CNN’s Van Jones on Monday slammed former Donald Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller for smearing former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, calling him out for lying about the former Barack Obama appointee.
Discussing a Fox News report implying Rice requested to unmask the names or Trump transition officials, former Georgia congressman Jack Kingston argued that Rice is a “controversial” figure in par with GOP operative Karl Rove.
“Susan Rice is a very very controversial political person …” Kingston began. “Recently, she said she knew nothing about any of this. This is the Democratic equivalent of Karl Rove, you know, his name popping up. So remember, Susan Rice herself is a story, is controversial.”
Van Jones, in response, noted that it’s within the purview of a foreign policy adviser to ask for information about matters concerning foreign policy.
“I just can’t understand what the problem here is,” Van Jones said. “She is the national security adviser, her job is to give advice. In order to give advice, she has to have information. To get the information, she’s got to ask questions. She’s basically doing her job.”
“Just to say, ‘she’s controversial in the right-wing media, so therefore there’s some big deal here because it’s her,’ any national security adviser advising the president has to ask questions about the information that they get,” Van Jones continued. “And that’s all that she’s doing. The rest of this stuff is just a bunch of nonsense trying to divert attention from what is clearly a very serious issue with the possibility that the president’s campaign was colluding with Russia.”
Miller argued that the length of time the FBI has been investigating Trump’s ties to Russia proves there is no “there” there.
“If they’ve been looking at this for eight months and they still haven't found anything, I think it’s really questionable if they ever will,” Miller said, “But what we do know about is Susan Rice … was systematically going through and on numerous occasions was unmasking American names, disseminating that information—“
“No, no, no no—that is not true. Don’t do that! That is not true buddy,” Van Jones replied.
“It looks very questionable,” Miller tried to continue.
“It’s a complete smear,” Van Jones shot back. “You can’t come on the air and say that Susan Rice has disseminated anything. Nobody has said that on planet Earth except for you, and it’s not fair.”
Watch the video below, via CNN:
