Bernie Sanders Campaign to Breitbart News: CNN Framed Warren Question 'Wrong'

DES MOINES, Iowa — Former Ohio State Senator Nina Turner (D) told Breitbart News in the spin room after the Democrat debate at Drake University on Tuesday evening that CNN had been “wrong” in how it asked a question about a dispute with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) over whether Sanders had told her a woman could not win the presidency.

Turner, who has previously attacked candidates like Warren for copying Sanders’ ideas, and who wore a T-shirt mocking “Pete’s Wine Cave” at the last debate in Los Angeles in December, said that while she was proud of how Sanders handled the question, she was unhappy with the way that CNN moderator Abby Phillip had framed the question during the debate.

On Monday, Warren claimed that Sanders told her in a private meeting in December 2018 that a woman could not win. Sanders denied that claim and his campaign called on her to clarify — whereupon she doubled down on the claim.

As Breitbart News noted, CNN’s Phillip presented the question to Sanders as if Warren’s claim were factual, not disputed.

Turner, speaking to Breitbart News in the spin room, said: “The framing of the question was definitely one-sided. It shouldn’t have been framed that way. The question should have been asked, ‘Senator, did you say this,’ and let him answer. And then you say the same thing to Senator Warren, ‘He said he didn’t say it. Did he say it?’ But instead, they framed it as if it was absolute. And that’s wrong.” She called the claim, and the framing of the question, “ludicrous.”

Turner said she did not believe Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was correct to claim that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was rigging the Iowa caucus by handing the articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump to the Senate just days before the vote, requiring Senators to stay in Washington. “Republicans should stay out of it.”

Sanders supporters, however, made their feelings known on social media, calling the debate and the process “rigged.”

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.