The White House praises UNC fraternity for safeguarding the American flag

The Biden White House commended a University of North Carolina fraternity Friday for protecting an American flag during recent campus protests.

Members of the UNC Pi Kappa Phi chapter were photographed preventing an American flag from touching the ground amid attempts to replace it with a Palestinian flag.

The photos went viral, and a third-party-run GoFundMe raised more than $500,000 to throw the fraternity the “rager” party “they deserve” for protecting the flag.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre faced a question during Friday’s briefing about President Joe Biden potentially donating to the group, even though the GoFundMe page stopped accepting donations on Thursday.

“There’s actually a real point in your question that I will address,” she responded. “I’ll just reiterate this. All Americans have the right to peacefully protest. It is not right to forcefully — forcefully take down the American flag to replace it with another flag. It is not right, and so I just wanted to make that clear, as well.”

The press secretary declined to say if the president was hoping to speak to the group.

“Look, protecting the American flag is admirable,” Jean-Pierre said. “I’ll leave it there.”

Both Biden and Jean-Pierre have condemned escalating violence beginning to take hold of pro-Palestinian protests at universities across the nation.

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“We have to follow the rule of law. Violence is not protected here. Americans have the right to peacefully, peacefully protest within the law,” she said earlier in the briefing. “We’re going to be very consistent here, and as I said, these are incredibly painful times, and it is a very charged moment, and we understand how difficult that could be.”

You can watch Friday’s briefing in full below.