CNN contributors Van Jones and Jeffrey Lord pointed fingers and got into a heated argument late on Super Tuesday when each accused the other side’s party of fueling racial tensions.
Jones, a Democrat, criticized GOP frontrunner Donald Trump for refusing to condemn white supremacist David Duke and the Klu Klux Klan.
“The things that Donald Trump has done, and not just in this race, are horribly offensive,” Jones said. “There is a dark underside here… he is whipping up and tapping into and pushing buttons that are very, very frightening to me and to a lot of people.”
Lord, a Trump supporter, accused liberals of “dividing people by race,” and insisted that the KKK is “the base of the Democratic party.”
“They were the military arm, the terrorist arm of the Democratic party, according to historians. For God sakes, read your history,” Lord said. “This whole attitude of dividing by race is still here, and this is how Democrats do the deal.”
Jones fired back he doesn’t care about how his party “voted 50 years ago,” and proceeded to get awfully close to Lord during the argument. Other CNN panelists remained quiet.
“You need to take a serious look at the fact that this man [Trump] is playing fast and loose. When he talks about terrorism, he gets passionate, he says, ‘No, this is wrong,’” Jones said before asking where that passion is when condemning the Klan.