



“On the death penalty bit, and I can’t imagine anyone in the administration is saying, ‘Hey, go pull a [Rodrigo] Duterte by murdering these dealers,’ but who’s telling him that the death penalty is a good idea?” Baldwin asked in referring to the authoritarian Philippines leader, whose security forces have waged a campaign of extrajudicial murder against drug users and dealers.

ADVERTISEMENT

“I don’t know. I don’t know," Jones said. "I’ve talked to people at the White House. There are a lot of good ideas over there. There’s some good people over there who are working hard. But there’s some other force that always, whenever something positive starts to happen, this other weird stuff gets creeping in here."



"Here’s what I would say. ... When you have 47,000 Americans die of something, I mean if [the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria] had killed 47,000 Americans, the entire country would stop what we were doing and we’d get this thing fixed tomorrow ," continued Jones, a former adviser to the Obama White House Council on Environmental Quality. "If this can be a step in that direction, that’s great. But leave out the ideas that nobody — nobody is calling for that."



"You might find some sheriff or somebody to stand with the president and say it, but literally I was just there. I’ve never seen so much pain and heartbreak and so much need for help and hope as I saw in West Virginia and good people, not one of them said the death penalty one time," he said. Baldwin's question came after Trump announced plans to push for some drug dealers to get the death penalty as part of an anti-opioid program.“On the death penalty bit, and I can’t imagine anyone in the administration is saying, ‘Hey, go pull a [Rodrigo] Duterte by murdering these dealers,’ but who’s telling him that the death penalty is a good idea?” Baldwin asked in referring to the authoritarian Philippines leader, whose security forces have waged a campaign of extrajudicial murder against drug users and dealers.“I don’t know. I don’t know," Jones said. "I’ve talked to people at the White House. There are a lot of good ideas over there. There’s some good people over there who are working hard. But there’s some other force that always, whenever something positive starts to happen, this other weird stuff gets creeping in here.""Here’s what I would say. ... When you have 47,000 Americans die of something, I mean if [the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria] had killed 47,000 Americans, the entire country would stop what we were doing and we’d get this thing fixed," continued Jones, a former adviser to the Obama White House Council on Environmental Quality. "If this can be a step in that direction, that’s great. But leave out the ideas that nobody — nobody is calling for that.""You might find some sheriff or somebody to stand with the president and say it, but literally I was just there. I’ve never seen so much pain and heartbreak and so much need for help and hope as I saw in West Virginia and good people, not one of them said the death penalty one time," he said.

"This death penalty thing is a complete nonstarter, and it’s divisive and it’s stupid. I think it’s an offense to the people who are really trying to solve this problem," Jones said.