Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is anything but a socialist when he hits the road, reportedly demanding his hotel room have a king-sized bed and be kept at a carbon-burning 60 degrees.
The independent senator, who has touted living a modest lifestyle and decried the country’s “1%,” might have some explaining to do following claims about his life outside the Capitol in Edward-Isaac Dovere’s Battle for the Soul: Inside the Democrats’ Campaigns to Defeat Trump.
Sanders, a proponent of the Green New Deal and an avid climate activist, has amassed a list of “minimum requirements” before he boards his private flights, Dovere wrote.
BERNIE SANDERS JUST BOUGHT A THIRD HOME. TELL THAT TO THE 99 PERCENT
“Charter flights were a revelation to him. He would always be a little embarrassed pulling into the private terminals, but boy, did he get a kick out of not worrying about being late for a flight that couldn’t take off without him,” the book said, according to Fox News. “By the beginning of 2017, his staff had put together a document laying out his minimum requirements for the kind of aircraft he’d require if asked to go on trips beyond his regular route back and forth between Vermont and Washington. Couldn’t be too cramped. Couldn’t get too bumpy.”
Staffers for the failed Democratic presidential candidate were also purportedly required to detail hotel accommodations in a list, dubbed the “Senator Comfort Memo.” Sanders was said to have had “zero tolerance” for any mishaps, including a room without the preferred temperature or one that was too close to an icebox.
In one reported instance, Sanders forced a hotel employee to tinker with his thermostat so he could sleep.
“Hotel rooms had to be away from elevators and from ice machines, so that quiet was guaranteed,” Dovere wrote. “He didn’t like getting upgrades and would often switch with an aide if he got the nicer room — ‘If there’s a bomb in there, it’s yours tonight,’ he’d joke — but he liked suites, and he liked bathtubs, and he insisted on a king-size bed, which had to have a down comforter or another blanket in the closet. He preferred that the extra blanket be dark blue, and made of cotton.”
“The temperature in the room had to be kept at 60, even if that required having a staffer sit in the room with an open window in the winter to make sure it cooled enough or calling management in to override the system,” Dovere added. “There was no bending the rules: once on a stop in California, annoyed that his aides couldn’t get the temperature below 65, he had them call the woman from the front desk up to change the thermostat while he sat on the bed, watching. She couldn’t get it to work, and nervously humiliated, she apologized. Sanders didn’t care. ‘So, Chloe,’ he said, annoyed. ‘You don’t want me to sleep tonight?’”
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Dovere’s book was compiled from more than 400 interviews over a four-year period. It details the battle to remove former President Donald Trump, who was thought to be unbeatable, from the White House.
Sanders did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Washington Examiner.
