good evening. welcome to "the van jones show." i'm van jones. i got two great guests tonight. one is running to be president of the united states, and he's hoping the path to the white house this year goes through the industrial midwest, ohio congressman tim ryan is here. he's going to be with us tonight. so exciting. also we've got an outspoken comedian, author, and activist, chelsea handler also in the building. so we're going to have a great show tonight. [ applause ]

first let's talk. once again, the defining feature of the trump presidency on full display this week. our economy is coming up, but our society is coming apart. president trump bragging on the economy with good reason. obama set him up from the alley-oop, but trump is getting credit for this slam dunk. these numbers are unbelievable. the economy growing at a faster pace than even the experts have been predicting. gdp up 3.2%. unemployment rate at its lowest in 49 years, down to 3.6%. hourly wages also going up, 3.2% rise from last year. and americans like it, okay? you got a brand-new cnn poll that shows trump's approval rating on the economy is now at an all-time high of 56%. that's good news, good news for the country. but on the flip side, this week we saw a circus or a soap opera that could easily have just been titled, you know, "our democracy

in danger." attorney general bill barr testified before congress on the mueller report. and once again he seemed like trump's personal defense lawyer, not an independent lawyer for the people. and speaker of the house nancy pelosi said that by apparently lying under oath, the number one law enforcement official in the country had actually committed a crime. and that's not even the worst of it. in all the hubbub about the hearing, you might have missed the one big thing that barr did this week that's truly terrible. he's moving to completely wipe out health care as we know it. in court filings this week, the doj asked a federal appeals court to strike down all of obamacare. that would leave tens of millions of americans in jeopardy of losing their health care with no replacement plan at all. it's especially concerning for people who have pre-existing conditions. also the trump administration is continuing to basically give the middle finger to the constitution, stonewalling on

oversight from congress, refusing to hand over his tax returns. trump saying he won't let his former white house counsel, don mcgahn, even testify in front of congress. this is not good, and it's getting worse. so ultimately all this brings us back to 2020. what is this election going to be about? on the one hand, former vice president joe biden says we are in a battle for the soul of the nation. but trump's acting chief of staff mick mulvaney has a slightly more cynical view. >> they hate to sound like a cliche, but are you better off than you were four years ago? it's pretty simple right ] it's the economy stupid. it's easy. people will vote for somebody they don't like if they think it's good for them. >> that's kind of sad. let's get some answers from somebody who is actually a part of this fight. please welcome to "the van jones show" a son of the industrial heartland, a 2020 presidential hopeful, and a proud representative from the great state of ohio, congressman tim

ryan. [ applause ] my man. good to see you. >> appreciate you having me. thank you. >> oh, man. >> thank you. >> i'm so glad to have you here. help me understand how you make sense of, on the one hand, these incredible economic numbers, on the other hand, you know, trump's personal performance and characteristics. how is that landing and playing in the heartland? >> well, i think i really don't believe those numbers. i think we've blown past the old metrics. the stock market's up. the unemployment rate is obviously very, very low. but 40% to 50% of american families could not survive a $400 or $500 emergency. that means your tire blows, somebody gets sick in your family skpu donand you don't ha proper insurance, some other tragedy happens. your economic viability goes down the tubes. so i don't think these metrics

today are actually capturing what people are going through. >> the economic insecurity. so mulvaney has a case to make, though, that even, you know, the numbers themselves give people a sense of hope. will people vote for donald trump even though they don't like him if the numbers keep moving the way they're moving? >> well, we've got to have a good campaign obviously, whoever the democratic nominee is, and we've got to talk about the future. i mean trump is still talking about the past. he's talking about steel mills and coal mines. coal jobs are down 30,000 in the last ten years. you know these statistics better than anybody. the future is in electric vehicles, solar, wind, artificial intelligence, additive manufacturing. these are industries growing at 25% to 30% a year. the president of the united states has no industrial policy for us, no agenda to capture these markets, and quite frankly, we're getting our clock cleaned by china. china dominates 40% of the electric vehicle market. they dominate 60% of the solar panel market. we've got to get our act together here. >> what is he not doing that you

