CNN contributor and staunch Trump supporter Jeffrey Lord tweeted “Sieg Heil!” at the president of Media Matters for America on Thursday.
That set off a Twitter back-and-forth between the men, which comes following an opinion piece Lord wrote for the “The American Spectator” that called MMFA President Angelo Carusone and the liberal media watchdog site “Media Matters Fascists.”
Carusone hit back at Lord on Twitter, noting that he’d spelled his name wrong and asking, “Why do you expect anyone to take you seriously when you don’t take yourself seriously?”
Lord quickly responded, tweeting, “Sieg Heil!” — the Nazi salute for “Hail, my leader!” — before going on to defend the tweet.
In the opinion piece, Lord takes issue with a Media Matters campaign to get Fox’s Sean Hannity fired from the network.
{mosads}“Media Matters is launching an effort to encourage Hannity’s sponsors to stop financially supporting his propaganda,” reads a Media Matters email sent to supporters last Friday. “At this point, if a company is sponsoring Sean Hannity’s show, it’s essentially supporting a Trump propaganda operation.”
The email provides a link to the petition page with a list of Hannity’s advertisers to contact.
“It is not a lie, Angelo, that you and [Media Matters] are trying to end Sean Hannity’s free speech. You have been playing this fascist game for years with others — Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly etc.” Lord writes. “If there is a conservative with an audience of any size your fascist instinct is not to debate honestly but to simply silence the opposition. Period. Threaten their sponsors and bully.
“This is America, Angelo. Not Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany or Communist Russia.”
Lord re-upped with CNN in December of 2016. The author and political strategist often is a foil to other panel guests on the network, generating headlines in the process.
Carusone took a screenshot and tweeted it at CNN, asking for the network to comment on “on air talent issuing (in serious and non-ironic way) nazi victory salutes.”