Sen. Bernie Sanders denied recent reports that he told Sen. Elizabeth Warren a woman could not win the presidency when he was put on the spot about the rumor.
Reports circulated Monday that Sanders, 78, told the Massachusetts Democrat during a 2018 meeting that “he does not believe that a woman can win” the Oval Office, something the independent Vermont senator immediately denied. Warren, 70, however, broke her silence hours later and backed up the claim.
“Well, as a matter of fact, I didn’t say it,” Sanders said during Tuesday night’s Democratic presidential primary debate. “And I don’t want to waste a whole lot of time on this, because this is what Donald Trump and maybe some of the media want.”
“Anybody who knows me knows that it’s incomprehensible that I would think that a woman cannot be president of the United States,” he continued. “Go to YouTube today. There’s a video of me 30 years ago talking about how a woman could become president of the United States.”
[Related: Sanders and Warren ‘he said, she said’ feud could wreck left-wing White House hopes]
Sanders then invoked the 2016 presidential election as an example of his support for women.
“In 2015, I deferred, in fact, to Sen. Warren. There was a movement to draft Sen. Warren to run for president. And you know what, I stayed back. Sen. Warren decided not to run, and I then did run afterwards,” he said. “Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 3 million votes. How could anybody in a million years not believe that a woman could become president of the United States?”
“And let me be very clear,” Sanders continued. “If any of the women on this stage or any of the men on this stage win the nomination — I hope that’s not the case, I hope it’s me — but if they do, I will do everything in my power to make sure that they are elected in order to defeat the most dangerous president in the history of our country.”
The controversy followed the end of an apparent nonaggression pact between the two candidates, who frequently team up to defend their policies from their more center-left rivals, when a leaked Sanders campaign memo revealed the candidate’s team had encouraged volunteers to tell voters leaning toward Warren that she brings “no new bases into the Democratic Party.”
