Bill heckled again
Posted: Wednesday, March 12, 2008 3:28 PM by Domenico Montanaro
From NBC/NJ's Mike Memoli
ERIE, Pa. -- Bill Clinton has gotten used to this by now.
Early on in an event in Northwest Pennsylvania, Clinton was beginning a regular line in his speech comparing the state of the nation now to when he was president in the 1990s. A young man then started shouting at the former president, repeating "1991 Bilderberg." After a moment or two, Clinton stopped trying to speak over him and acknowledged the heckler.
"Look, this is the deal, folks," he said. "All these people that are paranoid about the world come and scream at me everywhere."
The man said that if Clinton heard him out, he'd leave, so Clinton did so. But as he shouted about Bilderberg, NAFTA and the Trans-Texas Corridor, the crowd drowned him out with boos.
Eventually, Clinton rather calmly addressed the remarks of the heckler. "You said you would go if I answered the question," Clinton said. "All right, here's the answer."
He said he did attend the 1991 conference of global players at the invitation of Vernon Jordan. "To the best of my knowledge, NAFTA was not discussed by anybody in my presence," he said. "I was talking to people who happen to be from Europe who did not give a rip about NAFTA."
Clinton then gave a general defense of his role in NAFTA, saying he tried to get labor and environmental standards into that agreement, "but I couldn't because it was already negotiated when I got there." He also said that as president, he enforced trade laws more than the current Bush administration has.
"I had a very good time talking to those Europeans about European affairs and what was gonna happen to Russia, but I was not somehow polluted by it into sacrificing Americas economic interest," he said. "America did a lot better when I was president than they have in this decade and that is the truth. Now goodbye."
And with that, he waved him off.
Clinton enjoyed an otherwise rousing welcome in Erie during the visit, which he said brought back memories of a trip during his '92 campaign.
"When we started our bus tour we pulled into Erie at about a quarter to two in the morning and there were still 5,000 people waiting for us," he told the nearly 2,000 who waited about 45 minutes for him at East High School today. "I thought to myself we are gonna change this country and now we need to change this country again."
He then referred to the current race, acknowledging record turnouts and financial contributions. "We got almost two million new donors, many of them of very modest means who give over the Internet. People wanting to have a piece of their country's future."
He did not refer to last night's contest in Mississippi.
