From New York Times, I'm Michael Bavaro. This is The Daily. Pre-Pri-Pelstein! Over the past week, what had begun as a smattering of pro-Palestinian protests on America's college campuses exploded into a nationwide movement. As students at dozens of universities, held demonstrations, set up in campments, and at times seized academic buildings. In response, administrators at many of those colleges decided to crack down.
Calling in local police to carry out mass detentions and arrests from Arizona State, to the University of Georgia, to City College of New York. As of Thursday, police had arrested 2,000 students on more than 40 campuses. A situation so startling that President Biden could no longer ignore it. Look, it's basically a matter of fairness. It's a matter of what's right. There's the right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos.
Today, my colleagues, Jonathan Wolfe and Peter Baker, on a history-making week. It's Friday, May 3rd. Jonathan as this tumultuous week on college campuses comes to an end, it feels like the most extraordinary scenes played out on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles, for you have been reporting. What is the story of how that protest started and ultimately became so explosive?
So late last week, pro-Palestinian protesters set up an encampment at the University of California, Los Angeles. It was right in front of Royce Hall, which I don't know if you are familiar with UCLA, but it's a very famous red brick building, it's on all the brochures. There were two things that stood out about this encampment. The first thing was that they sort of barricaded the encampment. The encampment, complete with tents and barricades, has been set up in the middle of the Westwood campus.
The protesters, they have metal grates, they had wooden pallets, and they sort of separated themselves from the campus. This is kind of interesting. There are controlling access as we've been talking about they are trying to control who is allowed in, who is allowed out. They are sort of policed, the areas they will only would let people that were like part of their community they set inside. I'm a UCLA student, I deserve to go here.
We pay tuition, this is our school, and they're not letting me walk in. Why can't I go in? We're not engaged in. Then you can move. Well, you move. And the second thing that stood out about this camp was that it immediately attracted pro-Israel counter protesters. And what did the leadership of UCLA say about all of this, the encampment and these counter protesters? So, the University of California's approach was pretty unique.
They had a really hands-off approach, and they allowed the pro-Palestine protesters to set up an encampment. They allowed the counter protesters to happen. I mean, this is a public university, so anyone who wants to can just enter the campus. So when do things start to escalate? So there were definitely fights and scuffles through the weekend, but a turning point was really Sunday. And this group called the Israeli-American Council. They're a nonprofit organization organized a rally on campus.
The Israeli-American Council has really been against these pro-Palestinian protests. They say that they're anti-Semitic. So this nonprofit group sets up a stage with a screen, really just a few yards from the pro-Palestinian encampment. We are grateful that this past Friday, the University of California stated that they will continue to oppose any calls for boycott and anti-Semitic from Israel. And they host speakers and they help prayers.
And then lots of other people start showing up, and the proximity between protesters and counter protesters and even some agitators makes it really clear that something was about to happen. And what was that? What ended up happening? On Monday night, a group of about 60 counter protesters tried to breach the encampment there, and the campus police had to break it up. And things escalated again on Tuesday. They stormed the barricades and it's a complete riot.
I went to report on what happened just a few hours after it ended. Hello. Hi. I spoke to a lot of protesters and I met one demonstrator, Marie. Yeah, my first name is Marie, M-A-R-I-E. My name is Salem. And are you a UCLA student? I'm a UCLA grad student. And Marie described what happened. So can you just tell me a little bit about what happened last night? Last night we were approached by, you know, over 100 counter protesters who were very mobilized and ready to break into camp.
They proceeded to try to breach our barricades extremely violently. Marie said it started getting out of hand when counter protesters started setting off fireworks towards the camp. They had bear spray, they had mace, they were throwing wood and like spears throwing water bottles, continuing fireworks. So she said that they were terrified. It was just all hands on deck. Everyone was guarding the barricades.
Every time someone was experienced the bear spray or mace or was hit and bleeding, we had some men in the front line and then we had people. And they said that they were just trying to take care of people who were injured. I mean, at any given moment, there is, you know, five to ten people being treated. So what you described to me sounded more like a battlefield than a college campus. And it was just a complete terror and complete abandonment of the university.