would do if you had the opportunity? >> the president of the united states has the ability, the power to galvanize the economy, to catalyze around certain industries. if i was president of the united states, within the first week or two, i would be sitting down with the big three auto companies, the next-generation electric vehicle manufacturers in the united states, the department of energy, the department of transportation, venture capital, and the business community and figure out how can we dominate the electric vehicle market. then i think a week later we'd do solar and we'd do wind. we need to dominate these industries of the future because we're falling behind right now, van, and at some point we're not going to be able to catch back up. [ applause ] >> fired up. that's good. it's good that somebody actually has a plan to do something because like you said, the number is going up. industry falling behind is bad. joe biden just said china is not that big a deal. you seem to be worried about it. >> i actually think that's a stunning -- and i love joe biden, but i think that's

stunningly out of touch with where we are right now. i mean if you look at what china's doing, they've got a five-year plan, ten-year plan, 20-year plan, 50-year plan, 100-year plan. they're building islands in the south china sea. they've militarized them. long-term raw material contracts in africa. they're building bases in africa. they have a belt and road initiative where they're building infrastructure projects. i saw a picture the other day, a rail line from northeast china all the way to rotterdam. they are on the move. they are dominating electric vehicles. they're dominating solar. they're putting billions of dollars behind these projects, and they have a 100-year plan, van. we're in a 24-hour news cycle, and they're winning. that's the urgency that i'm bringing to this race. >> i love your passion. i know where you come from. i know that this is real to you. what can we do, though, about the robots that are coming? i mean the automation. you mentioned automation and a.i. like that's a good thing.

that stuff scares the crap out of me because i don't know how we compete. >> it's scary. >> are there policies or things you would do to help? >> here's what i would do. i'll tell you a quick story. when we lost youngstown sheet and tube, which was like the world premier steel manufacturer in youngstown in the late '70s, when that went belly up, the technology in the steel mills was pre-world war i. the steel industry put their head in the sand. they ignored what was happening around the globe and the competition, and we're still recovering today in youngstown and in gary, indiana, these steel-producing areas. i think we're at that same inflection point today with a.i., with additive manufacturing, and i think we have a choice. we can bury our heads in the sand like the steel industry did, and the whole country will look like the industrial midwest, or we can grab these technologies and dominate them and infuse them into our industries today, crank up productivity, and then make sure we cut these workers in on the deal so that we get middle class wages up.

and, yes, they're going to displace people along the way, but that's a much better position to be in because you'll get the benefits of what happens in the economy, or the alternative is you let china dominate them, and then they dominate the industries, and we're going to get screwed anyway. >> part of what i'm trying to understand, though, is you're trying to deal with that part, getting an economic agenda going forward, but you still have trump and the trump administration out there -- i mean forget their economic policy. they don't seem to respect the constitution in the same way that you or i might want them to do. what is your view of the of the proper approach for the democrats in the face of this kind of behavior from the administration? >> i think we continue to do what we're doing. i mean he makes the case. he makes the argument, and i think sometimes we get caught up on the 35% or 40% that are rock solid with trump and very loud on social media. they tend to have a big impact. but the reality of it is people don't like the way he behaves, you know. where i come from, people have

consequences if they act out of line. you know, he wants everybody to obey the rules. he wants china to obey the rules and not cheat, and yet he gets a subpoena from the united states congress, and he doesn't obey them. is that what we're teaching our kids? my wife's a first grade schoolteacher and she goes out of her mind on some of this stuff because it's like she's trying to do one thing at school every day, and on tv at night it's the attorney general lying to congress and the president of the united states not following the law. i think we win that, though. at the end of the day, this is another 18 months. what's the national stress level today? i mean forget the gdp and the unemployment rate. i want the national anxiety level, and let's start building the economy around that. and i think people are exhausted. >> yeah, that's true. >> they're exhausted, and i think if we provide a good alternative that has a good economic plan that cares about people, that's tolerant, that's big-hearted like america is, i

