Mary Katherine Ham on Wednesday became the latest conservative commentator to call out Donald Trump supporter Jeffrey Lord over racist statements about U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel.
During an appearance on CNN's New Day, Ham issued a warning to Republicans who supported Trump that the candidate could not be trusted to stay on message.
"Donald Trump tells you every day that he will be Donald Trump and he will not be managed or advised or contained," she explained. "This is like living with the grizzlies, you can think that you understand the grizzly and he understands you. But he's still a grizzly, you ain't gonna change it, and someday he might come at you."
Lord countered that leaders of the Republican Party who opposed Trump's anti-Hispanic statements about Curiel were "embracing identity politics."
"As the descendant of slavery and segregation, there's no room for that," Lord said.
"Hold on," Ham interrupted. "Donald Trump brought up the ethnicity of the judge many times unprompted. That was identity politics of the ugliest kind in 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," she added. "It should be a problem for many people who are conservative and are in the Republican Party."
"He said his Mexican heritage! That's Latino! Hello!" Lord shot back. "This is a judge who has made much of his Latino background."
"This goes to the larger point of Republicans bowing down to the god of identity politics," he continued. "And there should be no room for it in the Republican Party. Period. Ever. This is the party of Abraham Lincoln."
Ham acknowledged that liberals and the media needed to do some "soul searching" about "crying wolf too many times."
"Because now a wolf is here saying wolf things," she concluded. "And everybody goes 'shrug'."
