Conservative Pundit Jeffrey Lord OUT At CNN

Jeffrey Lord

CNN said Thursday it had cut ties with Jeffrey Lord, one of its most polarizing and ubiquitous personalities, after he used a phrase largely associated with Nazis in World War II.

According to Variety, the separation is the latest at the Time Warner-owned cable-news outlet, which has come under increased scrutiny since the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States.

On Twitter, Lord used the phrase “Sieg heil” in a retort to Angelo Carusone, who heads the liberal activist organization Media Matters for America.

“Nazi salutes are indefensible,” the network said in statement. “Jeffrey Lord is no longer with the network.”

Earlier, before CNN handed him his walking papers, Lord had insisted Media Matters chief Angelo Carusone was the bad guy here, and that he merely had been “mocking a fascist.”

Deadline.com reports Lord’s tweet was part of the latest social squabble with Carusone. The two are old foes and had been lobbing grenades at each other over an ad boycott campaign against Fox News’ primetime star Sean Hannity. One thing led to another, until Lord called the group “Media Matters Fascists” in a column this week in The American Spectator, describing MM’s members as “anti-free-speech bigots who, in typical fascist style, make it their mission to shut down speech they don’t like.”

Targeting Hannity’s sponsors to pull their ads is a “fascist game,” Lord insisted. “This is America, Angelo. Not Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany or Communist Russia.”