'He got uglier and more crude': CNN staffers 'elated' at Jeffrey Lord's ouster over Nazi salute

Trump booster and chronic line-stepper Jeffrey Lord finally went too far on Thursday when he tweeted a Nazi salute, causing CNN to sever their contract with him. In response, some CNN staffers are stoked that he's finally gone.

According to employees who spoke to The Daily Beast, the network's decision to fire Lord after two years of being their token pro-Trump pundit is positive.

"Nazi salutes are indefensible," the network said in a statement. "Jeffrey Lord is no longer with the network.”

“I’m elated,” one employee told the Beast on condition of anonymity. "[CNN president] Jeff Zucker has zero tolerance for this kind of bullsh*t."

"He let Kathy Griffin go, he let Reza Aslan go—what would have been the response if Zucker had let Jeffrey Lord stay on with his Nazi salute?" the employee said, citing the firings of two high-profile CNN contributors after they crossed lines while criticizing the president.

Though other employees claimed that Lord is an "amiable, jolly fellow" in person, another argued that being nice in person doesn't negate his nasty on-camera behavior.

“I think that at a certain point you can cross over from being an advocate and making reasonable arguments into just pandering to the ugliest of instincts,” the employee told the Beast. "Jeffrey unfortunately had been dabbling in that more and more, and had been getting uglier and more crude, almost as if he had to keep finding a bigger dog whistle."

"Obviously," the employee said, "he went too far.”