Bernie Sanders, America’s favorite mall kiosk tax preparer, is going to have to do a lot of mansplaining to work himself out of this one.
According to reports, during a private meeting in 2018 between him and Elizabeth Warren, the two longtime friends sat down to discuss what was at stake with Trump at the helm. They discussed facing off against each other and what that might mean for their friendship. The two agreed to keep it classy and Warren reportedly explained why she’d make a good candidate: One, she had a good argument about the economy and two, she’d earn female support.
Sanders replied: A woman can’t win.
Don’t take it from me, take it from CNN:
The description of that meeting is based on the accounts of four people: two people Warren spoke with directly soon after the encounter, and two people familiar with the meeting.
That evening, Sanders expressed frustration at what he saw as a growing focus among Democrats on identity politics, according to one of the people familiar with the conversation. Warren told Sanders she disagreed with his assessment that a woman could not win, three of the four sources said.
Sanders says it’s all bullshit. And when asked if the sources were women, he then chuckled and said, “Come on, man. You know women be lying.”
“It is ludicrous to believe that at the same meeting where Elizabeth Warren told me she was going to run for president, I would tell her that a woman couldn’t win,” Sanders said. “It’s sad that, three weeks before the Iowa caucus and a year after that private conversation, staff who weren’t in the room are lying about what happened. What I did say that night was that Donald Trump is a sexist, a racist and a liar who would weaponize whatever he could. Do I believe a woman can win in 2020? Of course! After all, Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by 3 million votes in 2016.”
Warren’s communications director Kristen Orthman declined to comment to CNN.
Who knows what happened, but four sources is three more than most people have when telling a story about a night. It doesn’t seem as if Warren has let that alleged comment affect her relationship with Sanders as they both kept up appearances, at least to push the progressive movement forward.
While many men and 53 percent of white women—who voted against their own self-interest to elect an unbagged pile of dog shit—have a problem with electing a female president, Warren remains the lone woman polling in the top five of the Democratic field, so feel that bern.