Biden campaign taps friend groups, social media, with unpredictable results

Biden campaign taps friend groups, social media, with unpredictable results
Biden listened attentively as she told him about surviving cancer and how the Affordable Care Act, which Biden helped push as Barack Obama’s vice president, saved her life. (AFP)
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Updated 30 May 2024
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Biden campaign taps friend groups, social media, with unpredictable results

Biden campaign taps friend groups, social media, with unpredictable results
  • Biden listened attentively as she told him about surviving cancer and how the Affordable Care Act, which Biden helped push as Barack Obama’s vice president, saved her life

RACINE: Andrea Dyess, 57, was already a Joe Biden fan, but after meeting him in her neighborhood of Racine, Wisconsin, in May, she has been talking to anyone who will listen about giving him four more years in the White House.
Dyess was on a street corner with her two young grandchildren trying to catch a glimpse of Biden’s motorcade, when a campaign worker invited her to join the president at a nearby community center.
Biden listened attentively as she told him about surviving cancer and how the Affordable Care Act, which Biden helped push as Barack Obama’s vice president, saved her life.
“I told him, just keep fighting the fight,” she said,
Since then, Dyess says she has shared her “once in a lifetime moment” directly with dozens of friends and relatives, at a church revival, at her grandkids’ school and on her neighborhood walks. She’s also been urging her 20-year-old son’s friends to register to vote.
Campaign officials say the encounter is exactly what they are hoping to replicate around the country with a series of small-scale campaign events.
Biden, 81, has spent decades honing his ‘retail’ politician style of wooing voters. Big, thundering speeches have never been his style but he lights up when meeting people one-on-one, thumping shoulders, hugging strangers and FaceTiming people’s moms.
In sharp contrast to the
mass rallies
hosted by Republican rival Donald Trump — heavy on stagecraft with classic rock playlists, anti-immigration rhetoric and mostly white audiences — Biden meets with small, more diverse groups of voters for personal conversations.
Those
smaller events
are arranged with friendly invitation-only audiences, and often publicized only at the last minute to avoid pro-Palestinian protests that have dogged Biden’s appearances for months.
It’s part of a broader campaign strategy that includes celebrity endorsements, a slew of political surrogates, traditional ads and official events to showcase Biden’s support for NATO, infrastructure funding and other key policies.
The campaign is under heavy pressure as Biden wobbles in the polls.
Despite strong economic growth and stock market highs, his approval ratings are near two-year lows, a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll showed, and other polls show Trump ahead in several of the battleground states that Biden narrowly won in 2020.
Campaign and Democratic party officials say that is in part because voters are still smarting from higher prices and don’t know enough about what Biden has done to reduce costs of prescription drugs and other essentials, or his backing of unions fighting for higher wages.
They say US media is too “fractured” to be an effective way of reaching voters on these issues. So they’re enlisting friend networks, super-surrogates, small business groups, podcasts, new media and TikTok stars who they hope will talk issues and policies as they try to convince millions of Americans to back Biden in November.
Charles Franklin, who directs polling at Wisconsin’s Marquette University Law School, said that because Biden doesn’t have “groupies” like Trump, these smaller events are a better bet. “If they both got the same stadium and did back to back events, [I’m] pretty confident that Trump would have the bigger turnout for that,” Franklin said.
Republicans, who ridiculed Biden’s 2020 campaign for being run “from his basement,” say the lack of big Biden rallies in 2024 is further evidence of his physical and political fragility.
Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt, described Biden’s strategy as “tiny, staged, 15-minute snooze-fests,” and said “Team Trump’s campaign events will continue to get bigger and better.”
Before events like the one in Racine, the campaign combs its databases for local people who care about a specific issue Biden’s policies have addressed or are part of a demographic he hopes to reach, and invites them to meet Biden. Sometimes they find unexpected guests like Dyess.
The interactions are filmed by the campaign for YouTube video and campaign ads, and followed by local and national media. Ideally, participants make their own social media posts and those go viral, reaching more voters, the campaign says.
“One of the strategies around any visit is not just to have the perfect room and create the conditions for serendipity, but also to make sure that what happens in the room doesn’t stay in the room,” said Ben Wikler, head of Wisconsin’s Democratic Party.
In Milwaukee in March, for example, Biden met 9-year-old Harry Abramson, who had written to Biden about his stutter.
Biden, who stuttered as a child, shared his strategy for dealing with difficult words. The interaction was picked up by the local Fox affiliate and other TV stations, digital and print media, and Biden’s campaign put it on Facebook and other accounts. It went viral, bouncing around chat rooms, TikTok and Reddit.
“Grandpa’s gonna Grandpa. Imagine telling your friends you got speech lessons from the president of the United States,” one Reddit user wrote under a video of the interaction on “Made Me Smile,” a group with 9.5 million members.
Biden visited the Fitts’ family home in North Carolina in January, part of a ‘kitchen table’ visit to regular families in swing states. Afterward, teenaged Christian Fitts posted a video on TikTok showing the President admiring school photos on his refrigerator and sharing french fries at the kitchen table.
The post got over one million “likes” and thousands of comments that attracted millions more views. Many were incredulous, rather than outright endorsements of Biden. “HIM JUST STANDING AT THE FRIDGE IS SENDING ME” one user wrote. Nearly 50,000 people liked the comment.
Tracking the digital impact of this strategy is difficult, political experts say. New tools to track TikTok content are still not reliable, most Facebook posts are private, and there’s no way to know how many of those who comment will actually vote.
Teddy Goff, co-founder of marketing firm Precision Strategies, believes the smaller events are a smart play.
“They’re going to wind up in the local news, local newspaper, local TV, and in all likelihood, will get seen by more people than might have been to that Trump rally,” said Goff, digital director of former President Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, referring to an April rally by Trump in Green Bay that drew a crowd of 3,200.
Relying on individuals to share the Biden message can be unpredictable.
Sheree Robinson, a Black mother of five from Racine who says funding from Biden’s American Rescue Plan helped her earn her a High School Equivalency Diploma, was invited to ride in Biden’s limousine during his May Wisconsin visit.
She posted a video on Facebook showing her smiling next to a bemused-looking Biden, as he gets detailed instructions on what to expect at the next event. In her comment, she used an obscenity to tout herself as a “big ... deal,” without any praise of Biden.
Later, however, she called into a local radio program to share what she called an “awesome” experience, and plugged Biden’s policy that helped her get a degree. The Wisconsin Democratic party is featuring her in digital ads it will use around the state.
Social media tends to embrace more negative or awkward moments, like a stumble or fall, Goff noted, rather than a tiny event like the recent one in Racine.
Biden’s campaign is outspending Trump’s on digital media in Wisconsin, according to an analysis by Priorities USA. It spent $2.2 million on digital ads in the state alone since January, compared to $1,500 spent by Trump.
So far, though, a FiveThirtyEight compilation of Wisconsin polls still shows Trump with a slight lead in the state.


