CNN political analyst Joe Lockhart drew considerable backlash on social media Wednesday after questioning whether the COVID-19 pandemic, a major Gulf Coast hurricane and raging California wildfires were the result of “Karma.”
Lockhart weighed in with the one-word response after writer and podcast host David Rothkopf asked followers on Twitter what all three major issues affecting the U.S. “have in common.”
Rothkopf had sent a follow-up tweet arguing that “[t]he president and his administration reject the science that is needed to address these crises” and “in the case of both the global climate crisis and the pandemic, actively made matters worse.”
Lockhart, a former White House press secretary who served during President Clinton’s impeachment, drew swift blowback from all sides on social media for his “Karma” response:
Lockhart eventually declared he was getting off Twitter for a few hours as the criticism continued to build.
Lockhart was already under fire this week for calling teenager Nicholas Sandmann, who spoke at the Republican National Convention on Tuesday night, a “snot nosed entitled kid from Kentucky” on Twitter.
That comment drew criticism from former George W. Bush White House press secretary Ari Fleischer.
Sandmann sued both CNN and The Washington Post each for $250 million over their reporting of an interaction he had with a Native American elder in Washington, D.C., in early 2019.
The teenager settled with the network and newspaper for an undisclosed amount earlier this year.