***To read the full blog, please check out the complete post on NewsBusters***
Midnight Eastern time came and went Monday into Tuesday without any official results from the Iowa caucuses and rumors suggested results wouldn’t be published until Tuesday morning. CNN’s patience wore wearing thin late in the 10:00 p.m. hour when their frustrations flashed. They were so desperate for numbers that host and liberal activist Van Jones began reading unverified numbers an apparent caucus secretary had released on Twitter. To that development, the panel fumed.
Following the handoff from Wolf Blitzer to Anderson Cooper, Jones shared the news he was getting from social media. Mush to Cooper’s confusion (click “expand”):
VAN JONES: I'm looking up on Twitter. You got a caucus secretary from a precinct who has just – he says he’s been on hold for an hour, he’s going to tweet out – he’s just starting to tweet out --
COOPER: He’s been on hold for an hour with?
JONES: For an hour with--
COOPER: Democratic Party in Iowa.
JONES: With the Democratic Party. He can't get a response, so they’re just starting to tweet out their results. This is starting to look like a debacle.
COOPER: Wait, who’s this tweeting?
JONES: This is Shawn Sebastian on Twitter. He’s just tweeting out his results. He’s just—“I’m the caucus secretary.”
COOPER: What’s his job? Where is he?
When Jones finally explained that he was reading from the account of the caucus secretary from “Story County precinct 11” and admitted he didn’t know if the numbers were accurate, he was exasperated by what he was witnessing. “I'm just saying that you’re starting to see a level of desperation set in and it’s starting to look like a debacle,” Jones decried.
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