FLASHBACK: Bernie Got Riled Up When MSNBC Asked Him About Now-Controversial Private Dinner With Warren
In a 2018 interview with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell, Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) snapped after being asked about his now-controversial dinner with fellow 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).
After Mitchell asked about the dinner, which reportedly took place the night before, Sanders shot back, “Do you really think that the American people are eagerly interested? I talk to Elizabeth Warren every single day.”
“Yeah, I do,” replied Mitchell, prompting Sanders to snap, “No, I don’t.”
“I think maybe the American people want to know how we’re gonna provide healthcare to all our people, let’s discuss it,” he declared. “How we’re gonna take on the greed of the pharmaceutical industry. How we’re gonna end this terrible war in Yemen. The fact that two senators get together to chat becomes a big deal, that’s a real problem I think from the media that we should be thinking about.”
The private meeting made headlines again Monday after unnamed sources alleged Sanders told warren during the dinner that he didn’t think a woman could win the election.
“The two agreed that if they ultimately faced each other as presidential candidates, they should remain civil and avoid attacking one another, so as not to hurt the progressive movement. They also discussed how to best take on President Donald Trump, and Warren laid out two main reasons she believed she would be a strong candidate: She could make a robust argument about the economy and earn broad support from female voters,” reported CNN on Monday. “Sanders responded that he did not believe a woman could win.”
“The description of that meeting is based on the accounts of four people: two people Warren spoke with directly soon after the encounter, and two people familiar with the meeting,” CNN explained, adding that three sources said “Warren told Sanders she disagreed with his assessment that a woman could not win.”
BuzzFeed confirmed the report.
Sanders, however, denied the report, claiming in a statement it’s “ludicrous to believe that at the same meeting where Elizabeth Warren told me she was going to run for president, I would tell her that a woman couldn’t win.”
“It’s sad that, three weeks before the Iowa caucus and a year after that private conversation, staff who weren’t in the room are lying about what happened,” he continued. “What I did say that night was that Donald Trump is a sexist, a racist and a liar who would weaponize whatever he could. Do I believe a woman can win in 2020? Of course! After all, Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by 3 million votes in 2016.”
Watch above via MSNBC.
