It is bad enough that CNN gave Trump supporter Jeff Lord the airtime to call Trump the Martin Luther King of health care. What’s worse is that CNN pays Lord for these statements.
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JEFFREY LORD: Alisyn, I want to say something here that will drive Symone crazy. Think of president trump as the Martin Luther King of health care.
When I was a kid, the president didn’t want to introduce the civil rights bill because he did not have the votes for it. Dr. King kept putting people in the streets in harm’s way to put pressure on for the bill to be put forward.
SYMONE SANDERS: You understand that Dr. King was marching for civil rights because people that looked like me were being beaten. Dogs siced on them. Merely because of the color of the skin. Let’s not equate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. To the vagina-grabbing president of the United States.
ALISYN CAMEROTA: Symone, you went there.
The opinion itself was insulting and offensive to the Civil Rights movement, but what makes it even worse is that CNN is paying people like Jeff Lord out of a warped rationale that politics should be covered like drama.
As The New York Times described it, CNN boss Jeff Zucker sees his pro-Trump panelists like Lord as characters in a drama. For Zucker, CNN isn’t about informing the public. The purpose of the network is to create non-stop conflict and drama like the exchange above between Lord and Symone Sanders.
While Sanders should be praised for her response, the problem is that CNN doesn’t care about the destruction they are doing to the country by paying people like Jeff Lord to be on the air. Differing points of view belong in our national discourse, but when a network is paying someone to make controversial statements to get attention, the goal has become entertainment, not informing the public.
Jeff Lord made the statement, but it is CNN who is paying him and giving him airtime.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
