Warren and corporate media conspire to nuke Bernie's campaign
The days old feud between Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders is a masterclass in media manipulation, and what I mean by that is that it's so blatantly a setup by the corporate media and the Warren campaign against Sanders that it should serve as a lesson to everyone in exactly how the media works.
The day before the final Democratic debate prior to the Iowa Caucuses hosted by CNN, CNN reported that, according to anonymous sources, Sanders told Warren that a woman couldn't win the presidency.
The description of that meeting is based on the accounts of four people: two people Warren spoke with directly soon after the encounter, and two people familiar with the meeting.
In reality, this is the same as having no source at all. Four anonymous sources, none of whom, seemingly, were actually in the meeting nor overheard Sanders say this themselves is not a confirmation of anything, it's hearsay. CNN would not have published this story absent the assurance that Elizabeth Warren herself would back it up, which is exactly what she did after her campaign's initial refusal to comment.
Then at the debate on Tuesday night, CNN debate moderator Abby Phillip asked Sanders if he had made the comment to Warren in their 2018 meeting, which Sanders flatly denied. Phillip then turned to Warren and asked, "Sen. Warren, what did you think when Sen. Sanders told you a woman could not win the election?" This is nothing more than a case of he-said, she-said and nobody other than Warren and Bernie know exactly what was said and neither of them can be relied on to be honest since it may harm their presidential aspirations, so why would CNN go out of their way to portray Warren as definitely telling the truth and Bernie as definitely lying unless they had an agenda from the outset?
At the end of the debate Bernie went up to Warren to shake her hand, which Warren made a show of refusing, and they then had a visibly tense exchange.
The video of the exchange aired live with no audio.
But sound of the moment was caught by CNN's microphones and found Wednesday.
"I think you called me a liar on national TV," Warren can be heard saying.
"What?" Sanders responded.
"I think you called me a liar on national TV," she repeated.
"You know, let's not do it right now. If you want to have that discussion, we'll have that discussion," Sanders said, to which Warren replied, "Anytime."
"You called me a liar," Sanders continued. "You told me -- all right, let's not do it now."
CNN claims that they "found" the audio the day after the debate, but both candidates were still wearing their lapel mics during the exchange so it's not credible to say that CNN actually had to look for the audio.
Establishment Democrats and other media allies of the Warren campaign immediately jumped to describe Bernie's denial of Warren's claims as being sexist and an attack against women.
https://twitter.com/neeratanden/status/1216832259841495044
Believe women – unless it doesn’t work for your ambition, apparently.
— Neera -Wear a Mask -Tanden (@neeratanden) January 13, 2020
Virginia Heffernan wrote in the Los Angeles times:
Watching the Tuesday night kabuki in slo-mo, you can see that Sanders (I-Vt.), who’s notoriously irritable and suffers from cardiac issues, was riled by whatever Warren said, and by her refusal to be touched. He shook a finger at her. Then again. He seemed intent on freeing her right hand to grab it.
We all know this stock male move: Come on, baby, give me a hug; we’re still friends.
Sure, during the debate, Sanders had gaslighted Warren over whether he told her a female candidate couldn’t win the 2020 election. But now he wanted her to forgive and forget. If he could be seen shaking her hand, he might be off the hook. But... nope. Warren didn’t play along. Sanders huffed off.
Wikipedia defines "gaslighting" as, "a form of psychological manipulation in which a person seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or in members of a targeted group, making them question their own memory, perception, or sanity. Using denial, misdirection, contradiction, and lying, gaslighting involves attempts to destabilize the victim and delegitimize the victim's beliefs." In claiming that Sanders had gaslighted Warren during the debate, Heffernan is saying that she conclusively knows that Bernie was lying and that Warren was telling the truth. How is that possible? She was not in the room with Sanders and Warren during the conversation in 2018, so how can she say Bernie's lying? It is, in fact, a lie for her to claim that Bernie gaslighted Warren.
Furthermore, how is it sexist, as Heffernan and Tanden claim, for Bernie to deny Warren's accusations, or for anyone to say that they believe Bernie over Warren? That's no more credible than it would be for someone to claim that Warren or anyone who believes Warren is antisemitic for making such claims about Bernie Sanders who is Jewish.
I'm not saying that Bernie didn't say exactly what Warren is claiming he said. I doubt that it's true, because it doesn't sound like something Bernie would say and I would argue that Bernie is the more honest of the two in general, but I wasn't in the room with the two of them, so I'm not in a position to say. My point is that the media is clearly working with Warren to boost her campaign at a time when Bernie is leading in the polls right before the Iowa caucuses on February 3.
The facts are clear: CNN ran a story obviously planted by the Warren campaign with no credible source and no possibility of a credible source since the source has every incentive to lie, CNN presented Bernie as a liar in their debate despite the fact that his claims on the subject are at least as authoritative as Warren's and that there is no further evidence to suggest that he's lying, Warren obviously orchestrated the handshake refusal and the recording where she accuses Bernie of lying for political optics despite having no problem shaking his hand or even hugging him at previous debates that took place after the alleged comments were made, and establishment Democrats like Tanden and Heffernan, who has a history of claiming Bernie's 2016 campaign was a Kremlin operation, declare Bernie to be a sexist.
This is a great example of the corporate media doing whatever they have to do to influence an election in the direction that they want it to go, and should be remembered every time they try to claim journalistic integrity or when they make any claims about anything. They have their own agenda and will do and say whatever it takes to further that agenda, just like anybody else.