Jeffrey Lord (born July 25, 1951) is an American author, and political strategist inPennsylvania, who served as an associate political director in the administration of former U.S. PresidentRonald Reagan.^[1] He subsequently became a highly visible political commentator forCNN and other media outlets. He was dismissed from CNN in 2017 after posting "Sieg Heil" on Twitter as a mocking response to Angelo Carusone, president ofMedia Matters for America.^[2]

Lord was born inNorthampton, Massachusetts, on July 25, 1951. He earned a degree fromFranklin and Marshall College.^[3]

Lord first worked as a press aide in thePennsylvania State Senate. He worked for Pennsylvania congressmanBud Shuster aslegislative director andpress secretary and for U.S. senatorH. John Heinz III asexecutive assistant. Later, Lord worked aschief of staff toDrew Lewis, for part of the time that Lewis was a co-chairman of Pennsylvania for theRonald Reagan presidential campaign. He also served in theReagan White House as an associate political director 1987–1988.^[3] In that position, he assisted in the judicial nomination process for several nominees, includingRobert Bork for theSupreme Court.^[4] He also worked forJack Kemp during the presidency ofGeorge H. W. Bush.^[3]

Lord has worked as a political commentator, contributing material toCNN,The Weekly Standard,The American Spectator,National Review Online,The Wall Street Journal,The Washington Times, theLos Angeles Times,The Philadelphia Inquirer, thePittsburgh Post-Gazette, and theHarrisburg Patriot-News. He has appeared as a guest on numerous television and radio programs. He also works as a political consultant for Quantum Communications, a Harrisburg-based political strategy firm.^[3]

He is the author ofThe Borking Rebellion, about the confirmation ofD. Brooks Smith to theUnited States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.^[3] It received a generally positive review inThe Wall Street Journal.^[5] His more recent book, published in January 2016 (from which he gained the name, "The Trump Defender"),^[6] isWhat America Needs: The Case for Trump.

In July 2010, afterShirley Sherrod stated that one of her relatives had beenlynched in the 1940s, Lord wrote an article inThe American Spectator pointing outthe man in question had actually been beaten to death by police officers. Lord questioned Sherrod's "veracity and credibility".^[7] He faced substantial criticism as a result,^[8][9][10] including criticism from other contributors toAmerican Spectator.^[11][12]

In August 2011, Lord wrote an article inThe American Spectator criticizing Texas Republican CongressmanRon Paul and the views of some of his supporters.^[13] The article sparked considerable debate within the conservative movement.^[14]

In March 2016, during aSuper Tuesday election night on CNN, an argument ensued for several minutes between Lord and a CNN contributor,Van Jones, about Lord's defense of Donald Trump. The argument came about when a fellow contributor, conservative commentatorS. E. Cupp, accused Trump of "crazy,dog whistle policy proposals", that she believed he had made to attract prejudiced voters,^[15] and because Trump had hesitated to disavowKKK leaderDavid Duke in a CNN interview the previous weekend. Lord responded that the KKK many decades earlier had supported Democrats, so the KKK was therefore left wing. He accused those who raised these worries of dividing Americans by race.^[16] Van Jones questioned the relevance of the first point and declared the second point "absurd,” as Democrats at the time were conservative and Republicans liberal. Lord responded that "history matters" and claimed that Democrats continue to divide citizens by race today and that doing so is "morally wrong".^[17]

In April 2017, on a CNN discussion program hosted byDon Lemon and featuring three other panelists including CNN commentatorSymone Sanders, Lord maintained, as he had on an earlier CNN program, that PresidentDonald Trump was the "Martin Luther King" of health care, explicitly comparing and equating Trump tactics to King tactics. This infuriated both Lemon and Sanders. Lemon ended the program after a few more minutes of discussion.^[18]

CNN dismissed Lord on August 10, 2017, after he tweeted "Sieg Heil!" to Angelo Carusone, president ofMedia Matters for America, suggesting Carusone was a fascist.^[19] CNN subsequently filled Lord's role as a pro-Trump contributor with Missouri politicianEd Martin.^[20][21] Lord's firing was criticized by journalists, commentators, and Republican operativesBill Maher,^[22]Steve Bannon,^[23]Roger Stone,^[24]Sean Hannity,^[25] Joseph Wulfsohn,^[26] and John Micek.^[27]

• The Borking Rebellion: The Never-Before-Told Story of How a Group of Pennsylvania Women Attorneys took on the Entire U. S. Senate Judiciary Committee—And Won. Katco Literary Group. 2005.ISBN 978-0-9646484-4-9.
• What America Needs: The Case for Trump. Regnery Publishing. 2016.ISBN 978-1-62157-523-8.
• Swamp Wars: Donald Trump and the New American Populism vs. The Old Order. Bombardier Books. 2019.ISBN 978-1-64293-018-4.

• Jeffrey Lord-Bio atThe American Spectator
• Appearances onC-SPAN
• Joshua Green (February 7, 2011)."When Ronald Reagan Endorsed Ron Paul".The Atlantic.

• Living people
• Franklin & Marshall College alumni
• American press secretaries
• Political staffers
• The American Spectator people
• CNN people
• Pennsylvania Republicans
• 1951 births
• People from Northampton, Massachusetts

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