White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre refused to answer “yes” or “no” when asked Tuesday whether President Biden thought it was fair that biological males compete as females in sports. Instead, she said that it is a “complicated” issue with a “wide range of views.”
Fox Business correspondent Hillary Vaughn, who asked the question of Jean-Pierre during the Aug. 29 White House press conference, noted that during the GOP debate, Nikki Haley insisted that saving women’s sports was the “women’s issue of our time” and wondered if Biden thinks keeping male-born athletes out of women’s sports is a “women’s rights issue.”
But Jean-Pierre refused to say it was a woman’s rights issue and called the whole discussion “complicated.”
The White House Press Secretary was asked today if President Biden agrees that the issue of "biological boys plays in girls sports" is a "women's rights issue"
— boysvswomen.com (@boysvswomen) August 29, 2023
KJP didn't give a direct answer, deflecting with "It's a complicated issue and there a wide range of opinions on this" pic.twitter.com/8K900tgtC8
“So we’ve talked about this many times. This is the Title XI, specifically. Look, and again, we’ve talked about this multiple times. It’s a complicated issue, and there are a wide range of views on this. The Department of Education proposed a rule, as you know, that gives schools the flexibility to establish their own athletics policies, and so while establishing guardrails, right, to prevent discrimination against transgender kids,” Jean-Pierre exclaimed. “That is something that is incredibly important, that the president wants to make sure that we also do that as well. So I’m just not going to get ahead of that.”
Personalizing the issue, Vaughn referenced Joe Biden’s granddaughters and asked if he cares if “girls are allowed to compete in sports without fear of injury” or if he believes it is “fair for girls to have to compete against biological males.”
But Jean-Pierre again refused to answer directly.
“I just answered the question. It is a complicated issue. It is truly a complicated issue with a wide range of views, a wide range of views. There is no yes or no answer to this. It is complicated. There’s a rule that the Department of Education has put forward, and we’re going to let that process move forward,” she insisted. “Again, we want to make sure that while we establish guardrails with this rule that we also prevent discrimination, as well, against transgender kids. But again, a complicated issue with a wide range of views, and we respect that.”
Even though she skirted the issue in Tuesday’s presser, in the past, Jean-Pierre has claimed that it is “irresponsible” to say that men playing sports as transgender women threaten the safety of biological women.
As Fox News pointed out, in June, EWTN White House correspondent Owen Jensen noted that there are parents “who are worried that their daughter may have to compete against a male, a person born male, and they could be a direct and physically athletic competition, and worry about their daughter’s safety.”
Jean-Pierre pushed back and asked if Jensen was saying that “transgender kids are dangerous.”
Jenson demurred from that characterization of his point, but Jean-Pierre called him irresponsible for saying it nonetheless.
“Well, you’re saying that their safety is at risk,” Jean-Pierre shot back. “You’re laying out a kind of broad example or explanation of what could be potentially happening. That is dangerous. That is a dangerous thing to say that essentially transgender kids are dangerous. And so that’s something that I have to call out. That is irresponsible.”
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