Well this seems like an overreaction:
CNN MONEY – CNN severed ties with Jeffrey Lord on Thursday, hours after he ignited controversy by tweeting the words “Sieg Heil!” at a prominent liberal activist.
“Nazi salutes are indefensible,” a CNN spokesperson said in a statement. “Jeffrey Lord is no longer with the network.”
Lord was not immediately reachable for comment. Earlier in the day, he defended his tweet by saying he was “mocking a fascist.”
Lord, a columnist for The American Spectator, has been harshly critical of the activist he tweeted at, Angelo Carusone, and the liberal group of which Carusone is president, Media Matters for America.
Lord and Carusone have had many sharp disagreements. Media Matters has repeatedly condemned Lord and criticized CNN for employing him as a commentator.
Earlier this week the two men got into another entanglement on Twitter, specifically over Media Matters’ past financial support from George Soros.
Carusone told Lord that one of his columns was “full of lies” and said “Soros gave us one donation one time…in 2010.”
Lord wrote a follow-up column for The American Spectator on Thursday morning, calling Carusone’s group the “Media Matters Fascists,” casting them as “anti-free speech bigots who, in typical fascist style, make it their mission to shut down speech they don’t like.”
Media Matters has been promoting an ad boycott against Fox News host Sean Hannity, a friend of Lord’s.
Lord said Carusone was playing a “fascist game” by targeting Hannity’s sponsors, and said Media Matters has been doing it for years against other conservatives.“This is America, Angelo. Not Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany or Communist Russia,” he wrote.
Lord tweeted the column at Carusone, who responded, “Your headline has a mistake in it.” Carusone asked, “Why do you expect anyone to take you seriously when you don’t take yourself seriously.”
Lord’s response was “Sieg Heil!”
I wasn’t a huge fan of Lord during the campaign as he willingly contorted himself to defend Trump no matter how ridiculous Trump’s words or actions were. But that said I don’t understand why CNN would react so harshly to a tweet like this.
When Reza Aslan called Trump a “piece of shit” on Twitter, it was like pulling teeth to get CNN to do something about it, and he had a history of doing this very thing. They finally fired him almost a week later.
But this wasn’t that. This was just Lord mocking Media Matters who deserve to be mocked. He’s exactly right about them.
Here’s how some on Twitter responded:
This reeks of looking for an excuse. Half of twitter is ppl calling each other Nazis. https://t.co/k0H5qnFu2X
— Seth Mandel (@SethAMandel) August 10, 2017
Exceedingly obvious that Lord's "Seig Heil" was a sarcastic way of calling someone a fascist, not an actual expression of Nazi sentiment. pic.twitter.com/3Tt00BmYag
— Alex Griswold (@HashtagGriswold) August 10, 2017
This is rather obviously a pretense. Comes days after a CNN conservative commentator trashed Jim Acosta anonymously.
— Alex Griswold (@HashtagGriswold) August 10, 2017
There is a 95.8% chance that @HardballChris is calling someone a Nazi at any moment during daylight hours, 97.3% when the sun goes down. https://t.co/AKXlDrB6UG
— Derek Hunter (@derekahunter) August 10, 2017
CNN might be shifting to a “no Trumpers” policy https://t.co/lnbXvn9u3d
— Allahpundit (@allahpundit) August 10, 2017
Also there’s one more:
Fox News tells me it will not be hiring Jeffrey Lord in the wake of his dismissal by CNN.
— David Folkenflik (@davidfolkenflik) August 10, 2017