The father of a 29-year-old domestic violence suspect resisting arrest before a Wisconsin police shooting claimed on CNN Monday the family has no pastor to refute claims by President Donald Trump that Trump spoke with such a minister.
“We don’t have a family pastor,” Jacob Blake Sr. told CNN’s Jim Acosta when asked why the president claimed to have been in contact with the pastor and not the family directly.
Someone should tell the guy that is publicly claiming he is https://t.co/XOmNSKWzik pic.twitter.com/qcxKMuJkhq
— LB (@beyondreasdoubt) September 1, 2020
If the family has no pastor, the identity of one individual at a Blake press conference last week remains a mystery. Here’s the transcript, emphasis added:
Thank you, attorney Crump. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is James E Ward jr. And along with my wife, pastor Sharon, we’ve been highly privileged to be the family pastor for more than 30 years to Ms. Julia Jackson, the mother of Jacob Blake, and also her mother, Janie Johnson, for more than 30 years. And at Julia’s requests and at attorney Crump’s request, I want to just set the tone for our press conference today by briefly representing Julia’s faith in the name of our lord Jesus Christ and offer a brief word of prayer.
The shooting of Blake sr.’s son, Jacob Blake, in Kenosha, Wisconsin was the pretext for a second wave of violent unrest in U.S. cities last week, marking the southern Wisconsin town as the latest hotspot in the nation’s culture wars that are turning deadly. Last week, two demonstrators were fatally wounded and a third ended up in the hospital after being shot by an armed 17-year-old Trump-supporting Illinois teenager. Kyle Rittenhouse’s attorneys have claimed self-defense, as one Rittenhouse assailant appears to have beat him with a skateboard and another appears to have also possessed a gun.
Trump is scheduled to visit Kenosha Tuesday over Democrat Gov. Tony Evers’ objections.
