White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre gave an incredible non-answer when asked which side threats of storming the Supreme Court and murdering justices are coming from.
Following up on a Department of Homeland Security memo that warned about the potential for violence after a major abortion decision is handed down, Fox News’ Peter Doocy asked Jean-Pierre on Wednesday, “Are these threats from pro-abortion activists or anti-abortion activists?”
“The President is clear on this question. He believes the right to peacefully protest in this country is fundamental, but he also believes that violence, threats, and intimidation have no place in political discourse anywhere. That is true whether it is in front of a courthouse or in front of a healthcare clinic,” Jean-Pierre responded.
She continued, “And that’s the thing. I feel…it seems like, to us, it is very one-sided on what we call out as intimidation or as violence. So we want to make sure we’re calling out on both sides of what is happening and what we’re seeing.”
She went on:
“While protests have been peaceful to date, the Department of Justice has U.S. Marshals providing support to support [the Supreme] Court Marshal, and the president believes Congress should pass the legislation to fund increased security for Court and judges as soon as possible.”
Finally, Jean-Pierre said, “Yesterday, in reference to this, the Department of Homeland Security said they are “committed to protecting Americans’ freedom of speech and other civil rights and civil liberties, including the right to peacefully protest.”
Watch the video below:
Peter Doocy asks Press Sec. Jean-Pierre if threats of violence against the Supreme Court building and justices are "from pro-abortion activists, or anti-abortion activists." pic.twitter.com/Lrjz01uSmc
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) May 18, 2022
Okay then.
That answer tells us absolutely nothing about what Doocy asked.
There was this line, “It seems like, to us, it is very one-sided on what we call out as intimidation or as violence.” But that does not explicitly address the question of threats to the Supreme Court over potentially overturning Roe v. Wade.
It is true that it was Trump supporters who broke into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, seeking to overturn the election.
And there is this graphic from the Anti-Defamation League, which shows right-wing extremists accounted for 75% of murders committed by extremists in the U.S. from 2012 to 2021.
White supremacy and other right-wing extremist violence kills more than 3 times as many people in the US than islamist extremist violence:https://t.co/FfPnkXFjlU pic.twitter.com/P79XWfBsU7
— Dina D. Pomeranz 🟣 (@DinaPomeranz) May 17, 2022
While some conservatives point to deaths that occurred during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, an ABC News study of those deaths found that the motives of those murders were mixed.
“Some of the deaths have allegedly been perpetrated by suspects with their own agendas that do not include social justice, others have allegedly been carried out by agitators seeking to use the protests as cover for their own purposes, including looting and other violent acts. Some may have resulted from personal disputes,” it explained.
But also during the Black Lives Matter protests, demonstrators set up CHOP in Seattle, Washington, which ended after there were several shootings and allegations of sexual assaults. Protesters also set fire to courthouses, and vandalized and looted stores.
According to one estimate, the collective damage sustained during racial justice protests in 140 cities in 2020 was expected to cost the insurance industry $2 billion.
With all that said, according to Axios, the DHS memo warned that violence could come from both pro-life and pro-choice activists after the abortion decision is handed down. However, it was not clear from that Axios report which groups were threatening to storm the Supreme Court building and murder justices.
If the threats are coming from pro-life activists, that is something that’s worth knowing. If they’re coming from pro-choice activists, that is also worth knowing.
But if Jean-Pierre doesn’t know specifically which side is making the threats, she should say that instead of talking about how the White House just feels like the threats are “one-sided.”