Code Pink's Medea Benjamin: 'Speaking Out' Against President 'Not Rude'

Code Pink's Medea Benjamin: 'Speaking Out' Against President 'Not Rude'

CNN’s Carol Costello browbeats Medea Benjamin, the Code Pink co-founder who interrupted President Obama’s foreign policy speech Thursday.

“I want to take objection with the term ‘heckler,’ because I actually had an invitation to get in,” Benjamin said. “I felt compelled to speak out; I waited ’til the end of the speech.”

She said she was unsatisfied with the President’s reassurances on changing the Administration’s policy on drone strikes and Guantanamo Bay, arguing with Costello that he could, as Commander-in-Chief, reverse these policies unilaterally.

Asked whether she might be undermining her own cause by being “rude” to the President, Benjamin responded, “I think killing innocent people with drones is rude; I think keeping people who are innocent in indefinite detention for 11 years is rude; I think not respecting the lives of Muslim people is rude; I think not apologizing to the families of innocent people who are killed is rude.

“There are a lot of rude things about our policies,” she concluded. “Speaking out is actually not rude, but it’s the basis of a democratic society where people use their voices to try to make our country better and our policies more in line with the rule of law.”

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