Sanders on whether primaries were rigged: ‘Our job is to go forward’

Sen. Bernie SandersBernie SandersThe Hill’s 12:30 Report: Milley apologizes for church photo-op Harris grapples with defund the police movement amid veep talk Biden courts younger voters — who have been a weakness MORE (I-Vt.) in an interview late Wednesday declined to answer a question about whether he believes the 2016 Democratic presidential primary was “rigged.”

“Look, Donna Brazile showed an enormous amount of courage in describing the truth as she saw it when she came into the leadership of the DNC,” Sanders told CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360,” referring to the Democratic National Committee and its former interim chair, when asked about the claim.

“I don’t think there’s any sane human being who doesn’t believe that my campaign was taking on the entire establishment, including the DNC.”

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The Vermont senator then called on Democrats to move on and focus on resisting the Republican agenda under President Trump.

“Anderson, to be very honest with you — my job, our job, is to go forward, is do everything we can to defeat this right-wing agenda of the Republican Party in the Trump administration, not to look backwards,” he said. 

Sanders’s comments come after Brazile seemed to suggest in her new book that the nomination process was rigged. Brazile cited a fundraising agreement she discovered between the Clinton campaign, Clinton’s joint fundraising committee, and the DNC that said the campaign would “control the party’s finances, strategy, and all the money raised.”

While Brazile later appeared to backtrack on her suggestion that the primary was fixed in Clinton’s favor.