Van Jones brutally rebuffs Kingston for resurrecting talking point that Trump fired Comey over Clinton probe

CNN's Van Jones schooled former Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) on Wednesday evening's "Erin Burnett Out Front" for claiming that the only reason President Donald Trump fired former FBI Director James Comey was due to the bungled investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her emails.

"Again, Comey said three times that Trump was not the focus of the investigation," Kingston claimed. "Now, why would Trump turn around and fire him if that was the reason he wanted to stop the investigation? The reason why he was fired is because of incompetence. Think about Feinstein's statements about him, Schumer, Johnson. Think about all the Democrats all fall were saying he has no credibility anymore. He needs to pack his bags. That's what Hank Johnson did."

Burnett said that if that was true Trump should have fired Comey the day that he entered the White House.

"There's no good time to fire this guy. But all I could say the Democrats all were on one page and needed to go," Kingston continued.

Kingston went on to claim that the "loyalty" comments that Trump allegedly made to Trump could have been about being loyal to America.

"Congressman, let me interject here," Burnett cut in to read Comey's official statement. "Here's what Comey said: he said 'my instincts told me that the one-on-one setting and the pretext about this being our first meeting was part of the president having me ask for my job and create some sort of relationship. This concerns me greatly given the FBI's independent status.' He then continues to say a few moments later the president said he 'need loyalty. I expect loyalty.' Which the FBI director says was followed by a long and awkward silence. It's clear the FBI director took it as a personal pledge of loyalty."

Kingston said that because Comey has made statements earlier that had to be corrected that this statement shouldn't necessarily be taken as truth. Kingston then called Comey's statements into question because Comey never went to Attorney General Jeff Sessions with his concern. Kingston then accused Comey of "rewriting" what happened - essentially calling Comey's claims lies.

Burnett noted that Comey instead went to his senior aides because he assumed Sessions would recuse himself, which he did weeks later.

Jones even went so far as to encourage the president to stop watching movies like "The Godfather" and perhaps turn on the progressive TV show "The West Wing" instead. "This is not the way presidents need to act," he said. Trump asking others to leave the room so that he could talk to Comey alone proves that Trump knew he was about to do something he didn't want others to hear, Jones explained.

"Here's the thing, the Trump supporters are now having to put themselves in a situation that they just want the American people to believe stuff that doesn't make sense," Jones said. "Let's make this a normal situation: suppose you had a CEO and something happened in the CEO's office and the head of the HR department started investigating what's going on in the CEO's office and the CEO brought that hr director in and said stop it. She doesn't do it and the boss fires her. Everybody knows what's going on with that. You had a mayor or a police chief she appointed and the police chief investigates the campaign and the mayor fires the police chief. If this were happening in any other situation, no Trump supporter, no person would say this is normal. It does not make sense and something is shady going on."

Watch below:

Van Jones calls BS on Jack Kingston's claim...by sarahburris