\n<\/p>\n
Before his 2017 special election to the Senate in Alabama, in which he defeated accused child molester\u00a0Roy Moore<\/strong>, Doug Jones<\/strong> was best known for\u00a0prosecuting<\/a> two Ku Klux Klan members who bombed Birmingham\u2019s 16th Baptist Church in 1963, killing four girls. On Sunday morning, Jones offered harsh words for his successor, former Auburn football coach\u00a0Tommy Tuberville<\/strong>, for spending the past week playing footsie with white nationalism.\u00a0<\/p>\n In an\u00a0interview<\/a> last Monday with a public radio station in Birmingham, Tuberville, a member of the Senate Armed Forces Committee, was asked whether he believed \u201cwhite nationalists\u201d should be able to serve in the military. The Biden administration has made countering extremism in the military a major domestic priority in the wake of the January 6 attack; nearly\u00a0one in five<\/a> rioters who have been charged are military veterans. \u201cThey call them that,\u201d Tuberville replied, referring to the Biden administration\u2019s criticism of white nationalists. \u201cI call them Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHe has this history of saying these things,\u201d Jones said during a Sunday morning appearance on MSNBC. \u201cThis is a man who when he was running for Senate did not even know what the Voting Rights Act was.\u201d Jones was referencing\u00a0a moment<\/a> during the 2020 campaign in which Tuberville was asked about expanding the Voting Rights Act and struggled to explain the basic contents of the law.\u00a0<\/p>\n Tuberville\u2019s office attempted to clarify the comments on Wednesday,\u00a0telling<\/a> Alabama-based news outlet AL.com that Tuberville was being \u201cskeptical of the notion that there are white nationalists in the military, not that he believes they should be in the military.\u201d Speaking at the U.S. Capitol on Thursday, Tuberville\u00a0said<\/a>, \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of good people that are Trump supporters that for some reason my Democratic colleagues want to portray as white nationalists. That\u2019s not true.\u201d<\/p>\n Jones counted himself skeptical of Tuberville\u2019s attempt to walk back his comments: \u201cIt\u2019s hard to get someone to walk back and clarify when they really have no clue what they\u2019re talking about,\u201d he said Sunday morning. Jones added that white nationalism \u201chas been on the country\u2019s radar\u201d since the deadly Charlottesville march in 2017. Numerous reports have demonstrated that the U.S. military struggles with a white nationalism problem.\u00a0<\/p>\n Tuberville\u2019s remarks last week were also criticized by Senate Majority Leader\u00a0Chuck Schumer,<\/strong> who called them \u201cutterly revolting\u201d on Thursday. \u201cI cannot believe this needs to be said, but white nationalism has no place in our armed forces and no place in any corner of American society, period, full stop, end of story,\u201d Schumer\u00a0said<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n On Saturday afternoon, Jones\u00a0quote-tweeted<\/a> a video of the white supremacist gang Patriot Front marching toward the U.S. Capitol building: \u201cI damn sure hope they haven\u2019t been listening to Tuberville and going to try and enlist!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n