Jeffrey Lord, Trump Defender on CNN, Is Fired for Using Nazi Slogan
Jeffrey Lord, the indefatigable defender of President Trump whose advocacy turned him into an unlikely political celebrity, was fired by CNN on Thursday after a convoluted Twitter exchange in which he evoked — mockingly, he said — a Nazi salute.
Mr. Lord received the news by telephone while on his way into CNN’s Manhattan studio in a town car provided by the network, which ferried him from his home near Harrisburg, Pa.
After Mr. Lord, 66, learned that his contract had been severed, the car turned around. “I didn’t have to walk; I thanked them for that,” he said in an telephone interview from the road.
While Mr. Lord was often castigated by critics for his relentless lobbying on Mr. Trump’s behalf — he was once rebuked on air by Anderson Cooper in particularly crude terms — it was a social media squabble that led to his ouster.
Mr. Lord had recently accused Angelo Carusone, president of the liberal watchdog site Media Matters, of emulating fascists by calling for sponsors to boycott Sean Hannity’s Fox News show. When Mr. Carusone responded on Thursday on Twitter, Mr. Lord posted the words “Sieg Heil!”, a response that he said was meant to mock Mr. Carusone’s behavior.
CNN executives did not view it that way. “Nazi salutes are indefensible,” the network said in a terse statement. “Jeffrey Lord is no longer with the network.”
Mr. Lord, a veteran of the Reagan White House, became CNN’s first paid pro-Trump contributor in July 2015. Mr. Trump, then a long-shot Republican candidate, had recommended Mr. Lord after complaining that the network’s panelists all seemed to dislike him. (CNN said it had already been considering Mr. Lord for a job.)
At the time, Mr. Lord was living with his mother and occasionally writing magazine pieces. Soon, he was ubiquitous on television, admired by Mr. Trump’s supporters as a rare mainstream voice for their candidate, and ridiculed by others for unwavering praise of him
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