CNN’s Camerota confronts Holocaust denier running for Congress in heated interview

CNN’s Alisyn Camerota on Thursday confronted the Holocaust denier who is the sole GOP candidate running for an Illinois House seat.

Arthur Jones, a self-described former leader of the American Nazi Party who is running as a Republican to unseat Rep. Daniel Lipinski (D), is uncontested for the GOP nomination in the state’s Democratic-leaning 3rd Congressional District.

The Illinois Republican Party and National Republican Congressional Committee have denounced Jones and voiced their strong opposition to his candidacy.

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Camerota interviewed Jones Thursday live on CNN’s “New Day,” asking him outright if he is a Nazi and continuing to spar with him in a heated exchange about the Holocaust.

“Mr. Jones, it is shocking to hear how vocally and unapologetically racist you are,” she said after playing a clip of Jones speaking at a neo-Nazi gathering, “Are you a Nazi?”

“I don’t call myself a Nazi,” Jones said, claiming that he has not been formally involved with Nazi organizations “since about 1990.”

“I call myself an American patriot and statesman,” he said.

Camerota listed several pieces of evidence showing Jones’s Nazi ties and involvement. 

“You dress in Nazi garb and you celebrate Hitler’s birthday,” she said. “You’re a Nazi.”

“Your website is filled with the most vile, rancid rhetoric I think I’ve ever read,” she continued. Jones’s campaign website includes a section titled “Holocaust?” in which he accuses survivors of the genocide of peddling “propaganda.”

{mosads}“It’s not vile and rancid, it’s the truth,” Jones said. “There’s nothing on that website that’s not true. … You ‘Jews’ media, you’ve gone absolutely nuts, you think that Adolf Hitler’s revived from the grave or something. It’s one man, one man, myself, that’s standing for the truth.”

Speaking over Jones, Camerota read facts about the Holocaust, which Jones forcefully dismissed as “poppycock” and a “scam,” and again referred to the Holocaust as an “extortion racket.”

“The cursed two-party, ‘Jew party, queer party’ system can’t stand it,” he said.

“If you did an honest investigation of the Holocaust you’d realize that it is nothing but an international extortion racket by the Jews to bleed, blackmail, extort and terrorize their enemies and to suck us into one war after another in the Mid East.”

After several minutes of confrontation, Camerota ended the interview by noting the at least seven races for public office that Jones has lost.

“We’re not in the business of predicting the news, but I can say that you will lose this race,” she said. “We’ll see what the voters think.”