(Editor’s note: “Bernie Briefing” is a weekly campaign-season look at how Vermont U.S. senator and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is playing in the national media.)
[T]hink you’re feeling taxed with the approaching Internal Revenue Service filing deadline?
Consider the saga of Bernie Sanders.
If navigating between his home state and the nation’s capital wasn’t enough, last week the Democratic presidential candidate had to square off against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a CNN debate just five days before Tuesday’s make-or-break New York primary.
“The debate,” New York Times reporter Elizabeth Williamson observed, “was an exhausting battle waged by exhausted candidates, a window into how brutally tiring a presidential campaign is at this stage.”
In the Brooklyn clash, Sanders had to defend Vermont from Clinton’s charges that it provided the highest per-capita number of guns used in recent New York crimes. (That’s only because the 55 guns it supplied — a tiny total compared with other states — divided by its small population leads to a deceptively large percentage, PolitiFact reports.)
“Overall the sense was of two aging contenders swinging, whiffing, and landing an occasional body blow in round after round,” the Times concluded of the debate. “While Mr. Sanders was speaking Mrs. Clinton’s eyelids at times drooped alarmingly; at one point Mr. Sanders, parched, lunged for a water bottle.”
Perhaps Sanders was tired because he earlier criticized General Electric as an example of corporate greed, which led CEO Jeff Immelt to note the candidate has never visited the company’s Green Mountain State plant, which led the candidate to say he had (“Sure, years ago, in Rutland, Vermont, yes — there’s a large plant that makes airplane parts”), which led The Washington Post to devote an entire Fact Checker column to “The Bernie Sanders-General Electric Dispute Over A Plant Visit.”
“There certainly appear to be no photographs, news releases or other documentation that pinpoint exactly when the alleged visit took place,” concluded Post reporter Glenn Kessler, who on the other hand quoted a union official who does remember it “because he was quite upset that Sanders would visit the plant — which remains nonunion despite years of efforts by the UE to try to unionize it.”
Or perhaps Sanders was weary from planning and packing for last Friday’s trip to Italy and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences (“in effect the Vatican’s in-house think tank on social, economic and environmental issues,” the Times explains).
“Bernie Sanders’ whirlwind Vatican tour began with a motorcade, tearing through the legendarily bad Roman traffic roughly 10 hours after the previous night’s debate in Brooklyn finished,” Politico reporter Gabriel Debenedetti writes in “Bernie’s Roman Holiday.” “Italian motorcycle police escorted the senator, who hadn’t even had time to shower, let alone change or practice the speech he’d finished writing overnight on the chartered plane.”
“Sanders was cutting it close: Bern Force One landed at the private terminal in Rome with just 52 minutes left on the clock before he was scheduled to speak at the Vatican conference,” Debenedetti continues. “Sanders made it in time to deliver a truncated, globalized version of his standard campaign address.”
(Time magazine offers an online transcript here.)
“Sanders and his wife, Jane, stayed overnight at the pope’s residence, the Domus Santa Marta hotel in the Vatican gardens, on the same floor as the pope,” Associated Press reporter Ken Thomas adds. “They were seen at the hotel reception, carrying their own bags.”
Lugging the luggage paid off. Sanders woke Saturday to meet briefly with his host.
“It was a real honor for me, for my wife and I to spend some time with him,” the AP quoted Sanders as saying. “I think he is one of the extraordinary figures not only in the world today but in modern world history. His message is resonating with every religion on earth with people who have no religion and it is a message that says we have got to inject morality and justice into the global economy.”
The pope was more modest.
“When I came down, I greeted him, I shook his hand and nothing more,” the pontiff told Reuters. “This is called good manners and it is not getting involved in politics. If anyone thinks that greeting someone is getting involved in politics, I recommend that he look for a psychiatrist.”
Sanders is back in the States, jet-lagged but awake enough to appear Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” CBS’ “Face the Nation” and CNN’s “State of the Union.” The candidate just released his 2014 income tax form, as reported by the Politico story “Sanders’ Tax Return: As ‘Boring’ As Promised” and the financial website The Motley Fool’s “What’s Next for Bernie Sanders’ Net Worth?” But that didn’t stop the news shows from asking when he’d share his other filings, be they from past years or the one he’s supposed to finish by Monday.
“We will post more of them, yes, we will,” Sanders told CNN. “Jane and I don’t have a bunch of accountants working for us. We will get it out.”
“By when?” CNN reporter Dana Bash asked.
“Which will be very soon,” Sanders responded.
“Like this week?” Bash asked.
“Probably,” Sanders responded.
Stay tuned.