Joe Biden silenced the room at a recent rally for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in a way only he could.
Man Heckles Biden Over Syria Situation
At a rally on Thursday in Cleveland, Ohio, a man who flew to Kurdistan, on his own, to fight ISIS alongside YPG heckled Biden regarding the recent decision to require YPG to withdraw from the city of Manbij, Syria, in order to continue receiving U.S. support.
The man yelled,
“My friends died, my American friends!”
The man continued to yell even as the crowd’s chants of “Hillary! Hillary!” grew stronger. Finally, Biden hit a breaking point and shot back,
“Will you listen? So did my son, OK?”
Biden was, of course, referring to his son, Beau, who passed away last summer after battling brain cancer. Beau Biden was an Iraq war veteran and the former attorney general of Delaware.
Joe Biden Offers To Speak To Heckler
After the outburst, Biden offered to speak privately to the man, saying on the stage,
“Come back after and talk to me about this. OK? You have my permission.”
According to The Guardian,
“Shortly afterwards the man could be seen talking to secret service agents and appearing to head to a backstage area.”
The man, who refers to himself as “Reinas ISIS-Slayer” in his YouTube video about his trip to the Middle East, told The Guardian on Friday,
“At first they toyed with the idea of my meeting Biden, but in the end I was told that he didn’t have time for me. So I offered my phone number, so that Joe Biden could contact me. I’m still waiting.”
While it’s true that Beau’s death and the deaths of this man’s friends in Syria are not connected, it’s quite obvious that Biden’s grief is still quite raw. I think Biden’s full humanity was on display in that moment. He snapped in frustration, not in anger, and spoke to the man like a human being.
Watch the exchange, posted by The Guardian, here:
Featured Image by Kelly Kline via Flickr under CC BY-SA 2.0 license
