>
Article snippet: Jeffrey Lord, the indefatigable defender of President Trump whose advocacy turned him into an unlikely political celebrity, was fired by CNN on Thursday after a convoluted Twitter exchange in which he evoked — mockingly, he said — a Nazi salute. Mr. Lord received the news by telephone while on his way to CNN’s Manhattan studio in a town car provided by the network, which ferried him from his home near Harrisburg, Pa. After Mr. Lord, 66, learned that his contract had been severed, the car turned around. “I didn’t have to walk; I thanked them for that,” he said in an telephone interview from the road. While Mr. Lord was often castigated by critics for his relentless lobbying on Mr. Trump’s behalf — he was once rebuked on air by Anderson Cooper in particularly crude terms — it was a social media squabble that led to his ouster. Mr. Lord had recently accused Angelo Carusone, president of the liberal watchdog site Media Matters, of emulating fascists by calling for sponsors to boycott posted the words “Sieg Heil!”, a response that he said was meant to mock Mr. Carusone’s behavior. CNN executives did not view it that way. “Nazi salutes are indefensible,” the network said in a terse statement. “Jeffrey Lord is no longer with the network.” Mr. Lord, a veteran of the Reagan White House, became CNN’s first paid pro-Trump contributor in July 2015. Mr. Trump, then a long-shot Republican candidate, had recommended Mr. Lord after complaining that the network’s panelists all s... Link to the full article to read more