CNN ended its relationship with political commentator Jeffrey Lord after he tweeted “Sieg Heil” on Thursday.
“Nazi salutes are indefensible,” a CNN spokesperson said in a statement. “Jeffrey Lord is no longer with the network.”
The tweet was directed at Angelo Carusone, the president of Media Matters for America. Lord wrote an op-ed calling Media Matters a “fascist” group for launching a campaign to get advertisers to pull their support for Fox News’ Sean Hannity.
Lord reportedly told The New York Times that he was in a CNN car when he learned he was fired.
He also spoke with CNN’s Brian Stelter after his firing Thursday.
“I love CNN,” Lord said. “I feel like they are caving to bullies here.”
Lord also appeared to make light of the situation late Thursday, in his first tweet since the announcement that he’d been fired.
Yashar Ali, a journalist who has written for HuffPost, tweeted that representatives from MSNBC, NBC and Fox News had confirmed they weren’t hiring Lord.
Lord joined CNN as a political commentator in 2015 and was known for his provocative and unabashed support of President Donald Trump. He once called Trump the “Martin Luther King of health care,” later arguing he did it “deliberately and with reason.”
But his inflammatory statements weren’t limited to his defenses of Trump. Among other things, Lord once claimed “there are no people of color” in America, called the Ku Klux Klan a “leftist” organization and argued singer Ariana Grande was partly to blame for the terrorist attack at her concert in the United Kingdom.
CNN host Anderson Cooper infamously criticized Lord in May when he argued Lord would defend Trump “if he took a dump on his desk.” Cooper later apologized for the comment.
This story has been updated.
Matt Ferner contributed to this report.
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