Jeffrey Lord, the conservative political commentator, shocked a fellow CNN panelist on Thursday morning by comparing the commander in chief to America’s late civil rights icon on the issue of health care.

“I want to say something here that I know will probably drive Symone crazy,” Lord said during a discussion with liberal commentator Symone Sanders. “But think of President Trump as the Martin Luther King of health care.”

Sanders, the former national press secretary for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, was aghast.

“Oh, Jeffrey! Jeffrey! Jeffrey!” she exclaimed, as Lord tried to explain the comparison.

“When I was a kid, President Kennedy did not want to introduce the civil rights bill. He didn’t have the votes for it,” Lord said. “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.”

The Trump administration has been sending mixed signals on the next phase of its plan for healthcare as it struggles to rebound from last month’s failure to secure enough Republican support for the GOP plan to repeal and replace Obamacare.

Photo: CNN

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal published Wednesday, Trump said his administration is undecided on whether it will continue to reimburse health insurers for covering low-income people. Earlier this month, the White House said there was no change in the policy of paying the cost-sharing subsidies.

“I don’t want people to get hurt,” Trump said. “What I think should happen — and will happen — is the Democrats will start calling me and [start] negotiating.”

Lord said Trump is simply doing for health care what King did for civil rights.

“You do understand that Dr. King was marching for civil rights because people that look like me were being beaten,” Sanders said. “Dogs were being sicced on them. Basic human rights were being violated for these people merely because of the color of their skin.”

Sanders added: “So let’s not equate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., humanitarian and Nobel Peace Prize winner, to the vagina-grabbing President Donald Trump.”

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