White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is echoing the false claim a conservative commentator called for eradicating transgender people.
During a Friday press briefing, Jean-Pierre said, “I just want to take a step back for a second and really call out the shameful, hateful, and dangerous attacks that we have been seeing on the LGBTQI community.”
“It started with a speaker at a conservative conference calling for the eradication of transgender people,” she claimed, adding, “Language that not a single national Republican leader has condemned.”
Watch the video below:
Jean-Pierre claims @michaeljknowles was "calling for the eradication of transgender people" at CPAC pic.twitter.com/iZMdJh5yfm
— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) March 10, 2023
Her comments refer to a speech by The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) earlier this month.
During his speech, Knowles said, “There can be no middle way in dealing with transgenderism. It is all or nothing. If transgenderism is true, if men can become women, then it’s true for everybody of all ages.”
“If it is false, then for the good of society, and especially for the good of the poor people who have fallen prey to this confusion, transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely — the whole preposterous ideology,” he added.
His comments quickly sparked a firestorm and led to some outlets misrepresenting his speech. Rolling Stone’s initial headline declared, “CPAC Speaker Calls for Transgender People to Be ‘Eradicated.’”
99% of conservative punditry is saying horrific shit and then feigning outrage when someone quotes you pic.twitter.com/mINRfXmw5W
— Jessica Valenti (@JessicaValenti) March 5, 2023
The headline has since been revised to state, “CPAC Speaker Calls for Eradication of ‘Transgenderism’ — and Somehow Claims He’s Not Calling for Elimination of Transgender People.”
Meanwhile, a sitting member of Congress somehow extrapolated on his comments to claim Knowles is a “Nazi” who is “hellbent on keeping only white men alive and in power,” without pointing to any evidence to try to support his claim.
Knowles responded to Jean-Pierre’s comments on Friday, asking, “Why are you lying about what I said?”
.@PressSec, why are you lying about what I said? pic.twitter.com/xxhCeoPRHA
— Michael Knowles (@michaeljknowles) March 10, 2023
Yes, the language used was bombastic. And it was viewed as calling for a genocide of transgender people by some.
But Knowles did not call for killing transgender people. His comments were solely focused on the “ideology” of “transgenderism.”
During an episode of his podcast this week, Knowles said, “Put simply, eradicating transgenderism from public life would mean behaving as American society did before, say, 2015 … [when] we did not have any acceptance of transgenderism in public life.”
“The idea that I or anybody else called for trans people to be eradicated is obviously a total lie,” he continued, adding, “If you want to eradicate a medical condition, you’re not saying you want to eradicate the patients. I don’t see how they could get that.”
Essentially, he is arguing “transgenderism” is a lie. And he is calling for society to stop accepting that someone can identify as a different gender than they were born and not to treat someone’s gender identity seriously.
You could argue he was calling for a less accepting society. But he did not call for eradicating people.
Jean-Pierre started out the week declaring her “homework” was “not on par today.”
And it seems this issue continued throughout the week, or she intentionally decided to misrepresent Knowles’ comments.