Zelensky hails Ukraine-US mineral deal as ‘truly equal’

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky (R) meets with US President Donald Trump (L) on the sidelines of Pope Francis’s funeral.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky (R) meets with US President Donald Trump (L) on the sidelines of Pope Francis’s funeral.
Updated 23 sec ago
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Zelensky hails Ukraine-US mineral deal as ‘truly equal’

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky (R) meets with US President Donald Trump (L) on the sidelines of Pope Francis’s funeral.
  • The deal, which both parties signed on Wednesday, would see the US and Kyiv jointly develop Ukraine’s critical mineral resources

KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday hailed a minerals deal that Kyiv had signed with Washington, saying the reworked agreement was “truly equal.”
The deal, which both parties signed on Wednesday, would see the United States and Kyiv jointly develop Ukraine’s critical mineral resources.
US President Donald Trump initially described the arrangement as “money back” for the wartime aid Ukraine received under his predecessor Joe Biden, but Kyiv says the new agreement is not linked to any past “debt.”
During the negotiations, “the agreement changed significantly,” Zelensky said in his daily address.
“Now it is a truly equal agreement that creates an opportunity for quite significant investment in Ukraine.”
“There is no debt in the deal, and a fund — a recovery fund — will be created that will invest in Ukraine and earn money here,” he added.
Kyiv and Washington planned to sign the agreement weeks ago, but a fiery clash between Trump and Zelensky in the White House temporarily derailed talks.
Ukraine had been pushing for long-term security guarantees as part of any deal.
The new agreement does not place any specific security commitments on the United States, but Washington argues boosting its business interests in Ukraine will help deter Russia, which invaded its neighbor in 2022.


Brazilian nun who was the world’s oldest person has died at 116

Brazilian nun who was the world’s oldest person has died at 116
Updated 37 min 17 sec ago
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Brazilian nun who was the world’s oldest person has died at 116

Brazilian nun who was the world’s oldest person has died at 116
  • Canabarro died at home of natural causes, said her Teresian nun congregation, the Company of Saint Teresa of Jesus
  • She was confirmed in January as the world’s oldest person by LongeviQuest

SAO PAULO: Sister Inah Canabarro, a Brazilian nun and teacher who was the world’s oldest person, died on Wednesday just weeks short of turning 117, her religious congregation said.
Canabarro died at home of natural causes, said her Teresian nun congregation, the Company of Saint Teresa of Jesus. She was confirmed in January as the world’s oldest person by LongeviQuest, an organization that tracks supercentenarians around the globe.


She would have turned 117 on May 27. According to LongeviQuest, the world’s oldest person is now Ethel Caterham, a 115-year-old British woman.
Canabarro said her Catholic faith was the key to her longevity, in a video taken by LongeviQuest in February 2024. The smiling Canabarro can be seen cracking jokes, sharing miniature paintings she used to make of wild flowers and reciting the Hail Mary prayer.
“I’m young, pretty and friendly — all very good, positive qualities that you have too,” the Teresian nun told the visitors to her retirement home in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre.
As a child, Sister Inah Canabarro was so skinny that many people didn’t think she would survive into adulthood, Cleber Canabarro, her 84-year-old nephew, told The Associated Press in January,
Her great-grandfather was a famed Brazilian general who took up arms during the turbulent period following Brazil’s independence from Portugal in the 19th century.
She took up religious work while she was a teenager and spent two years in Montevideo, Uruguay, before moving to Rio de Janeiro and eventually settling in her home state of Rio Grande do Sul. A lifelong teacher, among her former students was Gen. Joao Figueiredo, the last of the military dictators who governed Brazil between 1964 and 1985. She was also the beloved creator of two marching bands at schools in sister cities straddling the border between Uruguay and Brazil.
For her 110th birthday, she was honored by Pope Francis. She was the second oldest nun ever documented, after Lucile Randon, who was the world’s oldest person until her death in 2023 at the age of 118.
Canabarro took the title of the oldest living person following the death of Japan’s Tomiko Itooka in December, according to LongeviQuest. She ranked as the 20th oldest documented person to have ever lived, a list topped by Frenchwoman Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997 at the age of 122, according to LongeviQuest.
“Her long and meaningful life touched many, and her legacy as a devoted educator, religious sister, and a supercentenarian will be remembered with great admiration,” LongeviQuest said in a statement.
The wake for Canabarro will take place on Thursday in Porto Alegre, the capital of southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, her order said.


