During President Obama’s speech to the National Defense University, he was interrupted a handful of times by a protester who called for him to shut down the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (video after the jump).
As so often happens when there is a heckler, news coverage of the speech spent some time talking about the heckler rather than the meat of the speech itself. No cable news channel dwelled on the protester, but both CNN and MSNBC spent time talking about her right after it concluded that would otherwise have been spent talking about what the President actually said. Fox News didn’t mention the protester at all right after the speech, even during a segment about the President’s comments on Guantanamo.
Here’s what was said on cable news right after the speech concluded:
Jake Tapper on CNN: “At several points president Obama was interrupted by a protester, a woman demanding the immediate closure of gitmo. The President was trying to be patient, he went off script and said her voice was worth listening to even if he disagreed with her because she illustrated the point that these are very, very tough issues.”
Kristin Welker on MSNBC : “One headline: you heard someone interrupt the president twice calling on him to close Guantanamo Bay. the second time, she really went on for quite a while and you heard the president make that point that he was going off script to respond to her remarks.”
VIDEO:
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