Resident Trump apologist and festering canker sore on the public discourse Jeffrey Lord was fired from CNN Thursday after tweeting a Nazi slogan at a liberal activist. The use of "seig heil," the salute used at actual Nazi rallies during the Third Reich, appears to have been a bridge too far even for CNN. The network demonstrated during the campaign that nothing was out of bounds. No rhetoric was too outrageous, no argument too obviously trumped up and performed, no talking head too conspicuously vile—as long as it got ratings. In many ways, Lord was the shining emblem of CNN President Jeff Zucker's infamous line in a New York Times Magazine profile that all these on-air shit-slingers were mere "characters in a drama."

Lord certainly caused plenty of drama. In fact, it is astounding, and a profound indictment of Zucker and his network, that it took until now—until Lord used an actual Nazi slogan—for him to get kicked to the curb. Here is a brief sampling of the kind of "punditry" and "insight" and "considered political debate" that Lord brought to the nation's airwaves.

Here he is calling Donald Trump the "Martin Luther King of healthcare," because sullying the legacy of a Civil Rights icon is just a great ratings play:

This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

Because CNN is a Network of Principle, they had Lord on twice more that day to, in theory, defend his position—but really to soak up the ratings:

This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

After Trump attacked a federal judge, Gonzalo Curiel, as unfit to oversee the lawsuit filed against Trump University because his parents were Mexican immigrants, Lord tried to claim Trump was "calling attention to racism."

This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

When Trump attacked the mayor of London immediately following a terrorist attack on that city, Lord defended the president and went a step further. He claimed Trump would be justified in going after Ariana Grande. When pressed, he also said the British prime minister would have been justified in attacking the mayor of Orlando after that city was attacked, and said the same about the Pakistani prime minister attacking Rudy Giuliani after 9/11:

This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

Anderson Cooper's response was the only appropriate one: "Where's your basic human decency?"

He also defended the president's baseless, borderline delusional claim that President Obama wiretapped him during the campaign as an example of a charming use of "Americanese."

This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

Lord would also use false and misleading historical parallels in Trump's defense, like when he said the Ku Klux Klan were "liberals" because they were Democrats—and therefore liberals are The Real Racists—when fellow contributor Van Jones raised concerns about Trump's inflammatory rhetoric on the campaign trail:

This content is imported from Twitter. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

Lord's shameless defense of literally anything Trump said or did got to the point that Anderson Cooper, the straight-laced Silver Fox who sat through a whole bunch of bullshit through a two-year campaign, began asking Lord point blank if there was anything Trumpian he wouldn't defend:

This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

Cooper even got more specific:

This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

Lord and people like him are a disease in the body politic. In all likelihood, he does not actually care about Trump, or politics, or policy, or how it all affects people. He is simply a performer, an actor who goes out on set to play his role in Zucker's little drama. It is high time these networks got rid of these nihilistic controversy merchants and found some people who actually give a shit to debate the issues of the day.

At CNN, they have a fine opportunity: Kayleigh McEnany and many of the other reactionary Trump defenders have departed the network. Now Lord has also finally slithered back from whence he came—though he'll likely pop up again somewhere. It would take addressing the true moral tenor of our discourse to excise him from it. In the meantime, CNN has an opportunity, and an obligation, to redeem itself for allowing him to spew his pointless vitriol on their airwaves for as long as he did.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io