think we take trump out. i really do. [ applause ] >> you don't seem exhausted. that's a good thing. you don't seem exhausted. but on the one hand, you've got this oversight challenge. on the other side, pelosi and everybody were at the white house this week talking about a big infrastructure deal. do you guys have enough gas in your tank to both do oversight and an infrastructure deal? >> i mean i think it's going to be hard quite frankly. i would love for us to do an infrastructure bill. we need it. it's a jobs program, and i do think as the economy does soften, that's the perfect time. i think that would be really smart. i just don't see the republicans trying to really step up to pay for it, and we have trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see now. 1 trillion with a "t" every year going onto our national debt because of the tax cut that cost $2.3 trillion and reduced revenue coming in. so whatever we do, we've got to start paying for some of this stuff at some point. >> i'm as bipartisan as you can find as a liberal democrat. should we even do an

infrastructure deal at this point? won't that just guarantee that trump wins re-election if we do something -- if we do another big economic stimulus in the first term? >> well, i mean it needs to happen. i personally don't think it's going to happen. >> so you're not worried about it? >> i'm not really worried about it because i don't think mitch mcconnell is going to pass a big infrastructure bill. >> i can see you have a strategic mind about this stuff. strategy in the house is run by the speaker of the house. you ran to be speaker 2016. you get tried to get somebody to run against pelosi in 2018. you seem to be a critic of pelosi often. how do you think she's done these first 100 days or so? >> i think she's doing a great job. i mean it was never personal. i mean trump won. the blue wall fell. we completely lost our connection to the working-class people, white, black, brown, gay, straight. i just feel like the workers of this country felt like the democrats are more of a coastal party, more focused on coastal issues. and i felt like we needed to do something to reconnect with them.

but i've always had enormous respect for nancy pelosi. i think actually at this moment in time, she's there at the exact right time when the challenges to article 1 of the constitution, the house of representatives, the senate are under attack by this president. i think she's the perfect person to there because there's nobody who understands that world better than her. it was a family discussion we had. she won the starting quarterback position, and i'm the backup. >> that's great. [ applause ] >> you did a good job with that. a lot more to talk about with tim ryan when we come back. he's a part of a very crowded democratic field. why do we need so many candidates? is this a good thing or a bad thing? we're going to talk about that and a bunch more when we get back.

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welcome back to "the van jones show." i'm here with democratic congressman and 2020 presidential hopeful tim ryan. so i got to ask. do we need all these people running? i mean why is this happening, and how do you feel about it? >> i think some should get out myself. >> i bet you do. i mean is it going to hurt us, is it going to help us? >> i don't think so. i know some people are kind of spooked by it and like we got to get somebody to run. this is going to play out. we're democrats. let's have the ideas primaried. let's figure out where the country needs to go. clearly things aren't running well around, you know, the country for a lot of people -- education, agriculture. farmers aren't doing well. there's a lot of inequality, criminal justice. there's all of these issues. let's have a big conversation about them. >> let's talk about that because there does seem to be a kind of a basic split where on the one hand you have people like biden. they're saying let's return to

normalcy, return to decency and making that kind of appeal. then you've got bernie sanders and elizabeth warren who are saying, listen, the old status quo was broken to begin with. we don't want to return to anything. we want to go forward in a different direction. who do you think has a better argument? >> i think we need reform. i think we have to be decent. we have to be respectful. that has got to be a part of the next iteration of the country is where we get back to listening to each other, respecting each other. we can't be so divided because no matter what the plan is, it's not going anywhere if we're divided. we've got to come together as a country. but i'm on the reform side. i mean i just think the government is outdated, and sometimes the democrats go out of their way to defend the indefensib indefensible. our education system needed totally reformed. our kids are coming into our schools in many instances traumatized. >> by what? >> just life. over 50% of the kid who's go to our public schools are low

income. >> i see. >> they live in homes that have violence. they live in communities that have violence. and what we've learned over the last 20 years is that when you're traumatized, you literally can't -- you're in fight or flight mode. you literally can't access the part of your brain that you need to learn. so i'm promoting reforms around social and emotional learning as a foundational component to educating our kids. >> you know, it's so interesting to hear you talk about this because one of the things i wanted to ask you is sometimes you are so strong on the industrial working-class stuff, and that's often read as white folks. some of the same problems and pain in some of those declining white communities, they're right there in the black community, right there in the latino community. can you talk a little about what's in your heart and plan and playbook for african-american, latino, native american, for that part of the party? >> absolutely. and i'm not the one whoever says, oh, tim ryan's just for white people. people don't understand, youngstown, ohio, is almost 50% african-american. i mean i've been representing

