US Senator Elizabeth Warren said that fellow Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Bernie Sanders told her when they met privately in 2018 that he did not think a woman could win the White House.
Sanders has denied that, but Warren said in a statement on Monday that during their two-hour meeting two years ago to discuss this year’s US presidential election, “among the topics that came up was what would happen if Democrats nominated a female candidate. I thought a woman could win; he disagreed.”
The dispute marked an extraordinary turning point in a Democratic primary that, with few exceptions, has been characterized by genial differences over domestic issues such as healthcare.
The feud brewing between Warren and Sanders will likely change the tone of the campaign going into yesterday’s debate and came less than three weeks before the Iowa caucuses launch the Democratic contest.
It also marks a jarring split between the two long-time progressive allies, potentially giving an opening for a more moderate rival, such as former US vice president Joe Biden, to attempt unifying the party.
Warren said in the statement that she and Sanders “have far more in common than our differences on punditry.”
“I’m in this race to talk about what’s broken in this country and how to fix it — and that’s what I’m going to continue to do,” she said. “I know Bernie is in the race for the same reason. We have been friends and allies in this fight for a long time, and I have no doubt we will continue to work together to defeat [US President] Donald Trump and put our government on the side of the people.”
CNN first reported Sanders’ comment earlier on Monday, based on the accounts of anonymous people with knowledge of the meeting. That drew a swift and strong denial from Sanders, who said: “It is ludicrous to believe that at the same meeting where Elizabeth Warren told me she was going to run for president, I would tell her that a woman couldn’t win.”
Sanders aides then accused Warren’s campaign of leaking what they said was an inaccurate description of what was said during the meeting. That helped prompt Warren’s statement hours later.
Jeff Weaver, a senior adviser to Sanders, then seemed to try and defuse the situation, refusing to refute Warren’s version and instead saying on CNN on Monday night that “those conversations can sometimes get misconstrued.”
Still, the controversy is likely to revive anxiety among Democrats about whether — nearly four years after former US secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton lost her White House bid — voters are willing to support another woman running for president.
Such questions have dogged Warren and other female candidates throughout the campaign for this year’s election.
Stephanie Taylor and Adam Green, cofounders of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which has at times praised both Warren and Sanders, on Monday said in a statement that they “believe that a back-and-forth about this private meeting is counterproductive for progressives.”
“In this pivotal moment of the campaign, progressives must work together to defeat Donald Trump,” they said.
Incumbent Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa on Sunday claimed a runaway victory in the nation’s presidential election, after voters endorsed the young leader’s “iron fist” approach to rampant cartel violence. With more than 90 percent of the votes counted, the National Election Council said Noboa had an unassailable 12-point lead over his leftist rival Luisa Gonzalez. Official results showed Noboa with 56 percent of the vote, against Gonzalez’s 44 percent — a far bigger winning margin than expected after a virtual tie in the first round. Speaking to jubilant supporters in his hometown of Olon, the 37-year-old president claimed a “historic victory.” “A huge hug
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
A judge in Bangladesh issued an arrest warrant for the British member of parliament and former British economic secretary to the treasury Tulip Siddiq, who is a niece of former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who was ousted in August last year in a mass uprising that ended her 15-year rule. The Bangladeshi Anti-Corruption Commission has been investigating allegations against Siddiq that she and her family members, including Hasina, illegally received land in a state-owned township project near Dhaka, the capital. Senior Special Judge of Dhaka Metropolitan Zakir Hossain passed the order on Sunday, after considering charges in three separate cases filed
APPORTIONING BLAME: The US president said that there were ‘millions of people dead because of three people’ — Vladimir Putin, Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelenskiy US President Donald Trump on Monday resumed his attempts to blame Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for Russia’s invasion, falsely accusing him of responsibility for “millions” of deaths. Trump — who had a blazing public row in the Oval Office with Zelenskiy six weeks ago — said the Ukranian shared the blame with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ordered the February 2022 invasion, and then-US president Joe Biden. Trump told reporters that there were “millions of people dead because of three people.” “Let’s say Putin No. 1, but let’s say Biden, who had no idea what the hell he was doing, No. 2, and
RSS