While stumping in Philadelphia Thursday, former-President Bill Clinton was repeatedly interrupted by Black Lives Matter protesters who criticized his wife and the Democratic frontrunner, Hillary, for peddling the junk-science theory of minority kids as "superpredators" who ought to be brought "to heel" during Bill's 1996 campaign.
"I like protesters," Bill said Thursday. "But the ones that won't let you answer, are afraid of the truth."
The protesters further challenged Bill on his 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act," which many have credited with the lingering effects of prison overpopulation on poor minority communities.
"I had an assault weapons ban in it, I had money for inner-city kids for out-of-school activities, we had 110,000 police officers so ... the police would look like the people they were policing," Clinton argued, evidently uncomfortable with the line of questioning.
He said he "talked to a lot of African-American groups" who told him to "take this bill, because our kids are being shot in the street by gangs," adding, "We had 13-year-old kids planning their own funerals."
"I don't know how you would characterize the gang leaders who got thirteen-year-old kids hopped up on crack and sent them out onto the street to murder other African-American children," Bill Clinton told protesters Thursday. "You are defending the people who killed the lives you say matter."
Watch the full exchange below:
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