these interests for a long time, and they are similar in a lot of ways. we have to get rid of the structural racism in the criminal justice system. that has to happen. [ applause ] because it's limiting opportunity. i mean that's really, at the end of the day, the big problem. there's not opportunity in communities of color. i'm going to be proposing an urban martial plan in which we go into urban communities. i think we've got to clean them up. i don't think there's any reason why we have to have the level of blight that we have. some of these towns have thousands and thousands of homes that need to come down. we need to invest in our downtowns. we need to renovate theaters, riverwalks, clean up our rivers and entice businesses to come back to our community centers, especially in these small and midsized towns. i want a robust, urban agriculture program in the united states. >> that's fresh. >> it is fresh, literally.

i want to get healthy food into these communities. we have high rates of diabetes, especially in communities of color, and it's largely based on the diets. so let's actually invest into healthy foods, clean up these towns, get schools with social and emotional learning, and vocational training. let's get prepared to compete against china in the 21st century. >> all that sounds awesome. [ applause ] you know, i think part of the challenge -- you got great ideas. one of the things i noticed with you, you talk about the green new deal without talking about the green new deal. everything you're talking about, electric cars and all this sort of stuff and the infrastructure, like i know what you're doing. so, you know, talk a little bit -- on the nose about the climate crisis. is that something that you're concerned about? >> i'm frightened, frightened about it. i think like we all are. and i think talking about it -- because when you talk about those people at general motors who lost their job or the truckers who lost their job, they don't have the luxury to worry about climate change.

they've got a mortgage coming. they've got their kids they're trying to educate. they've got health care issues. they don't know what's happening with their retirement. it's not that they don't care. it's not that they don't understand. it's like they don't have the bandwidth. so i'm trying to frame this in a way, and i want to invite people in to be a part of this broader conversation. come to tim ryan for america.com and be a part of this conversation because it is fresh. it is different. but if the democrats are not for reform, if we're not for the future economy, then what are we doing as a political party? it's go time for us, especially around climate. [ applause ] >> you know, you seem like biden with maybe, you know, more heai and forward leaning. is biden kind of going back?

>> the china comment worried me a little bit. i love joe biden. i was just on the trail with him. i just walk up to him, i'm like, i love you. that's literally what came out of my mouth. >> it's going to be hard to run an attack. >> i worry about the china comment. i think this is going to be about the future. i think it's about the president who's going to allow us to dominate electric vehicles. who's going to steer that investment into the communities of color that have been unplugged from any benefits of globalization for the last 30 or 40 years. i think the country is looking for a president to say, i get it. i think i fit in that. that's why i'm running. i hope people will help me get there. >> good luck to you on the campaign trail. coming up, baltimore's mayor just resigned. another setback for a city that's been struggling. i got back in my van, and i spoke to baltimore residents about all the issues going on

there. you're going to want to hear what they have to say about their city. that's next. i have one kid in each branch of the military. it's so important to us that verizon is supporting military families. that's how i stay connected with them. (vo) the best network is the one that gives you more. like a special price for military families and $100 when you switch. that's verizon. who's already won three cars, two motorcycles, a boat, and an r.v. i would not want to pay that insurance bill. [ ding ] -oh, i have progressive, so i just bundled everything with my home insurance. saved me a ton of money. -love you, gary! -you don't have to buzz in. it's not a question, gary. on march 1, 1810 -- [ ding ] -frédéric chopin. -collapsing in 226 -- [ ding ] -the colossus of rhodes. -[ sighs ] louise dustmann -- [ ding ] -brahms' "lullaby," or "wiegenlied." -when will it end? [ ding ] -not today, ron. -when will it end? [ ding ]

