Van Jones had a message for America on election night, and it had nothing to do with gas prices.
"I'm happy Donald Trump is miserable, and I'm happy tonight," the CNN commentator said Tuesday as Democrats were projected to take both the House and the Senate. "This is like Christmas, and a birthday and the Easter Bunny, and Halloween."
That's four holidays. He needed four.
"Happy, happy, happy, I'm so happy," Jones went on, in case anyone at home had missed the mood. When the panel talked about the results, he called the night the repudiation of Trumpism people had been hoping for.
Then he went to Jonestown.
"If you join a cult, at some point, the cult leader takes you to Jonestown and tries to get you to drink the Kool-Aid," Jones said. "This is Jonestown for the Republican Party."
More than 900 people died at Jonestown in 1978, about a third of them children, after Jim Jones had his followers drink cyanide-laced punch. In Van Jones's version, Trump is the cult leader. You can work out who the followers are.
"They drank the Kool-Aid, and they have candidates that are dropping like flies across the country," he said. Republicans hadn't stood up to Trump when he was "violating the law," Jones said, and now they were "paying the price."
Scott Jennings, the only Republican at the table, rolled his eyes.
Then Anderson Cooper spoke up. He's the anchor, the guy whose whole job is keeping the night on the rails, and he turned to Jennings with a joke: "I don't know if you want to check what's in your glass, Scott."
That was a poison joke, aimed at the one Republican on the set, on live national television.
"Do you realize I'm sitting right here?" Jennings said. "I can hear everything you're saying."
Jones wasn't done. "Can I be happy for my party?" he asked. That's a strange question from a man CNN pays to analyze elections, though at least it was an honest one.
At one point he announced, "I don't want to talk about Donald Trump anymore." Kasie Hunt cut in to tell him people were going to talk about Trump anyway. She had a point, since Jones had barely talked about anything else all night.
Jennings was the one on the panel who actually talked about voters. He didn't dress up the night. He called it "a country a** whooping," then went straight to the reason why: cost of living and gas prices. Americans, he said, have "here and now concerns."
That was one man at the table talking about grocery bills while another talked about the Easter Bunny.
CNN runs ads promising "Facts First." On the biggest news night of the year, its viewers got a holiday list and a mass-suicide comparison from the commentator, a report on how he thought the president was feeling, and a poison joke from the anchor.
Jones got his Christmas, his birthday, his Easter Bunny and his Halloween. In January his party takes over both houses of Congress, and the grocery bills and gas prices Jennings was talking about become its problem.