Appearing as a guest on Tuesday's Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield, liberal CNN political commentator and Daily Beast editor-in-chief John Avlon tried to blame the KKK on the "conservative movement" and lectured conservative CNN political commentator and NewsBusters contributor Jeffrey Lord that "you need to own that cancer at the heart of the conservative movement right now because that is -- we are reaping what you have sown for decades."
After host Ashleigh Banfield brought up a survey finding that Donald Trump would have more difficulty winning a general election than GOP candidates Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio, Avlon predicted that Trump would not be able to "pivot" for the general election:
Alex (Castellanos) just said, you know, maybe he hopes that Donald Trump pivots, but we know what Donald Trump stands for. We know what Donald Trump believes. He is a wall builder, not a bridge builder. That is the essence of his campaign. And his campaign is all about playing to an incredibly narrow base that does not translate to the changing demographics of this country.
Referring to Lord recalling on CNN over the weekend that the KKK was founded by Democrats, the liberal CNN commentator tried to smear the conservative movement as having culpability over the KKK as he added:
And when you hear Jeffrey Lord desperately try to deflect away from the comments on the KKK and others, that is a dog whistle game that goes way back. And while Jeffrey can point out that it wasn't always under the Republican banner, it was always under the conservative populist banner. And you need to own that cancer at the heart of the conservative movement right now because that is -- we are reaping what you have sown for decades, Jeffrey.
After Lord injected, "The Ku Klux Klan is a leftist hate group," Avlon angrily shot back: "There you go again, buddy! There has been a conservative populism at the heart of that kind of bigotry, and that is what's emerging in the demographic turnout today."