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welcome back to "the van jones show." another week, another blow for the city of baltimore. this time their mayor is actually resigning in scandal

after profiting from a no-bid book deal. as she said, baltimore deserves better. the city is already coping with a gun violence epidemic. there were 309 homicides in 2018 alone. there are also systemic issues there like poverty and drugs. another struggle, the relationship between the police and the community. after years of abusing power, excessive force, violating people's constitutional rights, the police were forced to make major changes as a part of a federal consent decree. but now 75% of the police officers say they feel restricted by the order and can't do their job. and guess what? many of the residents still don't trust the police. so i wanted to talk to the people there about all this. i got back in my van -- yes, van in a van -- and i went to baltimore to find out what's going on. take a look. ♪ all right. so here we are in baltimore. beautiful, affluent area.

very different baltimore than the baltimore where we're going. everybody remembers four years ago when freddie gray died in police custody. it sparked off massive protests, riots and violence. the country was made aware of the problem of policing in baltimore, but there are so many other problems here that were not talked about then or now. how are you? >> good morning! >> how are you doing? welcome, welcome, welcome. >> hello, everybody. >> so why did we pick you up on that corner? >> on that corner just across the street, when i was a kid, i

was walking to school, and a guy walks up to me. the guy robbed me. >> yeah. >> at gunpoint. on the same playground when i was a kid, some guy tried to rob us for our kites. and a plainclothes cop jumped out of his car. the guys ran away, and then he put us in his police car and took us home. >> didn't you used to run around that same neighborhood? >> it was funny. when we picked him up -- i hadn't been around there in a while. when i was in my late teens, early teens, i was hustling around there? >> what do you mean when you say hustle? >> i was selling drugs, weed, crack. both of my best friends that i hung around with were murderers. that's what kind of prompted me to change my life. >> you were going to a lot of funerals? >> a lot of funerals.

i lost six last year, you know, like i'm 30 now. i stopped counting after 20. >> you heard devon say he stopped going in the neighborhood where people got killed because you can feel the darkness in the space where murder has happened. so people do that all around the city, avoiding spaces where they know somebody got killed. and we just think baltimore deserves more than to have these black holes all over the city. >> a lot of people know about what happened here in part because of your photography. i mean you took a picture that wound up on the cover of "time" magazine. i mean really the world saw what was happening in baltimore in large part through your eyes and through your lens. so four years later, is it better, or is it worse? >> it's a lot of space for improvement. i just feel like the death of freddie gray gave baltimore a platform for change, and i feel like now, post-freddie, people actually have eyes on baltimore now. people are being held

accountable for the things they're doing. it's being brought to the front. >> the numbers suggest that things are not much better and possibly worse. you had 300-plus murders. >> yes, sir. i mean to be frank, we're talking about black people. that's who's suffering here. you know, i just heard his story of how many he's lost. we're in a city that has just accepted the amount of black people dying year after year, and we pump money into -- and here we go with this consent decree. >> what's wrong with the consent decree? >> some of the consent decree is fine. i'm talking about the parts that impact police dealing with the issues that they know can cause violence in baltimore. let's pretend that i pulled up on the corner, and somebody is standing there, and i know that they're out there hustling. so i'm going to say to you, my man, please. let me get the corner.

all right. and he can move. the foul way, the wrong way is to jump out on him, cuff him, and call for a wagon. so i do understand some of that, but we still need to give the police enough room to do their job, and to show in baltimore there's specific corners, communities, blocks where the odds of someone dying are very high. >> i've been on rough rides. i've had police hop out on me. i've had police put drugs on me just because they didn't like me. a lot of these police officers don't have respect for the community. you've got police officers that live in york, pa. they don't live in the city. they look at it and digest these stigmas, and you can see it in the way they react to the youth and other people in the community. people are starving. so when you see people hustling and stuff like that, a lot of these guys, they have to provide. you can't protect something or police something you don't understand. >> how do you see it? i mean obviously it's not easy

