People associated with the controversial Black Lives Matter movement are attending Wednesday’s White House meeting that President Obama has convened to address mistrust and violence between police and minority communities.
“This is the president’s desire to bring people into one room that have a variety of perspectives to represent,” Josh Earnest, Obama’s spokesman, explained on Wednesday. “I’m confident that there will be law enforcement officials in the room who are deeply troubled by the actions and comments of some people who associate themselves with the BLM movement.”
“And the president has cautioned about applying the controversial comments and actions of some — he didn’t call them controversial, he called them stupid — and applying them to an entire movement,” Earnest said. He said doing that is “just as wrong as attributing the illegal actions of a couple of law enforcement officers to every cop in the country.”
“That’s wrong too,” Earnest said. “That’s not fair. That’s not accurate. And resisting that impulse and keeping open our hearts will be necessary to making progress on this challenge.”
Obama made similar remarks during his speech at Tuesday’s memorial in Dallas for the five police officers who were slain by a racially motivated sniper last week.
