CNN contributor and Trump surrogate Jeffrey Lord got a concise lesson in American history and false equivalencies on Thursday after he referred to President Donald Trump as “the Martin Luther King of healthcare.”
“Think of President Trump as the Martin Luther King of healthcare,” CNN contributor and Trump surrogate Jeffrey Lord said in response to a question about Trump’s negotiating tactics. “When I was a kid—”
“Oh, Jeffrey, Jeffrey, Jeffrey,” panelist Symone Sanders interjected.
“When I was a kid, President Kennedy did not want to introduce the civil rights bill because he said it wasn’t popular, he didn’t have the votes for it, etcetera,” Lord continued. “Dr. King kept putting people in the streets in harm’s way to put the pressure on so the bill would be introduced. That’s what finally worked.”
“OK, Jeffrey, you do understand that Dr. King was marching for civil rights because people that looked like me were being beaten, dogs were being sicced on them, basic human rights were being withheld from these people merely because of the color of their skin,” said Sanders, who is black.
“I agree! I agree!” Lord said.
“So let’s not equate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a humanitarian and Nobel Peace Prize winner, to the vagina-grabbing President Donald Trump,” she concluded.
“Oh, boy. Jeffrey, you did introduce this,” host Alisyn Camerota said. “You went there.”
“There is no similarity,” Sanders added.
Posting without comment. #healthcare pic.twitter.com/dspY5BLfuV
— Symone D. Sanders (@SymoneDSanders) April 13, 2017
