Tuesday at CNN’s Democratic presidential town hall, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) lashed at Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump for his prior efforts to determine President Barack Obama’s eligibility to be president.
Sanders rattled off a list if where Republicans have attempted to obstruct Obama’s policy endeavors, but added blocking Obama’s effort to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court and Trump’s questions about Obama’s birth certificate as other signs of ill-will aimed at Obama.
Partial transcript as follows:
Literally it turns out, on the day that Obama was inaugurated, Republicans came together and said, what are we going to do? And what they concluded is we’re going to obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, make it as difficult as he could to do anything.
Now, we have had to fight through that and I’ve been at the president’s side time and time again, getting a stimulus bill through when we were in the midst of a horrendous recession, The Affordable Care Act, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But what you are seeing today in this Supreme Court situation is nothing more than the continuous and unprecedented obstructionism that President Obama has gone through.
And this — and this is on top of this birther issue, which we heard from Donald Trump and others, a racist effort to try to de-legitimatize the president of the United States. Can you imagine that? To say, well, he’s not really the president. He wasn’t born in the United States, which is nonsense. You know, it’s a funny thing on that issue. I was — my dad, as I mentioned, came from Poland. I’m running for president. Guess what? Nobody has asked for my birth certificate. Maybe it’s the color of my skin, I don’t know.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor