Sean Spicer refused to acknowledge Timothy Caughman’s murder as hate crime

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On Monday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer refused to classify the death of Timothy Caughman, who was stabbed with a sword by an Army vet who had declared that he wanted to kill a black man, as a hate crime.

During the daily press briefing, American Urban Radio Networks reporter April Ryan asked Spicer about the New York Daily News cover story in which James Jackson “gave a statement to a reporter talking about he wishes the man were younger and he was a thug that (was) killed. So what do you say to this? This is clear — it’s racism at its ugliest.”

But rather than condemn the crime, Spicer said that the president “wanted to unite the country” and that “hate crimes and anti-Semitic crimes of any nature should be called out.”

On the white supremacist murder case, Spicer says all hate should be called out, but people are too quick to criticize “people on the right” pic.twitter.com/snyqcltSpw

— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) March 27, 2017

Then, he went on a tirade against the left for “immediately jumping” on “people on the right” over the recent wave of bomb threats on Jewish community centers, though those calls were traced to a 19-year-old with dual American and Israeli citizenship.

“There’s no question, black and white, we need to call out all instances,” he added. “But I do think there’s been a rush to judgment on some of the anti-Semitic cases.”

“In that particular case, we saw that the President was right,” Spicer said. “And a lot of the folks on the left were wrong.”

Spicer also said that he did not know details on the Jackson case.

Mayor de Blasio’s spokesman Eric Phillips took to Twitter to blast Spicer after the briefing: “Words matter and it’s the spokesperson’s job to get them right. Call it what it is, Sean. It’s a hate crime — and it’s terrorism.”