Conservative Pundit Defends Trump Amid GOP Criticism
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - Conservative author and commentator Jeffrey Lord defended Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for President, against rebukes from fellow Republican Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House, for criticizing a judge overseeing a trial regarding allegations of fraud against Trump University.
Lord, during an interview with Dom Giorano on Talk Radio 1210 WPHT, said Ryan and other critics were falling into a Democratic trap.
"What really disturbed me about Paul Ryan's comment and, frankly, what disturbs me about a lot of these Republican comments is they appear to have bought into this whole notion of identity politics. As I have said frequently, identity politics is the grandchild of slavery and the child of segregation. It's identifying people by race, judging them by race, judging them by skin color."
He insisted Trump's complaints were valid, no matter what Ryan or any fellow Republicans think about it.
"What [Ryan's] saying here is it's wrong to say that the judge is bias because he's got all of these Latino connections which he boasts about professionally and if that doesn't provide a conflict of interest, it does provide a conflict of interest. He doesn't want to say that because he wants to play the identity politics thing that you're not supposed to say something like that out loud. But you should say something."
