Sanders Questioned on ‘Bernie Bro Behavior’ at Town Hall: Anyone Who Claims to Support Me Shouldn’t Engage in Bullying
During tonight’s big CNN Las Vegas town hall, Bernie Sanders was asked by one woman in attendance to disavow the “Bernie bro behavior.”
“I will condemn, absolutely anybody, including my campaign or any other campaign, that makes vicious personal attacks against people. What our people are involved in, we are a campaign which believes in compassion, which believes in justice. So I don’t tolerate ugly attacks against anybody,” Sanders responded.
He went on to say that people on his campaign have been on the receiving end of nasty attacks as well, telling the audience, “We have an internet which is essentially the wild west.”
“We’ve got millions and millions of supporters and I dare say, 99.9% are people who would never, ever do that,” Sanders continued. “And I urge other candidates also to be mindful of these ugly personal attacks that have come into my campaign.”
Anderson Cooper jumped in to ask about the attacks from other campaigns, given the harassment and attacks against Culinary Union leaders after the union criticized Sanders on Medicare for All.
Sanders responded:
“I’m totally against online bullying and harassment. And I can condemn anybody who claims — you know, I have a hard time understanding, given my views, which everybody knows, how anybody who thinks they are supporting me would do some ugly and terrible things. But also, let me just say this — and I don’t want to be overly paranoid here — is that we live in a crazy time. And there are a lot of folks out there who do bots and all this other thing. I saw some of those things. And there are people out there who want to divide the progressive movement.”
He added, “Anybody out there who claims to be a Bernie Sanders supporter, we work with the unions. This is a union-led campaign. We believe in unions. We will never attack union leadership and we will not attack people on a personal basis. We can have a debate about the issues, but I do not believe in online bullying, end of discussion.”
You can watch above, via CNN.
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