A top-level nominee for President Joe Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) appeared on a Chinese government-controlled propaganda network to advocate for defunding the police in the U.S. in 2020.
Biden has nominated Carlton Waterhouse to serve as the deputy assistant administrator for the EPA’s Office of Land and Emergency Management. Waterhouse told the Chinese propaganda outlet CGTN in June 2020 that he supported defunding the police and transferring the funds toward social welfare projects. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has repeatedly used the Black Lives Matter and “defund the police” movements in an attempt to discredit America’s commitment to human rights.
“In all honesty, if you think about all of our major police forces, we have spent all of our money on a possible cure rather than putting it into education, health, and social services,” Waterhouse said in the interview, first reported by the American Accountability Foundation.
Biden nominee Carlton Waterhouse went on Chinese propaganda TV to advocate for defunding police in the US while ignoring the Chinese government’s brutal crack down on Hong Kong. https://t.co/VdJLvB1JeU
— BidenNoms, A Project of AAF (@bidennoms) August 11, 2021
Waterhouse is currently the director of the Environmental Justice Center at Howard University. He signed onto an open letter supporting defunding the police along with dozens of other academics, according to The Washington Free Beacon.
“The empowerment of police in this country is the empowerment of state violence against black, indigenous, and Latinx people to maintain their subordination and preserve the upwards distribution of wealth,” they wrote.
Biden claimed in July that Republicans who accuse Democrats of supporting the defund the police movement are “lying.” Waterhouse is just one of many Democrats who have publicly and adamantly voiced support for the movement.
Waterhouse is facing opposition from Republicans in the Senate based on his history of political activism. He is one of several Biden nominees to face aggressive pushback in confirmation hearings. (RELATED: Biden’s Nominee To Lead ATF Pushed Dubious Claim About Waco Siege To Call For Blanket Ban On Assault Rifles)
“Carlton Waterhouse is a political activist who supports fringe environmental and racist policies,” Republican Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton told Fox News in a statement. “Arkansans and all Americans deserve a fair administrator of law — not an extremist who would weaponize the EPA to serve his wacky version of ‘social justice.”