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Camerota had an epic confrontation with Arthur Jones, a racist, anti-Semitic, anti-LGBT candidate for Congress from Illinois.
CNN's Alisyn Camerota confronted Nazi congressional candidate Arthur Jones on today's edition of New Day, taking him to task on his Holocaust denial and saying he couldn't get elected dogcatcher.
Jones is running as a Republican in a Chicago-area district that's so heavily Democratic the Illinois Republican Party didn't bother to put up a candidate -- and his nominating petitions had the required number of valid signatures, so he's the only Republican in the March 20 primary.
Despite being nominally a Republican, Jones denounced the "accursed two-party, Jew-party, queer-party system." He is a former leader of the American Nazi Party but said he hasn't been formally associated with a National Socialist organization for about 20 years. When Camerota asked, "Do you call yourself a Nazi?" he responded, "I don't call myself a Nazi. I call myself an American patriot and statesman."
"You can call it whatever you want, Mr. Jones," Camerota replied, "but your website is filled with the most vile, rancid rhetoric I think I've ever read." He shot back with "It's not vile and rancid, it's the truth."
What he calls "truth" includes denial that the Holocaust, Nazi Germany's slaughter of Jews, gays, and others, ever occurred. "Yes, I deny the Holocaust," he said. "It's an extortion racket."
Camerota said he's entitled to his conspiracy theories, but not to his own facts. The facts, she said, are these: "Six million Jews were killed. Adolf Hitler perpetrated a genocide. The Auschwitz death camp existed. And the Nuremberg trials happened." Jones called that "poppycock."
Camerota went on to note that Jones has been repudiated by the Republican Party and predict that he will lose the general election, as he has lost previous bids for office. "You couldn't win dogcatcher," she said.
In the general election in November, Jones will face either the Third Congressional District's current representative -- Dan Lipinski, a conservative Democrat who cosponsored the anti-LGBT First Amendment Defense Act -- or Lipinski's challenger in his party's primary, the more progressive Marie Newman.
Watch Camerota's takedown of Jones below.
