U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr appeared on CNN’s “The Situation Room” on Wednesday, where he touched on a wide range of controversial topics, particularly the Jacob Blake case.
Blake is one of the latest known Black victims of police brutality. He was shot seven times in the back by Kenosha police last month.
During his talk with CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer, Barr first declined to talk about the case.
” I’m not going to talk about the Blake case,” Barr said. “Because it’s different than the Floyd case.”
Without presenting supporting evidence, Bill claimed that Blake, the 29-year-old man, was armed while committing a felony.
Despite Barr’s accusations, there are no reports from the Wisconsin Department of Justice that states that Blake was armed during the shooting. The department only mentioned that Blake informed police he had a knife in his possession, which was found on the driver’s side floorboard after the incident.
Barr’s statements about the Blake case was not the only troubling thing he said during the segment. The chief law officer later went on to say that the alarming number of unarmed Black Americans killed by police officers was a “false narrative.”
” I don’t think there are two justice systems,” Barr said. “I think the narrative that the police are in some epidemic of shooting unarmed Blake men is simply a false narrative and also the narrative that’s based on race.”
He also insinuated that racism within the criminal justice system does not exist.
” I think there are some situations where statistics would suggest that they are treated differently, but I don’t think that that’s necessarily racism,” Barr said. “I think we have to be careful about throwing around the idea of racism.”
Racism is when a person believes that another person is “a lesser human” because of their race, he said.
Although Barr acknowledged that his definition of racism exists, he stated that it is not as common as people suggest.
When Blitzer asked Barr about Trump encouraging North Carolina voters to vote multiple times, the chief legal advisor said he was unfamiliar with the state’s voting laws. He then agreed with Trump’s remarks about mail-in voting, adding that is enabling voter fraud.
