Biden Called Kyle Rittenhouse a White Supremacist, but Won't Speculate on Motive of Malik Faisal Akram

On Sunday, Joe Biden acknowledged the Texas synagogue hostage situation, dubbing the incident an “act of terror,” but refused to “speculate” on Akram’s motives when asked about it by reporters.

“No, I don’t. I — there’s speculation, but I’m not going to get into that. I will — I’m going to have a press conference on Wednesday, and I’ll be happy to go into detail of what I know in detail at that time,” Biden said in a press conference Sunday.

The now-dead hostage-taker was identified as Malik Faisal Akram, and he demanded the release of Aafia Siddiqui, a jihadi known as “Lady al Qaeda.”

Just like the FBI, Biden seems intent on “whitewashing” Akram’s motives. Akram only targeted a synagogue. I wonder what his motives were.

This insistence on pretending that Akram’s motives are unknown is troubling but not surprising. So much of this incident doesn’t fit the preferred narrative of the political left.

But it wasn’t all that long ago that Joe Biden was very willing to speculate the motives of Kyle Rittenhouse—who shot and killed two people in self-defense during the Kenosha riots—and label him a white supremacist without any proof whatsoever.

MEMBERS ONLY: Yes, Joe Biden Needs to Apologize to Kyle Rittenhouse

In 2020, in the final months of the presidential campaign, Biden featured a photo of Rittenhouse in a video posted to Twitter accusing Trump of refusing to “disavow white supremacists,”

There’s no other way to put it: the President of the United States refused to disavow white supremacists on the debate stage last night. pic.twitter.com/Q3VZTW1vUV

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) September 30, 2020

Then Biden falsely linked Rittenhouse to white supremacists during an interview on CNN with Anderson Cooper.

“I don’t know enough to know whether that 17-year-old kid, exactly what he did, but allegedly he’s part of a militia coming out of the state of Illinois. Have you ever heard this president say one negative thing about white supremacists? Have you ever heard it? That’s the reason I got back in this race because of what happened in Charlottesville,” Biden claimed.

The only thing he got right was Rittenhouse’s age. Everything else was wrong. He wasn’t part of a militia. He wasn’t a white supremacist. A jury of his peers also agreed he acted in self-defense and found him not guilty.

Biden never apologized to Rittenhouse for his smears. In light of his unwillingness to “speculate” about Akram’s motives, Rittenhouse deserves an apology now more than ever.