Donald Trump supporter Jeffrey Lord says KKK were Democrats who wanted to advance 'their own progressive agenda'

The heated interview went into meltdown on CNN with former Obama staffer Van Jones:’I’m not going to play that game’

Mr Trump won seven states in Super Tuesday, one of the most important polling days before the election (REUTERS/Chris Keane)

Despite calls to ban Muslims from the US and most recently refusing to denounce endorsement from the Ku Klux Klan, Donald Trump is being backed by supporters who claim he has a better civil rights track record than his rivals.

One such supporter, a former President Reagan staffer, is Jeffrey Lord.

In a heated CNN interview he claimed that Mr Trump is less racist than other Republicans.

“I hate to say this about the Republican establishment, but their view of civil rights is to tip the black waiter five bucks at the country club,” Mr Lord said. Trump, meanwhile, is “not going to patronize people.”

Van Jones, a former staffer of President Obama, responded that “things that Donald Trump has done - and not just in this race - are horribly offensive”.

Mr Jones admitted that pundits have failed to respect Mr Trump’s voters - the Republican won seven states in Super Tuesday, one of the most important polling days before the election - but he also spoke about the “dark underside” of Mr Trump’s inflammatory statements and his “whipping up and tapping into and pushing buttons that are very, very frightening to me and frightening to a lot of people.”

Mr Trump reused to denounce the KKK in an interview on Sunday and then reversed his decision later on twitter.

“[He] is playing funny with the Klan, that is not cool,” said Mr Jones.

But Mr Lord cited the KKK’s historic connection with the Democratic party, saying it was “a leftist terrorist organization”.

Mr Jones, a lawyer, author and activist, criticized Mr Lord’s comparison of the Trump-KKK controversy to President Obama’s relationship to the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the pastor who was filmed saying “God damn America!”

Mr Lord called him an “anti-semite”.

“Reverend Wright never lynched anybody!” Mr Jones said. "Reverend Wright never put anybody on a post. And you guys play these word games, and it’s wrong to do in America. It is wrong to do!”

The debate got even more personal as Mr Lord accused Mr Jones of not knowing US history, while Mr Jones attacked accusations made by Mr Trump against five young black men who were wrongly convicted for a 1989 rape in New York.

“What you’re doing here is dividing people,” Mr Lord said. “We’re all Americans here, Van. You are dividing people. This is what liberals do. You are dividing people by race. This is what liberalism is all about.”

“The Klan divided people by race!” Mr Jones replied.

“And they did it to further the progressive agenda!” Mr Lord said. “Hello!”

“You know what?” Mr Jones continued. “Watching all this nonsense in your party, he [my seven-year-old son] turns around and says, ‘Dad, you’re a liar.’ … He sees so much vitriol from your party, he brings that into our house. Now we’ve gotta have him watch Nick Jr. He can’t even learn civics because of what is going on in your party — the circus wing in your party.”

“I know you,” Mr Jones said to Mr Lord. “I trust you. Tell Donald Trump he needs to, for my children’s sake … if he’s going to lead this country, he needs to be as passionate about what has happened in my community as in anybody else’s.”

Mr Lord cited President John F Kennedy and said we have to ensure that “race has no place in American life or law”.