Here’s what Biden said in Tampa — and how his critics responded

TAMPA — At his first Tampa Bay area stop of 2024, President Joe Biden hammered Republicans on an issue that his campaign hopes will be at the top of voters’ minds come November: abortion.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned federal abortion protections in 2022, Democrats have made the issue a top campaign priority, promising to protect access to abortion while Republicans around the country work to restrict it.

Florida is case in point. Biden’s visit comes just a week before a ban on most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy is set to take effect.

“In America today‚ 2024, women have fewer rights than their mothers or their grandmothers had, because of Donald Trump,” Biden said. “I don’t think we’re going to let him get away with it, do you?”

The Biden campaign stop also comes just weeks after the state Supreme Court decided that Florida voters would decide on an abortion amendment in November.

If passed by 60% of voters, the amendment would enshrine the right to an abortion in the Florida Constitution. Biden’s team hopes the abortion ballot measure can boost the president’s chances of winning what could prove to be a crucial swing state in his reelection fight against former President Donald Trump.

(Currently, Biden’s odds in Florida don’t look great. Trump won Florida in 2020, and polls show Biden lagging behind Trump again this year.)

Biden said voters in states all over the country have come out to protect abortion access, adding: “This November, add Florida to that list.”

But for all the abortion talk inside Hillsborough Community College’s partially filled gymnasium, there was plenty else that others wanted to highlight about Biden’s visit.

In a statement, Florida GOP chairperson Evan Power downplayed abortion, saying Biden had come to Florida to talk about “manufactured issues.”

He said Floridians’ “top issues are immigration, the economy, and inflation, in all three areas Joe Biden has failed.”

Sen. Rick Scott, who is up for reelection in November, called his likely Democratic opponent, former U.S. Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, and Biden “socialists” on a mobile billboard outside of the Biden event, where Mucarsel-Powell also spoke. But those ads also didn’t discuss abortion. Instead, they focused on immigration — specifically, the death of Laken Riley, a Georgia nursing student who was killed, prosecutors say, by an immigrant who was in the country illegally.

The Trump campaign also criticized Biden ahead of his visit on the border and the economy.

“Joe Biden and the Democrats are radically out of touch with the majority of Americans in their support for abortion up until birth,” Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a statement Monday. (Biden’s team says he supports abortion until the point of fetal viability.) “Women want a President who will secure our nation’s borders, remove violent criminals from our neighborhoods, and build an economy that helps hardworking families thrive.”

Biden also faced criticism from the left on Tuesday. Demonstrators critical of the United States’ support for Israel in its war with Hamas gathered outside the Tampa event.

Around 100 protesters gathered near the entrance to the event, chanting, “Biden, Biden, you can’t hide, you’re committing genocide,” and holding Palestinian flags. A handful of conservative protesters who oppose abortion also came out to the campus Tuesday.

Ali Abdel-Qader, 24, gathered with his friends to protest Biden’s event, saying protesters want to send a clear message to Biden that the Tampa community won’t tolerate what Abdel-Qader called an ongoing genocide.

“I’m Palestinian; these people are my brothers and sisters,” he said. “Biden is supplying Israel with weapons. This is a massacre that he is aiding and supporting.”

Still, Biden is hoping his record on abortion will distinguish him from Trump and motivate people to turn out and vote. When he was president, Trump appointed three of the Supreme Court justices who overturned federal abortion protections. Biden’s administration has worked to safeguard access to the procedure, including by defending medication abortion in an ongoing U.S. Supreme Court case and by issuing an executive order that seeks to expand contraception access through federal health programs.

Will abortion be enough to carry Biden in expensive and increasingly conservative-leaning Florida?

A March survey conducted by Gallup found that voters are relatively unlikely to consider abortion their top issue. They’re far more likely to list the economy, immigration or the leadership of the country as top problems.

After the 15-minute speech, Biden and Florida Democratic Party chairperson Nikki Fried met for another several minutes with grassroots Democrats, including union officials, campaign volunteers and youth leaders. In a casual address, Biden focused much less on abortion than he did at the rally.

“We’ve got a lot more work to do. We’ve built the strongest economy in the world,” Biden said. “We’ve got to get inflation even further down.”

Biden reiterated his campaign’s talking point that “Florida’s in play nationally,” adding, “the momentum is clearly in our favor.”

Times reporters Romy Ellenbogen, Divya Kumar, Justin Garcia and Lesley Cosme Torres contributed to this report.

Correction: An earlier version of this story included someone with the Voices of Florida Fund who the group said mischaracterized why the organization wasn’t participating in Biden’s event.