Sanders Spars With Chris Cuomo Over Argument He Is Dismissing Dem Voters as the ‘Establishment’: ‘No, No, No, No! Hold It! That Is Not Fair!’

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders pushed back hard on Chris Cuomo when the CNN host argued that his campaign was conflating voters supporting 2020 rival Joe Biden with the party “establishment.”

During a segment on the eve of the critical Michigan primary, Sanders forcefully rejected the idea that he or his campaign are trying to minimize or disappear the groundswell of voter support that has consolidated behind Biden in the past week. Ever since Biden’s surprisingly resounding victories in the South Carolina primary and on Super Tuesday, the Sanders camp has increasingly come under fire by reporters for its anti-“establishment” rhetoric that tends to dismiss or blame the large numbers of Democrats — particularly older African-Americans and suburban voters — for not supporting their candidate.

“But it’s not just the primaries, Chris,” Sanders said, arguing that he is the best candidate to drive voter turnout against President Donald Trump in the general election. “Does anyone really believe, let me throw it out to you, you know this stuff, that a campaign like Joe’s, which is frankly the same old same old establishment politics supported by the wealthy and they got all the governors and senators supporting them, does anybody really think that that is going to be the campaign of excitement and energy that’s going to grow the base that we need to defeat Trump? I don’t think so.”

“I get your case and you know the counterargument,” Cuomo said in rebuttal. “They say ‘Look what happened last Tuesday, he got all the votes he needed and then some’ and you’re calling the ‘establishment’ what his voters call Democrats and African-Americans. That’s the state of play…”

“No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, Hold it! That is not fair!” Sanders quickly broke in.

“What was unfair about it?” a smiling Cuomo asked. “Go ahead.”

“Let me define what I mean by ‘establishment.’ Don’t do it for me,” Sanders insisted, as Cuomo merely backed down with an “Okay.”

“What I mean by establishment is there are 60 billionaires supporting his campaign…”

“But you said the voters, that he had the establishment voters…” Cuomo interrupted.

“No I didn’t. No, no, no, no, no, nope,” Sanders shot back, before offering a caveat. “If I said that, then I misspoke. I’m talking about the establishment. Can we call billionaires part of the economic establishment? Can we call Michael Bloomberg part of the establishment and Wall Street taking out their checkbooks, the health care industry taking out their checkbooks? That is the establishment. We are taking them on. People are sick and tired of billionaires buying elections and sick and tired of an economy that works well for the people on top but is not working well for working class people who are going nowhere in a hurry over the last 45 years. This country needs Medicare for All like every other major country on Earth, we need to make sure that the wealthy start paying their fair share of taxes and deal with the crisis of climate change. That’s what our campaign is about. It is not what Joe’s campaign is about.”

“I think what we’ll see play out tomorrow night is a function of what people have more confidence in or what they’re less concerned about,” Cuomo replied, “what you’re promising for the future and how to get there versus what Biden may have represented in the past.”

Watch the video above, via CNN.