Story highlights Jeffrey Lord: On CNN's "New Day," I compared President Trump and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. -- some found it controversial

People shouldn't be so shocked -- I made the comparison deliberately and with reason

Jeffrey Lord is a CNN political commentator. Previously, he served in the Reagan administration as a White House political adviser. The views expressed in this commentary are solely his own.

(CNN) In an appearance Thursday on CNN's "New Day" to discuss health care and President Trump, controversy arose when I said this:

"When I was a kid, President Kennedy did not want to introduce the civil rights bill because he said it wasn't popular, he didn't have the votes for it, et cetera. Dr. King kept putting people in the streets in harm's way to put the pressure on so that the bill would be introduced. That's what finally worked."

Jeffrey Lord

I was doing the appearance via Skype, which doesn't allow me to see the faces of those I am speaking with. But suffice to say, both host Alisyn Camerota and fellow guest Symone Sanders were astonished. So, it appears, are others. They shouldn't be.

In fact, I made a comparison between Trump and King deliberately and with reason. Both men used or are threatening to use crisis to pass legislation.

Dr. King, along with President Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, was one of my childhood heroes. His direct action was instrumental in getting the Civil Rights Act -- introduced by President Kennedy and signed by President Johnson after Kennedy's assassination -- proposed and pushed through Congress. While I didn't mention Dr. King's famous 1963 "Letter from Birmingham Jail," that is exactly what I had in mind on the air.

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