We also watched private security watch this the entire time on the stairs and some LAPD. We're stationed about a football field link back from these counter protesters and did not make a single arrest, did not attempt to stop any violence, did not attempt to get in between the two groups, no attempt.
I should say I spoke to state authorities and eyewitnesses and they confirmed Murray's account about what happened that night, both in terms of the violence that took place at the encampment and how law enforcement responded. So in the end, people ended up fighting for hours before the police intervened. So in her mind, UCLA's hands off approach, which seemed to have prevailed throughout this entire period, ends up being way to hands off in a moment when students were in jeopardy. That's right.
And so at this point, the protesters in the encampment started preparing for sort of two possibilities. One was that this group of counter protesters would return and attack them. And the second one was that the police would come and try to break up this encampment. So they start building up the barricades. They start reinforcing them with wood. And during the day, hundreds of people came and brought them supplies.
They brought food, they brought helmets, goggles, ear plugs, salient solution, all sorts of things these people could use to defend themselves. And so they're really getting ready to burrow in. And in the end, it was a police attainement. So Wednesday at 7 p.m., they made announcement on top of voice hall, which overlooks the encampment. The ministry of criminal dodges up to and put in a rush, blatantly in the area of the city.
And they told people in the encampment that they needed to leave or face a rest. And so as night falls, they put on all this gear that they've been collecting, the goggles, the masks and the ear plugs, and they wait for the police. And so the police arrive and sort of station themselves right in front of the encampment. And then at a certain point, they storm the back stairs of the encampment. And this is the stairs that the protesters had been using to enter an exit of the camp.
And they set up a line and the protesters do this really surprising thing. They open up umbrellas, they have these sort of strobe lights, and they're flashing them at the police who sort of just like slowly back out of the camp. And so at this point, they're feeling really great. You know, they're like, we did it. We pushed them out of the camp.
And when the cops try to push again on those same stairs, the protesters organize themselves with all these shields that they had built earlier and they go and confront them. And so there's this moment where the police are trying to push up the stairs and the protesters are literally pushing them back. And at a certain point, dozens of the police officers who were there basically just turn around and leave. So, how does this eventually come to an end?
So at a certain point, the police pushing again. Most of the conflict is centered at the front of these barricades. And the police just start tearing them apart. They remove the front barricade and in this place is this group of protesters who have linked arms and they're hanging on to each other. And the police are trying to pull protesters one by one away from this group. But they're having a really hard time because there's so many protesters and they're all just hanging on to each other.
So at a certain point, one of the police officers started firing something into the crowd. We don't exactly know what it was, but it really spooked the protesters. They started falling back. Everyone was really scared that protesters were yelling, don't shoot us. And at that point, the police just sort of stormed the camp. And so after about four hours of this, the police pushed the protesters out of the encampment. They had arrested about 200 protesters and this was finally over.
And I'm just curious, Jonathan, because you're standing right there. You are bearing witness to this all what you're thinking, what your impressions of this were. I mean, I was stunned. These are mostly teenagers. This is a college campus and institution of higher learning. And what does all of them in front of me look like a war zone?
The massive barricade, the police coming in with riot gear and all of this violence was happening in front of these red brick buildings that are famous for symbolizing really open college campus. And everything about it was just totally surreal. Well, Jonathan, thank you very much. We appreciate it. Thanks, Michael. We'll be right back.
Peter around 10am on Thursday morning, as the smoke is literally still clearing at the University of California, Los Angeles, you get word that President Biden is going to speak. Right. Exactly. Wasn't on his public schedule. He was about to head to Andrews Air Force Base in order to take a trip. And then suddenly we got the notice that he was going to be addressing the cameras in the Roosevelt room.
They didn't tell us what he was going to talk about, but it was pretty clear, I think, everybody understood. There was going to be about these campus protests about the growing violence and the clashes with police and the arrests that the entire country had been watching on TV every night for the past week. And I think that we'd be watching just that morning with UCLA. And I reached the point where he just had to say something.
