Jeffrey Lord

Jeffrey Lord (born July 25, 1951) is an American author, and political strategist in Pennsylvania, who served as an associate political director in the administration of former United States President Ronald Reagan.[1] He subsequently became a highly visible political commentator for CNN and other media outlets. He was fired from CNN in 2017 after posting a Nazi salute on Twitter.[2]

This article is about the political strategist and commentator. For the literary pseudonym, see Richard Blade (series).

Jeffrey Lord
BornJuly 25, 1951
Northampton, Massachusetts, U.S.
NationalityAmerican
EducationFranklin and Marshall College
OccupationPolitical staffer, author
Political partyRepublican

Early life

Lord was born in Northampton, Massachusetts, on July 25, 1951. He earned a degree from Franklin and Marshall College.[3]

Career

Lord first worked as a press aide in the Pennsylvania State Senate. He worked for Pennsylvania congressman Bud Shuster as legislative director and press secretary and for U.S. senator H. John Heinz III as executive assistant. Later, Lord worked as chief of staff to Drew Lewis, for part of the time that Lewis was a co-chairman of Pennsylvania for the Ronald Reagan presidential campaign. He also served in the Reagan White House as an associate political director 1987–1988.[3] In that position, he assisted in the judicial nomination process for several nominees, including Robert Bork for the Supreme Court.[4] He also worked for Jack Kemp during the presidency of George H. W. Bush.[3]

Lord has worked as a political commentator, contributing material to CNN, The Weekly Standard, The American Spectator, National Review Online, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, the Los Angeles Times, the The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and the Harrisburg Patriot-News. He has appeared as a guest on numerous television and radio programs. He also works as a political consultant for Quantum Communications, a Harrisburg-based political strategy firm.[3]

He is the author of The Borking Rebellion, about the confirmation of D. Brooks Smith to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.[3] It received a generally positive review in The Wall Street Journal.[5] His more recent book, published in January 2016 (from which he gained the name, "The Trump Defender"),[6] is What America Needs: The Case for Trump.

Political commentator

In July 2010, after Shirley Sherrod stated that one of her relatives had been lynched in the 1940s, Lord wrote an article in The American Spectator pointing out the man in question had actually been beaten to death by police officers. Lord questioned Sherrod's "veracity and credibility".[7] He faced substantial criticism as a result,[8][9][10] including criticism from other contributors to American Spectator.[11][12]

In August 2011, Lord wrote an article in The American Spectator criticizing Texas Republican Congressman Ron Paul and the views of some of his supporters.[13] The article sparked considerable debate within the conservative movement.[14]

In March 2016, during a Super Tuesday election night on CNN, an argument ensued for several minutes between Lord and a CNN contributor, Van Jones, about Lord's defense of Donald Trump. The argument came about when a fellow contributor, conservative commentator S. E. Cupp, accused Trump of "crazy, dog whistle policy proposals", that she believed he had made to attract prejudiced voters,[15] and because Trump had hesitated to disavow KKK leader David Duke in a CNN interview the previous weekend. Lord responded that the KKK many decades earlier had supported Democrats, so the KKK was therefore left wing. He accused those who raised these worries of dividing Americans by race.[16] Van Jones questioned the relevance of the first point and declared the second point "absurd,” as Democrats at the time were conservative and Republicans liberal. Lord responded that "history matters" and claimed that Democrats continue to divide citizens by race today and that doing so is "morally wrong".[17]

In April 2017, on a CNN discussion program hosted by Don Lemon and featuring three other panelists including CNN commentator Symone Sanders, Lord maintained, as he had on an earlier CNN program, that President Donald Trump was the "Martin Luther King" of health care, explicitly comparing and equating Trump tactics to King tactics. This infuriated both Lemon and Sanders. Lemon ended the program after a few more minutes of discussion.[18]

CNN fired Lord on August 10, 2017, after he tweeted "Sieg Heil!" to Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters for America, suggesting Carusone was a fascist.[19] CNN subsequently filled Lord's role as a pro-Trump contributor with Missouri politician Ed Martin.[20][21]

Bibliography
  • The Borking Rebellion: The Never-Before-Told Story of How a Group of Pennsylvania Women Attorneys took on the Entire U. S. Senate Judiciary Committee—And Won. Katco Literary Group. 2005. ISBN 978-0-9646484-4-9.
  • What America Needs: The Case for Trump. Regnery Publishing. 2016. ISBN 978-1-62157-523-8.
  • Swamp Wars: Donald Trump and the New American Populism vs. The Old Order. Bombardier Books. 2019. ISBN 978-1-64293-018-4.

