Van Jones, the civil rights advocate and former Obama administration advisor, will get a regular bimonthly slot on CNN’s primetime schedule with The Van Jones Show, the Time Warner-owned cable-news outlet said Monday.
The one-hour program will launch in January, CNN said, and Jones will also host a new original documentary series that will examine on instances of “reconciliation, hope and redemption within the criminal justice system.” Citizen Jones, a production company, will collaborate with CNN on that program.
In The Van Jones Show, the host will offer his take on “the forces that elected Donald Trump, the anti-Trump ‘resistance’ movement and the future of both major parties,” CNN said. Jones has been an intermittent part of CNN’s lineup in recent months, hosting a series of town halls under the rubric “The Messy Truth,” during which he seeks answers on various policy and culture issues from voters across the nation.
The Van Jones Show will feature a live studio audience. Jones has been eager to get different factions to come together and discuss issues in a substantive way.
“I just want to mix it up a little bit,” the author and activist told Variety earlier this year. “I really understand how dad-gum smart people in the middle of the country are. I also understand how the coastal, cosmopolitan crowd can really come off as holier than thou and snotty, but of course, I really embrace those strong liberal values you find in the blue states,” he explained. “I really think that gives me something to bring to the national conversation.”
Jones has worked as a CNN contributor since the end of 2013, and worked alongside Newt Gingirch, Stephanie Cutter and S.E. Cupp on a re-boot of the CNN perennial Crossfire. The show was canceled in the fall of 2014, but Jones has continued to enjoy a CNN presence, most notably, perhaps, during the 2016 presidential election.
