Bernie Sanders Falsely Claims No Democrats Running For Office Want To Defund The Police

Updated:
Senator Bernie Sanders, in an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper, claimed "nobody" he knows talks about the need to defund the police.

Senator Bernie Sanders, in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, claimed “nobody” he knows talks about the need to defund the police.

Tapper began by mentioning how Democrats have suggested that pushing progressive policies in the Georgia Senate runoffs could hurt their candidates.

He cited House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-SC) who recently said, if “we are going to run on Medicare for All, defund the police, socialized medicine, we’re not going to win.”

Sanders sought to change the narrative.

“Let’s rephrase that,” he insisted. “Nobody I know who’s running for office talks about defunding the police.”

“What we talk about is making police officers accountable,” Sanders added, offering up several examples.

“That is not defund the police.”

RELATED: Sources Claim Trump Will Start Media Company To ‘Wreck’ Fox News

Bernie Sanders’ Comrades Frequently State They Want To Defund The Police

Sanders’ good friend and closest policy ally in Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), has explicitly and frequently argued in favor of the ‘defund the police’ movement.

She complained when New York City mayor Bill de Blasio announced he had cut $1 billion from the NYPD budget.

“Defunding the police means defunding police,” she said “It does not mean budget tricks or funny math.”

She reiterated calls to defund the police even after the election.

“I believe the path toward justice is a long arc. Safety is not just an officer with a badge and a gun,” claimed AOC at a virtual town hall.

“Our [police budget] is too high.”

RELATED: Kayleigh McEnany Just Took A Buzzsaw To Ilhan Omar And AOC Over Anti-Police, Crime Comments

More Anti-Police Comments From The ‘Squad’

Aside from AOC, other Democrats have spoken vociferously in favor of defunding the police.

“I will never cosign on funding a police department that continues to brutalize us,” ‘Squad’ member Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) said of the Minneapolis Police Department.

She called the department a ‘cancer’ that needed to be cut out to a cheering mob in June, calling to “completely dismantle” the Minneapolis Police Department.

Other close allies of Sanders have made their thoughts quite clear.

Over the summer, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), also members of the ‘Squad,’ introduced the BREATHE Act with great fanfare.

The legislation was developed and written by the Electoral Justice Project for the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), a group that seeks to “abandon” police, prisons, and any form of punishment for lawbreakers.

Indeed, Politico reporter Marc Caputo shared the sentiment of a top Miami Democrat, who claimed that the calls to “defund the police” cost Democrats the state of Florida:

Interestingly enough, the patriarch of the “democratic socialist” movement himself actually supports increasing funding for the police. 

Sanders stated an obvious and easily verified lie and Tapper, helping to spread that lie, didn’t push back on it one bit.

By Rusty Weiss

Rusty Weiss has been covering politics for over 15 years. His writings have appeared in the Daily Caller, Fox... More about Rusty Weiss

Mentioned in this article::