Bernie Sanders give Chuck Todd a clinic on issues
Chuck Todd did what Chuck Todd does on today’s Meet The Press. He attempted to drive a false narrative favorable to the one the plutocracy wants served. Bernie Sanders did what Bernie Sanders does. He bombastically prevented his words from being twisted. He refused to play nice by deferring to a false narrative or even letting it get into the ethos unchallenged.
Chuck Todd first used the tragic killing in Lafayette, Louisiana to try to sandbag Bernie Sanders. “You’ve continue to walk, straddle a line here,” Chuck Todd said. “You talk about, you are sort of pro NRA votes in Vermont having to do with being about Vermont, not about the nation as a whole.”
Bernie Sanders did not allow Chuck Todd to finish the setup of the false narrative. “Chuck, that’s not what I said,” Bernie Sanders interjected. “I come from a state that has virtually no gun control. And I voted to ban certain types of assault weapons. And I voted to close the gun show loophole. And I voted for instant background checks. And what I said is that as a nation we can’t continue screaming at each other or else we have to find common ground.” Sanders then went on to describe what finding common ground looks like. It is similar to the explanation he gave when confronted in an orchestrated fashion at a recent event.
Chuck Todd then attempted to play a clip from Netroots Nation where the Black Lives Matter protesters interrupted both Martin O’Malley and Bernie Sanders. Chuck Todd was trying to spin it as a confrontation. Sanders did not allow that clip to be misrepresented. He responded factually. “I didn’t have a confrontation,” Bernie Sanders said. “I was there to speak about immigration reform. And some people started disrupting the meeting. And the issue that they raised was in fact a very important issue — about black lives matter, about Sandra Bland, about black people getting yanked out of, in this case of Sandra Bland, getting yanked out of an automobile, thrown to the ground and ending up dead three days later because of a minor traffic violation. .. This is an issue that is a very important issue, an issue of concern that I strongly share.”
Chuck Todd then attempted to create a chasm. “Some people think you were too dismissive,” Todd said. Bernie Sanders again interrupted and did not let a false narrative fester. He pointed out that he was a part of the civil rights movement for decades. Likewise when Todd tried to reinforce the message that Sanders is only about the economic message, Sanders used Martin Luther King’s parallel actions on poverty to make his case. He said they were parallel issues.
To be frank, Bernie Sanders has been a constant on economic issues for decades. Likewise he has always supported civil rights. In fact he was an active participant. What Black Lives Matter did at Netroots Nation was important. It put an existential problem endemic in the black community that has been unresolved for decades into the platform. The good thing is that Bernie Sanders heard the message. Chuck Todd was trying to create a wedge where there isn’t one.