CNN commentator shuts down analyst who compares "vagina-grabbing" Trump to MLK

Impact

Jeffrey Lord, a former Reagan White House staff member hired by CNN in 2015 for the sole purpose of defending President Donald Trump, called Trump "the Martin Luther King of health care" on Thursday morning. Lord compared Trump's push on an unpopular health care bill to King's leadership during the Civil Rights Act.

Symone Sanders, a former staffer on Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign, who sat opposite Lord and who is black, did not agree with that characterization.

"Jeffrey, you do understand... you do understand that Dr. King was marching for civil rights because people that look like me were being beaten, dogs were being sicced on them, basic human rights were being withheld from them merely because of the color of their skin?" Sanders asked. 

"So let's not equate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a humanitarian, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, to the vagina-grabbing President Donald Trump."

"Oh, boy," CNN anchor Alisyn Camerota replied.

This is not the first time Lord has put his foot in his mouth on national television. In June, the New Republic compiled a 20-minute YouTube video of various CNN commentators rhetorically criticizing him.