Bernie Sanders just failed the Russia test
This week Donald Trump’s Director of National Intelligence briefed Congress on the Kremlin’s latest attempts at helping the Trump 2020 campaign, and in response, Trump fired the guy. It couldn’t be more clear that Trump wants Vladimir Putin’s help. But it turns out Trump isn’t the only candidate that Putin is trying to help.
Today the Washington Post reported that the U.S. intel community has also briefed Bernie Sanders on the fact that the Kremlin is trying to help his 2020 campaign. This isn’t surprising, as Sanders has a far worse chance of defeating Donald Trump than any other Democratic nominee would have, for reasons that are obvious to everyone outside Bernie’s support base. The question of course is what Bernie is going to do about it.
At first it looked like Bernie was doing the right thing, when he publicly denounced the Kremlin’s attempted help earlier today, and told Putin to stay out of the election. But then it turned out Bernie was actually briefed on this a month ago, and he kept it quiet. If Bernie has learned that the Kremlin is trying to help his campaign, didn’t the public deserve to know about it? CNN asked Bernie about this today, and instead of answering the question, he claimed it’s a media conspiracy against his campaign:
Here’s the video: pic.twitter.com/JpOljo2PIE
— Abby D. Phillip (@abbydphillip) February 21, 2020
Can’t this guy take responsibility for anything? Bernie Sanders has spent the past month refusing to inform the public that the Kremlin has been trying to help his campaign. And now that the media has finally broken the story wide open, he’s accusing the media of having timed the story to try to hurt his chances in Nevada. This is silly, as the WaPo wouldn’t have waited until the night before the caucus if it were trying to time it to impact voting. Also, if Bernie had just been up front with the public a month ago, the story wouldn’t be coming out at this particular point in time.
Donald Trump failed the Russia test this week in spectacularly corrupt fashion. Bernie Sanders handled his own Russia test in far less egregious fashion, but he still failed the test. It’s the latest reminder that while Bernie would be an infinitely better 2020 option than Trump would be, Bernie isn’t qualified to be the Democratic nominee. Every time he has the chance to do the right thing, he does the opportunistic thing instead.
