This was posted on Thursday, August 10, 2017 by RODNEY HO/rho@ajc.com on his AJC Radio & TV Talk blog
CNN is having a fun time with contributors saying and doing offensive things. There was stand-up comic Kathy Griffin taking a picture holding a bloody Donald Trump head. As a result, CNN said ended her annual visit to Times Square with Anderson Cooper on New Year's. There was academic Reza Aslan bad-mouthing the president in a profane way on Twitter. CNN quickly cancelled his show "Believer."
Now it's Trump supporter and regular paid CNN contributor Jeffrey Lord using "Sieg Heil" as a response to a critic on Twitter. His time on CNN? Over. A spokesperson told CNN's media writer Brian Stelter: "Nazi salutes are indefensible."
The American Spectator today published a piece by Lord saying that the liberal Media Matters watchdog organization is a bunch of "fascists" Lord thinks are trying to take down Sean Hannity of Fox News. Lord Tweeted the article directly to Media Matters prsident Angelo Carusone but misspelled his name in the headline. Carusone, tweaking Lord, pointed out the misspelling.
Lord's response? "Sieg Heil," which is the Nazi salute phrase.
Credit: Rodney Ho
Credit: Rodney Ho
In an interview, Carusone said he was befuddled at first by Lord's response. He wasn't sure if his offense was over the top so he sent it to a bunch of more conservative friends. They too, he said, thought the response was out of proportion to the insult. He also didn't call on Lord to be fired. ("I"m not a fan of the perpetual outrage machine," he said.) CNN chose to do that on its own, he said.
Naturally, Carusone is no fan of Lord, a former Ronald Reagan administration staffer who has been one of the most consistent pro-Trump voices among CNN's stable of political commentators. "He's disruptive and deceitful," Carusone said, and places an air of academic dressing around his fatuous arguments. "You can't be a shill for Trump and have standards applied to you."
Lord, who joined CNN soon after Trump entered the presidential race, made a brief comment after the news came out: "LOL!":
CNN's Stelter reached Lord by phone. Lord defended himself, saying, "I love CNN, but I feel they are caving to bullies here."
In May, Anderson Cooper got so exasperated with Lord's defense of Trump that he said Trump could take "a dump on his desk, you'd defend him. I don't know what he would do that you would not defend."
Another CNN commentator and pro-Trump supporter Kayleigh McEnany recently left the network to be a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee.
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