Security! Joe Biden’s Super Tuesday victory rally in Los Angeles last night didn’t go totally smoothly after the stage was bum-rushed by an unruly pair of vegan protesters.
‘Let dairy die,’ yelled the women, members of Direct Action Everywhere. Biden looked bemused — plus ça change — as his wife Jill stood between the protesters and the former VP. His senior adviser Symone Sanders cleared one of the women away from him with the tenacity of a defensive lineman. Cockburn was impressed.
"Let Dairy Die" protesters interrupt Joe Biden #SuperTuesday speech. pic.twitter.com/0g5rrjpxUR
— The Hill (@thehill) March 4, 2020
But he finds it baffling that these protester ladies would try to startle such a jittery old man. Joe’s already got coronavirus to worry about, now you want to give him a heart attack like Bernie?
The lack of protection being afforded to a former vice president is deeply concerning. Full credit to Sanders for her swift response — she joked on Twitter that she broke a nail — but why is the defense of a candidate falling to his aides?
This is not the first incident. Cockburn was at a Joe Biden event in Manchester, New Hampshire a month ago. Joe got three sentences into his speech when a bespectacled young man with a ponytail and suspect dentistry stood up and yelled ‘Joe do you apologize for touching women and children?’ An elderly Biden supporter had to obstruct the protester’s path as he made his way towards the former vice president.
This is how close he got.
Again, it fell to Jill Biden to separate the loon from her husband. Again, Joe looked muddled. The young man was drowned out by chants of ‘we want Joe!’, and ushered out of the venue by union fire-fighters while he shouted ‘Trump!’
Biden is a former vice president and leading presidential candidate. He needs protection — private security paid for by his new backer Michael Bloomberg or a secret service detail.
Former Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs joined calls for the leading Democrats to be afforded secret service protection. ‘Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden need secret service protection,’ he told MSNBC. ‘What happened tonight was nothing short of genuinely scary…they should have secret service protection in the next 24 to 48 hours.’
Mercifully these protesters just wanted to air a grievance — but with security this lackluster, it’s not hard to imagine how something worse could occur.