Trump’s national security adviser Waltz leaving post: US media

National Security Adviser Mike Waltz speaks during a television interview at the White House, Thursday, May 1, 2025.
National Security Adviser Mike Waltz speaks during a television interview at the White House, Thursday, May 1, 2025.
Updated 01 May 2025
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Trump’s national security adviser Waltz leaving post: US media

National Security Adviser Mike Waltz speaks during a television interview at the White House, Thursday, May 1, 2025.
  • Waltz and his deputy Alex Wong were both set to leave, CBS News reported, while Fox News said Trump was expected to comment on the matter soon

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser Mike Waltz is to leave his post following a scandal in which a journalist was accidentally included on a chat between officials about air strikes on Yemen, US media reported.
Waltz and his deputy Alex Wong were both set to leave, CBS News reported, while Fox News said Trump was expected to comment on the matter soon.
The former US congressman is the first major official to leave the administration in Trump’s second term, which has so far been more stable in terms of personnel than his first.
A White House official did not confirm the reports, saying they “do not want to get ahead of any announcement.”
Waltz had been under pressure since the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic Magazine revealed in March that Waltz had mistakenly added him to a chat on the commercial messaging app Signal about attacks on Houthis.
Officials on the chat laid out the attack plan including the timings that US warplanes would take off to bomb targets in Yemen, with the first texts barely half an hour before they launched.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has also faced pressure over the scandal.
“1215et: F-18s LAUNCH (1st strike package),” Hegseth wrote in one text, referring to F/A-18 US Navy jets, before adding that “Target Terrorist is @ his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME.”
“1415: Strike Drones on Target (THIS IS WHEN THE FIRST BOMBS WILL DEFINITELY DROP, pending earlier ‘Trigger Based’ targets).”
A short time later, Waltz sent real-time intelligence on the aftermath of an attack, writing that US forces had identified the target “walking into his girlfriend’s building and it’s now collapsed.”


‘Not a commodity’: UN staff rally over deep cuts

‘Not a commodity’: UN staff rally over deep cuts
Updated 01 May 2025
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‘Not a commodity’: UN staff rally over deep cuts

‘Not a commodity’: UN staff rally over deep cuts
  • Carrying signs reading “We stand for humanity” and “Protect the protectors,” protesters poured into the square in front of the UN European headquarters
  • “We’re supposed to stand for workers’ rights, so this is really tough,” Lena, an ILO staff member said

GENEVA: Hundreds of UN staff rallied in Geneva Thursday over deep funding cuts, especially from key donor the United States, which have led to mass-layoffs and threatened life-saving services around the world.
The demonstration, called by UN staff unions and associations, brought together workers from a wide range of Geneva-based agencies, along with their families and supporters under a blazing sun.
Carrying signs reading “UN staff are not a commodity,” “We stand for humanity,” “Stop firing UN staff now” and “Protect the protectors,” protesters poured into the square in front of the United Nations European headquarters.
“We’re supposed to stand for workers’ rights, so this is really tough,” Lena, a staff member at the International Labour Organization, told AFP, refusing to give her last name.
“You just feel helpless,” she said, standing next to her daughter sound asleep in a baby carriage with a sign reading “We stand for better jobs in the world” propped on top.
Humanitarian organizations worldwide have been reeling since US President Donald Trump returned to office in January, pushing an anti-refugee and anti-migrant agenda and immediately freezing most US foreign aid funding.
The United States has traditionally been by far the top donor to a number of agencies, which have been left scrambling to fill sudden and gaping budget gaps.
A number of agencies have already signalled the dire consequences as austerity measures take hold across the UN system.
According to UN staff unions, the UN refugee agency is preparing to cut up to 30 percent of its staff worldwide, while the International Organization for Migration has said it will need to lay off more than 6,000 staff members, or over a third of its workforce.
The World Food Programme is meanwhile preparing to cut between 25 and 30 percent of its global workforce.
Thousands of jobs are also being cut at the UN humanitarian agency OCHA, the World Health Organization and UNAIDS, with many more hanging in the balance, the staff unions said.
They also noted that nearly one in 10 jobs were being eliminated at the ILO, while the UN children’s agency UNICEF is facing a projected 20-percent budget cut.
“So many people are afraid of losing their jobs,” said Elodie Saban, who works at the main UN Geneva office.
“People who work for the UN are often asked to make extreme sacrifices. It is outrageous to see how they are being treated.”
Ian Richards, head of the UN office in Geneva staff union, stressed in a statement that “our colleagues have worked in some of the most dangerous, difficult and isolated locations in the world.”
“They couldn’t choose when or where they moved. They have sacrificed their personal and family lives, and in some cases paid the ultimate price, to help those in need,” he said, decrying that now “many are being let go without any social or financial support from their employers.”
Lena agreed, pointing out that some workers “are here for 20 years, and then it is basically: ‘goodbye’, you’re gone in two months.”
She highlighted that international UN staff are not granted unemployment benefits in the countries they work in, and their residence permits expire within a month of losing their employment.
Even worse, perhaps, would be the impact on operations in the field where the UN’s humanitarian agencies provide life-saving aid to millions of people, while an agency like the ILO battles against things like child labor, Lena said.
“Now, we just have to tell people we have worked with for years, ‘sorry’.”


