Shelby Talcott on June 26, 2019
The system was rigged against Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders in his loss to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, Sanders claimed Wednesday on MSNBC.
Sanders spoke to Katy Tur on MSNBC’s “Live With Katy Tur” Wednesday and said that he would have beaten President Donald Trump had the election against fellow Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton not been “rigged against” him. Sanders bowed out of the 2016 election less than two weeks before the Democratic National Convention and endorsed Clinton for presidency in her race against Trump.
“No, some people say that if maybe that system was not rigged against me I would have won the nomination and defeated Donald Trump,” Sanders said after Tur asked his thoughts on whether or not he hurt Clinton’s candidacy. “That’s what some people say.”
Some people, such as Donna Brazile, have alleged that Clinton had been able to accomplish a “secret takeover” of the Democratic National Committee at the very beginning of the primary race, ending Sanders’ chances of winning. Sanders seems to concur with this idea and was adamant that he would have been the one to defeat Trump.
Sanders went on to say that he is a Democrat, although he has been outspoken about being for socialism throughout his campaign.
“Of course I’m a Democrat,” Sanders said. “This is a democratic national convention – a Democratic primary here.”
This is a change of tune from his past, where Sanders has proudly admitted that he considers himself to be a socialist.
“When I ran for the Senate the first time, I ran against the wealthiest guy in the state of Vermont,” Sanders said in an interview with The Nation in 2015. “He spent a lot on advertising — very ugly stuff. He kept attacking me as a liberal. He didn’t use the word ‘socialist’ at all, because everybody in the state knows that I am that.”
“I intend to be the Democratic nominee,” Sanders told Tur Wednesday.