And why in his estimation, and those of his advisors, was this the moment that Biden had to say something? Well, it kind of reached a boiling point. It kind of reached the impression of a national crisis. And you expect to hear your president address it in this kind of a moment, particularly because it's about his own policy. His policy toward Israel is at the heart of his protests. And he was getting a lot of grief.
He was getting a lot of grief from Republicans who were shiting him for not speaking out. Personally, he had to say anything about 10 days. He's got a lot of pressure from Democrats too who wanted him to come out and be more forcefully. It wasn't enough in their view to leave it to his spokespeople to say something. Moderate Democrats felt he needed to come out and take some leadership on this.
And so at the appointed moment, Peter, what does Biden actually say in the Roosevelt Room of the White House? Good morning. Good morning. Before I head to North Carolina, I wanted to speak for a few moments about what's going on on our college campuses here. Well, he comes into the Roosevelt Room and he talks to the cabinet. He talks about the two clashing imperatives of American principle. The first is the right to free speech. And for people to peacefully assemble and make their voices heard.
The second is the rule of law. Both must be upheld. One is freedom of speech. The other is the rule of law. The fact peaceful protests is in the best tradition of how Americans respond to consequences and the problem is that they're not going to be able to solve the problem. The other works he's saying is yes, I support the right of these protesters to come out and object to even my own policy, and the fact is what he's saying, but it shouldn't trail into violence.
Destroying property is not a peaceful protest. It's against the law. Vandalism. Trespassing. Breaking windows. Shutting down campuses. It shouldn't trail into taking over buildings and obstructing students from going to class or canceling their graduations. Threatening people, intimidating people, instilling fear in people is not peaceful protest. It's against the law. And he leans very heavily into this idea that what he's seeing these days goes beyond the line.
I understand people have strong feelings and deep convictions. In America, we respect the right and protect the right for them to express that, but it doesn't mean anything goes. It is crossed into harassment and expressions of hate in a way that go against the national character. As president, I will always defend free speech, and I will always be just as strong and standing up for the rule of law. That's my responsibility to you, the American people, my obligation to the Constitution.
Thank you very much. As I watched the speech, I heard his overriding message to basically be, I, the president, I say some drawing a line. These protests and counter protests, the seizing and defacing of campus buildings, class disruption, all of it, name calling, it's getting out of hand that there's a right way to do this, and what I'm seeing is the wrong way to do it, and it has stopped. That's exactly right. As he's wrapping up, reporters of course ask questions.
The first question is, will this change your policy toward the war in Gaza, which of course is exactly what the protesters want? That's the point. Right. And he basically says, no, no, just one word, no. Right. And that felt kind of important as brief and fleeting as it was, because at the end of the day, what he's saying to these protesters is, I'm not going to do what you want. And basically your protests are never going to work. I'm not going to change the US's involvement in this war.
Yeah, that's exactly right. He's saying, you know, I'm not going to be swayed by angry people in the streets. I'm going to do what I think is right when it comes to foreign policy. Now what he thinks is that they're not giving them enough credit for trying to achieve what they want, which is an end of the war. He has been pressuring Israel and Hamas to come to a deal for a ceasefire that hopefully in his view would then lead to a more enduring end of hostilities.
But of course, this deal hasn't gone anywhere. Hamas in particular seems to be resisting it. And so the president has left with a policy of arming Israel without having found a way yet to stop the war. Right. I wonder though, Peter, if we're being honest, don't these protests, despite what Biden is saying there, inevitably exert a kind of power over him, you know, becoming one of many pressures, but a pressure nonetheless that does influence how he thinks about these moments.
I mean, here he is at the White House, devoting an entire conversation to the nation to these campus protests. Well, he'll look, he knows this fees into the political environment in which he's running for a reelection in which he basically has people who otherwise might be his supporters on the left disenchanted with him. And he knows that there's a cost to be paid. And that certainly obviously is in his head as he's thinking about what to do.
