Trump advocate Jeffrey Lord insists Paul Ryan is the real racist

(Image credit: CNN/YouTube)

published 8 June 2016

On a conference call with supporters Monday, Donald Trump advised his public advocates to very specifically push back against reporters and others who criticize Trump's argument that U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel's "Mexican heritage" gives him an "inherent conflict of interest" in the Trump University fraud case. "The people asking the questions — those are the racists," Trump said, according to Bloomberg Politics. "I would go at 'em." Republican lawmakers have been distancing themselves from Trump's comments, and on Tuesday, House Speaker Paul Ryan called them the "textbook definition of racism." And on CNN Tuesday, Trump backer Jeffrey Lord went at 'em.

"Speaker Ryan has apparently switched positions and is now supporting identity politics, which is racist," Lord told Carol Costello, with GOP strategist Ana Navarro looking on, bemused. Costello asked Lord if he was calling Ryan a racist, and Lord said, "I am accusing anybody, anybody who believes in identity politics, which he apparently now does, of playing the race card. The Republican establishment is playing this. Sen. [Mitch] McConnell is playing this." Costello cut in, "Do you know how ironic that is, that you're calling all of those particular Republicans racist?"

Lord did not seem to grasp the irony, so Van Jones spelled out the flaw in his argument on Tuesday evening, also on CNN. "If I said, 'You can't be my judge because you're a white man, and white men have done horrible things to me,' you'd say I'm a racist," he told Lord. "But if Donald Trump says a Mexican can't be part of his judge, jury, he's a hero? And now he's an anti-racist? This does not make sense."

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.