Bernie Sanders criticized the media as much as his last Democratic primary rival, Joe Biden, in his first remarks to the press after losing 10 Super Tuesday states to the former vice president.
“There has never been a campaign in recent history that has taken on the entire political establishment, and that is an establishment which is working frantically to try and defeat us,” the Vermont senator said in a press conference on Wednesday. “And there’s not been a campaign, I think, that has been having to deal with the kind of venom we’re seeing from some in the corporate media.”
He referenced a CNN segment with the chyron “Can Either Coronavirus or Bernie Sanders Be Stopped?” and then-MSNBC host Chris Matthews comparing Sanders’s Nevada caucuses win to the 1940 Nazi invasion of France.
“This campaign has been compared to the coronavirus on television. We have been described as the Nazi army marching across France,” Sanders said.
Sanders then turned his aim to the former vice president, acknowledging that he and Biden are “basically neck and neck” in delegates after Super Tuesday. Results from the contests are still being calculated, but the Associated Press projects that Biden now has 566 delegates while Sanders has 501. A candidate needs 1,991 delegates to win the Democratic presidential nomination on the first ballot.
Sanders called Biden, 77, a “decent human being” but asserted he is “heavily supported by the corporate establishment.” Sanders, 78, noted their differing records and Biden’s support for a “dysfunctional and cruel” healthcare system compared to Sanders’s Medicare for All government-funded plan that would eliminate private insurance.
“What this campaign, I think, is increasingly about is, which side are you on?” Sanders said. “Does anyone seriously believe that a president backed by the corporate world is going to bring about the changes in this country that working families and the middle class and lower-income people desperately need?”
“I look forward to a serious debate on the serious issues facing this country, and I would hope that the media will help us do that, allow that kind of debate to take place,” Sanders said.