being a police officer either. >> no, it's not easy. and right now if we look at the homicide numbers, the shooting numbers, the robbery numbers, that's not the police that are producing those type of statistics. >> what we don't say enough in that conversation, though, is when you take the homicide map and you lay over it the map where all the liquor stores are, it's the same map. if you lay the map over top of it where there's either joblessness or people are underemployed, it's the same map. where all the blight is in the city, it's the same maps. so it's not like people are innately violent. to me, even the question of asking of what's happening in baltimore, that question is based in oppression because it's ignoring the fact that we're sitting in the middle of a violent system of oppression that creates all of this disparity, all of this hopelessness. and dr. king even said, if you do to a people what has been done to black and brown people in america, you're going to get

the same results from any group of people. >> you're right. it's the same map, and it's been the same map for decades. the same dope spots. and we are on a multi-million dollar dope strip right now. >> yeah. >> and there's going to be violence to control this strip. and the police have to do something about it. and the police need to play fair with the public, not put drugs on them, don't mistreat them, respect them, but they've got a job to do because we can't get them back once they're gone. >> you know, there's the opioid epidemic that is usually talked about in the white rural areas. but there were almost 700 people who died of opioid overdoses here in baltimore. >> it's always been here. >> but it wasn't called an epidemic because it was only happening to -- >> to black spaces.

i broke my hand and found myself selling them. then i found myself popping them more and getting some of my friends. you can't just kick that stuff. the difference is when you get on that stuff, you really -- you realize that you're really hooked and you can't get help. you got to think about you see somebody get shot or whatever the case may be, you turn to something. you might start off with weed and graduate to something else because you're dealing with post-traumatic stress. >> how did you get off? >> god. the universe, my family. i've been through so much. my family is always there. that's the difference between me and a lot of my peers. i have a strong family. >> that kind of pain and trauma, you only have two choices. it's either going to swallow you up whole, or you got to use it to keep pushing you forward in some kind of way. for me, it's about making sure that murder does not have the last say, right? that love has to have the last say. ♪ >> that's beautiful, isn't it? >> it is. >> it doesn't seem like it was that long ago. >> i know, right? >> everybody protested every

day. >> you think about his face and his image, it's a part of history now. >> oh, absolutely. >> you really cannot tell the history of america now without saying the name freddie gray. we cannot forget what's going on in baltimore and places like baltimore. this show is all about that. coming up, chelsea handler is here. the 2016 election forced her to face some very personal pain in her life. we're going to talk about that and see who she wants to have in the white house in 2020 when we get back. last year, the department of veteran's affairs partnered with t-mobile for business, to help care for veterans everywhere. with va video connect, powered by t-mobile, men and women who serve can speak to their doctors from virtually anywhere, and get the care they deserve, so they can return to their most important post. best friend, quarterback, or just dad. the va provides the care, t-mobile provides the coverage.

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my next guest is an outspoken comedian. she's also a political activist and an author. her new book "life will be the death of me" debuted at number one on "the new york times" best-seller list. please welcome to "the van jones show" chelsea handler in the house. [ applause ] >> hi, everybody. >> good to see you. >> live audience. i love it. it's what i live for. >> so first of all, i've got the big question everybody wants to know. are you still in love with bob mueller? >> i have very strong sexual

feelings for robert mueller, and they're not going away. my feelings are not conditional. i'm exploring them, and i'm exploring the mueller report. and as i go through it, i'll make an assessment on where i stand with him romantically. i mean he is married, so obviously i have to respect that. but i can still pine for him. >> i know that a lot of us, though, were hoping that the mueller report was going to come out. trump was going to get into trouble. but do you think that we spent too much time on that, you know, everybody kind of in the mueller mania and then afterwards kind of disappointed? >> yeah. we relied on it. i certainly did. i thought that was going to be the end of this chapter, and it turns out there's just going to be more and more corruption. but, you know, listen, i had to get my life back. you know what i mean? i want to be optimistic, and i want to be positive. and i can't watch the news on a loop like i used to, and i can't read the news on a loop like i used to because i want to be in a state of action, not reaction. sometimes when we're watching it, we're just sitting there