Bangladesh holds mass political rallies in anticipation of first vote since Hasina ouster

People gather at a May Day rally organized by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party in Dhaka on May 1, 2025. (BNP)
People gather at a May Day rally organized by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party in Dhaka on May 1, 2025. (BNP)
Updated 01 May 2025
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Bangladesh holds mass political rallies in anticipation of first vote since Hasina ouster

People gather at a May Day rally organized by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party in Dhaka on May 1, 2025. (BNP)
  • Thousands of people gathered for a May Day rally organized by Bangladesh Nationalist Party
  • Chief of Bangladesh’s interim administration earlier said election could take place end of 2025

DHAKA: Three days of mass rallies began in Bangladesh on Thursday as political parties seek to drum up support ahead of the anticipated first vote since the ouster of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina last year.

The country’s interim government, headed by Nobel prize winner Prof. Muhammad Yunus, has been implementing a series of reforms. And preparing for elections since taking charge in August, after Hasina fled Dhaka amid student-led protests that called for her resignation.

Yunus has said that Bangladesh could hold elections by the end of 2025 or in the first half of 2026, provided that electoral reforms take place first.

As thousands of people gathered in Dhaka for a May Day rally organized by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party on Thursday, its leaders seek to highlight the rights of Bangladeshis to a free and fair election.

The BNP’s Vice Chairman Shamsuzzaman Dudu told Arab News: “People were deprived of their voting rights in the last three general elections due to a fraudulent environment.

“Considering the present context, people are optimistic that they would get the chance to exercise voting rights and eventually hand over power to their trusted political party.

“In this way, a democratic government will be reinstated in the country.”

He added: “These expectations and dreams of the countrymen will be represented through our mass demonstration today.”

“We want to see a Bangladesh, which is run through a democratic system, where people would be able to exercise and enjoy all of their due rights.”

The country’s largest Islamic political party, Jamaat-e-Islami, also held a rally on Thursday.

They will be followed on Friday by a mass demonstration organized by the National Citizens Party, which was formed by the students who spearheaded the youth-led protests that overthrew Hasina.

On Saturday, Hefazat-e-Islam, a powerful Islamic organization in the country, is also expected to hold a “grand rally.”

The series of political rallies are taking place a little over a year since Bangladesh’s last elections in January 2024, when Hasina won a fourth term in polls that were boycotted by the main opposition parties.

Following 15 years of uninterrupted rule, Hasina and her Awami League party had allegedly politicized key government institutions, including the Election Commission.

Bangladesh is going through a “transitional moment,” said NCP Joint Member Secretary Saleh Uddin Sifat, highlighting that the interim government’s ongoing work is crucial to secure a better future for the country.

“If we can’t reform or overhaul the other machineries of the state, like (the) judiciary, police, constitution etc., before the election, then the next government might also be an authoritarian one because of the existence of the authoritarian elements within the state machineries,” Sifat told Arab News.

Sifat is expecting a good turnout at the NCP rally on Friday, which will urge for reforms in various state institutions and demand justice for alleged crimes committed by members of the Awami League.

“We believe our next general election will not simply serve as a medium of transferring power,” he said. “Rather, it will pave the way for a permanent and effective reformation of the structural issues of the country.”