The public was told by the establishment media that Bernie Sanders “blew” or “flubbed” or “messed up badly” during an interview with the New York Daily News. The best reading I can give is it was an intentional exaggeration by the New York Daily News who were set to endorse Clinton in a few days afterward. The worst reading I can give is it was maliciously meant to put doubt in the minds of New Yorkers about Sanders’ strongest issue right before the New York Primary.
It’s already a question as to whether or not most of the media pundits, who talked about Sanders “flubbing” the interview, had actually read the full transcript of what Sanders said.
But some people who went through Sanders’ comments actually found fault with some of the questions the Daily News staff asked Sanders.
If you’re here reading this, you’ve probably already watched the epic takedown of the Daily News by Cenk Uygur (The Young Turks), along with Nomiki Konst’s comments and the New York Times’ breakdown of Sanders’ interview.
Add activist Shaun King to the list of people who have pushed back on the media-created meme that Sanders ‘doesn’t know what to do’ or ‘has no plan for getting things done.’ Check out the interview with Shaun King by Jordan Chariton:
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partial transcript
SHAUN KING: …When I read the transcript, and then when I listened to the audio, I dug most of what I heard. I understood what people are saying about, like hey uhm, how he said he would break up big banks. ‘We didn’t like his tone’ or ‘we didn’t really — we didn’t fully understand his answer’. I got that. But it actually made sense to me. And Robert Reich who was President Bill Clinton’s Labor Secretary actually came out the day the transcript was released and said no, actually, Bernie was right with what he said about how big banks can be broken up. There’s kind of a fundamental misunderstanding here about who has the power to do that. Not that Bernie was wrong, but that Bernie — according to Robert Reich — was actually right. That the President has the power. And Bernie even said — I went back. I just wrote a piece today, my rebuttal of the Daily News endorsement of Hillary Clinton. It just came out a few minutes ago.
JORDAN CHARITON: Wow, they do give you a lot of freedom.
KING: Yeah. Yeah. So I wrote a very thorough critique of it. And it just came out and uhm, in Bernie’s interview with the editorial board, he said, you know, ‘No, if I’m President, I would consult the Treasury [Department] and the Fed. I would consult people. I’m not gonna tell you right now here’s exactly how I would break up JP Morgan Chase’. Or here’s exactly how I would break up XYZ. I would consult people and we’d think through it and it would be a complicated process’.
I was flabbergasted at the notion — and I say this in my piece — that people were making it out like he had no idea what he was talking about.
CHARITON: Right.
Watch video for full interview
The Daily News came under fire for not knowing who had the power to break up the breaks, asking Sanders how he would get the Federal Reserve to break up a bank when it’s the Treasury Department who would most likely handle something like that.
To that point, Chariton said:
CHARITON: The Daily News itself confused some things, you know. They were mentioning that the Federal Reserve plays a part in breaking up the big banks when it’s really the Treasury Department. There were a few other things that the questioner wasn’t exactly accurate on. But I think once the media, particularly TV news, latches onto a meme — which is you know ‘Bernie Sanders, he blew it’ — it kinda sparks from there into a bigger thing.
KING: Yeah. I think that’s exactly — what happened is that when the mainstream media and the Hillary Clinton campaign decided ‘oh wow, he royally screwed up here. This is terrible’ — most people didn’t actually read the transcript. Or didn’t actually see what was ‘terrible’. And they just assumed it was true. Like ‘oh man he doesn’t even know how he’s gonna break up these big banks’…
Watch video for full interview
Check it out
The Young Turks – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB6gq-NO0_0
Jordan Chariton, Shaun King Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFvUMbVi374
Nomiki Konst – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3AdBnDZjO4
New York Times – http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/07/upshot/yes-bernie-sanders-knows-something-about-breaking-up-banks.html