Ventura and Mason are graduate students at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and reporters at Medill News Service.
MANASSAS, Va. – At their first joint campaign event in the 2024 presidential race, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris rallied voters around abortion access and reproductive rights in Northern Virginia, but several pro-Palestinian demonstrators interrupted the president with criticisms of his handling of the Israel-Hamas war.
The event at George Mason University’s Manassas campus, about 30 miles from Washington, D.C., showcased both a strength and a weakness of the Biden-Harris ticket, a pairing likely to dog the incumbents throughout the campaign.
Biden and Harris hope reproductive rights will help them win competitive states like Virginia, where Democrats largely campaigned on abortion access during off-year state elections last November, ultimately flipping the state House. But the hecklers underscored a growing potential weakness among some of the Democratic base. It was the second time pro-Palestinian demonstrators have disrupted Biden during a campaign speech. The first occurred at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., on Jan. 8, emphasizing some Democrats’ disapproval of the administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war.
“I think, in my personal opinion, that you cannot vote for Joe Biden if you believe in human rights,” said Mohamed Azab, 42, an immigrant and local resident who was one of almost a dozen protesters standing in the audience.
Biden, who was forced to pause with each interruption, promised to restore Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that declared abortion a constitutional right but was overturned in 2022. But Neda, a demonstrator in her 30s who would not provide her last name to protect her anonymity, wasn’t convinced.
“We know that Biden is here to talk about women's rights, and about their reproductive rights, but he did forget to mention that he is dealing with a genocide that has taken away women’s rights in Gaza and in Palestine,” she said. Neda provided her first name only because she felt safer having some sense of anonymity.
Israel’s war in Gaza has not been officially called a genocide, but a case considering such charges is underway before the International Court of Justice. About 25,000 people have died there, many of them women and children, according to Gaza's health ministry. Biden has requested Congress approve a $14 billion aid package for Israel and has not called for a ceasefire, but he has criticized Israel’s “indiscriminate bombing” in Gaza.
A United Nations Population Fund staff member said in November that more than 5,000 pregnant women will be forced to give birth without anesthesia and in unsanitary conditions given the lack of resources and electricity in the region.
At the Jan. 23 rally, protesters shouted “Ceasefire now!” and “How many kids have you killed today?” before being escorted away. Biden supporters on- and offstage attempted to drown out the hecklers by chanting: “Four more years!”
Azab, a recent U.S. citizen who will be eligible to vote for president for the first time in November, said Biden’s policy in the Israel-Hamas war was the most important issue for him. He argued that Americans should not vote for Biden, regardless of the alternative.
“Nothing is gonna change if we elect Joe Biden,” he said.
But when 20-year-old Keoni Vega, a student studying American politics at the University of Virginia, compared Trump and Biden, he said that Trump was by far the worse option.
“I think as Biden would say, ‘Don't compare me to the Almighty, compare me to the alternative,’” said Vega. “And so if you look at these issues that a lot of people are upset with and, for the most part, rightfully so, you have to realize if it's not Biden, it's going to be Trump, who's going to be tenfold worse.”
Longtime abortion advocate Sharon Wood echoed Vega’s opinion that Democrats should rally around Biden.
“I don't agree with everything about him. I think he should be stronger on pushing for a ceasefire, but he's our guy,” said Wood, 74, who lives in nearby Chantilly.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
____
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.