>> There was a giant story that took up most of the headlines yesterday involved Elizabeth
Warren, accusing Bernie Sanders of telling her that a woman cannot be elected as president.
Now this was a private conversation that happened between Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders
in December of 2018, so over a year ago.
And at first, the story was reported by CNN, and there were no sources named.
There were four anonymous sources.
None of those individuals were in the room as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren had
that conversation.
So, there was a lot of speculation about what was going on and there was a lot of pressure
toward Warren to just either confirm or deny what CNN was reporting.
Well she did finally put out a statement and the statement infuriated me further.
"I thought a woman could win, he disagreed.
I have no interest in discussing this private meeting any further because Bernie and I have
far more in common than our differences on punditry."
So she didn't give any insight into the context of the conversation.
She, just made a vague statement.
She didn't quote him, she made a vague statement about how he disagreed.
So that doesn't answer a lot of questions.
In fact, that leaves us to question what happened even further.
And so, Cuomo invited me on his program and I thank him for that because it's not often
that you see progressive voices in cable news.
And I was on with Howard Dean.
We're not going to show you clips of Howard Dean because honestly, he didn't say anything
interesting or controversial.
I don't mean that to insult him.
It's just there was nothing there was nothing he said that was like, you know worth discussing
further on the show.
>> So he wasn't like slamming Bernie.
>> He wasn't actually.
>> Okay.
>> He wasn't, he wasn't.
>> Well, that's important to know.
>> Right so, but I do wanna show you a few of the exchanges I had with Cuomo and mostly
I wanna fill in the blanks, because these segments are so short that I didn't get a
chance to make some of the points that I really wanted to make.
So let's take a look.
This entire situation is so incredibly disappointing and also incredibly stupid.
Because in shutting down the conversation and saying that she refuses to talk about
it any further, there are questions that need to be asked.
What was the context of the discussion?
Was he talking about it in the context of where the country is right now?
And also I would love to see anyone in the media hold Joe Biden accountable for literally
saying the exact same thing publicly no criticism, no backlash, none.
And we also need to mention that Bernie Sanders encouraged Elizabeth Warren to run back in
2016.
And there are multiple videos of Bernie Sanders, dating back to the 1980s, where he publicly
spoke about how he believes a woman can can win.
And so all of this contextual information is incredibly important to the conversation
and unfortunately it's being left out to paint a particular candidate as some sort of sexist,
when the facts just don't bear that out.
>> Well we don't know what the facts are, because Elizabeth Warren says-
>> We do though.
>> But he said.
>> We do, we have.
>> We have evidence of, how do we know he said it?
>> No, she says.
No, no, no, I don't- >> And in what context?
>> No, I don't, I don't know anything.
I'm saying Elizabeth Warren says he said it.
So now, we've got something here.
>> So, I, okay.
>> Okay, yeah.
>> I said my piece.
I was glad I was given an opportunity to kinda share-
>> You did a good job.
>> All of the various example of who Bernie Sanders is and what hes' fought for.
And look we didn't even get into his record when it comes to fighting for women.
He was supportive of reproductive rights before that was a popular position to take.
He was supportive of the Violence Against Women Act.
In fact in an effort to get Bernie Sanders to vote for Biden's crime bill they purposely
included the Violence Against Women Act in the text to that legislation.
>> Mm-hm.
>> And so he felt passionately about it.
He gave a very impassioned speech as a law maker in support of the Violence Against Women
Act, doing something about the fact that women were facing just devastating domestic abuse.
We didn't get to all of that, but at least I got an opportunity to share a few examples
of who he his, and I'm grateful for that, because you didn't see that anywhere else.
>> Yeah, look and I'm glad that you did that and I would have the exact same impulse to
do that.
If we don't have any evidence from the conversation, and we don't, other than they're are obviously
dueling characterizations of what was said.
Then we need to look to what else do we know about this person to help evaluate how likely
it is that we think he said this thing which seems, on it's face, kinda crazy.
We can't imagine, I mean even if I didn't know the stuff going back to the 80s, I would
say he's not gonna sit down with the woman who's going to be facing him on the debate
stage in six months and tell her, no, no, none of you broads could ever.
He's not gonna say anything like that, that's crazy.
But once you add the context, that's important too.
And it's not like the stuff from the 80s isn't, it doesn't mean that he couldn't say something
like that.
You're not either a sexist or not a sexist in the same way that you're either a racist
or not a racist.
It is a whole bunch of different things about you that exist on a spectrum.
It's a cloud of different things.
You can be generally supportive of a group but still believe something ignorant, or something
like that.
But it just doesn't make any sense that he would say that.
>> If you're- >> And its really fascinating, one other thing.
>> Go ahead, go ahead.
>> And it makes a 100% sense that he would criticize Trump in the same way that he's
been doing publicly every single day for literally years.
He would say, yeah, Trump is a misogynist he'll attack a female candidate.
I've been saying that.
You've been saying that.
Literally everyone on every side of these issues have been saying that same thing.
>> Right I think that's what the context of the conversation was.
Obviously there's no way of knowing because Warren has decided to shut the conversation.
>> I know.
>> Down at this point and that's, look, this leak came from her campaign.
It's very clear.
I mean, even Nate Silver put that on blast- >> Ryan Grim said that he asked her is this
an intentional leak from your campaign and she says no.
>> She- No, it's not an intentional leak.
This is what I think happened.
I think that there are two schools of thought within her campaign.
