President Biden is under fire after he created a controversy by making comments on anti-Israel protesters at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) event that some suggested were reminiscent of remarks former President Trump made about the 2017 Charlottesville rally.
“Those, those protesters out in the street, they have a point,” Biden said Monday at the Democratic National Committee – referring to anti-Israel protesters who converged on police fencing outside the United Center in Chicago throughout the day.
“A lot of innocent people are being killed on both sides.”
The comments provoked controversy quickly and have been seen by some to be linked in rhetoric with those expressed by Trump following the Charlottesville incident.
Trump was widely criticized in 2017 after he said there were “very fine people on both sides” when torch-bearing white supremacists and neo-Nazis clashed with counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia.
He has said that his remarks were misconstrued and argued he was talking about people for or against taking down a statue of Confederate General Robert E Lee, not the white supremacists themselves.
“Biden just gave the Hamas/Israeli conflict a very fine people on ‘both sides’-type line. Disgraceful,” said former McConnell adviser Scott Jennings in response.
Richard Goldberg, a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, wrote on X, “And just like that, Joe Biden legitimizes Nazis.”
The speech followed raucous anti-Israel protesters outside the DNC, some of them carrying signs and chanting slogans that were highly critical of United States government policy on Middle East matters.
The protests in Chicago also included some of the rowdiest rhetoric of this year’s season, with delegates passing through crowds chanting “DNC, go home – Or we’ll bring the war home.”
“This should be Biden’s ‘fine people on both sides’ moment with one difference: he actually said it,” British American conservative writer Ian Haworth said.
The controversy has sparked a new debate around how leaders are supposed to frame and refer to demonstrations — particularly those rooted in such polarizing issues as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
