Kirk A. Bado

USA TODAY NETWORK - Tennessee

This story has been updated to clarify the timing of when Dr. Carol Paris interrupted President Trump's speech.

Several protesters interrupted President Donald Trump's Nashville rally at the Municipal Auditorium Wednesday night.

After one protester early in the speech garnered a chorus of boos from the crowd, Trump stopped mid-speech to scold the demonstration.

"One person" he said as security confronted the protester, "and that will be the story tomorrow."

Several others also interrupted. One of them was Dr. Carol Paris. Holding up a banner proclaiming "Improved Medicare for All," she began shouting at the president to provide Medicare for all before being escorted out by security.

"It was nerve racking, I was frightened," Paris said in a telephone interview after the speech. "But I believe this is important."

Paris is the current president of the national organization Physicians for a National Health Program and is on the steering committee of Health Over Profit for Everyone. She said she wrote a letter to the president weeks ago seeking a meeting to discuss healthcare reform. She said she never received a response. After she read that the president would be coming to Nashville, she decided to take matters into her own hands.

"It was nerve racking, but I had to do it," she said.



This is not the first time Paris has demonstrated for healthcare reform. When the Affordable Care Act was working its way through Congress in 2009 and 2010, she went to several demonstrations and protests.

"This is important," she said. "People are dying in this country for lack of healthcare, I'm a physician and I can't stand by that."

Before the rally, an announcement over the arena's public address system asked attendees to shout down protesters but not to touch them and let the police take care of them.

Shortly after raising her sign and yelling at the president, security approached Paris and led her out of the auditorium, she said. The police took down her information, but did not arrest or cite Paris. They took her to the door and asked her to leave, Paris said. But she isn't deterred in her advocacy mission.

"The same thing I always do," she said. "I'm going to continue to educate and write."

Reach Kirk A. Bado on Twitter at @kirk_bado

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