CORRECTION, March 4, 2024: First lady Jill Biden spoke in Tucson, Arizona, on Saturday. The city’s name was misspelled in an earlier version of this article.
Political pundits have recently been warning Joe Biden’s 2024 campaign that the president’s laudable support for Israel might hurt him in the November election, and anyone who doubted that possibility had only to look at a campaign event over the weekend for further evidence that it might be true.
First lady Jill Biden was giving a speech Saturday in Tucson, Arizona, when she was interrupted multiple times by anti-Israel protesters who attempted to shout her down.
Biden was encouraging her listeners to get actively involved in efforts to get out the Democratic vote when a group of protesters interrupted her.
“We’re going to talk to our friends about why this election is so important, tell them what’s at stake,” she was saying. “Sign up for phone banks and canvasing shifts. We’re going to meet this moment.”
At that point, a number of voices were raised in protest.
“You and your husband support the genocide of the Palestinian people,” the loudest voice (at that particular moment) yelled, forcing Biden to pause.
Others at the event who were more supportive of the Bidens began chanting “Four more years” to drown out the protesters, who soon quieted down, presumably because they were escorted from the premises.
Biden thanked her audience for their support — but her troubles weren’t over.
After another 90 seconds of almost textbook campaign prattle, she was interrupted again. This time, little could be understood from the protesters, except for one voice who yelled out “Free Palestine!” before being shut down.
Fox News shared video of the speech, complete with interruptions.
Forbes shared another excerpt of the speech that showed that the interruptions began almost as soon as Biden began speaking from the podium.
Fox cited a New York Times / Sienna College poll that was released on the same day as Biden’s campaign event that showed her husband’s approval rating well underwater.
According to Fox, that poll showed that 47 percent of the 980 registered voters asked “strongly disapproved” of Joe Biden’s job performance and 14 percent “somewhat disapproved.”
The poll had a margin of error of 4 percent, but given that only 17 percent of respondents said they “strongly approved” of the job the president was doing, that margin could not have been much comfort to the Biden campaign.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
