Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) went onto Hardball Friday evening to defend Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump over his past promotion of conspiracy theories about Barack Obama's birth certificate... and he got absolutely crushed.
Chris Matthews began by asking Kingston to explain whether Trump still believed that Obama was born in another country, or whether he now believes the president was born in Hawaii.
Kingston immediately tried to dodge by claiming that Hillary Clinton was the one who created the entire "birther" conspiracy. Matthews pressed him for evidence on this and Kingston insisted that he'd seen a secret memo written by the Clinton campaign talking about the need to question Obama's citizenship.
However, when Kingston was pressed to describe who actually wrote up this supposed memo, he couldn't give any specifics and would only say that he'd get it to Matthews at a later date.
The real fireworks started, however, when Joy Ann Reid and Katy Tur were asked to weigh in on the matter.
Reid took Trump to task for not only exploiting the birther conspiracy theory, but popularizing it and making it a widely spread belief among his followers.
"It is an article of faith among enough Republican-based voters and enough Trump supporters that I think Donald Trump doesn't want to walk away from it," she said. "It's the reason he's popular with them. It rocketed him to the top of the pile among 17 Republican candidates for president and it has created and built his cult of personality."
NBC reporter Katy Tur, who has followed the Trump campaign around all year, came back at Kingston and said that Trump has helped convince his followers that Obama is not a legitimate president.
"Let me tell you what Donald Trump supporters tell me on the campaign trail often," she said. "They often say they believe he was born in Kenya, they often say they believe he's a Muslim. Some of them go on to say he's an undercover operative, a Manchurian candidate. that being said, Donald Trump has not backed away from this. let me finish this, Mr. Kingston. Donald Trump has not backed away from this because he's never backed away from any statement on this campaign trail so far."
Check out the whole clip below.
