CNN contributors Van Jones and Jeffrey Lord, a Donald Trump supporter, on Tuesday night engaged in a fierce debate over the Ku Klux Klan and Donald Trump after Lord declared that the KKK is a “leftist terrorist organization.”
The argument began when Jones slammed Trump for a Sunday interview during which the Republican presidential frontrunner avoided disavowing former KKK leader David Duke.
“He is whipping up, and tapping into, and pushing buttons that are very, very frightening to me and frightening to a lot of people. No. 1: When he is playing funny with the Klan, that is not cool,” Jones said, referring to Trump. “The Klan is a terrorist organization.”
“A leftist terrorist organization!” Lord jumped in to declare.
Lord told Jones that the KKK was “the military arm, the terrorist arm of the Democratic party, according to historians” and said that Democrats’ “whole attitude of dividing by race is still here.”
“I don’t care how they voted 50 years ago,” Jones hit back. “I care about who they killed.”
Lord later added that dividing people by race is “what liberalism is all about.”
“The Klan divided people by race,” Jones said in response. “The Klan killed people by race.”
Lord also defended Trump’s comments on Duke and the KKK. He said that Trump made a “mistake” by not clearly disavowing Duke in the Sunday interview, but noted that the real estate mogul denounced the former KKK leader numerous times.
Watch the video via CNN:
I don’t think I’d call that a debate. Projection and tired trope vs ‘living it’ isn’t a debate. Mr. Jones was debating; the other asshole you’d like to say suffers from cognitive dissonance but more likely that was all mendacity. He can fool himself and his FOX buddies but if you look at the political affiliations of Black Americans he sure as shit isn’t fooling them. And GOP’ers ain’t gonna get the Black goodie with crap like that.
I am amazed that Jones did not take a poke at that reprehensible piece of lying excrement. I do not believe I could have been so restrained.
Bleedin’ Hearts, the KKK is I tells ya. CNN actually puts these nuts on TV. Shame !
I was watching this live and almost managed to kill him with my mind from sheer rage.
Do people actually believe this? This is right up there with the idea that black voters should be voting Republican because it’s the “Party of Lincoln”. Yes, it was, 150 years ago, back when it was the liberal progressive party and the Democrats were the conservatives in favor of a slavery status quo.
Then a whole bunch of shit happened…
Also, at what point does it even matter? Fine. The KKK are a leftist terrorist organization. I concede the point. WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH TRUMP NOT CONDEMNING THEM? Is your answer to the question as to why your candidate is cozy to them? “It’s your fault there even is a KKK?”
That’s not an answer. That’s the most ludicrous deflection I’ve ever heard. It’s not just a lie, but it’s poor debating…
YOU COLOSSAL FLAMING ASSHOLE.
How Jones didn’t reach across the table and strangle him, I don’t know. I would not have had that level of self-control.
This is almost like that go-to line they use when a Republican is called out for saying some bigoted nonsense: But…but…Robert Byrd.
Putting aside the fact that they have to keep citing antics from 80 years ago of a long-dead Democrat (who renounced his past) apparently the modern GOP doesn’t realize that we’re all on to the Southern strategy, we saw the party realignments, we saw Dixiecrats like Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, Trent Lott - and every two-bit Klansman south of Mason-Dixon - flock from the Democrats to the Republicans.
Whoever was in the Klan then, whatever party label they were, just doesn’t match up to where the parties are today. But I guess they think if they say it often enough, folks will believe it.