going, i hate this. i can't believe it. so i think a lot of us, you know, have had a wake-up call, and i know i'm a person that that happened to. and i know millions of other people feel the same way. so it was a good chance to take a look at myself and find out what my issues are moving forward and why trump represents such pandemonium to me. >> that's one of the things about this book. this is a different kind of a book. i mean it's still hilarious, but you're really kind of opening up your heart. why did the trump election hit you so hard? >> i think what -- i've been through therapy. i had to get a psychiatrist after the election. republicans love to talk about that. chelsea handler is such a spoiled brat, and i was acting like a spoiled brat. i didn't understand things could go this wrong. i thought adults like you were supposed to take care of these, adults like you, responsible people, so i could go on living in my uninformed happiness, cashing checks and being a loud mouth. it was a wake-up call because vis-a-vis my psychiatrist, i realized it was a trigger for me

to the other time in my life when things were unstable and when things became unhinged when my brother died. i was 9. my brother was 22. he sat in the kitchen and said to me, i'll be home. i'll never leave you with these people, talking about my parents. i trusted him. he was my first kind of boyfriend. when you're a little girl, your big brother is everything, and for me that's who he was. so he died after he told me that, and i never thought i had to revisit that. i never thought that's where my anger was from. it is. that's where my anger is from because i felt rejected, and at that age you don't have the articulation. >> you can't make sense of it when you're a kid. >> you don't know what happened. you just feel like he left you and lied to you. that was my way to go through life. i don't need anyone. i will not rely on adults. they're unreliable. it's not about trump. trump represents that time to me the unjustness of it all. >> i think the courage to just say that just needs a beat

because i think a lot of people got triggered and regressed back to earlier things and then acted out of that for a very long time and are still in that. you're the first person i've heard to put words to that and to write it in a book that's both funny and heartbreaking. talk more about that discovery. >> i think what i learned is that we all have -- part of the human experience is that you're injured. you have trauma. that's happened to every single person whether you're aware of it or not or what your trauma is. i think when you don't go through it and walk the walk and talk to somebody about a pain, about grief, about a loss, it will come back and bite you in the ass. it will land on your door bigger and louder, and the hole gets bigger. and then it is an injury that really needs attention. and i think for me, you know, a lot of us have such built up and pent up anger from something that happened in our childhood. i mean it's natural to be angry at donald trump being president. >> right. >> it is not natural for it to take over and consume my life. >> listen, i have been saying it a long time. it's bad enough that trump runs

the white house. he shouldn't run my house. like i need to be able to have some kind of peace. >> yes. >> but when you decided to write this book, what was that process like? because you're going through it while you're writing it, it seems to me. >> yeah. i started going to sessions with my guy, and he was telling me things about -- i said why do i end relationships if somebody pisses me off, i can't ever speak to them? it's like scorched earth. it's over. >> he said because that's your blueprint but how a relationship ends. your brother was there one day and gone the next day. that's how you think it goes. i was like, oh. things like that, i was like i can't be the only person who is this out of touch with themselves. so i wrote -- you know, writing it all, it was a huge catharsis obviously because i got to talk about my mother dying and my brother dying. i was like, i can't write a book about death. this is awful. who is going to read this book? death can be funny if we stop resisting so much when people are leaving us or sick and just

help them through their pain and help them be comfortable. it's a whole different world. we take everything so personally. loss is so personal. the person died. no one is out to get you and die on you. no one's trying to disappoint you in that way. so we just -- i helped me slow down, which is something i really needed. it helped me sit with myself and think about everything and what i want to contribute in this world moving forward. >> speaking of contribute, you actually went out with emily's list, and you tried to help people get elected to office, women in particular. what did you learn about the country that you didn't know when you went out there trying to help people get elected? >> how easy it is to run for office. i mean it's so much easier than people think it is. it's just like a galvanization. you get momentum, and you build it, and you catch people with you, and there's so much energy in it. i know you know this, to be part of something like that. i think lots of people said, you know, we're going to chip in for this election, and look at the results. look how many women and people of color we elected to congress. i mean it's a huge, huge

victory. [ applause ] >> absolutely. you know, speaking of women, we also now have a ton of women running to be president. do you think it's important that we have a woman at the top of the ticket? >> i don't know about the top of the ticket. i think we have to have a woman on the ticket. it depends who the best person is. i don't want to say put a woman in a job because we need a woman. we need a woman representing and we have qualified women who can do that. i love elizabeth warren. and i love pete buttigieg or however you say it. i love -- i love a lot of the candidates, and i'm also happy that there are so many. good. let's get them all. you know what i mean? [ applause ] >> we've got so much more to talk about when we get back. chelsea is working on another project to raise awareness about white privilege. we're going to talk about that and other stuff when we get back.

