Biden campaign co-chair says president’s response to campus protests is ‘very strong’

Mitch Landrieu, the national co-chair of President Biden’s reelection campaign, on Sunday defended the president’s response to the pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses, despite some criticizing him for taking too long.

CNN anchor Jake Tapper asked Mr. Landrieu why it took Mr. Biden more than a week to address the nation about the protests, even after Orthodox rabbis at Columbia University told Jewish students to leave campus if they didn’t feel safe.

“First of all, the FIrst Amendment is critically important. The president has always believed that people want to have the opportunity to redress their grievances against the government. This is not something new,” Mr. Landrieu said on “State of the Union.”

“The president has been very strong about this from the beginning, and the president came out the other day, and as he said, as he has always said, he understands that people have a right to protest, but they have to do so peacefully,” he said. “But when it turns violent, that’s when things have to end.” 

Mr. Biden last week condemned the college campus protests that have turned violent.

“Violent protest is not protected, peaceful protest is,” the president said. “It’s against the law when violence occurs. Destroying property is not a peaceful protest.”

“Dissent is essential to democracy, but dissent must never lead to disorder or to denying the rights of others so students can finish the semester and their college education,” he said.

Mr. Landrieu said Mr. Biden has been “very clear [and] very strong” in speaking out against antisemitism and Islamophobia.

“Very passionate opinions on both sides of this issue,” he said. “The president has been handling it very, very well and he’s going to continue to do so.”

He said the comparison of these protests and the Vietnam War protests made by Sen. Bernard Sanders, Vermont independent, is “an over exaggeration.”

“This is a very different circumstance,” Mr. Landrieu said. “I think that people who actually lived through that very difficult time, they would say that this isn’t comparable. However, that is not to say that this is not a very serious matter.”