Van Jones challenged Rick Santorum during a panel discussion Friday after the former Pennsylvania senator tried to downplay reports of chaos within President Donald Trump‘s White House.
When asked about a damning New York Time’s op-ed claiming Trump aides regularly have to “thwart parts of his agenda” to stop the POTUS from making less-than-great decisions, Santorum tried to sweep it under the rug, arguing that Trump has flaws like anyone else.
“Of course it worries me that that may happen on occasion,” he said. “I’ve talked to people in the White House — this isn’t what it’s like every day. Everybody has bad days, everybody has issues at certain times, and everyone has their weaknesses.”
Jones offered a different take on the matter, however. He argued such “erratic” behavior wouldn’t fly with Republicans if it was Obama in the White House displaying these antics.
“The idea that if Barack Obama was running around the White House doing weird stuff, his staff had to have a mini-coup every day to stop him from blowing up the world, nobody on the Republican side would be [saying], ‘Hey but he did a good job of bailing out Detroit, so it’s all good!'” he said. “That’s not how fair-minded people think about this stuff.”
The CNN commentator argued it’s due time Congress had some hearings about what’s actually going down at the White House.
“Don’t we want to figure out what’s happening inside the Oval Office, if we in fact have an erratic president … who’s having mini coups every day.” Jones said. “So the idea that Congress should just sit here and do nothing doesn’t make sense to most people.”
Watch more in the clip below.
