GOP politician says Rachel Maddow “wants to look like a man” so she should stop bashing Donald Trump

Former Georgia state Rep. Vernon Jones – who was originally elected as a Democrat before switching parties – is angry that MSNBC and CNN decided not to air Donald Trump’s victory speech after the Iowa primary, and he has a strange argument about why they should have: MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, according to Jones, is trying to “look like a man.”

After Trump’s victory in the first GOP primary state this past Monday, Maddow announced on MSNBC that the network would not air his victory speech.

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She pointed out one specific thing that can make a huge difference between now and the general election next year.

“There is a reason that we and other news organizations have generally stopped giving an unfiltered live platform to remarks by former President Trump,” she said while he was speaking on Monday. “It is not out of spite. It is not a decision that we relish. It is a decision that we regularly revisit, and honestly, earnestly.”

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“There is a cost to us as a news organization of knowingly broadcasting untrue things. And that is a fundamental truth of our business and who we are.”

CNN aired part of his speech but cut away when he started using what CNN anchor Jake Tapper called “anti-immigrant rhetoric.”

Trump said on Tuesday that CNN and MSNBC are “crooked” and “dishonest” for not airing his speech and that they “should have their licenses or whatever they have, take it away.” Cable TV stations don’t have FCC licenses since they don’t use public airwaves. Also, there is no federal regulation requiring even broadcast networks to carry victory speeches after states’ primary elections.

On the rightwing network Newsmax, Jones ranted about Maddow, accusing her of hating white men while trying to look like one.

“You know, she always bashing white men, but she wants to look like a man,” he bellowed. “And there she is, um, they are literally making a decision not to carry President Trump because they don’t want their viewers to hear from President Trump.”

“They are afraid of President Trump. So here they are, literally censoring the president. Don’t want his information out there. They’re beating him up on one hand, they’re ranting and raving. And let’s just say in the meantime, they’re just creating up more racial divide, more — more gender divide. It’s just — MSNBC has gone too far again.”

Jones is opposed to all LGBTQ+ rights because, he claims, being LGBTQ+ is “a choice.”

“I don’t know what you are unless you tell me what you are, if you’re gay,” he said last year as he was running for Congress in Georgia’s Tenth District. “But when I walk in that room, you can tell that I’m Black. I’m Black from cradle to grave, let’s not get that confused.”

Gay people “can actually change,” he continued. “You can go from being straight, to being gay, to being transgender and all these other genders. But when you Black, I don’t have a choice.”

In 2020, when he was a Democratic member of the Georgia House of Representatives, he was confronted by Doraville City Councilwoman Stephe Koontz for his support of anti-immigration legislation. Koontz is transgender, and instead of talking about immigration Jones ranted “about how LGBTQ rights are not civil rights.”

“You might be a man one day and a woman the next, I don’t even know who you are,” Jones allegedly said, according to Koontz. Jones later told the Atlanta Constitution-Journal that his “recollection of the conversation is different” but did not explain further. Despite his denials at the time, he said pretty much the same thing two years later on a recorded podcast.