Story highlights
Jones says Trump's message is that US is "focused on our own interests"
CNN contributor Jeffrey Lord says Trump wants "the city on the hill ... to be rebuilt"
President Donald Trump in his inaugural address laid out a “petty” and “small” vision for a “radically ordinary country,” CNN contributor Van Jones argued Friday.
“To the world he actually now says the United States is now a radically ordinary country,” said Jones, a Democrat and former Obama administration adviser.
“We will be petty. We will be small. We will be focused on our own interests and we are abandoning now that inspirational city on the hill position that Reagan talked about,” Jones continued.
“This is a very patriotic speech, but it’s a patriotism unrecognizable, I think, to the world,” Jones continued.
“[I] don’t know where it leads us, but I think the world is now adrift,” Jones added, speaking on a panel moderated by CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “I don’t know who leads the world now.”
But Jeffrey Lord, a CNN contributor and a Trump supporter, fired back, arguing the President had not called for a diminished America but a restoration of strength.
“I think he has said the city on the hill has been devastated and needs to be rebuilt,” Lord said. “That’s a different thing altogether.”