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all right, welcome back "the van jones show" with chelsea handler. you have a very unusual and interesting, exciting project with netflix. documentary on white privilege.

now, that is generally not considered a funny topic. you're a comedian. why did you pick white privilege? >> i guess it was part of my wake-up call, you know, with my book. i was starting to write my book and becoming much more self-aware about my privilege, about how my life has turned out and how kind of easy it's been and why maybe that happened and what would it be like for someone of color to get rewarded for drinking and sleeping -- talking about all the things i've talked about, glorifying bad behavior. it struck me i should probably talk about my own privilege, you know what i mean and hang myself out to dry to open up the conversation. white people don't like this conversation. so people -- the white meme don't want to talk about privilege because they don't want to say the wrong thing or feel guilty. that's what i learned doing this documentary and it was depressing because, again, it's putting it on people of color, the privilege conversation. we're making people of color decide what we should do about our white privilege instead of white people saying how do we

become better advocates and allies? i can make anything funny. >> you have an african-american boyfriend who actually went to prison doing the same stuff that you were doing. >> yeah, i had my boyfriend named tyshawn in high school. i got pregnant. had to get an abortion and his family -- we got arrested. he got arrested. we had a dime bag of marijuana and were 16, he was 18. he got arrested. i got let go. they said get out of this neighborhood, third time he had a full scholarship to unlv. his whole life he spent 14 years incarcerated after that just because they were waiting for him to screw up. no one was waiting for me to screw up. i never once got in trouble. i missed a year of high school because i was partying and doing stuff and let me make it up in a summer. our lives were different and i could go right back to my

perfect easy life, not perfect or easy but comparatively. to see him was part of the documentary and seeing how the systemic racism and oppression that gets -- seems into people's lives and it is hard to get out of that. >> i can't tell you how much i appreciate you for doing it. it's sort of like hiding in plain sight. i mean i went to yale for law school. i saw more kids doing drugs at yale than i never saw in the housing project. none of those kids went to project. how is he doing now. >> he's good. he's out of jail and he lives with his -- he lives, you know, in someplace in new jersey and i met -- i saw his family again. it was really nice to see him. he thought we probably would get right back together after that so that was a little bit like, no, no. but i appreciate -- i like you. so it was eye opening for me and it was -- i think it will be eye opening for a lot of people who are kind of questioning -- i

thought a long time privilege meant one thing, you come to a familiar which with a trust fund and go to an ivy league school. there's privilege just walking around. >> well said, well said. i appreciate that. thank you so much for being here. check out her new book "life will be the death of me." also please watch my other show, "the redemption project" tomorrow 9:00 p.m. here on cnn. incredibly heartwarming, heartbreaking stuff. i'm van jones. this is "the van jones show." peace and love for one another. [ applause ] and you want to make sure to aim it. i'm aiming it. ohhhhhhh! i ordered it for everyone. [laughing] (dad vo) we got the biggest subaru to help bring our family together. i'm just resting my eyes. (dad vo) even though we're generations apart. what a day. i just love those kids. (avo) presenting the all-new three-row subaru ascent. wave to grandma, everybody.

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you are live in the cnn newsroom. i'm ana cabrera in new york. north korea test fires multiple projectiles and rocket launchers almost daring president trump to react. in response, trump offers a reassuring tweet today saying north korean leader kim jong-un knows that i am with him and does not want to break his promise to me and adds the deal will happen. this even though russia's vladimir putin is making his own deals with the reclusive kim. the two met last week in russia so is this a power grab as talking falter with the u.s.? cnn's boris sanchez is with us now. kim jong-un is sort o