MANASSAS, United States: Joe Biden attacked Donald Trump over the key election issue of abortion rights Tuesday, but pro-Palestinian hecklers carried out their most disruptive protest yet against the US president as he spoke.
Demonstrators shouting “Genocide Joe has got to go” interrupted the Democrat at least 10 times during the rally in Manassas, Virginia, his first campaign event of 2024 alongside Vice President Kamala Harris.
“This is going to go on for a while. They’ve got this planned,” said Biden as he struggled to get started on the speech, while audience members drowned out the protesters with chants of “Four More Years.”
A protester interrupts President Joe Biden during an event on the campus of George Mason University in Manassas, Va., Tuesday, Jan. 23, 2024, to campaign for abortion rights, a top issue for Democrats in the upcoming presidential election. (AP)
One male activist unfurled a Palestinian flag and a female protester held up a banner reading “ceasefire” before they were escorted out of the rally.
While Biden’s rally was part of an attempt to put abortion rights front and center of his election campaign, the heckling highlighted another problem area among some Democratic voters.
Protesters have disrupted previous Biden events over his support for Israel during its military offensive on Gaza after Hamas’s October 7 attacks, but the demonstrations on Tuesday were the most sustained to date.
Despite the protests, Biden launched his most full-frontal attack on Trump so far over reproductive freedoms, accusing the Republican of being “hell-bent” on further abortion restrictions.
Biden slammed the former president, his likely rival in November, as being “proud” of the fact that his three Supreme Court picks had contributed to it overturning the federal right to abortion in 2022.
“The person most responsible for taking away this freedom in America is Donald Trump,” Biden said.
“Donald Trump and the Republican speaker of the house are hell-bent on going even further,” he added, accusing Republicans of wanting to bring in a full ban on abortion across the United States.
Biden and Harris also raised the abortion issue on Monday, the 51st anniversary of Roe v Wade, the landmark US Supreme Court judgment legalizing abortion.
The current conservative-leaning top court then stunningly threw out that judgment in 2022.
Twenty-one 21 US states have brought in full or partial bans since the Supreme Court issued its ruling.
Democrats increasingly see the issue as a vote winner.
Polls repeatedly show a clear majority of Americans support continued access to safe abortion, even as conservative groups push to limit the procedure — or ban it outright.
