White House press secretary suggests ‘looking into transgender violence’

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has said it’s “worth looking into” the claims that there has been a rise in “transgender violence” in the US.

During a press briefing on Monday (22 September), Leavitt said it would be “ignorant” to suggest that the US government shouldn’t look into the rise of what she called domestic extremism.

Her comments came after right-wing podcaster Charlie Kirk was shot dead in Utah earlier this month, while debating gun violence.

Despite Tyler Robinson, who has been charged with aggravated murder, not publicly identifying as trans, several right-wing pundits and politicians, including vice-president JD Vance, have claimed the shooting was another example of “left-wing extremism”.

During the briefing, The Daily Wire’s Mary Olohan asked Leavitt: “The president said, ‘we are looking into transgender violence’, does that mean the FBI is looking into it, and do you have any more clarity as to how the administration is viewing this uptick in, specifically, transgender violence?”

Leavitt replied: “It’s definitely something worth looking into and I think anyone who denies that at this point is being wilfully ignorant.

“The administration is taking it seriously, all causes of violence, and why these people would be driven to such evil and such hatred, and there’s probably many answers to that question.

“The administration is focused on all of them. For individual cases, of course the FBI and the Department of Justice are leading those. As for this overall violence and domestic terrorism that we’re seeing, the White House and the president’s policy team will be leading the charge and that begins with labelling Antifa as a domestic terrorist organisation and I can assure you there will be additional actions to come.”

Antifa refers to a left-wing political philosophy which focuses on anti-fascism and anti-nationalism. It is not a centralised political organisation, although several political groups refer to themselves as Antifa or anti-fascist.

Just moments before being shot, Kirk responded to a question about gun violence by saying “too many” trans people were responsible for mass shootings in the US. However, of the 3,708 incidents in the US since 2016, only an estimated 16 were committed by out transgender individuals.

Fact-checking website Snopes rubbished Kirk’s comments, saying in an article that “social media personalities on the right have repeatedly stirred up false claims about the gender identities of past mass shooters”.

Following Kirk’s death, several pundits have looked to link Robinson to left-wing movements after bullets found at the scene were found to be engraved with anti-fascist sentiments. However, experts have said the words didn’t necessarily indicate any political leaning.

Jamie Cohen, an assistant professor of media studies at Queens College, in Flushing, New York, told Sky News that political messaging was often used online as “double-speak” intended for “someone like me to dive into what they would call meme culture, and declare them something so that they get more press”.

Cohen, who studies memes, went on to say: “It could just be another bait-and-switch for researchers who are falling into the same trap they are designing for more viral exposure.”

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