US Democratic presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren has said her rival for the nomination, Bernie Sanders, once told her he didn’t think a woman could win the 2020 presidential election.
“Among the topics that came up was what would happen if Democrats nominated a female candidate,” Warren said in a statement about a private meeting between the pair that took place in December 2018. “I thought a woman could win; he disagreed.”
Warren, a senator for Massachusetts, went on to say she didn’t plan to discuss the meeting again and insisted she and Sanders have “far more in common than our differences on punditry”.
Her revelation came hours after CNN published a report about Sanders’ comments that cited only anonymous sources.
After Warren said she believed broad support from female voters would make her a strong competitor against Donald Trump, Sanders reportedly responded that he did not believe a woman could win.
Hours after the initial report, Warren supported CNN’s account of the conversation in a statement.
Earlier on Monday, Sanders had issued a strong rebuke of how CNN’s sources characterised his remarks.
“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,” he said.
“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. What I did say that night was that Donald Trump is a sexist, a racist and a liar who would weaponise whatever he could.
“Do I believe a woman can win in 2020? Of course! After all, Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by three million votes in 2016.”
The report comes amid rising tension between the two candidates’ campaigns. On Saturday, Politico published some of the scripts that Sanders’ campaign apparently gave volunteers. Talking points included claims that “people who support her are highly-educated, more affluent people who are going to show up and vote Democratic no matter what” and that “she’s bringing no new bases into the Democratic Party”.
The story raised some eyebrows given that Warren and Sanders are longtime friends. According to CNN’s report, the two agreed during that December meeting to avoid attacking one another.
Warren fired back against the Sanders campaign scripts on Sunday.
“I was disappointed to hear that Bernie is sending his volunteers out to trash me,” Warren told reporters after a town hall meeting. “Bernie knows me and has known me for a long time. [...] I hope Bernie reconsiders and turns his campaign in a different direction.”