President Obama will sit down Wednesday with Sen. Bernie Sanders, the socialist senator who is giving Hillary Clinton a run for her money in polls of Iowa and New Hampshire primary voters.
The president will meet with the Vermont independent behind closed doors in the Oval Office, and there will be no press availability before or afterward, the White House said in its guidance for Obama’s Wednesday schedule.
The timing of the meeting, coming as it does just days before Monday’s Iowa caucus, is raising eyebrows among Democratic voters as the party has become somewhat split between the two candidates.
But White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Obama and Sanders first discussed the meeting in December when Sanders attended the congressional holiday ball at the White House.
“The two will meet privately in the Oval Office and there will be no formal agenda,” he said Tuesday.
The Sanders-Obama summit comes after the president offered high praise for Hillary Clinton and brushed aside comparisons between Sanders’ surging campaign and Obama’s against Clinton in 2008.
“I think Bernie came in with the luxury of being a complete long-shot and just letting loose,” said Obama told Politico in an interview posted Monday. “I think Hillary came in with the both privilege and burden of being perceived as the front-runner. And, as a consequence, you know, where they stood at the beginning probably helps to explain why the language sometimes is different.”
But Obama also gave Sanders credit for being authentic, something Vice President Joe Biden has also said. Neither said Clinton had an authenticity problem, but neither specifically gave Clinton credit for being authentic.
The White House has repeatedly stressed that Obama will remain neutral in the Democratic primary.
