White House responds to Palin: Domestic violence ‘not a joke’
The White House is firing back after former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin pinned blame for her son’s domestic violence charges on President Obama.
“I don’t know if the president saw the remarks. I can tell you that the reaction of some people is to make light of the rhetoric that we see on the campaign trail, particularly from Gov. Palin, but the fact is domestic violence is not a joke,” press secretary Josh Earnest said Thursday at the White House briefing.
{mosads}Pressed on whether Palin was making a joke of a serious issue, Earnest declined to go after Palin directly.
“No, I’m just saying that the instinct that some people have when hearing her rhetoric is to make light of it,” he said.
“And sometimes those jokes come pretty easy. But in this case, the issues she’s talking about are quite serious and certainly issues that we take quite seriously here.”
At a rally following her endorsement of Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, Palin linked her son’s recent arrest to the president’s treatment of combat veterans.
“They come back wondering if there is that respect for what it is that their fellow soldiers and airmen and every other member of the military so sacrificially have given to this country,” she said.
“It starts from the top, the question though that comes from our own president, where they have to look at him and wonder, ‘Do you know what we go through, do you know what we’re trying to do to secure America and to secure the freedoms that have been bequeathed us?’ ” she added.
Trump has backed Palin up on the comments, saying he urged the Tea Party favorite to mention her son’s arrest.
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