Bill Clinton on Confronting Protesters: ‘We Got to Listen Again’
— -- On the campaign trail today in Erie, Pennsylvania, former President Bill Clinton addressed yesterday’s heated confrontation with Black Lives Matter protesters at a Philadelphia campaign event.
“I did something yesterday in Philadelphia. I almost want to apologize for it, but I want to use it as an example of the danger threatening our country because the founders set this country up so that we could keep growing and being bigger and including more people,” he said.
Clinton explained that he wanted to have a conversation with the protesters and acknowledged that he should have responded differently.
"I rather vigorously defended my wife, as I am wont to do, and I realized finally I was talking past [a protester] the way she was talking past me," said Clinton. "We gotta stop that in this country. We gotta listen to each other again."
He continued: "I like and believe in protests. I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't because I engaged in some when I was a kid. But I never thought I should drown anybody else out. And I confess, maybe it's just a sign of old age, but it bothers me now when that happens."
During Thursday's campaign event, Clinton became involved in a heated exchange with activists protesting his 1994 crime bill. He fired back at them saying, "You are defending the people who kill the lives you say matter."
The former president did not apologize for his remarks yesterday but admitted that some outcomes of the 1994 bill "cannot be justified."
Clinton stood by other parts of his bill, such as putting more law enforcement on the streets, which he said has reduced crime. He also blamed Republicans for insisting that longer prison sentences be included in the bill.
"We are living in a country where young African Americans think their number one threat now is from police officers," said Clinton. "When I signed that crime bill, they knew what their number one threat was. It was from gangs making money out of cocaine, taking teenage kids, hopping them up, giving them guns, telling them to kill other teenagers to prove their bones."
Black Lives Matters protesters have made a point to protest both GOP and Democratic presidential candidates and have met privately with Hillary Clinton to voice their concerns. ABC News Philadelphia affiliate, WPVI, spoke to Erica Mine, one of the protesters in Philly, who said her opinion of Hillary Clinton had not changed.
"[Hillary Clinton] did not come out and even look for the black vote until we started addressing the issues of police violence of the unarmed killings of black men and women in this country," said Mines.
