CNN: During a CNN town hall in Nevada, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) refused to answer if he would accept financial support from Michael Bloomberg, should Bloomberg fail to secure the Democratic presidential nomination.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN: Two polls out today show that he’s your closest competition. Right now, do you see him as the biggest threat to you to getting the nomination?
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: Anderson, I’m not much into political speculation. I don’t know what’s going to happen here in Nevada. I don’t know what’s going to happen on Super Tuesday. I don’t know, you know, who’s going to win, who’s going to lose. But this is what I do know. And this I feel very strongly about.
You know, Mr. Bloomberg has ever right in the world to run for president of the United States. He’s an American citizen. But I don’t think he has the right to buy this election.
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SANDERS: You know, we pride ourselves on being the longest-standing democracy in the world. And we’re proud of that. To me, what that means, one person, one vote. If you want to run for president, you run for president. You’ve got good ideas, maybe you win, maybe you don’t win.
But I do think it’s a bit obscene that we have somebody who, by the way, chose not to contest in Iowa, in Nevada, in South Carolina, in New Hampshire where all of the candidates, we did town meetings, we were talking to thousands and thousands of people, working hard. He said, I don’t have to do that. I’m worth $60 billion. I have more wealth than the bottom 125 million Americans. I’ll buy the presidency. That offends me very much.
And tomorrow night…
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SANDERS: You know, and what also offends me is, you know, I think we’re going to take a look at his record. And there are a number of things about his record that I think the American people may not know. As the mayor of the New York City, he was very aggressive in pushing so-called stop and frisk.
And what that meant, and it was very clear, no hiding this, that if you were black, if you are a Latino man, and you walk down the street, the police have the right to grab you for no reason, throw you up against the wall, search you, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of African-Americans and Latinos in New York City underwent that.
And then, finally, after he left and Bill de Blasio became mayor, they did away with stop and frisk, and you know what? Crime rate continued to go down. So his policies humiliated and offended hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people. And I think that is something that is worthy of discussion.
