© AP
Former US President Donald Trump on Thursday called the pro-Palestinian demonstrations at American universities worse than the deadly white supremacist protests in Charlottesville.
According to Trump, there is a lot of hatred and anger in the pro-Palestinian protests in the US and “Biden is sending an absolutely terrible message.” “He has no idea how to send a message, he can’t speak, he can’t put two sentences together, he doesn’t know what to do. This is not our president,” Trump continued. “He talks about Charlottesville. Charlottesville was nothing,” Trump said. “The nothing compared to… The hate wasn’t the kind of hate you have here. This is terrible hatred.” According to Trump, Biden cannot speak about it because he does not understand what is going on.
White supremacists, including neo-Nazis and members of the Ku Klux Klan, protested in Charlottesville on August 11 and 12, 2017. On the second day, James Fields drove his car into a counter-demonstration, killing one and injuring 35, AP writes .
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“There were very bad people in that group, but there were also very good people, on both sides,” Trump said in the days after the deadly protest in Charlottesville.
Current US President Joe Biden said that he knew at that moment that he would run for president again. It is an anecdote that he often quotes, AP outlines, including during his current campaign. “Minimizing the poison of anti-Semitism and white supremacism on display in Charlottesville is abhorrent and divisive,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said Thursday.
Pro-Palestinian manifestations
Pro-Palestinian manifestations are taking place at American universities such as the University of South California in Los Angeles and Columbia University in New York. The students are asking universities to condemn Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip and to renounce companies that sell weapons to Israel.
Some Jewish students say that criticism of Israel tends toward anti-Semitism and makes them feel unsafe. The demonstrations are met with heavy-handed police action, drawing comparisons with the student protests against the Vietnam War. More than 100 people have been arrested.