The campaign manager for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) shot down reports that the scene at the Nevada’s Democratic convention last weekend was violent and expressed doubt about the accounts from some of the party officials present that they felt threatened by the protests of Sanders’ supporters.
Jeff Weaver was asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper Wednesday whether those officials who said that they had feared for their lives were making it up.
“If people received phone calls that were inappropriate, we absolutely condemn that 100 percent. The Senator has condemned it. I’ve condemned it. The whole campaign condemns it,” Weaver said. The Nevada state party chair, Roberta Lange, reportedly received hundreds of threatening voice messages and texts from Sanders supporters outraged over how she handled the convention.
While he was not at Saturday’s convention, Weaver said that based on the account of Sanders surrogate Nina Turner, the reports of a violent atmosphere had been overblown.
“She said, no one went on the stage. No one had the right to feel threatened,” Weaver said. “What happens is when you rig the process, and you get an angry crowd, you know they’re not used to that.”
Earlier in the day, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) — a Hillary Clinton supporter who was booed off the stage Saturday while giving the state convention’s keynote address — told CNN she “feared for her safety,” even as she had a lot of security around.
But Weaver, in his CNN appearance Wednesday, accused the media of misrepresenting what happened Saturday.
“These claims of violence, I don’t see any violence that happened in that room,” Weaver said, adding that Turner told him, “no violence occurred when she was there.”
“There are widely spread news reports about chairs being thrown. There is absolutely no video evidence of that anywhere, which there would be,” Weaver said. “This is all good fodder for media coverage but a lot of it is divorced from reality.”
Weaver did say that the “booing and the cat-calling” — which were captured on multiple videos posted to social media — were “uncalled for.”
