Biden campaign to blame 'climate of violence' on pro-Palestine protests after Trump shooting: Report
US officials say the assassination attempt on the former president 'changed everything' for Biden's re-election bid
The re-election campaign of US President Joe Biden is shifting focus away from attacking former president Donald Trump for the climate of violence in the country and instead placing the blame on pro-Palestinian protesters.
According to senior US officials who spoke with Reuters on 14 July, the campaign will “draw on the president’s history of condemning all sorts of political violence including his sharp criticism of the ‘disorder’ created by campus protests over the Israel–Gaza conflict.”
The shift came in response to Saturday’s assassination attempt on Trump. “This changes everything,” one campaign official told the British news agency. ”We’re still assessing. Making the case against Trump, drawing that split screen will get much harder.”
Before Saturday’s assassination attempt, Biden’s campaign strategy was set to focus on attacking Trump personally, including TV ads highlighting his May felony conviction relating to hush money paid to a porn star to avert a sex scandal before the 2016 US election.
As student protests against the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza spread across dozens of US university campuses this year, Biden was quick to condemn protesters and accuse them of promoting violence and antisemitism.
In April, he released a statement condemning protesters at Columbia University occupying the institution’s Hamilton Hall, which they renamed Hind’s Hall in honor of Hind Rajab, a six-year-old Palestinian girl who was murdered by the Israeli army in Gaza.
Hind and her relatives were killed on 29 January while fleeing their neighborhood in Gaza City after the Israeli military issued evacuation orders for the area. Their bodies were finally recovered 12 days later. Multidisciplinary research group Forensic Architecture mapped a total of 335 bullet holes in the Kia Sedan where they were killed.
In June, Biden also condemned a pro-Palestine protest outside an event in Los Angeles where real estate firms were advertising land in the occupied West Bank as residential homes for sale.
Although the student protests in support of Palestinians have been largely peaceful, protesters have faced brutal police repression and accusations of antisemitism. Western media outlets regularly framed the protests as being antisemitic and as promoting “hate and violence.”