A Donald Trump-caused, Republican civil war may take place at the Grand Ol’ Party’s summer convention. By the same token, the Thursday political news cycle was awash in reports that President Barack Obama had told Democratic donors to rally behind Hillary Clinton as their nominee. The alleged faux-endorsement came from several anonymous sources cited by The New York Times, which claimed that Obama’s comments were delivered at a private event in Austin, Texas. So, when fellow Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, the host asked the obvious question.
“I know that you consider President Obama to be a friend,” said Maddow. “I just have to ask your response to that.”
Oh boy did Bernie have a response for Maddow:
“The bottom line is that when only half of the American people have participated in the political process, when some of the larger states in this country — people in those states have not yet been able to voice their opinion on who should be the Democratic nominee — I think it’s absurd for anybody to suggest that those people not have a right to cast a vote… So to suggest that we don’t fight this out to the end would be, I think, a very bad mistake.”
Despite Sanders’ insistence on the apparent absurdity and mistaken nature of Obama’s comments, however, the longtime Vermont senator cast doubt on whether the president actually said what the NYT and other outlets had reported. He even went so far as to avoid speculating on the precise wording ascribed to Obama and mentioned an ambiguous claim that the White House had later denied or played down the matter.
Unfortunately for Sanders, as the NYT article noted in an update late Thursday, a “White House official” had in fact confirmed the basics of what the president had supposedly told donors in Austin. In other words, without giving an official endorsement, Obama did tell party donors and fellow Democrats that it was time to rally around Clinton as the eventual nominee.
(Via The Hill and Talking Points Memo)