Doocy Hits Psaki on DOJ Targeting Parents

CLAY: We’ve been talking a lot about parents and how people are gonna respond to the covid vaccine mandate. While we were on here live, Marsha Blackburn, senator from Tennessee, texted me to let me know that their group has fought back in a big way against what I think is a crazy action and overreach by the Department of Justice, Merrick Garland, the attorney general there.

The Department of Justice is saying that they are going to investigate parents as domestic terrorists for speaking out against critical race theory, masking in schools. You’ve seen a lot of these school board meetings — I was a part of one of them — that have been very fevered in terms of the debate that’s been going on. Well, Peter Doocy asked Jen Psaki about whether or not the parents the Department of Justice is planning on investigating are in fact domestic terrorists. Let’s play cut 10.

DOOCY: Does the administration agree that parents upset about their kids’ curriculums could be considered domestic terrorists?

PSAKI: Well, let me unravel this a little bit because the National School Board Association is not a part of the U.S. government. I’d point you to them. What the Department of Justice said in a letter from the attorney general is that, quote, “Threats against public servants are not only illegal, they run counter to our nation’s core values.” That is true. These were threats against public servants, threats against, uh, members of the school district. Uh, regardless of the reasoning, uh, threats and violence against public servants is illegal.

CLAY: So, why does the Department of Justice have to get involved? If there are threats and violence, Buck, then local authorities should investigate and prosecute as necessary as they do for virtually every local crime.

BUCK: There’s no legal excuse for this. This is a sheer act of intimidation because of politics. That’s all this is. This was meant to send a chill down the spines of parents. By the way, I don’t think it’s gonna work. I think a lot of parents are saying, “Oh, you like to brainwash my kids and the Biden DOJ is gonna threaten me for opposing it?”

I don’t think they’re gonna say, “Oh, right! Brainwash away,” the kind of parents that show up at this meeting and are upset about it. I think that’s one thing that the left… Bullies don’t like it when you fight back, and the left certainly doesn’t like it when parents decide that they’ve had enough of the indoctrination of their kids.

But I do think it’s so interesting. The FBI will say, for example, that Antifa is “just an idea.” But parents who don’t want their kids shown, you know, essentially pornographic material in school or taught critical race theory or forced to wear masks, even though we know — from Florida, the data — that doesn’t do anything. It’s stupid; it’s child abuse.

They’re insurrectionists, Clay. They’re really a threat to… Parents showing to the school board meeting, according to the Biden administration logic and narrative here, is somehow anti-democratic. They’re actually a threat to democracy, which is why the attorney general of the United States would put out a letter that’s like, “Nice free speech you got there, parents. Be a shame if something happened to it.”

CLAY: Yeah, and I want to give credit here. This letter just went out today from several different senators on the Judiciary Committee saying, “We’re concerned…” I’m reading from that letter. “We are concerned about the appearance of the Department of Justice policing the speech of citizens and concerned parents.

“We urge you to make very clear to the American public that the Department of Justice will not interfere with the rights of parents to come before school boards and speak with educators about their concerns, whether regarding coronavirus-related measures, the teaching of critical race theory in schools, sexually explicit books in schools, or any other topic.

“Furthermore, we urge you to instruct the FBI and the various United States Attorneys to make clear in the meetings discussed above that speech and democratic processes, like those that occur at a local school board meeting, must be respected.” This is crazy to me, Buck, that a letter like this would come out. It’s embarrassing for the Department of Justice to send it out.

BUCK: It seeks to the priorities at the very top of the Department of Justice. We’ve been discussing the CDC data showing that there was the highest in a century rise in murders in this country. You’d think if they’re gonna mobilize the federal government on an issue at the law enforcement level it would be to try to keep people safer. But instead, they made a very conscious decision.

Merrick Garland is not a stupid guy. He’s obviously a tool of the left now because he works in the Biden administration. But he’s not dumb. He knew exactly what the response would be to putting this — or I should say, knew that it was optimistic a response from people and that it was meant to be essentially a warning that you better not get out of line.

But it’s also a reminder here Clay of how much we’re kind of getting inside the kitchen sneaked of the left one power circle here. They need teachers unions. They need the Department of Education to be operating without the search and seizure of parents to keep Democrat politicians elected and to brainwash kids into left-wing crap so that they don’t you know what this country is audible. When you start to threaten that as a parent, you’re going after like the big boss here so to speak. You’re going after the people that are making the ambition decisions.

CLAY: You’re going after moms, and they ain’t gonna like it. And I will say this, Buck, when we come back: I wish we were having an election a month from today basically in November of 2021, either the presidential election or the midterms.