Bernie Sanders said Friday that Democratic presidential rival Hillary Clinton has evolved her positions to closely mirror his own.
On ABC’s “Good Morning America,” David Muir played a clip of a “Saturday Night Live” sketch in which Clinton is shown changing her tone and talking points in order to morph into a Sanders-like character.
“Do you think being in the race, you have forced Secretary Clinton to evolve her message?” Muir asked a smiling Sanders.
“I think if you look at issue after issue after issue she has moved very much closer to us,” the Vermont senator responded.
“What people really have got to look at is who has been there for decades,” Sanders continued. “Who has time after time taken on the special interests, whether it’s Wall Street, the drug companies, the fossil fuel industries? I think if people check the record, they’ll find that Bernie Sanders was there a lot earlier than Hillary Clinton.”
Sanders, who boasted on the show that he has won six of the last seven primary and caucus contests, looks to take that momentum against Clinton in Wisconsin on Tuesday, and again chip away at her delegate lead.
Sanders also stood by a promise not to make his campaign negative should he beat Clinton and face Republican front-runner Donald Trump in the general election, and said he thinks voters want to hear about the real issues.
“What I will do is contrast my record to Republicans who want to cut Social Security, want to cut Medicare, believe that climate change is a hoax, want to give hundreds of billions of dollars to tax breaks to the one-tenth of one percent,” he said. “So I will contrast my record, but I think the American people want to hear about the issues relevant to their lives, not about savage attacks against other people.”
