PAINFUL: Bernie Sanders Mistakenly Answers the Wrong Question for 2 and a Half Minutes at NAACP Forum

Independent Vermont Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders spent several minutes delivering an impassioned answer about health care during an NAACP forum. But the question he’d been asked was not about health care.

Senator Sanders was one of several candidates to appear Saturday at the Iowa NAACP’s Economic Freedom Presidential Town Hall, and was well-received. But Sanders hit a snag when Des Moines NAACP President and moderator Kameron Middlebrooks asked him one question, and Sanders decided to answer another.

“Senator, the average cost of child care in Iowa is $8,200 a year,” Middlebrooks said, adding “This is clearly, this is beyond the means of many African American households in Iowa.”

“How would you both increase the availability of high quality care, why the same time reducing the costs so providers could still have a livable wage?” he asked.

But Sanders instead launched into a lengthy, impassioned answer about the cost of health care. The response generated several rounds of applause from the audience.

When he had concluded, the moderators did not make a note of the slip-up, instead inviting Sanders to deliver his one-minute closing remarks. But during those remarks, the moderators could be heard chuckling about the answer on hot mics.

Elsewhere in Sanders’ appearance, he responded to a question about the 2 million health insurance industry jobs that could be lost under Medicare for All, promising support for displaced workers and training into other healthcare-related fields.

“The people who work for health insurance companies are not my enemies,” Sanders said. On Friday, Elizabeth Warren suggested those 2 million workers could go work on car or life insurance. She also claimed to have released a plan for those displaced workers, when her Medicare for All cost plan stated that her transition plan is still several weeks away.

Watch the clip above, via The Des Moines Register.

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