The Bernie Sanders campaign script at the center of the Vermont senator’s feud with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) was reportedly distributed to teams in at least two early voting states on Friday before being killed the next day.
Controversy has emerged between the two Democratic presidential candidates in the past couple days following Politico’s report regarding a Sanders campaign script that instructs volunteers to tell voters who are leaning toward voting for Warren that “she’s bringing no new bases into the Democratic Party.” Warren initially reacted to the script while speaking to reporters in Iowa Sunday, saying that she was “disappointed to hear that Bernie is sending his volunteers out to trash me.”
The unexpected drama between Sanders and Warren only escalated when CNN reported Monday that Sanders told the Massachusetts Democrat in December 2018 that he did not believe a woman could win the presidency, which Sanders would later deny and call “ludicrous.”
According to a Politico report Tuesday, three Sanders campaign officials said that volunteers and staffers used the script critical of Warren while canvassing for votes on Saturday. Sanders initially suggested that rogue employees were to blame for the controversy.
Sanders’ campaign reportedly pulled back the script Saturday after Politico published its report on it “because it was sloppily worded.”
“The language was pulled because it was sloppily worded,” a Sanders official told Politico, which confirmed that the script was an official campaign document.
After pulling the script that was initially distributed to Sanders campaign volunteers, two Sanders officials told Politico that the campaign provided a new script on Sunday and directed officials in early voting states to stop handing volunteers the old one.
According to Politico, a Warren aide said that her campaign appreciated Sanders’ withdrawal of the initial script and they hoped to move on from the controversy.
Read Politico’s report here.
