Between presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump demanding that Hillary Clinton be jailed and a report that the former once paid off Texas Gov. Greg Abbott with a campaign contribution, there wasn’t much room in Friday’s headlines for Bernie Sanders. The second place Democratic presidential candidate just can’t catch a break these days with Clinton’s nomination all but totally assumed. So why the hell did the internet explode with the rumor that the 74-year-old Independent senator from Vermont would be skydiving into a campaign rally in Cloverdale, California?
It all started with a story in The Press Democrat, a daily newspaper in Santa Rosa. According to reporter Guy Kovner, campaign staffers told NorCal Skydiving president Jimmy Halliday “they would offer [Sanders] the option of parachuting into the rally site.” In his own words, Halliday emphasized that neither Sanders nor his personnel were confirming that this was actually going to happen. It was just a “possibility”:
“I’ve been told they will run the idea by Bernie,” Halliday said. “I can’t confirm that’s the plan. I know that’s a possibility.”
Then again, it didn’t help that the words “skydive” and “Bernie Sanders” were mentioned together in a sentence. Nor did Cloverdale airport manager Michael Morrissey, who fanned the flames of speculation when he told the paper, “He’s supposed to make a grand entrance.”
Cue the predictable-yet-still-enjoyable freak out on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/aseitzwald/status/738738739598528512
bernie should skydive into everything
— Asawin Suebsaeng (@swin24) June 3, 2016
https://twitter.com/sonicdork/status/738756631589203968
.@BernieSanders could skydive into a rally, which is technically always true.
— comedycentral (@ComedyCentral) June 3, 2016
Unfortunately (though not at all surprisingly), Sanders wasn’t going to be skydiving into the Cloverdale rally on Friday. The few hours’ worth of internet squalor created by the viral story garnered an official comment from campaign spokesperson Symone Sanders, who told The Hill that “the senator will not be parachuting or skydiving into the campaign rally today.”
Some were distraught…
https://twitter.com/jessesingal/status/738782698668478465
…whereas others were cheeky.
https://twitter.com/AlexJamesFitz/status/738784574268923905
However, the best response came not in the form of a direct comment on the potential Sanders skydive, but in Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs’ fantastic quip regarding a Clinton campaign staffer’s dumb joke:
JUST IN: Clinton will also not be skydiving into any campaign rallies today. https://t.co/J5F0q7lGoE
— Jesse Lehrich (@JesseLehrich) June 3, 2016
Clinton skydiving would have been almost as shocking as her holding a press conference https://t.co/1yMYbRoPup
— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) June 3, 2016
(via The Hill)