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:
