Dem Senator Slams Van Jones Over Vile “Dead Gaza Baby” Joke

Maryland Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen called out political commentator Van Jones for his grotesque “dead Gaza baby” joke on Real Time with Bill Maher.

“This is not about critical race theory on college campuses, this is about Iran,” Jones said while claiming that information about Israel’s genocide of Palestinians is all just Iranian propaganda. “Iran and Qatar have come up with a disinformation campaign that they are running through TikTok and Instagram that is massive. If you are a young person, you open up your phone and all you see is ‘dead Gaza baby, dead Gaza baby, dead Gaza baby—Diddy—dead Gaza baby, dead Gaza baby.... That’s not DEI, that is a geopolitical adversary that is deliberately trying to divide the West against itself.”

The crowd erupted in laughter and applause.

Jones was widely rebuked, perhaps most pointedly by Van Hollen.

“I’m glad Van Jones apologized for his sick joking about dead kids in Gaza. But the problem goes deeper: he spread Netanyahu propaganda that the mass killings of civilians in Gaza—including 20K+ kids—is Iranian fake news,” he wrote on X. “It’s not the students and young people who are fooled. It’s Van Jones.”

Calling Palestinians using social media to broadcast their own genocide a disinformation campaign is stupid and disgusting, especially given how hard it is to share that information in the first place. Jones later offered a half-hearted apology, but the damage was done.

“I’ve watched hundreds of hours of Gaza videos in the last 2 years, including content filmed by our brave teams inside the strip, and can confirm that the ‘dead Gaza baby’ images are quite real, not the product of a ‘disinformation campaign’ and that there is nothing funny about them,” NBC News’s Hala Gorani said.

“Turning ‘dead Gaza baby’ into a punchline is such an evil choice that I’m struggling to even engage with the outrageous lie that we only care about Gazan deaths because of an Iranian social media campaign,” Briahna Joy Gray chimed in. ​​

Others pointed to Jones’s history of leftist performance—making a 2003 pro-Palestinian rap album, starting a Maoist, Marxist-Leninist collective in San Francisco in the 90s—to show how spineless his current rhetoric is.

As for Van Hollen, his condemnation of Jones is unfortunately one of very few instances of U.S. leadership on either side showing any ounce of courage in speaking up against Israel’s genocide. And while words won’t make Israel’s bombs stop dropping on Gaza, Van Hollen shows that the bright line on fealty to Israel is deteriorating.