An argument broke out between Jeffery Lord and Van Jones when Lord attempted to defend’s Trump apathy about the KKK.
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Lord also went after House Speaker Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney.
Lord, who served with the Reagan administration, said the Republican establishment’s view of civil rights is to “tip the black waiter five bucks at the country club” and that Trump is succeeding because he’s not going to patronize people.
That comment set Jones off.
After Lord defended Trump by saying he disavowed the KKK before and after his disastrous ABC News interview Sunday – when he refused to do so – Jones reminded him that the “things that Donald Trump has done and not just in this race are horribly offensive”.
“We have a big problem, now”, Jones continued. He is whipping up and pushing buttons that are very frightening to me and frightening to a lot of people. When he talks about terrorism he gets passionate and says, “no, this is wrong”, but when you talks about the Klan, (he says) “Oh, I don’t know…”
“You can put whatever label you want”.
“We’re not going to play that game”, Jones said.
“You have to take a serious look at the fact that this man is playing fast and loose and footsie. I know this man when he gets passionate about terrorism… the Klan is a terrorist organization”.
“Hold on a second! Rev. Wright never killed anybody!” “It’s wrong to do”.
At this point, Lord finally managed to get a word in and opined, “It is wrong to understand that these [KKK] are not leftists“.
In 2013, for an essay in the American Spectator, he wrote about “leftist” abuses throughout history – tracing them all the way to the controversies over the IRS allegedly targeting Tea Party groups, what he called “tyranny of a different sort”. Jones said. “Call them chipmunks!”
The author of What America Needs: The Case for Trump says he was pointing to historical references when the KKK was the terrorist arm of the Democratic Party in the 1870s.
“I know you”, Mr Jones said to Mr Lord.
“For God’s sake, read your history”, he shot at Jones. “You are dividing people – this is what liberals do – you are dividing people by race”.
“For African Americans”, Jones said, “when we try to speak about the pain of the lynchings, we try to speak about the fear that we are having around every African-American dinner table, kitchen table about, ‘What does Trump mean?’ People thought well 50 years ago they were Democrats, to us it feels dismissive”.
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“And they did it to further the progressive agenda!”
