‘No one mentioned the word “race,” “white,” “black,” or anything—except him,’ Jones falsely claimed
CNN contributor Van Jones said there’s “no evidence” the black Charlotte train murder suspect, DeCarlos Brown, stabbed Iryna Zarutska because she was white—even though video footage shows him saying, “I got that white girl.”
CNN NewsNight host Abby Phillip on Monday said “certain people” have aimed to turn the killing into a “reciprocal George Floyd situation.” She played a clip of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk saying Zarutska, a refugee of the war in Ukraine, “was murdered just because she was white.”
Jones disagreed, arguing there was “no evidence” Brown had racial motivations when he stabbed Zarutska without provocation.
“We don’t know why that man did what he did. And for Charlie Kirk to say, ‘We know he did it because she’s white’ when there’s no evidence of that is just pure race-mongering, hate-mongering. It’s wrong,” Jones said. “For someone like Charlie Kirk, he should be ashamed of himself. No one mentioned the word ‘race,’ ‘white,’ ‘black,’ or anything—except him.”
But surveillance footage shows otherwise. After stabbing Zarutska, Brown said, “I got that white girl, got that white girl,” as he meandered around the train car.
The Department of Justice on Tuesday charged Brown with one count of committing an act causing death on a mass transportation system. Attorney General Pam Bondi vowed to “seek the maximum penalty,” declaring Brown, who was already facing first-degree murder charges at the state level, “will never again see the light of day as a free man.”
Kirk also accused mainstream media outlets of holding a double standard. He argued if Brown and Zarutska’s races were reversed, “it would be an apocalyptically huge national story used to impose national, sweeping political change.” He pointed out that numerous publications initially failed to cover the stabbing. When they finally did, the headlines centered on conservatives’ reactions rather than the killing itself.
Kirk noted the New York Times reported the murder ignited “a firestorm on the right.” He called Axios’s story “repulsive” for reporting the stabbing was “drawing repeated attention” from Republicans who are frustrated with soft-on-crime policies.
CNN, for its part, published a triple-byline story with a headline more akin to a Shakespearean tragedy than a brutal murder: “How the lives of a Ukrainian refugee and a Charlotte man with a criminal history converged in a fatal stabbing.”
Some critics, including White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, have contrasted the media’s coverage of the Charlotte stabbing to the case against Daniel Penny, the white man who restrained Jordan Neely as he went on a threatening rant on a Manhattan subway, killing him in the process.
“Many of the journalists in this room spilled plenty of ink, trying to smear Daniel Penny for defending a subway car from a deranged lunatic in New York City, but none of those same reporters lift a finger to write stories about an actual murderer,” Leavitt said during a Tuesday press briefing.
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