White House aides reportedly expect pro-Palestinian protestors to disrupt every public event where President Joe Biden speaks due to his handling of the Israel-Hamas war.
The unhappy so-called pro-Hamas protestors highlight the radicalism within the Democrat Party and the White House’s challenge to maintain their support heading into the presidential election.
Polling shows Biden’s approval rating among Arabs is dangerously low for his reelection hopes. The Arab American Institute recently revealed that only 17 percent of Arab Americans would vote for Biden, down from 59 percent of those who voted for Biden in 2020.
“[T]he 2024 election is expected to be won on razor-thin margins. Every vote, including every Arab American and every Muslim American vote, matters,” Guardian columnist Moustafa Bayoumi analyzed.
RELATED — “Cease Fire Now!” Pro-Palestinian Protestors Heckle Joe Biden at Charleston Church
Hecklers interrupted Biden’s campaign speeches as a “pointed public confrontation” of the president and his moderate position on the Israel-Hamas war, Politico’s West Wing Playbook reported Monday.
The confrontations caused Biden’s staff to limit who attends his campaign events, reducing the low number of attendees interested in listening to the often-babbling president. “But, at the end of the day, there’s a consensus among aides that the disrupters will find a way into the president’s events,” Politico reported:
Biden’s big campaign speech last Tuesday on abortion access was interrupted at least 14 times by people chanting “genocide Joe” and “cease-fire now or no vote.” The next day, cease-fire demonstrators shouted over Biden at a United Auto Workers event. At the South Carolina Democratic Party’s “First-in-the-Nation” celebration dinner on Saturday, protesters again interrupted Biden’s speech (two people called for a cease-fire while a third urged Biden to declare a climate emergency).
These types of interruptions have become so routine that White House aides now expect the president to be confronted every time he speaks.
They make plans for it. Staff try to limit who gets invited to certain events. And there are advance tricks — like building a buffer around the stage to keep attendees farther away from the president — to make it more challenging for protesters to derail a speech.
Attempts to mute the Biden dissenters backfired. In one instance, security dragged a so-called pro-Hamas protestor across the floor of an event, interrupting Biden’s UAW speech. The incident “did not come across well” because it was “too aggressive,” setting up a dynamic that could “backfire” against the president, Politico reported on the video circulating on X:
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre maintains that the administration supports free speech. “The president respects people’s right to speak out peacefully,” she told reporters on Wednesday.
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former GOP War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.