It appears Newt Gingrich was right in his outrage at the hypocrisy surrounding the kidnapping and abuse of a mentally-ill white teen by four young black assailants. Despite the suspects shouting “fuck Donald Trump” and “fuck white people”, Chicago police said today that they do not believe the attack was motivated by race, more likely due to his “special needs.”
As a reminder, this is what Gingrich, said earlier on Fox and Friends: “If this had been done to an African-American by four whites, every liberal in the country would be outraged and there would be no question that it is a hate crime.” He added that “we are right at the edge of a terrible period — which I know President-elect Donald Trump wants to avoid — of having a deep bitter division in the communities in a way that makes America very hard to govern.”
And to address these divisions the country must first admit there is a problem on both sides; alas not only do the authorities refuse to at least approach what happened objectively, so does the Obama administration itself.
On Thursday afternoon, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters at the daily White House briefing that it’s “too early to tell” if the four Chicagoans who kidnapped and tortured a mentally challenged teenager committed a hate crime, despite the quite clear audio track that accompanied the violent kidnapping.
“I’ve seen the video through news coverage, and I know local officials, law enforcement officials are investigating this matter based on reports I’ve seen there,” Earnest said in response to a question from Fox News’ Kevin Corke. “They are still conducting an investigation into the disturbing images we saw in that video. They do demonstrate a level of depravity that was an outrage to a lot of Americans.”
When asked about Obama’s take of the video, Earnest said that he hadn’t “spoken to the President about it, but I am confident he would be angered by the images that are depicted on that video.”
When Corke asked a followup question about whether or not it was a hate crime, Earnest responded that it’s “too early to tell.”
“I don’t know where the investigation will lead,” he continued. “Our expectation would be that local law enforcement would follow the facts, and I wouldn’t speculate at this point the degree that federal officials would get involved in considering those kinds of crimes.”
Which is odd, because roughly at the same time, the local police charged the four “depraved” perps with engaging in a hate crime.
