Former President Bill Clinton told a heckler Friday that he essentially had no choice but to support a Democratic primary candidate who supported the controversial 1990s crime bill that he signed.
The legislation has been accused of bringing about mass incarceration and being tough on minorities.
Clinton reminded a man who interrupted him to protest the crime bill that Hillary Clinton’s opponent, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), also supported it at the time.
"You don't have anybody you can vote for who didn't have anything to do with this," Clinton said, as the New Jersey crowd laughed.
The exchange began earlier when the man interrupted Clinton's speech.
"Why would you put more people in prison?" the protestor asked.
Someone yelled at the heckler to be quiet, but Clinton engaged him, wondering if he was talking about the "crime bill." What the man said next was unclear, but he pointed at Clinton and spoke to him in an accusatory tone.
"Wait, wait, wait. Don't get upset," Clinton said, to more laughter from the crowd. The heckler cut Clinton off again, and the crowd yelled at him to let the former president answer.
"May I answer? The crime bill, 1994, which you must be talking about, also contained a provision which no one ever mentions, which forbade first-term drug offenders from being covered by the excessive sentencing laws," Clinton said. "Did you know that? I bet you didn't."
Clinton, as he did with Black Lives Matter protesters he clashed with last month in Philadelphia, touted some of the bill's positive effects and praised President Obama's work on criminal justice reform.
Later, when a separate protester interrupted Clinton, the former president said that while racism, sexism, and homophobia had decreased in America, people were still too afraid to hear opinions that differed from their own.
"He went off mad, because I told him the truth," Clinton said of his heckler.