Republicans attack Joe Biden for failing to quell protests against Israel’s war in Gaza, painting campuses from New York to California as out of control under the US president’s leadership. is taking advantage of the confusion.
On Thursday, Biden condemned “disruptive behavior” on campuses across the country after police were called in to quell a demonstration at the University of California, Los Angeles. The order “must prevail,” he said.
But the unrest, weeks in the making, has exacerbated tensions within the president’s Democratic Party over his handling of the Middle East conflict, and the trial of former President Donald Trump, who is expected to be the Republican nominee in November’s election. It took some attention away from it. Charged with falsifying documents in a New York “hush money” case.
“[Democrats] “They were trying to make a big deal out of the Trump trial, but the protests have taken a backseat,” said John Feehely, a Republican strategist and former congressional aide.
As dramatic scenes unfolded this week, with police storming an occupied building at New York’s Columbia University and counter-protesters attacking a pro-Palestinian camp at UCLA, Mr. Trump spoke during a break in court proceedings. He was campaigning in the state.
He called on university presidents to “immediately remove the camps, vanquish the extremists, and reclaim our campuses for all ordinary students seeking a safe place to study.”
President Trump also praised the crackdown by New York law enforcement, saying, “The police came and it was all over in just two hours. It was a beautiful thing to watch.”
A conservative news host said Wednesday on Fox News that footage streaming from a university appears to be from a “third world” country as right-wing commentators slam Democratic politicians for the protests. “We have a former president of the United States on trial and thugs causing unbelievable mayhem,” said former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a guest on the show.
In addition to Biden’s condemnation of the protests on Thursday, he plans to deliver a speech on anti-Semitism at the Capitol next week, presidential spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said.
But Republicans are using the confusion to paint Biden as weak and unwilling to confront his left-wing critics or make stronger public comments on the issue.
“When will the president himself, not his spokesperson, condemn the hateful little people of Gaza?” Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas told reporters Wednesday.
“President Biden needs to condemn Hamas campus sympathizers without obscuring that Israelis are fighting a just war of survival,” Cotton added.
Feeley said Biden’s problem is that no one is “paying attention” and protesters are “not afraid” of him, adding, “Biden should stand for law and order. It’s like a parent trying to get their kids to quiet down by giving them more candy.
Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson rushed to Columbia University last week to make a vivid political statement against the protesters. The trip came shortly after the House of Representatives approved a bill containing aid to Ukraine that was controversial within his party and sparked a challenge to his leadership.
“I can hardly think of a better foil for the Republican Party than far-left campus protesters,” said Kyle Kondik, an analyst at the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “It feeds into their broader narrative about the election, which is that Trump is going to step in and clean up the mess.”
The House of Representatives on Wednesday passed a bill with a bipartisan majority that would expand the definition of anti-Semitism to enforce anti-discrimination laws. However, 70 Democrats opposed it, as did 21 Republicans.
This political influence created a toxic backdrop for the 1968 Democratic National Convention and paved the way for Republican Richard Nixon’s victory over Hubert Humphrey in the White House race later that year. It has been compared to protests against
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With less than four months until the convention, Mr. Biden is walking a very fine line between condemning unacceptable protests and not alienating young progressive voters who should be voting.
The College Democrats of America, a student group affiliated with the Democratic National Committee, announced this week that it would support Mr. It’s brutal, genocidal, and unjust.”
They criticized Republicans for “vilifying all demonstrators as hateful” and also criticized Biden’s “bear hug” strategy against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
However, it is unclear whether the Republicans’ attacks on Biden will continue. Previous attempts to portray Biden and the Democratic Party as weak on law and order in the 2020 White House election and 2022 midterm elections have shown that other issues are more important, with the exception of some congressional races. Therefore, there was no particular effect.
Democrats also accuse Republicans of hypocrisy, noting that many Republicans defended the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. It also noted President Trump’s comment that there were “very fine people on both sides” at the white supremacist march. 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Kondik said college protests are a more “comfortable” issue for Republicans, but the outlook remains that the election is close. Mr. Trump leads Mr. Biden by 0.8 percentage points, according to the average FiveThirtyEight national poll.
Like Mr. Biden, Democrats were scrambling to find a position to limit their political influence in a tough November campaign. Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat running for the U.S. Senate from Michigan, said Wednesday that there is a “thin but very important line between protected speech and speech that threatens or attempts to intimidate violence.” “There is,” he said.
