April 14, 2017

Don Lemon Rips Into Jeffrey Lord for Describing Trump as “MLK of Health Care”

The CNN commentator refused to apologize for the controversial remarks.


CNN commentator Jeffrey Lord drew instant outrage on Thursday after he described President Donald Trump as the “Martin Luther King of health care,” while supporting Trump’s reported plan to cut subsidies to the poor in order to force Democrats into negotiating on a health care bill. According to Lord, the two were comparable because they were willing to put “people in the street in harm’s way” to pass legislation.

By evening, the conservative pundit was still defending the outrageous remarks. During a segment with Don Lemon, Lord repeatedly refused to apologize and dismissed Lemon’s claim that the comparison was insulting. Lord even attempted to tell an anecdote about his father losing employment after defending a black waitress, before Lemon swiftly cut him off.

“Don’t take me to some before-the-war crap,” Lemon said. “I want to hear what you’re saying to the coworkers you work with now, Jeffrey. Answer the question now.”

“I want to hear now to the coworkers, to the people of color you work with on this network every single day, who were offended by your remarks.”

Lord responded by claiming, “We don’t judge people by color in this country.”

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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