CNN fires conservative commentator Jeffrey Lord after Nazi salute tweet

CNN has cut its ties with conservative political commentator Jeffrey Lord after he tweeted "Sieg Heil" on Thursday.

Aug 11, 2017

CNN has cut its ties with conservative political commentator Jeffrey Lord after he tweeted “Sieg Heil” on Thursday.

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

The tweet was apparently written for Angelo Carusone, who is the president of Media Matters for America. Lord called Media Matters a “fascist” group after it launched a campaign for advertisers to stop supporting Sean Hannity, of Fox News, and claimed that it was trying to suppress free speech.

At the time, Lord wrote of the group:

The objective of Media Matters (and let’s stop with the camouflage and from now on call them what they really are, MMF — Media Matters Fascists), clearly, is to re-write the First Amendment so it will now be modeled after Fascist Italy’s Ministero della Cultura Popolare — Mussolini’s Ministry of Popular Culture.

CNN cut ties with Lord after the Nazi salute tweet, though Lord seemed to make light of the situation, tweeting “LOL” on Thursday after he was fired and telling The New York Times that he was in a CNN car when he learned that he had been fired. He even spoke to CNN’s Brian Stelter on Thursday after he was fired to say that he still loved the network.

“I love CNN,” Lord said. “I feel like they are caving to bullies here.”