‘I’m Speaking Now’: CNN’s Keilar, Biden Adviser Symone Sanders Get in Fiery Clash Over Iowa Chaos
CNN’s Brianna Keilar clashed with Biden senior advisor Symone Sanders in a remarkably heated back-and-forth this afternoon over what the Biden camp has been saying about the Iowa chaos.
Sanders echoed what Biden said earlier about the risk of Bernie Sanders being on the ticket allowing President Donald Trump to attack the party as socialists. Keilar did note Sanders used to work for the Vermont senator, and she responded, “Brianna, if I may, I was a good spokesperson in 2016 and would offer that I’m a great spokesperson now.”
As for Iowa, Keilar noted how the Biden camp “has raised questions about the legitimacy of the process.”
As they went back and forth Keilar jumped in to ask Sanders to answer directly, saying, “I want to pin you down on this, this is very important. Yes, I already said that, the data is partial, but that said, that’s not what we heard from Kate Bedingfield, she wasn’t saying that it was partial, she was saying this process threw into question the legitimacy of the data as we have seen it. Is that true? Should we doubt, in your view, in the campaign’s view… let me finish, Symone. I let you finish, let me finish.”
“You didn’t actually, but go ahead,” Sanders remarked.
“I did before, multiple times,” Keilar said, before asking again, “Are you saying we should doubt the numbers we see?”
Sanders pointed to a number of failures that came up across the state.
Keilar again confronted her on whether they believe the results they’re seeing, asking, “I’m going to interrupt you when you’re not answering the question. Is this data correct? In your view, is it correct?”
She played the video of Bedingfield saying, “”If you have a process where you can’t be confident that the results that are being reported are reflective of the votes that people cast last night in the process, that’s a real concern.”
Sanders agreed it is a “real concern” before Keilar said “I’m speaking now” and continued:
“For detractors of President Trump, including you, including Democrats, one of their major concerns is he throws into question the legitimacy of institutions, not the least of which is the election process. That appears to be what you are currently doing now by stating you’re not trusting the numbers we’re seeing.”
Sanders shot back, “Are you equating us raising legitimate concerns about a process where the app broke down, we don’t have accounting for presidential preference cards, the phone lines and the backups didn’t work — are you equating us raising legitimate questions what we could see Monday night Donald Trump and his campaign are doing?”
They kept going back and forth over the Iowa numbers and when Keilar asked if they believe the Iowa Democratic party that the partial data is correct, Sanders said, “I guess we’ll have to take the Iowa Democratic Party at their word, Brianna.”
You can watch above, via CNN.
