Bernie Sanders Campaign Blasts Clinton, David Brock For Mudslinging
Hillary Clinton once claimed that she would refrain from mudslinging and negative campaigning after Bernie Sanders entered the race. All that’s flown out the window, however, since the Vermont senator has experienced favorable polls in recent days. Most recently, David Brock, the head of Clinton Super PAC Correct the Record, criticized Bernie’s most recent ad.
The video ad features a Simon & Garfunkel song, “America.” It’s a one-minute vignette of Bernie Sanders and various Americans working, dancing, and supporting him at rallies. Brock took issue with the ad, decrying the lack of racial diversity in it.
“From this ad it seems black lives don’t matter much to Bernie Sanders.”
This is an odd statement coming from a man known as a political mercenary. Bernie Sanders has worked for his entire adult life for the betterment of minorities, and those close to him know that black lives do, in fact, matter very much to him.
Bernie Sanders spokesman, Michael Briggs, shot back on the criticism, bringing up David Brock’s history of politically convenient racism.
“Bernie Sanders, as everyone knows, has one of the strongest civil rights records in Congress. He doesn’t need lectures on civil rights and racial issues from David Brock, the head of a Hillary Clinton super PAC. Twenty-five years ago it was Brock – a mud slinging, right-wing extremist – who tried to destroy Anita Hill, a distinguished African-American law professor. He later was forced to apologize for his lies about her. Today, he is lying about Sen. Sanders.”
In 2001, David Brock admitted that he had lied about Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas, who was then still waiting for confirmation from Congress as a Supreme Court nominee. He admitted having worked for extreme right-wing leaders, who gave him the responsibility to smear Hill.
Now, instead of smearing and spreading lies about Anita Hill on behalf of right wing politicians, David Brock is smearing Bernie Sanders, whose campaign has come from behind and has become a serious challenge to Clinton.
The Sanders campaign was on-point in bringing up David Brock’s past as one who lies when politically expedient. In an earlier Inquisitr story, it was reported that the Clinton ally was preparing to smear Bernie Sanders by bringing up his age in an up-coming ad. The ad never aired, and Brock denied planning such an attack on Twitter.
My statement regarding Sen. Sanders' health records: pic.twitter.com/uC7n8aHjP9
— David Brock (@davidbrockdc) January 17, 2016
Yet, two days later, the Super PAC founder appeared on Bloomberg’s With All Due Respect and ultimately admitted that he had been prepared to bring up Bernie Sanders’s age.
“It’s usual for all candidates in the presidential, particularly someone who’s doing well and becoming a top-tier candidate. And look, they said they were gonna do it so clearly I was on the right path.”
Brock’s attack on Bernie Sanders’s campaign ad for not being diverse enough, then, is a head scratcher, for he has a history of lying when convenient and for racist attacks at the behest of party leaders.
Briggs also slammed Clinton for being in bed with someone willing to engage in ad hominem attacks for her, despite her promise to not run a negative campaign.
“It’s bad enough that Hillary Clinton is raising millions in special-interest money in her super PACS. It is worse that she would hire a mudslinger like David Brock. She should be ashamed of her association with Brock.”
After a new CNN/ORC poll was released this week showing Bernie Sanders eight points ahead of Hillary Clinton in the primary campaign, Briggs, again, released a statement.
“At a time when Sec. Clinton’s lead is evaporating in Iowa we understand why her campaign is panicking and saying absurd things. The people of Iowa showed extraordinary courage in 2008 by voting for Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton, and many Iowans now understand that it’s too late for her brand of establishment politics and establishment economics.”
[Photo: Joshua Lott/Getty]
