Barack Obama schools heckler about being ‘polite and civil’ at Arizona campaign event: ‘Set up your own rally’

Former President Barack Obama schooled a heckler about being “polite and civil” at an Arizona campaign event on Wednesday night, calmly telling the disruptive man to “set up your own rally”.

The two-term president took to the stage in Phoenix to throw his support behind Democrats Senator Mark Kelly and Secretary of State Katie Hobbs ahead of next week’s midterm elections.

In two closely watched races, Mr Kelly is fighting to hold onto his Senate seat in a race against Republican candidate Blake Masters while Ms Hobbs is taking on Donald Trump-backed Kari Lake in the gubernatorial race.

During Wednesday’s rally, Mr Obama was telling the crowd that Republicans want “an economy that’s very good for folks at the very top, but not always so good for ordinary people” when he was interrupted by a man shouting.

“Like you, Obama!” the heckler shouted.

The former president looked towards the culprit and initially tried to continue with his speech while the man continued to cause a ruckus.

Mr Obama kept his cool, simply stopping and asking: “Are you gonna start yelling?”

The crowd erupted in boos aimed at the heckler while Mr Obama smiled and raised his hands in the air, calmly saying: “Don’t start yelling. Come on. Why you start yelling?”

As the man continued to shout and boos grew louder from the crowd, Mr Obama urged everyone in attendance to remain calm.

“Hold on, everybody,” he said. “Don’t get distracted. Hold up.”

Turning to the heckler, he gave him a lesson in how civil human discourse works.

“Hey, young man, just listen for a second,” he told him.

“You have to be polite and civil when people are talking, then other people are talking and then you get a chance to talk.”

Mr Obama went on to remind him about the hard work that people had put into organising the rally.

“Set up your own rally!” he said.

“A lot of people worked hard for this. Come on, man.”

The heckler was escorted out of the crowd, enabling the rally to continue.

The former president used the rude interruption as an example of the state of American politics, where he says people get “distracted” from what is going on.

“Listen up for a second, please. This is what happens in our politics these days. We get distracted. You got one person yelling and everybody’s yelling,” he said.

“You get one tweet that’s stupid and suddenly everybody’s obsessed with the tweet. We can’t fall for that. We have to stay focused.”

Mr Obama’s cool response comes after he has faced other hecklers while doing the rounds on the midterms circuit this last week.

On Saturday, during a campaign rally in Detroit, Michigan, Mr Obama urged elected officials to “explicitly reject” dangerous rhetoric in the wake of the violent hammer attack on Paul Pelosi.

When he made the comments he was interrupted by a heckler shouting from the crowd.

Mr Obama pointedly told the man: “Sir, this is what I mean… there is a process that we set up in our democracy.

“Right now, I’m talking. You’ll have a chance to talk sometime soon.”