Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) called President Donald Trump a “pathological liar” Sunday morning on the CNN program “State of the Union” — and ducked host Jake Tapper’s question about whether he himself plans to run for president in 2020.
“I don’t think it’s a question of going high or going low. I think it’s a question of telling the truth,” said Sanders.
The failed Democratic candidate in 2016 was responding to now-viral clips of former Attorney General Eric Holder’s saying Democrats should “kick” people — and of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saying that the Dems cannot be “civil” with a party that is attacking their values.
“The truth is, you have a president who lies all of the time — a pathological liar,” declared Sanders.
“I don’t think that’s what the American people want.”
Sanders went after Trump for an op-ed he penned in USA Today, attacking Sanders’ Medicare for All program.
When Tapper redirected Sanders to respond to whether protesters’ disrupting Republican officials while they’re eating at restaurants with family or friends and banging on the doors of the Supreme Court represented an acceptable level of aggression, Sanders declared, “I am very strongly in favor of mobilizing the American people to stand up and fight for economic justice and social justice and racial and environmental justice.”
“I am not a great fan of being rude or disrupting activities,” he added.
Sanders emphasized that the 2018 midterm election results will come down to voter turnout.
“My hope is that people stand up, fight back, and get involved in this campaign,” he said emphatically.
Related: Even NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio Said the Dems’ Resistance Has Gone Too Far
But then look at the path the CNN host took.
Tapper asked Sanders for his opinion about the op-ed in USA Today by Trump — which Tapper told viewers was “suffused with lies and factual errors.”
“It’s only an hour-long show. We can’t get into every lie President Trump told in that op-ed,” said Tapper.
Sanders agreed with that pronouncement, saying Trump’s assertion that such a program could actually make matters worse in terms of coverage was not accurate.
“Health care is a right, not a privilege,” Sanders asserted. “Do we spend our money to provide health care for every man, woman and child, or to make the drug companies and the insurance companies phenomenally rich while our health care outcomes are worse in many cases than [in] many other countries?”
Sanders claimed that Trump “lied about 19 different times in his op-ed attacking me,” pointing specifically to Trump’s assertion that the Medicare for All program would weaken coverage for the elderly.
Sanders called that assertion “an outrageous lie.”
The Vermont senator countered by saying that his plan would expand coverage for the elderly by including dental care, vision care, and hearing aids.
Check out these tweets:
As arguably the rudest, nastiest person in American public life hearing this from Bernie Sanders is really hilarious. https://t.co/wsk6XXSy8o
— George. (@jitotweets) October 14, 2018
The only hack here is you! You are worse than plain ignorant, you're a special kind of ignorant combined with a dose cognitive dissonance, and a smidge of raw hatred for anything outside your white privileged world! Join the rest of humanity going forward, or be left behind!
— Mike Paolucci (@Mike_P_Paolucci) October 14, 2018
“We have three weeks to go on in the most important midterm election in the history of this country. And I think that is what we focus on right now,” Sen. Bernie Sanders says on whether or not he will be running for president in 2020 #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/JSK3ovOYYy
— CNN (@CNN) October 14, 2018
Michele Blood is a Flemington, New Jersey-based freelance writer and a regular contributor to LifeZette.
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