ALISYN CAMEROTA (HOST): Jeffrey, is Donald Trump an unpredictable wild animal? 

JEFFREY LORD: I don't think so. I don't think so. He's a very smart guy. He is the Republican nominee or will be the Republican nominee for president of the United States. No, I don't think so. What does disturb me when I listen to this, and I'm not going to re-litigate the whole thing again --

CAMEROTA: Thank you.

LORD: Far too many, far too many of these Republican establishment figures that you pictured there, and I don't want to include Governor Ridge, who I know, I voted for twice. I think he’s terrific, we just disagree on this. But it does concern me that the Republican Party seems to be embracing identity politics, which I find, as I've said many times, is the descendent of slavery and segregation. There is no room for that in the Republican Party. 

MARY KATHARINE HAM: I'm sorry. I’m sorry but bringing -- hold on. I'm sorry, but Donald Trump brought up the ethnicity of the judge many times unprompted. That was identity politics of the ugliest kind in and of itself, and it is the reason we are still talking about this. And it is not some leftist capitulation to say that saying a man cannot do his job because of his ethnicity is a problem. It should be a problem for many people who are conservative and who are in the Republican Party. It should be.

CAMEROTA: Go ahead, Jeffrey. 

LORD: M.K., with all due respect, the judge has made a career out of his ethnicity. He belongs to a group, I might add, that a year ago announced it was going to boycott all of Donald Trump's properties. That's not an impartial judge. That is not an impartial judge.

HAM: Hold on. Then make that argument either to the court and ask for recusal, or make that argument in public. But that was not the argument that Donald Trump made. You are making up his argument after the fact.

LORD: No I am not. He said his Mexican heritage, that's Latino. Hello? It’s the same thing. It’s Latino. This is a judge who has made much of his Latino background. And this is where I say this is a much larger argument than Donald Trump. When Judge Sotomayor boasted that she was a wise Latina who could make better decisions than a white male, liberals swooned over that. 

CAMEROTA: Well Jeffrey, I mean there is a difference. Hold on a second. Jeffrey, just a second, because I have heard you use the Sotomayor analogy. One is about how you are enriched by your heritage, that's what Sotomayor was trying to say. 

LORD: She said she could make a better decision than a white male. 

CAMEROTA: Yes, and eight years later she tempered that and sort of went back on that, what some believe was clumsy language. But it was about how that has enhanced her experience. What Donald Trump was saying was that it negate -- that being of Mexican ancestry disqualifies you. It’s actually the opposite of what Sotomayor analogy you used.

LORD: Ali, it’s just basic 101. If you have conflict in a case, if you're a judge and you have got a conflict with a defendant, it doesn't matter what the conflict is, you should get out of the case. 

HAM: Right, and he made the argument that the ethnicity itself was the conflict. He did not make the points about his associations or what they backed. He didn't make those points. What he said was many, many, many, many times that the ethnicity itself was the problem and that is why he is being called to task for it. 

LORD: M.K., with all due respect, that is not the point. And again, this goes to the -- 

HAM: That is the point. That's the point he made 20 times in an interview. 

Previously:

Right-Wing Media Defend Trump’s Racist Attack On Judge With False Comparison To Sotomayor’s Call For Diversity

Jeffrey Lord And The Worst CNN Segment Of The Entire Election

CNN's Trump Surrogate Calls Paul Ryan A Racist