ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Bill Clinton is having a tough go of it on the campaign trail.

Last month, he complained about the “awful legacy” of the past eight years, and on Thursday had to defend himself, and the crime bill he signed as president, to Black Lives Matter activists. In the meantime, he threw Vice President Joseph R. Biden under the bus.

“I like protesters,” Mr. Clinton said at a rally in Pennsylvania, as he was forced to address the protesters. “But the ones who won’t let you answer are afraid to tell the truth.

Here’s what happened. Let’s just tell the whole story,” he said. When I became president, the headlines in the newspapers were full off … Vice President Biden … he was the chairman of the committee that had jurisdiction over this crime bill,” Mr. Clinton said.

“I had an assault weapons ban in it. I had money for inner-city kids for out-of-school activities. We had 110,000 police officers so we could put people on the street and not in these military vehicles and police would look like the people they were policing.

“We did all of that. And Biden said, ‘You can’t pass this bill. The Republicans will kill it if you don’t put more sentencing in.’ I talked to a lot of African-American groups. They thought black lives mattered. They said, ‘Take this bill because our kids are being shot in the streets by gangs,” Mr. Clinton said.

Black Lives Matter protesters complain that the crime bill Mr. Clinton signed into law has had disparaging effects on their communities, disproportionately incarcerating young black men and making them the targets of law enforcement activities.

Protesters targeted Hillary Clinton at a private fundraiser in South Carolina earlier this year, echoing her words of support for the 1994 bill.

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