References
  1. Lord, Jeffrey, (July 14, 2015)."Yes, Trump Can Win: Media, GOP Establishment made same attacks on Reagan" Archived July 28, 2015, at the Wayback Machine. American Spectator.
  2. Grynbaum, Michael M. (August 10, 2017). "Jeffrey Lord, Trump Defender on CNN, Is Fired for Using Nazi Slogan". The New York Times.
  3. Givant, Kimberly (October 3, 2016). "Interview with CNN political commentator, F&M alumnus Jeffrey Lord". The College Reporter [F&M].
  4. Lord, Jeffrey (December 20, 2012). "Robert Bork's America". The American Spectator. Retrieved March 6, 2016.
  5. Hillyer, Quin (August 30, 2005). "How the Judges Are Judged". The Wall Street Journal.
  6. Baer, John (July 13, 2016). "Live from Harrisburg: It's Jeffrey Lord, Donald Trump's defender on CNN". Philly.com. Retrieved December 9, 2016.
  7. Lord, Jeffrey (July 26, 2010). "Sherrod Story False". The American Spectator. Archived from the original on July 27, 2010.CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  8. "Jeff Lord Defends His Shirley Sherrod Piece" Archived August 11, 2017, at the Wayback Machine, FrumForum.com, July 28, 2010. Retrieved February 11, 2017.
  9. Beutler, Brian, "Sherrod Critic: She Used 'Lynching' To Gin Up Democratic Voters", Talking Points Memo, July 28, 2010. Retrieved February 11, 2017.
  10. Balko, Radley, "The American Spectator's Mistaken History". Reason, July 26, 2010. Retrieved February 11, 2017.
  11. Klein, Philip, "Taking Issue With Jeff Lord" Archived August 11, 2017, at the Wayback Machine, the American Spectator, July 26, 2010. Retrieved February 11, 2017.
  12. Tabin, John, "Sherrod Story True", The American Spectator via archive.org, July 26, 2010. Retrieved February 11, 2017.
  13. Lord, Jeffrey (August 23, 2011). "Ron Paul and the Neoliberal Reeducation Campaign". The American Spectator.
  14. Hunter, Jack (August 24, 2011). "Ron Paul and Conservatism: An Exchange". The American Spectator.Wood, Thomas (August 25, 2011). "American Spectator Dead Wrong on Ron Paul".
  15. Moyer, Justin William (March 2, 2016). "Trump and KKK inspire meltdown on CNN starring Van Jones and Jeffrey Lord". The Washington Post. Retrieved March 12, 2016.
  16. Wemple, Erik (July 26, 2016). "Trumpite Jeffrey Lord continues making mockery of CNN programming". The Washington Post.
  17. Poniewozik, James (March 2, 2016). "A Fiery Debate on the K.K.K. in 2016. Who Figured?". The New York Times.
  18. "'Goodnight – goodnight we're done': Don Lemon abruptly ends show after losing it with Jeffrey Lord". rawstory.com. April 2017.
  19. "CNN severs ties with Jeffrey Lord".
  20. Raasch, Chuck (August 25, 2017). "Missouri Republican Ed Martin jumps into the Lord still-hot seat on CNN". St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Retrieved October 11, 2017.
  21. Barr, Jeremy (September 28, 2017). "CNN Fills Jeffrey Lord Role With Ed Martin". Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved October 11, 2017. The contributor announced his own hire on Twitter last week.
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