Recently, a prominent restauranteur in San Francisco accused socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) of being a rude old crank. On Tuesday, that characterization appeared to show itself when he told a crying baby to “keep it down” while he spoke at a New Hampshire town hall event.
“A squealing baby tested Bernie Sanders’ cool during a town hall event on Tuesday in New Hampshire,” reports Fox News. “The Democratic presidential candidate was about to answer a health care question from an audience member when the little one broke out into a shrill cry.”
At first, Sanders proceeded to answer the question from the audience member until the squealing cries became too much to bear.
“Thank you very much, because it’s not easy getting up in front of a TV camera to talk about this. Did I hear you correctly say you have to cut your pills in half?” Sanders asked the audience member before turning his head towards the crying baby. “If we could keep that down a little bit? OK. Thanks.”
Trump campaign officials shared the video on Wednesday and trolled his campaign. “Sanders not feeling the Bern for kids in the audience yesterday,” tweeted campaign official Zach Parkinson.
During the 2016 campaign, President Donald Trump had a similar moment when an audience member’s baby began to cry. Trump used it to humorous effect, although the media tried to paint him as being insensitive — claiming he literally kicked a baby out of a campaign rally. Even left-leaning Snopes had to rate this claim “False” at the time:
Trump, however, didn’t actually kick the squalling child out of his rally.
Daniel Dale of the Toronto Star wrote that he was sitting near the baby during the rally, and that while Trump really did make the comments captured in the above-displayed video, the incident was mischaracterized and Trump never actually ordered the tot be removed from the room.
According to Dale, Trump said “Don’t worry about that baby” when the infant first started crying, and when the child cried again, the mother quickly left the room to avoid interrupting the candidate. Trump noticed the woman leaving and called after her, “You can get the baby out of here.” But the woman and the child both returned to their seats later in the rally.
Bernie’s apparent “baby gaffe” comes shortly after San Francisco restaurateur John Konstin described Bernie as being both rude and cranky when visiting his establishment, John’s Grill, during a campaign stop.
“Dems in town for DNC packed in John’s Grill, the 111-year old bistro that’s become a go-to for pols in San Francisco,” reported POLITICO at the time. “Owner John Konstin tells POLITICO he hosted a full house, including a big party with Secretary of State Alex Padilla and Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, all led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was ‘pure class.'”
While the others were indeed “pure class,” Sanders, as it seems, was pure crank by refusing to shake hands and being fairly rude to the staff.
“It was all very nice, except for cranky Bernie,” Konstin told Politico. “He didn’t want to shake hands, he didn’t want a picture. He wasn’t nice to any of the staff.”