Former US President Barack Obama shot back at a heckler during a speech he was making on Saturday while campaigning for Democratic candidate and Governor Gretchen Whitmer ahead of the November midterm elections.
The crowd at a Michigan high school went wild, yelling “Teach him, Barack!” along with various shouts directing the heckler to “get out” after the former president scolded one of the hecklers for his lack of “basic civility” on Saturday evening.
Obama had been in the middle of talking about the political environment, which he identifies as being full of “heated” rhetoric in the wake of Friday’s attack on the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, when someone from the crowd attempted to interrupt him, yelling “Mr. President” loudly from the audience in a tone that appeared to be challenging the former commander-in-chief.
The crowd responded to the heckler with a flurry of boos, prompting Obama to grab their attention again. “Hey, so this is what I’m saying! Whoa,” said Obama over the noise. “There is a process that we’ve set up in our democracy.”
“Right now I’m talking, you’ll have a chance to talk sometime,” he said, as his voice was drowned out again by the raucously cheering crowd.
The crowd’s shouting continued as Obama managed to say: “That’s not a great way to do this. It’s not, you wouldn’t do that at a workplace. If you wouldn’t just interrupt people in the middle of a conversation — It’s not how we do things.”
“Basic civility and courtesy works,” he added.
The crowd continued to escalate after another heckler was escorted out of the crowd, with Obama eventually regaining the room’s attention.
“Not only is this an example of what I’m talking about, it’s an example of how we get distracted,” Obama said, going on to reference the dog character from the Disney film “UP!” to underscore how easily distracted one can become in politics. “That’s us with politics. We get distracted instead of focusing on what’s important!”
During his speech, Obama condemned negative rhetoric on both sides of the aisle, and the consequences of not doing so.
“If elected officials don’t do more to explicitly reject that kind of rhetoric. If they tacitly support it or encourage their supporters to stand outside voting places armed with guns and dressed in tactical gear, more people can get hurt. And we’re going to be violating the basic spirit of this country,” Obama warned.
The former president remains one of the most popular members of the Democratic Party nearly six years after leaving the White House. On Tuesday, he’ll continue rallying for his party in Nevada.