Psaki Accuses ‘Voices on the Right’ of Hypocrisy on Protests Outside Justices’ Homes, Encourages More ‘Peaceful’ Demonstrations
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki does not see protests outside the homes of Supreme Court judges as a form of intimidation, and encouraged more as long as they remain “peaceful.”
Psaki was asked during a Tuesday press briefing whether a recent protests outside the homes of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and others were an “attempt to interfere or intimidate” by Fox News correspondent Alexandria Hoff.
Psaki denied this, saying the protests have been peaceful thus far. She also called out “voices on the right” she feels are hypocritically outraged by the demonstrations.
The demonstrations followed the liberal organization Ruth Sent Us publishing the street names of multiple justices. Their map also included two exact addresses. The map was eventually taken down for violating Google’s terms of service, but protests have gone forward outside judges’ homes, carried out by demonstrators outraged over a draft opinion leak suggesting Alito and others could overturn Roe v. Wade in the coming months.
“The president’s longstanding view has been that violence, threats, and intimidation of any kind have no place in political discourse,” Psaki told Hoff, then pivoting to targeting “voices on the right.”
“What I do find interesting … is that there are voices on the right who have called out these protests while remaining silent for years on protests that have happened outside of the homes of school board members, the Michigan Secretary of State, or including threats made to women seeking reproductive health care, or even an insurrection against our Capitol,” Psaki said.
According to Psaki — who will soon be working at MSNBC, according to reports — “voices on the right” have not paid enough attention to these other examples to warrant their outrage now, even though she also described the Supreme Court protests as “peaceful” thus far.
She then encouraged the protests outside the homes of justices to remain peaceful.
“So I know there’s an outrage right now, I guess, about protests that have been peaceful to date, and we certainly continue to encourage that outside of judges’ homes, and that’s the president’s position, but the silence is pretty deafening,” she said.
Psaki previously condemned any protests that included “violence, threat, or vandalism,” but she received pushback from critics for not fully condemning the addresses of justices being published online.
“We want it, of course, to be peaceful, and certainly the president would want people’s privacy to be respected,” she said last week when asked about the planned protests. She added at another point that the White House has no official position on where people protest.
