The president of the United States can barely go out in public these days without being called "Genocide Joe."
Repeated protests at President Joe Biden's events are becoming an increasing impediment as he seeks to get his reelection message out — and point to a glaring political vulnerability: the fury over his support for Israel among progressives and young voters.
Biden is not the only presidential candidate with this problem. Former President Donald Trump is often confronted by liberal demonstrators. His GOP rival Nikki Haley also had to parry a climate protest at a recent campaign rally in New Hampshire.
Presidential candidates have been swatting away protests for decades and most manage to do so in ways that defuse the interruptions. They often get a hand from their crowds — Biden fans drown out his opponents with chants of "four more years." But the way that the three 2024 presidential candidates are dealing with their unwanted disturbances offer insights into their personalities and their political DNA.
For Biden, who is naturally courteous, the protests are becoming a problem. Trump's core campaign attack is that Biden is old, weak and unable to assert control, so the sight of the president hesitating to quell dissent that tries to thwart his ability to make a political point is an unflattering image.
At a recent event in Virginia, Biden's searing attack on Trump over abortion was repeatedly drowned out, depriving his remarks of their potency. "This is going to go on for a while; they've got this planned," Biden said. Protestors unfurled a banner reading "Stop Genocide" and another held up a Palestinian flag. At other events, protestors held up signs reading "Genocide Joe" in protest of Biden's refusal to call for a formal ceasefire in Israel's war in Gaza, which has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians.
It's not that Biden doesn't know how to deal with a heckler. His suppression of Republican shouts and interruptions during last year's "State of the Union" address was a master stroke and made him look strong. This year's address in March will play a critical role in the choreography of the president's bid for reelection in November.
Trump also has to deal with hecklers — and, like Biden, tries to hide his irritation at having to share the spotlight. Before a recent event in Manchester, New Hampshire, a man paced around the back of his crowd muttering, "It's like 1930s Germany." He was later bundled out by police after interrupting Trump's speech. The ex-president uses such interruptions to slip into his strongman persona and to indulge the undercurrent of violence that simmers below the surface at his rallies. "Get out of here, you can throw him out … he's just a disturbed person." Trump said as the crowd shouted at the man and chanted "USA, USA, USA." A few days later, Trump was shouted down multiple times by protestors at a rowdy event in Laconia, New Hampshire. And in Iowa earlier in the month, Trump ordered one heckler out with the words "go home to Mommy." In 2016, Trump notoriously said he'd consider paying legal fees of supporters who roughed up protestors.
Politicians don't get very far if they can't deal with hecklers. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, had a neat line ready when she was interrupted ahead of the New Hampshire primary last week, that cemented her own chosen political story. "Don't boo someone like that," she told her supporters."My husband and other military men and women sacrifice for us every day for her to do that," said Haley, whose spouse, Michael, is on an overseas deployment.
"We are blessed to live in a country with free speech," she added.
The all-time classic of the presidential heckler genre concerns Richard Nixon. In 1972, the then-president welcomed a group called the Ray Conniff Singers to the White House with the immortal line, "If the music is square it's because I like it square."
What happened next was anything but square, as one of the singers, Carole Feraci, unfurled a sign that read "Stop the killing" in reference to the Vietnam War. "President Nixon, stop bombing human beings, animals and vegetation," the singer said.
Nixon sat in the front row, his face locked in an awkward grin for several embarrassing moments of silence before the music struck up.
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