During Thursday’s press conference, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki made multiple false claims as she was questioned about the steps the Biden administration will take in response to the armed carjacking of Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA) in Philadelphia on Wednesday.
“Is the president taking crime in big cities more seriously now that a Democratic member of Congress, Mary Gay Scanlon, has been carjacked at gunpoint?” Fox News reporter Peter Doocy asked.
“Well, let me first say that were relieved that she was not injured,” said Psaki. “And the president called her and spoke with her this morning as well.”
“It is absolutely unacceptable for any American, whether they’re a member of Congress or not to be victimized by crime like that,” she added.
Psaki went on to claim that the Biden administration increased funding through the American Rescue Plan to “fight crime, make neighborhoods safer by supporting programs to interrupt violence, hiring additional law enforcement officers, and providing them with the resources and tools they’ve asked for.”
It should be noted that the funding Psaki is referring to in the American Rescue Plan was allowed to be used to “respond to the covid-19 emergency or its negative economic impacts, including assistance to households, small businesses, and nonprofits or aid to impacted industries such as tourism, travel, and hospitality; provide premium pay to essential workers or provide grants to employers of essential workers during the covid-19 emergency; provide government services to the extent of the reduction in revenue of such state, territory, or tribal government due to the covid-19 emergency; or make necessary investments in water, sewer, or broadband infrastructure.”
Fact checkers at the Washington Post gave Psaki “Three Pinocchios” earlier this year for making similar claims.
As the Washington Post explained, in the American Rescue Plan, “Police officers are one category of essential workers covered by the law, but they are not mentioned specifically like ‘impacted industries such as tourism, travel, and hospitality’ or ‘water, sewer, or broadband infrastructure.’ …The American Rescue Plan devoted $350 billion to ‘state and local aid,’ a pot of money that was designed for a variety of budget-plugging purposes. Among those is keeping police, teachers and emergency medical technicians at work, but going strictly by the bill text, lawmakers had no guarantee that police would get a slice of the pie.”
Psaki later claimed that “The president has never supported defunding the police. He’s always been an advocate for adequate funding and ensuring that police departments and community policing programs have exactly what they need.”
However, President Biden called for defunding the police during his presidential campaign, and Vice President Kamala Harris said she “applauds” Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti for defunding his city’s police.
