In response to a report on Monday alleging that socialist senator Bernie Sanders told Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) in a private meeting back in 2018 that a woman could not win the presidency, “The View” co-host Meghan McCain said that Sanders “has a problem with women.”
Speaking with her fellow hosts, McCain said that while Sanders enjoys a solid reputation among women in Washington, “his supporters have a bad reputation—meaning the ‘Bernie bros.’”
“It’s actually one of the few things that really connects liberal pundits and conservative female pundits together is just a level of misogyny—look at Twitter, and some of the accounts they do—directed towards specifically women, women in politics, and women in political commentary,” said McCain, as reported by The Daily Beast. “I’m sure I’ll have my Twitter lit up on fire because of this, but he has a problem with women.”
According to a CNN report on Monday, Sanders and Warren, two longtime friends, met in 2018 to discuss terms on how to regard the other during the 2020 primary race so as not to engage in destructive sabotage. It was then that Sanders allegedly made his not-so-woke declaration.
“The two agreed that if they ultimately faced each other as presidential candidates, they should remain civil and avoid attacking one another, so as not to hurt the progressive movement,” said CNN. “They also discussed how to best take on President Donald Trump, and Warren laid out two main reasons she believed she would be a strong candidate: She could make a robust argument about the economy and earn broad support from female voters. Sanders responded that he did not believe a woman could win.”
Four people corroborated that the meeting took place, two of whom said that Elizabeth Warren told them directly after what Sanders had said. Senator Warren later issued a statement clarifying that the conversations did take place.
“Among the topics that came up was what would happen if Democrats nominated a female candidate. I thought a woman could win; he disagreed,” Warren wrote in a statement. “I have no interest in discussing this private meeting any further because Bernie and I have far more in common than our differences on punditry.”
In a statement to CNN, Bernie Sanders denied ever saying what was ascribed to him in the meeting, calling the accusation “ludicrous.”
“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 said. “It’s sad that, three weeks before the Iowa caucus and a year after that private conversation, staff who weren’t in the room are lying about what happened. What I did say that night was that Donald Trump is a sexist, a racist and a liar who would weaponize whatever he could. Do I believe a woman can win in 2020? Of course! After all, Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by 3 million votes in 2016.”
“The View” co-host Sunny Hostin agreed with Meghan McCain and didn’t “doubt that he perhaps said that.”
“Because when you read Hillary [Clinton]’s book, she does say that all of the innuendo and all of the Bernie Sanders attacks really led the way and paved the way for Trump calling her ‘Crooked Hillary,’” Hostin said. “So she thinks Bernie’s attacks really harmed her.”