Former President Bill Clinton made an impassioned plea in support of Vice President Kamala Harris during a campaign stop Tuesday afternoon at the University of Pittsburgh in Greensburg.

Clinton spoke to a standing-room-only crowd of more than 200 people packed into the Campana Chapel and Lecture Center in Hempfield. His speaking program included support for the Harris-Walz economic plan as the presidential election enters the home stretch just a week before the Nov. 5 election.

But his message changed after a Pitt student interrupted the former president’s 45-minute speech to protest the war in Gaza.

Clinton addressed the protester briefly and promised to reconsider her comments. Toward the end of his remarks, he chatted back and forth with her, including a history lesson about his time in the White House nearly three decades ago when he tried to bring peace to the Middle East. He defended Harris’ position. She has called for a ceasefire, humanitarian aid and full support for Israel’s right to self-defense.

“We have to rebuild it. The reason you should support Kamala Harris is not because she has a detailed plan and can have one, but because this thing is broken into a million pieces and the facts are different. If I were there, I wouldn’t be able to get what I wanted again. It’s the hardest thing in the world, and one thing I know: we can’t kill ourselves here by killing ourselves. The reason I support them is because Trump says you have to support me because I will support Israel. That’s not necessarily true. “Protecting the current administration and its policies could make things worse,” Clinton said.

In the final days of his presidency, Clinton outlined what he described as a peace agreement with the Israeli government and Palestinian leaders. That deal collapsed when Palestinian leaders pulled out of the deal at the eleventh hour, a circumstance he still laments, he said.

“Now we have to redo it. Younger people with better connections and better contexts should do it,” Clinton said. “If you want peace there, and you want it to be fair to both sides and lead to security for both sides, you have to choose the person who you believe is the fairest and most likely to achieve that.” … But I know that if she wins, she’ll be asking people in all the major communities who know what’s important. If she doesn’t win, he (former President Donald Trump) will support the most dogmatic and authoritarian parts of the Israeli government. You just have to decide.”

The young protester declined to identify herself or be interviewed after Tuesday’s event.

Clinton, returning to Westmoreland County where he gave a major health care speech as president in 1994 and campaigned for his wife in the 2008 Democratic primary, praised Harris’ economic proposals and criticized Trump’s suitability for office.

He also addressed comments made during Trump’s rally in New York last weekend that focused on racial and ethnic divisions, as well as jokes from a comedian in which he referred to Puerto Rico as “a floating island of trash.”

“They didn’t deserve what they got the other night. This should be a day of unity, so I think it’s especially for this day that we should say that we are all Puerto Ricans,” Clinton said.

It was a message that resonated with 19-year-old Pitt-Greensburg student Debany Renovato. Renovato, who is from Texas and whose parents immigrated to the United States from Mexico, said she wanted to hear Clinton’s reaction to the hostile comments during Trump’s rally.

“I think as a Latin American, I felt like I was represented today. It broke my heart to hear what they said about immigrants. As a child of immigrants, Clinton’s comments were special to me. I hope many young people will vote for Kamala Harris because she will support our rights,” Renovato said.

Clinton was a popular political figure in Westmoreland County and made a quick stop at the White Rabbit Café in downtown Greensburg before his speech on Tuesday. The former president spoke about his connection to the area, noting, among other things, that he was the last Democratic presidential candidate to win Westmoreland County, a county that is now clearly Republican.

Trump won Westmoreland County with 63% of the vote in 2020 and by more than 31 percentage points four years earlier when he defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Local Democrats are hoping to narrow Republicans’ expected margin of victory over Trump this year as part of Harris’ path to winning Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes.

“I won this county twice – I ran both times – and no Democrat has won it since. I want you to break this trend,” Clinton said.