Bernie Sanders isn’t shy about saying Donald Trump’s campaign is involved in a “campaign of bigotry.”
The independent senator from Vermont, who plans to campaign for Hillary Clinton Saturday, told CNN’s “New Day” Friday of the Trump campaign: “Look, this this is pathetic. And this goes to the root of what Trump's campaign is about. Let's be clear. It's about bigotry.”
Sanders recalled how Trump was “the leader of the so-called birther movement. And what the birther movement was about...was not being critical of Obama. This is a democracy. We can criticize Obama. It was delegitimizing the first African-American president in the history of our country. And the reason for that was clear.”
The reason, Sanders said, is that “There are racists in this country who could never accept the fact that we had a black president. And that's what Trump was trying to do, delegitimize the president, not disagree with him.”
As a result, the senator said, “I think this is part of his entire campaign of bigotry. It's against Muslims. It's against Mexicans, attacking women's -- women, you know. It is not acceptable for a candidate for president of the United States to be arguing whether or not our president was born in this country.”
Trump’s campaign did acknowledge Thursday that Trump believbes Obama was born in this country, but Trump himself wouldn’t say it publicly.
He noted that his father was born in Poland, and came to the United States when he was 17. “Do you know how many people ever ask, me whether or not I was born in America? Nobody ever asked me that,” Sanders said. He was born in this country.
David Lightman: 202-383-6101, @lightmandavid