Jill Biden and her husband's campaign adviser Symone Sanders became bodyguards Tuesday night, keeping a pair of vegan protesters who charged the stage during the former vice president's Super Tuesday speech in Los Angeles from getting near him.
Joe Biden was thanking his supporters when the first protester, a woman with a "Let Dairy Die" placard rushed the stage. Jill Biden put her body between the protester and her husband, reports The Washington Post.
Seconds later, another protester stormed the stage, and the former second lady turned around, grabbed the woman's wrists and blocked her. Meanwhile, Sanders tackled the woman and she and other campaign staffers wrestled her off the stage.
Both Jill Biden and Sanders took the incident in stride when responding later on Twitter. Biden merely tweeted "what a night," and Sanders deadpanned "I broke a nail."
Patrick Fallon, a freelance photojournalist on assignment for Bloomberg Politics, snapped a photo of the former second lady appearing to snarl while grabbing the second protester and tweeted it would probably be his "most tweeted picture of 2020."
However, others said the disruption shows how Biden should have Secret Service protection by this stage of his campaign. As a former vice president, he was entitled to a detail for up to six months after leaving office in January 2017, and the Department of Homeland Security has not restarted his protection.
“What happened tonight was nothing short of genuinely scary," Robert Gibbs, the former press secretary under President Barack Obama, said on MSNBC. "Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden need Secret Service protection,” said Gibbs.
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