“You Are Defending The People Who Killed The Lives You Say Matter:” Bill Clinton Slams BLM Protesters
Bill Clinton unleashed a torrent of angry rhetoric at Black Lives Matter protesters Thursday during a campaign speech for his wife in Philadelphia after demonstrators condemned him and his wife for supporting his crime bill.
CNN reports that the protesters interrupted Clinton, who was campaigning for Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton. Yelling that Black youth are not super predators, protesters took issue “with a phrase then-first lady Hillary Clinton used in a 1996 speech about violent crime committed by young people,” notes the report.
The protesters also criticized Bill Clinton for the 1994 crime bill he signed into law as president that most blame for the mass incarceration of African-Americans.
“You are defending the people who killed the lives you say matter,” he said, writes the news outlet. He also defended his wife’s use of the term “super predators,” the report says.
Via CNN:
“I don’t know how you would characterize the gang leaders who got 13-year-old kids hopped up on crack, and sent them out in the streets to murder other African-American children,” the former president said. “Maybe you thought they were good citizens — she didn’t.”
WATCH: Roland Martin talks with the Black Lives Matter protesters who disrupted former President Bill Clinton’s speech at a campaign event.
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Hillary Clinton was confronted by protesters earlier this year over the use of the term.
“They are often the kinds of kids that are called ‘super predators,’” Clinton said in a 1996 speech, when crime was a major public concern, according to polls at the time. “No conscience, no empathy, we can talk about why they ended up that way, but first we have to bring them to heel.”
Bill Clinton defended his wife’s civil rights legacy, pointing to her “work on school desegregation in Alabama with the Children’s Defense Fund at age 27, saying she was instrumental to ending a practice that allowed white school leaders to exclude black students,” the report says.
SOURCE: CNN | PHOTO CREDIT: Getty | VIDEO CREDIT: Inform
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Hillary Clinton Regrets 1996 “Super-Predator” Comment Following Encounter With BLM Activist