Washington – The White House pushed back on Thursday against former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s comments on domestic violence, saying the issues she raised on the campaign trail are some that the Obama administration takes “quite seriously.”
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Palin’s son was arrested on suspicion of assaulting a woman and carrying a gun while intoxicated, police in the family’s Alaska hometown said on Tuesday.
In a speech she made Wednesday to support leading Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, Palin linked her son’s charges to his experience in the U.S. military and blamed the Obama administration for not doing enough to support its veterans.
“I can certainly relate to the families who … feel these ramifications of PTSD,” she said according to media reports, using an acronym referring to post-traumatic stress disorder.
“And it makes me realize more than ever it is now or never for the sake of America’s finest that we have a commander in chief who will respect them.”
White House spokesman Josh Earnest, asked about the comments at a news briefing on Thursday, said the instinct of many people is to “make light” of some of the rhetoric on the campaign trail, particularly from Palin.
“The fact is domestic violence is not a joke. Gun violence is not a joke. Problems with addiction are not a joke and the … sacrifices that many of our men and women in uniform make, for our safety and security, are not a joke.”
Earnest said while the fodder may come easy, “in this case, the issues that she’s talking about are quite serious and are certainly issues that we take quite seriously here.”
He did not know if the president had seen the remarks, Earnest added.
Some veterans groups quickly lashed out at Palin for her remarks. “PTSD is a serious subject and should not be politicized,” Paul Rieckhoff, who founded the group Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, said Thursday on Twitter.
“The idea that Palin can pin this on Obama is absurd,” Nate Bethea, a veteran from the war in Afghanistan who said he also suffers from PTSD, posted on the social media site late Wednesday.
I honestly thing the poor woman was drunk during that speech. That makes me sad.
The fact is that Palin’s son enlisted in the army as an alternative to going to prison (for cutting brake lines). He showed a propensity for violence then, even before Obama was president.
If the dog barks means the stone was aimed well…
She slammed them well enough.. now they trying 2 get back on whatever they can…
So if they didn’t find anything about her What 2 say. They going down 2 What her son did.
What do u say about it?
“What do u say about it?”
I say you’re an idiot whose pathetic grammar and inability to write a coherent sentence marks you for the typical Trump/Palin supporter.
I was a trump fan tell palin jumped in. I now have second thoughts.
This….. The only insult I can think of is ‘republican’, managed to blame obama for her messed up family. And this again from the party of ‘family values. The party that believes in ‘personal responsibility.
And they tell us it is the natural placrbfor orthodox Jews. Says something about us