But I think his view of the war is changing by the day for all sorts of reasons. And most of them have me to do with realities on the ground. He has decided that Israel has gone far enough, if not too far, in the way it has conducted this operation in Gaza. He is upset about the humanitarian crisis there.
And he's looking for a way to wrap all this up into kind of a move that would move to peacemaking, like beginning to get the region to a different stage, maybe have a deal with the Saudis to normalize relations with Israel, like exchange for some sort of a two-state solution that would eventually resolve the Palestinian issue at its core.
So I think it's probably fair to say that the protests won't move him in an immediate kind of sense, but they obviously play into the larger zeitgeist of the moment. And I also think it's important to know who Joe Biden is at heart. It's a cleanup. He's not drawn to activism. He was around the 1968. The last time we saw this major conflagration at Columbia University, for instance, at the time Joe Biden was a law student in Syracuse about 250 miles away. He was institutionalist, even then.
He was just focused on his studies. He was about to graduate. He was thinking about the law career. And he didn't really have much of an affinity, I think, for his fellow students of that era for their activist way of looking at things. He tells a story in his memoir about walking down the street in Syracuse one day to go to the peacheshop with some friends. And they walk by the administration building and they see people hanging out of the windows. They're hanging SDS ban.
As the students for a democratic society, which was one of the big act of a group so the era. And he says they were taking over the building and we looked up and said, look at those assholes. That's how far apart from the anti-war movement I was. That's him writing in his memoir. So to a young Joe Biden, those who devote their time and their energy to protesting the war are, I don't need to repeat the word twice, but they're losers. They're not worth this time.
Well, I think it's the tactics they're using more than the goals that he disagree with. He would tell you he disagree with the Vietnam War. He was for civil rights, but he thought that taking over a building was performative, was all about getting attention and that there was a better way in his view to do it. He was somebody who wanted to work inside the system. He said in an interview, quite a few years back, he says, look, I was wearing sports coats in that era.
He saw himself becoming part of the system, not somebody trying to tear it down. And so how should we think about that Joe Biden when we think about this Joe Biden? The Joe Biden who, as a young man, looked upon anti-war protesters with disdain and the one who is now president and his very own policies have inspired such ferocious campus protests.
Yeah. You know, that Joe Biden, the 1968 Joe Biden, he could just throw on a sports coat, go to the pizza shop with his friends, make fun of the activists and call them names. And then that's it. They didn't have to affect his life. But that's not what 2024 Joe Biden can do. Now where he goes, he's dog by this. He goes to speeches and people are shouting at him, genocide Joe, genocide Joe. He is the target of the same kind of a movement that he disdained in 1968.
And so as much as he would like to ignore it or move on or focus on other things, I think this has become a defining image of his year and one of the defining images, perhaps, of his presidency. And 2024 Joe Biden can't simply ignore it. Well Peter, thank you very much. We appreciate it. Thank you. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today.
During testimony on Thursday in Donald Trump's Hush Money Trial, jurors heard a recording secretly made by Trump's former fixer, Michael Cohen, in which Trump discusses a deal to buy a woman's silence. In the recording, Trump asks Cohen about how one payment made by Trump to a woman named Karen McDougall would be financed. The recording could complicate efforts by Trump's lawyers to distance him from the Hush Money deals at the center of the trial.
A final thing to know tomorrow morning, we'll be sending you the latest episode from our colleagues over at the interview. This week David Merkese talks with comedy star Marlon Wands about his new standup special. It's a high to get when you don't know if this joke that I'm about to say is going to offend everybody or they're going to walk out or they're going to boom me or they're going to hate this and he tell it and everybody cracks up and you're like, whoo.
Today's episode was produced by Diana Wynn, Luke Vanderpiluk, Alexander Lee Young, Nina Feldman and Carlos Prieto. It was edited by Lisa Chao and Michael Benoit, contains original music by Dan Powell and Mary El Lazano and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Lanzberg of Wonderly. That's it for the Daily. I'm Michael Bavaro. See you on Monday.