Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., on Monday said that Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt, in 2018 told her that he didn’t think a woman could win the 2020 election — a statement the Sanders campaign had blasted as “a lie” earlier in the day.
“Bernie and I met for more than two hours in December 2018 to discuss the 2020 election, our past work together and our shared goals,” Warren said in a statement. “Among the topics that came up was what would happen if Democrats nominated a female candidate. I thought a woman could win; he disagreed.”
The statement confirmed a CNN report earlier in the day on the 2018 meeting, which Sanders and his campaign strongly denied.
“It is ludicrous to believe that at the same meeting where Elizabeth Warren told me she was going to run for president, I would tell her that a woman couldn’t win. It’s sad that, three weeks before the Iowa caucus and a year after that private conversation, staff who weren’t in the room are lying about what happened,” he said.
He added that “of course” a woman could win. “After all, Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by 3 million votes in 2016,” Sanders said.