OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany blasted President Joe Biden over his weak response to the ongoing anti-Israel protests spreading through college and university campuses around the country, adding that her former boss, Donald Trump, actually has the “moral authority” on the issue.
During a segment on Fox News’s “Outnumbered” program on Thursday, McEnany compared the former president’s bold response to the outbreak of protests and violence to Biden’s late, tepid response, adding that she did not want to hear any more claims about “anti-Semitism” coming from the right.
“This is a problem of the left. Joe Biden hails from the left. He is a Democratic president. I’m sorry, but I give him no credit today. Zero credit today. I like to give Biden credit where credit’s due. Not today,” began McEnany. “So Biden speaks today because, politically, the moment demanded it. But what did he have time to do over the last nine days?
“Take issue with the effort of Florida to protect unborn babies. He went to the White House Correspondents Dinner. He did a campaign event in D.C. and a campaign event in Delaware. He found time for all that. He even went on Howard Stern. He found all the time in the world for that. But he couldn’t speak out about this,” she continued.
She noted further:
You don’t get credit for that. And then about a minute into his speech, which, by the way, only lasted about a minute or two — so, yeah, clearly not prioritizing this — about a minute or two to speak. He says this is not a moment for politics. It’s a moment for moral clarity. Well, it’s not a moment for politics. Then why have you treated it so politically?
Here’s the sad part. The press will let him get away with this. If Donald Trump had delivered those exact same remarks in the exact same timeline, the White House press briefing room would be at a fever pitch…We would be asked, “Do you denounce the support from any anti-Semitic protester?” And unless we denounced every young person in the country, that wouldn’t be enough. And then we would be asked, “Will you pull their student loans?” If we didn’t answer, there would be a ferocious roar from the White House press corps.
“As Donald Trump said, Joe Biden is the moral authority for this country. Has he acted like it? No. He’s led from behind,” McEnany concluded. “The former president has been the moral authority on this issue, not the current one.”
WATCH:
Kayleigh McEnany destroys Joe Biden's tepid, half-hearted 'response' to the growing anti-Israel protests on college campuses. Rightfully declares TRUMP, not Biden, is "the moral authority" on this issue. pic.twitter.com/YLAwHBocnd
— USA Features Media (@UsaFeatures) May 3, 2024
Earlier, a White House spokesman said that Biden was against using police to clear campus protesters despite university officials ordering them to disperse.
“We continue to believe in the freedom of speech and the right to protest policies and ideas that you want to protest,” spokesman John Kirby said. “You just got to do it peacefully. You can’t hurt anybody, and you can’t in this case, like to Peter’s question, you can’t be disrupting the educational pursuit of your fellow students, and they have a right to go to school, and they have a right to do so safely.”
Trump, by comparison, has been relentless in his criticism of the protesters, many of whom are being influenced by outside professional agitators, according to some reports.
“New York was under siege last night,” Trump told supporters at a campaign rally in Wisconsin, praising the police officers for arresting about 300 protesters at Columbia and City College of New York who he referred to as “raging lunatics and Hamas sympathizers.”
“I say remove the encampments immediately, vanquish the radicals, and take back our campuses for all of the normal students who want a safe place from which to learn,” Trump added.
