President interrupted three times during speech on drones.

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Courtesy of MSNBC:  

President Barack Obama was repeatedly interrupted by a heckler whose taunts slowed the delivery of a major national security speech in the Washington, D.C. area. 

The unidentified heckler began shouting at the president toward the tail end of his highly-anticipated address, when he touched upon U.S. policy toward detainees suspected of terrorist acts.  

Obama was forced to pause three separate times and talk over the protester, interrupting the flow of the closing section of the speech at National Defense University. 

“I'm about to address it ma'am, but you've got to let me speak,” Obama scolded the woman. “Why don't you sit down and let me tell you exactly what I'd do." 

The antiwar group Code Pink, which often interrupts high-profile political events with vocal protests against U.S. foreign policy and national security strategy, said its founder Medea Benjamin was the person responsible for the interruption. 

Though the president appeared somewhat irritated by the interruption, he said he was willing to cut the woman “some slack, because it’s worth being passionate about.” 

He added after another interruption: “The voice of that woman is worth paying attention to. Obviously I do not agree with much of what she said. And obviously she wasn’t listening to me and much of what I said. But these are tough issues, and the suggestion that we can gloss over them is wrong.”

I think he handled that pretty well. And he is right, this is something many of us feel very passionately about and he, and his administration, need to recognize that.

Here is the transcript of the entire speech in case, like me, you missed it earlier.