"When Vernon Jones, a Black Democratic state representative from Georgia, crossed party lines to deliver a passionate endorsement of Donald Trump at the Republican national convention, the party greeted him like a rock star. Now comes evidence the label has gone to his head.
At a Trump rally in Macon, Georgia, on Friday night, Jones launched arguably the most ill-advised and dangerous crowdsurf since the electro dance legend Steve Aoki broke a concertgoer’s neck in a dinghy.
Thumbs raised and not wearing a mask, the 59-year-old lawmaker launched himself into a mostly maskless audience. Riding a sea of red Maga hats, packed tightly together in contravention of Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention Covid-19 social distancing guidelines, the grinning Jones was passed overhead from deplorable to deplorable, to use a term for Trump supporters Jones cited in a tweet defending the stunt.
“Yes, I surfed that crowd!” Jones wrote. “To the haters – stay mad! You’ll be even more mad come 3 November.”
On social media, reaction was swift and brutal. One Twitter user dubbed Jones “Captain Covid”. Others denounced him as an idiot and a loser, living in fairytale land.
Republicans hope Jones, who was first elected to the Georgia state house in 1992, can help shore up the Black Republican vote in his state. Trump won Georgia from Hillary Clinton by more than five points in 2016, but recent polls show the president trailing Joe Biden by almost one and a half points.
Race has also emerged as a key theme in Georgia’s tightly contested US Senate contests, in which both of the Democratic candidates, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, hold narrow leads, according to Quinnipiac polling this week.
One of the Republican incumbents, David Perdue, was involved in an incendiary moment at Trump’s Macon rally when he mangled the name of Kamala Harris, Biden’s running mate, the first Black woman on a major party presidential ticket."
