Bristol Palin, daughter of former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, has criticized President Barack Obama for inviting 9th grader Ahmed Mohamed to the White House, saying the move will simply "encourage more racial strife."
The Texas student, who is a Muslim, made headlines earlier this week after he was detained by police when his engineering teacher mistook his homemade clock for a bomb.
"They told me 'No, you can't call your parents,'" Ahmed said of the police who pulled him out of class for questioning. "'You're in the middle of an interrogation at the moment.' They asked me a couple of times, 'Is it a bomb?' and I answered a couple of times, 'It's a clock.'"
"I felt like I was a criminal," the teenager told MSNBC, explaining that he will not be returning to the school that suspended him. "I felt like I was a terrorist. I felt like all the names I was called."
The case sparked claims of racial profiling and anger across the country, with many celebrities and politicians voicing their support for Ahmed. Shortly after the news broke, the hashtags #IStandWithAhmed and #EngineersForAhmed garnered hundreds of thousands of posts and tweets.
President Obama was among those to voice his support, even inviting the teen to the White House: "Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It's what makes America great," he tweeted.
In a post shared on her Patheos blog, 24-year-old Bristol Palin weighed in on the incident: "This is the kind of stuff Obama needs to STAY out of," she writes. "This encourages more racial strife that is already going on with the 'Black Lives Matter' crowd and encourages victimhood."
Palin argued that the police "clearly" made a "mistake" and shouldn't be further shamed by the president.
"But why put more people against them? Why egg it on? Childish games like this from our president have divided our country... even more today than when he was elected," she writes.
Another teen, 13-year-old CJ Pearson from Augusta, Georgia, also sharply criticized the president for the move in a viral YouTube video.
"When cops are gunned down, you don't invite them to the White House. You never did. But when a Muslim builds a clock, come on by. What is this world you're living in?" he said in the video, which has been viewed nearly 400,000 times.
CJ, who is the national chairman of Teens for Ted, a national group backing Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz for president, also charged that the invitation to Ahmed fits the president's agenda and slammed the "Black Lives Matter" movement.
"You're seeking to appease terrorists - domestic terrorists - and those domestic terrorists are the 'Black Lives Matter' movement. And you think. Mr. President, that I am going to respect you? How am I going to respect you when you don't respect the brave men and women and innocent people who have lost their lives because of your incompetence?"
