Republican presidential candidate and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) called protesters who interrupted her speech Thursday "ignorant" and "disrespectful," while at a Veterans Day parade in Columbia, S.C. Friday.
About 10 minutes into a foreign policy speech on the USS Yorktown in Charleston, S.C. Thursday, protesters from the Occupy Wall Street movement interrupted her, using call and response.
"You capitalize on dividing Americans, claiming people that disagree with you are unpatriotic socialists," said the protesters, according to Mount Pleasant Patch. After local police escorted them out, Bachmann said, "Don't you just love the First Amendment?"
"They haven't been told what was done for them, and that's what's a shame," said Bachmann Friday while shaking hands at the parade, according to CNN. "And I think that as soon as they would know, if they understood the heavy price that was paid for that First Amendment right, they'd be much more respectful."
When a woman with no connection to the group apologized for the incident, Bachmann said the protesters were ignorant of the heroes "on the USS Yorktown who paid a big price for them." She added, "They're ignorant and they were disrespectful, but you know someday hopefully they'll come to know the price that was applied."
Bachmann criticized Occupy Wall street in a recent speech in Ames, Iowa. "A vocal minority called Occupy Wall Street believes that the problem we face is capitalism or free markets. It's not. The problem is government doing what both the Constitution and decent morality prohibit, that is crony capitalism," she said.
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