I think there's the progressive school of thought, well meaning people who wanna fight
for the right things.
But her campaign has been infiltrated with these Obama era officials, some of whom I'll
talk about in a little bit.
But I think that they went behind her back and leaked this to CNN, because they saw that
she was really struggling in the polls.
I want to be clear, this is my speculation, and my read on it, okay?
>> That would be my hunch, too.
>> I don't think that she green-lit it, but I don't know.
What I do know is she had an opportunity to jump in and say Bernie Sanders is a good friend
of mine.
I do not believe he's sexist.
We had a conversation where we were discussing the pros and cons of both of our candidacies.
Because the fact, look it's a fact, right?
If you're going to assess you're electability, your viability as a candidate, you're gonna
think about all the different ways you're gonna get attacked.
And so with Bernie Sanders it's gonna be the socialist narrative, the socialist fear mongering,
with Warren, yeah, I mean if you're a woman, we've never had a female president in the
United States.
Of course there's sexism in the country.
People have had frank conversations about that.
And I think it makes sense to then take a conversation like that and try to spin it
as you know evidence of Sanders supposed sexism is just gross.
And her statement left much to be desired as someone who considers herself a friend
of Bernie Sanders.
And I wanna actually fast forward really quick to what the campaign is now telling its supporters
and its staffers, okay?
>> Mm-hm.
>> So there is a Twitter group where they communicate with one another and BuzzFeed
reported the following.
Warren's campaign is telling key online supporters that their goal is de-escalation and warning
backers not to accuse Bernie Sanders of sexism.
So I'm gonna give you exact quotes from this group from an Elizabeth Warren campaign official.
I would be careful with the sexism angle when it comes to the Bernie/Warren exchange individually-
that's not what this is about and I think it'll be really bad news for us if that becomes
what this is about.
This is about i.e., press asking her if she thinks Bernie is sexist.
The staffer told the group.
Is that what this is about broadly absolutely, I don't know what that means.
But no one here is actually claiming Bernie himself is sexist regardless of your own personal
beliefs on that topic.
One other quote from this campaign official "Claiming you are worried a woman can not
win flagging that she will receive sexist attacks is something many, many people feel."
>> Mh-hm.
>> So they are trying to isolate it, but this is the kind of I would, I would have much
rather preferred Elizabeth Warren to include.
I do not believe Bernie Sanders is sexist, in her statement.
>> She has that opportunity tonight, doesn't she?
>> She does, she does and I hope that she takes it.
But with that said, there's one other part of this Cuomo appearance that I wanted to
share with you and I wanted to actually get your thoughts.
This is a theory that I have, I've shared it on this show before I got an opportunity
to share it with Cuomo's audience.
I think the reason why she noticed a dip in the polls, and if you just go back to the
timing of all of this, it was after she put out her transition plan for Medicare For All.
>> Right.
>> That transition plan made it abundantly clear that she was not actually gonna push
for Medicare For All.
She was really gonna push for a public option.
Then you see this dip in the poll.
Right, now my problem with Elizabeth Warren is that rather than acknowledging the flaw
in her tactic there and changing course, she has decided to bring up a conversation that
she had with Bernie Sanders in December of 2018 when he notices a significant rise in
the polls.
Like, the American people aren't stupid.
They notice what's going on, they notice that she's bringing this up at a time when her
campaign is really struggling.
>> Now listen.
>> I think it's a bad move on her point.
I think she should focus on policy.
>> I hear you.
>> Yes.
>> He hears you.
>> He hears me.
But then he went on to talk about how he thinks that the Democratic candidates are focusing
too much on policy.
You know, on the granular level he kept saying that and then he also talked about the electability
of someone like Bernie because he refers to himself as a socialist.
Which is.
>> Well there's a million poles, general election poles with him versus Trump.
If you want evidence, that exists.
>> I know.
So that's the point that I wanted to make but the segment needed to end.
And a long-time Bernie Sanders adviser, Jeff Weaver, was on after me, so I'm totally fine
with my segment ending so he can talk.
But look, I wanna show the polling because I think the polling backs up what my theory
is.
And if you look at the average, the real clear politics average, and it's important to look
at averages, guys, because if you take any one pole, and you use that one pole to have
a theory of what's going on, I don't really think it's that accurate.
You gotta look at an average of what's happening.
So you look at all the different poles.
For the people watching right now, the brown line is the Elizabeth Warren campaign.
And for those of you listening in the podcast, let me just note what happens.
You see her surging up, up, up, up all the way from to June to about October.
October is when she spikes.
That's when she has really great debate performance and she touted many of her progressive policies.
But then in November, November 15th, to be exact, that's when she releases her healthcare
transition plan.
Which makes it clear that she's not actually gonna fight for Medicare for all.
She's gonna propose a public option.
And, if she gets that passed, in her third year, when she's gonna ramp up for reelection
she's gonna then propose Medicare for all.
That is when you see a significant dip, right?
And so that's the point that I was trying to make on the show.
Because they keep talking about, socialism is scary, and Bernie is really gonna struggle
when it comes to his electability.
But when it comes to the policies, and so many people in the media fail to realize this.
His policies are popular with the base, they're popular with voters.
And it's not just voters on the left, it's popular with many Americans, even the small
majority of Republicans, like Medicare for all, when you poll them on it.
And so I bring this all up because all of these identity issues that the media keeps
bringing up and harping on, don't really resonate with voters when they can jot feed their kids
or when they are in the middle of financial ruin because they can not pay their medical
bills.