Political journalists and pundits were quick to pounce on an interview published Wednesday by the Wall Street Journal, which they said showed Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders had changed his stance on the investigations into his opponent Hillary Clinton’s emails.
But a review Sanders’ comments shows that his position has remained essentially unchanged since he famously told Clinton during the first Democratic debate that “the American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails.”
The article this week in the Wall Street Journal carried the headline “Bernie Sanders Takes Gloves Off Against Hillary Clinton in Interview.”
In it, the independent senator from Vermont voiced his support for the investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server during her tenure at the helm of the State Department. Sanders dismissed the idea that he had endorsed her use of a private server during the debate.
“You get 12 seconds to say these things,” Sanders told the Journal. “There’s an investigation going on right now. I did not say, ‘End the investigation.’ That’s silly.…Let the investigation proceed unimpeded.”
Journalists and pundits quickly latched onto the quote as a potentially important shift for Sanders, who has trailed Clinton by wide margins in national polls, and a sign that he might be starting to attack the frontrunner.
The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent noted the comment on his blog, The Plum Line, on Thursday morning, under the headline “Bernie Sanders goes hard at Hillary Clinton.” Sargent suggested the comments didn’t mark “that dramatic a reversal” but that they were a shift nonetheless.
From The Plum Line:
The upshot of his remarks then was that the American people would rather hear about the issues than about Clinton’s e-mails. Now he’s claiming the e-mail arrangement raises legitimate questions that should be answered by a legitimate inquiry. Those things aren’t mutually exclusive. They can both be true.
But Sanders’ comments do signal the possibility that he may begin to raise the e-mail issue in a more systematic way. The Sanders campaign has made a big show of promising not to go “negative” in this campaign. Yet in the Wall Street Journal interview, Sanders stated that Clinton’s inconsistency on the Trans-Pacific Partnership and other issues “does speak to the character of a person.” Raising questions about Clinton’s character is going negative To be clear, that’s also legitimate: asking whether Clinton’s changes in position should make us question her commitment to her current stances is fair game. But let’s not pretend raising questions about her character isn’t going negative.
Similarly, the thing to watch for now is whether Sanders begins to stray into suggesting the e-mail story sows doubts about Clinton’s honesty or integrity. That hasn’t happened yet, but as the voting gets closer, it just might.
The conservative website The Daily Caller went further by cheering Sanders’ comments under the headline “Bernie Sanders Was Sick Of Hearing About Hillary’s Emails, But He Got Better.”
From The Daily Caller:
Sure. He didn’t say the facts don’t matter. He just said he was sick of hearing about them!
He’s embracing the truth too late to do him any good, of course. If he’d said “The investigation should proceed unimpeded” during the debate, he might not have gotten such a round of applause, but at least he’d still be in the race.
Other journalists took note of the Sanders interview on Twitter:
Sanders says his “damn emails” line wasn’t actually absolving Clinton, calls probe “appropriate” https://t.co/93zpSxAzK7
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) November 5, 2015
I think – I THINK – Sanders is going to go a bit more negative on Clinton in the next debate https://t.co/93zpSxAzK7
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) November 5, 2015
Bernie Sanders is regretting his e-mail comments at the Democratic debate so, so much: https://t.co/TG6sbUhSsd
— Tim Fernholz (@TimFernholz) November 5, 2015
Sanders to WSJ: If Hillary stopped public access or compromised classified info, questions are “valid.” https://t.co/JUQpZunId1 via @WSJ
— Gerald F Seib (@GeraldFSeib) November 5, 2015
Bernie Sanders is now openly questioning Clinton’s character, saying email q’s are “valid” per @PeterNicholas3 intvw https://t.co/uluYnSg0Bh
— Sam Frizell (@Sam_Frizell) November 5, 2015
Politico described it as a “tonal shift.” CBS News called it an “about-face.” And the conservative Washington Free Beacon said Sanders was “walking back” his famous debate line.
But while Sanders has begun criticizing Clinton in recent weeks for her voting record and seemingly flip-flopping on policy during her long political career, his comments on the email server remain consistent since the debate.
In fact, moments after walking off stage following the Oct. 13 debate, Sanders was asked by CNN’s Chris Cuomo about the “damn emails” line. Cuomo wondered if it was “a gift” for Clinton. But Sanders demurred.
“There is a process in place for the email situation that Hillary clinton is dealing with. Let it play itself out,” Sanders said. “But as a nation, let us start focusing on why it is that so few have so much and so many have so little.”
“I think it was the right thing to do,” he continued. “I think American people want substantive debate no the real issues that are affecting their families.”
Watch Sanders’ post-debate interview below. His comments about the emails start at about 1:05.
Yes, he did!
A lot of smart liberals get the same BS. I agree 100% that her using a private server was idiotic, to say the least. Somehow that gets translated to me saying she did something illegal, or that I am somehow not saying the media is making way too much of this.
Yes, the media is making too much of this. But the bottom line is that SHE should have known the media would be all over this. And that is what Bernie is saying. But that makes too much sense.
Breaking News: TPM posts an article about how nothing really happened but people in the media, the press, journalists, etc., all of them wrote as if something really happened.
The following two sentences are not contradictory.
Yes, use of a private Email server by the Secretary of State needs to be investigated.
People of the USA are tired of hearing about Hillary’s emails.
See if TPM can write another 10 paragraphs to waste our time on reading something that tells us nothing more about Hillary and Bernie.
I support Hillary and I still like Bernie. This is a presidential primary and the amount of butt-hurt about two competing candidates who are gently poking each other on issues is pretty silly. They need to illuminate their differences and they need to get their positions out. They are both doing a pretty good job while keeping the campaign civil. Bernie or no Bernie Hillary has to satisfy the greater public that her email use was not a problem.
No, he didn’t.