Spicer slams ‘immediate jump’ to blame right for hate crimes

White House press secretary Sean Spicer on Monday accused liberals of rushing to judgment over who was behind the recent spate of bomb threats to Jewish community centers, arguing that President Trump was validated when he predicted that the threats were intended to make conservatives look bad.

Asked about a white supremacist accused last week of killing a black New York man, Spicer answered by noting that Trump kicked off his recent joint address to Congress with “a call to denounce hate no matter where we come from politically.”

“While we are on the topic, there has been a rush to judgment in a lot of other cases when it comes to, in particular, the anti-Semitic discussion, where people have jumped to conclusions about denouncing people on the right,” Spicer said during the White House’s daily press briefing.

{mosads}”In that particular case, we saw the president was right and this rush to judgment by a lot of folks on the left was wrong and none of them have been held to account on that. That’s something that equally needs to be called out, when people are charging something of someone that is not true.”

Spicer was referring to series of bomb threats against a variety of mostly Jewish targets around the world.

Authorities recently arrested an Israeli teen accused of phoning in “hundreds” of those threats. And the FBI arrested a former reporter and charged him with making eight of those threats.

Trump, whose daughter converted to Judaism when she married her husband, condemned the rise in anti-Semitism at the time.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, who met with Trump in February, said the president floated the possibility that the threats were actually a false-flag attack, “trying to make people look bad.’”

While the White House did not confirm that account at the time, Spicer’s comments appear to confirm the characterization.

“We saw these threats coming into [Jewish community centers] and there was an immediate jump to criticize folks on the right and denounce people on the right and ask people to condemn it,” Spicer said Monday.

“It turns out, it wasn’t someone on the right. The president, from the get-go, said, ‘I bet you it’s not someone [on the right],’ and he was right.”

The original question, from American Urban Radio Network’s April Ryan, had been about a white man who is facing murder charges after he allegedly killed an elderly black man. The alleged attacker told the New York Daily News he wishes he had either killed a “young thug” or a “successful, older black man” instead of the actual victim.

Spicer said he could not address the case specifically but said that “in those cases, there’s no question, black and white, we need to call out all instances of this.”