‘Cease-Fire Now!’: Pro-Palestinian Protesters Disrupt Biden’s South Carolina Campaign Speech By Audrey Fahlberg
Pro-Palestinian protesters interrupted Joe Biden’s campaign speech on Monday afternoon in Charleston, S.C., calling on the president to demand a cease-fire in Gaza, where the Israeli Defense Forces are continuing their offensive military campaign three months after Hamas’s brutal assault in Israel.
Biden supporters in the audience countered the protesters’ “cease-fire now” chants Monday afternoon by yelling “four more years,” prompting the president to acknowledge that the conflict continues to roil his own base into the new year.
“I understand their passion,” Biden said from the podium in South Carolina, the first Democratic primary state in this year’s nominating calendar. “I’ve been quietly working with the Israeli government to get them to reduce and significantly get out of Gaza, using all that I can to do.”
The interruption undercut Biden’s emotional remarks from Mother Emanuel AME Church, where the president again voiced support for a ban on “assault weapons” as he spoke about the gruesome mass shooting there in 2015 that left nine people dead.
“The Word of God was pierced by bullets of hate and rage propelled by not just gunpowder, but by a poison, a poison that’s for too long haunted this nation,” Biden said of the brutal mass shooting that occurred nearly nine years ago. “And what’s that poison? White supremacy.”
Monday’s remarks followed his first speech of the new year on Friday near Valley Forge, Pa., where he cast his likely 2024 general election rival, former President Donald Trump, as a threat to democracy.
The setting for Biden’s speech — a historic black church whose congregation was active in the civil-rights movement — is indicative of his campaign’s focus on shoring up black support in South Carolina as the 2024 election cycle kicks off in earnest.
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