Critics rebuke Biden’s DNC remarks about anti-Israel protesters, suggested Trump support for Nazis

President Joe Biden is drawing criticism for remarks he made Monday at the Democratic National Convention in which he expressed support for anti-Israel protesters who converged on the streets outside the Chicago convention.

"Those protesters out in the street, they have a point. A lot of innocent people are being killed on both sides," Biden said to the roughly 10-month war in Gaza between Israel and the Palestinian-backed militant group Hamas.

Some Biden critics saw the comment as support for the Hamas, who sparked by the war with a deadly Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack on Israel. 

Political strategist and writer Scott Jennings, who was an adviser to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, called the remark “disgraceful.” 

American conservative commentator and author Katie Pavlich responded on X with, Biden “said people in the streets advocating for the suicide bombing of bars, cafes, buses, night clubs and restaurants ‘have a point.’ That’s what ‘globalize the intifada’ means.”

Biden also recounted, as he’s done in the past, that his inspiration to run for president stemmed from antisemitic violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, when the city decided to remove a statute of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. Torch-bearing racist groups were among the protestors of the statue’s removal. 

Biden also repeated the demonstrably false claim that Trump had called the neo-Nazis at the Charlottesville protest “very fine people,” something even the liberal fact checking site Snopes has denied has any truth.

Trump, in fact, said there were "very fine people on both sides."

In addition, Biden had already said in March that pro-Palestinian protesters "have a point."