Bernie Sanders: ‘We’ve got more important things to worry about in this country than Bill Clinton’s sex life’
First it was Hillary Clinton’s “damn emails” that Bernie Sanders said Americans were sick and tired of hearing about. Now it’s Bill Clinton’s sex life.
“We have more things to worry about than Bill Clinton’s sexual life,” Sanders said on ABC’s “This Week" Sunday.
The Vermont senator and Democratic presidential hopeful repeated the line on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday.
“I think we’ve got more important things to worry about in this country than Bill Clinton’s sex life,” he said.
Sanders was asked about Republican frontrunner Donald Trump’s suggestion that the former president’s sexual past is fair game — and will dog Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton in her bid for the White House.
“I think Donald Trump might want to concern himself with the fact that he is dead wrong when he says that we should not raise the minimum wage,” Sanders said on ABC. “He’s dead wrong when he says we should give huge tax breaks to billionaires like himself. And he’s dead wrong when he thinks that climate change is a hoax when virtually the entire scientific community says that it’s the great environmental crisis that we face. Maybe Trump should worry about those issues rather than Bill Clinton’s sex life.”
Bill Clinton’s sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky, a 22-year-old White House intern, led to his impeachment in 1998 and subsequent trial for perjury and obstruction of justice.
Last week, Trump threatened to rehash Bill Clinton’s infamous sexual indiscretion after Hillary Clinton announced that her husband would be joining her on the campaign trail.
“Hillary Clinton has announced that she is letting her husband out to campaign,” Trump wrote on Twitter, “but HE’S DEMONSTRATED A PENCHANT FOR SEXISM, so inappropriate!”
Sanders speaks at a New Year’s Eve rally in Des Moines. (Photo: Mark Kauzlarich/Reuters)
Meanwhile, Sanders doubled down on his recent assertion that the brash real estate mogul is a “pathological liar.”
“I do not get engaged in personal attacks, but Trump really is over the edge,” Sanders said on ABC. “Time after time, this guy just comes up with things off the top of his head that are lies. And somebody has got to say that.”
Sanders, who is openly courting Trump’s working-class supporters, said they share similar goals.
“Working-class Republicans are also seeing their wages going down — they’re seeing almost all new income and wealth going to the top 1 percent,” he said on CNN. “They can’t afford to send their kids to college. They’re seeing their jobs going to China. And I think they want a president who has the courage to stand up to the billionaire class, to raise the minimum wage, to make public colleges and universities tuition-free and, by the way, to address a corrupt campaign finance system, where millionaires and billionaires and corporations are now spending unlimited sums of money to buy elections.
"That’s a pretty across-the-board sentiment,” Sanders said. “The American people want change. And I believe that I’m a vehicle of change, being prepared to stand up to the wealthy and the powerful and create an economy that works for all Americans.”
