Stung By Boycott, Beck Channels McCarthy: There Are ‘Communists’ Advising The President

The Wonk Room

Stung By Boycott, Beck Channels McCarthy: There Are ‘Communists’ Advising The President

by Brad Johnson

On Tuesday night, Glenn Beck invoked the red-baiting of a bygone age, making the claim that there are “Communists in the United States government.” Beck’s McCarthyite rampage came during an extended screed attacking White House Special Advisor for Green Jobs Van Jones, a former Center for American Progress senior fellow and the co-founder of Green for All, an environmental-entrepeneurial organization. After renouncing his “rowdy black nationalism” in 2000, Van Jones “has emerged as the perhaps the nation’s chief proponent of using business-based solutions to create jobs and clean up the environment.” However, Glenn Beck is convinced that Van Jones is a Communist sleeper agent in the White House:

I know there are good decent people, left and right, Democrats and Republicans that watch this program! How much more evidence do you need that we have radicals in the White House? Oh, we haven’t even begun. If you think you need more — We need to at least start having the necessary conversation of: Do we really want Communists in the United States government as special advisors to the president? To be honest with ya, and maybe it’s just me, I don’t even want Communists having lunch with our president. When Putin was having an hour with the president, I know he had to do it, but I wasn’t comfortable with it! Barack Obama did not campaign on openly changing the whole system.

Watch it:

In fact, Obama did campaign openly on a message of change. And hope.

Evidently, Beck is attacking Van Jones to divert attention from his accusations that President Obama is a “racist” who “hates white people.” A successful boycott by Color of Change, an organization co-founded by Van Jones in 2005 but with which he has had no active involvement since 2007, has led to 57 advertisers abandoning Beck’s show.