Warren Mayor James Fouts (file photo)
Warren Mayor James Fouts
Warren Mayor James Fouts, who doesn't shy away from controversy, tells Buzzfeed that security threatened to eject him from Sunday night's Democratic debate in Flint if he did not quiet down after he kept saying positive things about Bernie Sanders.
Fouts says he attended both the Republican and Democratic debates, and the audience at the Republican debate was loud.
“The Democratic debate is totally controlled by Hillarys [sic] good friend DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz,” Fouts wrote on Facebook Monday. “No commentary is allowed by the audience. Particularly if you are cheering Bernie Sanders. Persons who do not adhere to Hillarys [sic] rules are threatened with expulsion.”
Evan McMorris-Santoro of BuzzFeed writes:
At the debate, Fouts sat in the center section of the hall, directly behind Wasserman Schultz, the DNC chair. Next to him was his longtime executive assistant. Fouts told BuzzFeed News that at multiple times during the beginning if the debate, he turned to his executive assistant, praised Sanders’ performance and said the Flint debate — added to the calendar after the initial set were announced — proved that more debates were a good idea.
“I was just saying ‘great job, Bernie!’ and ‘we need more debates,’” Fouts said. He said that at one point he vocally criticized Clinton for “wrapping herself around Obama.”
He insisted he was speaking at a “normal conversation” level. Staff for the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia who were sitting near Wasserman Schultz and Fouts said he was being “very disruptive” and made it hard to hear the candidates. Wasserman Schultz did not respond to a request for comment.
During an early commercial break, security confronted Fouts, roused him from his seat and pulled him and his assistant off to the side of the hall. He was told there had been “complaints” about his behavior and that security had been ordered to throw him out.
“The sergeant at arms said, ‘The people that run this want you ejected, they don’t want you here,’” Fouts recalled. He said his assistant asked if the complainer was Wasserman Schultz.
“The security guy said, ‘don’t say I said it,” Fouts said.
