CNN contributor cut for Nazi tweet

An ill-advised tweet has led to the removal of another CNN personality.

The cable news network fired contributor Jeffrey Lord, a staunch supporter of President Trump, on Thursday after he tweeted “Sieg Heil!” to Angelo Carusone, the president of Media Matters for America, the liberal watchdog group.

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

Lord used the phrase, a greeting in Nazi Germany, during an exchange with Carusone on Twitter.

The pundit came under fire in April for describing Trump as “the Martin Luther King of healthcare.”

Lord was a relatively obscure conservative writer who served in the Reagan administration before he became a talking head on CNN during the 2016 presidential campaign. He joined CNN as a paid contributor in August 2015.

Media Matters has been a longtime critic of Lord’s defense of Trump, and of CNN for keeping him on the air. The group has also pushed for the firing and advertiser boycott of Sean Hannity, the leading right-wing host on Fox News Channel.

Lord targeted Media Matters this week in a column for the American Spectator in which he called the group “fascists.” It led to an exchange with Carusone on Twitter that escalated to Lord’s use of “Sieg Heil.”

Lord later told CNN.com in an interview that he used the term to mock Media Matters, which he said is “bullying advertisers to take people off the air.”