Sen. Bernie Sanders demanded an apology from rival Hillary Clinton after she accused the Vermont senator of spreading lies about her campaign.
“Secretary Clinton owes us an apology. We were not lying,” Sanders said at a rally in Sheboygan, Wis., Friday evening. “We were telling the truth.”
Sanders was responding to a video posted online Thursday showing Clinton being confronted at an event in New York by a woman working for the environmental group Greenpeace about her contributions to her campaign by the fossil fuel industry. The activist asked if Clinton would act on her vow to fight climate by rejecting “fossil fuel money” to her campaign in the future.
“I am so sick of the Sanders campaign lying about me, Clinton said. “I am sick of it,” she said, explaining her campaign can receive contributions from employees of oil and gas companies but not the firms themselves.
Sanders said Friday that the truth is that Clinton “has relied heavily on funds from lobbyists working for the oil, gas and coal industry.”
Citing an analysis done by Greenpeace, Sanders said Clinton’s campaign and her super PAC have received more than $4.5 million from the fossil fuel industry. He added that more than 50 oil, gas and coal lobbyists have contributed to Clinton’s campaign, including 43 that gave the maximum, $2,700, allowed in the primary contest.
“Secretary Clinton, you owe our campaign an apology,” Sanders said. “We were telling the truth.”
Clinton’s campaign refused to back down. They blamed Sanders and his supporters for breaking a promise to run a positive campaign.
“Despite their pledge to run a positive campaign about the issues, we have seen increasingly ratcheted-up personal attacks from Senator Sanders, his campaign and their surrogates,” Clinton’s National Communication Director Jen Palmieri said in a statement reported by ABC News. “It’s disappointing that they’ve doubled down on negative character attacks that deliberately mislead voters rather than debate the issues.”
“Their latest attack over campaign contributions ignores their own donations from individuals who work for oil and gas companies, and most importantly it ignores Hillary Clinton’s record and agenda. We will not apologize for calling out these kinds of schemes for what they are — a desperate move from a campaign that has clearly decided that the only hope for a path to victory is through misleading attacks,” Palmieri said.
