In the he said, she said this week between Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, a CNN debate moderator sided Tuesday evening with the senator from Massachusetts.
This is now the second time that someone on the cable network’s payroll has worked to tip the scales against Sanders during a Democratic presidential primary.
During Tuesday’s debate in Des Moines, Iowa, CNN’s Abby Phillip asked the Vermont lawmaker to address reports that he had told Warren during a closed-door meeting in 2018 that a woman could not win the presidency.
“Sen. Sanders, CNN reported yesterday, and Sen. Warren confirmed in a statement that, in 2018, you told her that you did not believe that a woman could win the election. Why did you say that?” Phillip asked.
Note the question’s framing.
There is no evidence the Vermont senator said this, and he denied it prior to the debate. But Warren claims he did. Absent hard evidence of what was said, there is no real way to know who is telling the truth. I would probably put my money on Sanders for the simple reason that I don’t know if he is a shameless, self-serving liar, but I know that Warren is.
Somehow, Phillip failed to ask Sanders whether he actually said it. She asked why he said it. The implicit suggestion is that the senator is lying about what was said in that meeting.
“Well, as a matter of fact, I didn’t say it,” Sanders said in response, claiming for the second time this week that reports of what was said in his conversation with Warren are false. “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.”
The senator added, “Anybody who knows me knows that it’s incomprehensible that I would think that a woman cannot be president of the United States. 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.”
Phillip followed up, “Sen. Sanders, I do want to be clear here: You’re saying that you never told Sen. Warren that a woman could not win the election.”
“That is correct,” he said.
Then came the really amazing part.
“Sen. Warren,” Phillip continued, “what did you think when Sen. Sanders told you a woman could not win the election?”
Just like that, the CNN reporter moved the suggestion that Sanders is lying from implicit to explicit.
CNN: “Sen. Sanders, I do want to be clear here, you’re saying that you never told senator Warren that a woman could not win the election?”
SANDERS: “That is correct.”
CNN: “Sen. Warren, what did you think when senator Sanders told you a woman could not win the election?” pic.twitter.com/BZ1NajmQE9— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) January 15, 2020
There really is no better way to describe this moment than to echo journalist Matt Taibbi, who said of the evening that it was “an unusually vile performance by CNN.”
It is a good thing Warren does not have a long and shameful history of telling outrageous lies to advance her career. Otherwise, this would be really embarrassing for Phillip.
