CNN has finally cut ties with execrable pro-Trump commentator Jeffrey Lord, too late to do anybody any damn good. The final straw was a Jeffrey Lord tweet to Media Matters for America president Angelo Carusone in which Lord simply replied "Sieg Heil!"
"Nazi salutes are indefensible," a CNN spokesperson said in a statement. "Jeffrey Lord is no longer with the network."
Lord was an omnipresent fixture on the network during the campaign during a period when few other conservative pundits were willing to support Trump. Lord not only did so with gusto, but with flagrant misinformation, race-baiting, and a grotesque contempt for the truth—none of this was enough to curb his network appearances. He declared the KKK to be "a function of the left", he defended the Trump campaign's meetings with Russian go-betweens by noting that Democrats had met with DREAMers, he declared Trump to be the Martin Luther King of health care", the claim white nationalist support for Trump were "provoked" by groups like "Black Lives Matter or La Raza", steadfastly defended Trump's claim that America has a "Muslim problem", repeated on-air a far-right conspiracy theory supposing that one of Hillary Clinton's top aides was tied to the Muslim Brotherhood, repeated fake news stories, asked a black Democratic panelist when she was "going to get around to apologizing for slavery?" while demanding another march on the Democratic convention to protest pre-Civil-War party support for slavery, suggested several weeks before the election that voting machines may be tampered with to block Trump votes, declared that America's gun violence was caused by abortions, and a history of similar fabrications, rantings, and conspiracy theories.
Despite his history of incendiary statements and outright fabrications, and despite Lord-infused segments being widely pilloried elsewhere in the media, CNN renewed his contract after the election was over.
His latest "joke", however, was the thing that finally caused CNN management to abandon ship. And it sounds like even then, they had to be pushed.