Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on Thursday shrugged off NPR radio host Diane Rehm repeatedly asking him whether he was a citizen of Israel during an interview a day earlier.
“I like Diane Rehm. She is a good radio interviewer,” Sanders said at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast. “I suspect what happens is her staff gives her a list of questions and someone screwed up pretty bad.”
During the Wednesday interview, Rehm began a question saying, “You have dual citizenship with Israel…” Sanders, who’s running for president, quickly corrected her saying he does not have dual citizenship.
“I don’t know where that question came from. I am an American citizen, and I have visited Israel on a couple of occasions. I’m an American citizen, period,” Sanders said.
Rehm later said in a statement on Wednesday that she made a mistake and got the question from a comment on Facebook. She also apologized to Sanders.
Sanders said he had heard questions like that before.
“I actually was once at a meeting and some guy got up there and talked about it,” Sanders said at the breakfast on Thursday. “I really didn’t understand what he was talking about. Yes, I’ve seen it. It’s been on the internet.”
Sanders shrugged without elaborating about that interaction.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” he said.
