ABOVE: White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre condemned comments by a conservative pundit who called for the “eradication of transgenderism” during the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in suburban Maryland.
“I just want to take a step back a moment and really call out the shameful, hateful, and dangerous attacks that we have been seeing on the LGBTQI community as we’ve seen this week, as I said, and also last week,” Jean-Pierre said during a press briefing March 10.
“Look,” she continued, “it started with a speaker at a conservative conference calling for the eradication of transgender people, language that not a single national Republican leader has condemned.”
Michael Knowles, who is associated with Ben Shapiro’s The Daily Wire, also said during CPAC: “There can be no middle way in dealing with transgenderism. It is all or nothing.”
Jean-Pierre then addressed the spate of anti-LGBTQ and particularly anti-trans legislation that has been proposed by Republican legislatures throughout the country, which has become increasingly extreme:
“In Iowa and Tennessee, Republicans are now calling for legislation to attack gay marriage and protections for same-sex couples,” she said. “In Florida — just Florida alone — Republicans introduced 20 bills — 20 bills — on a single day to roll back the rights of LGBTQ community.”
Jean-Pierre then focused her comments on a bill introduced in the Florida legislature last Friday:
“One of those bills would give the state the right to remove kids from their parents just because that kid is transgender. And just think about that. Just think about a kid who is sitting at home in this community who is listening and hearing elected officials talking about how they want to take away their rights or how they want to even threaten their parents with felony charges for seeking healthcare for their children.”
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