Young Turks founder on Sanders-Warren feud: ‘I really wish they had deescalated’

Young Turks founder Cenk Uygur expressed disappointment Wednesday after a feud between Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) took center stage at Tuesday night’s Democratic presidential primary debate.

“I really wish they had deescalated and I’m quite disappointed,” Uygur, who has endorsed Sanders’s presidential campaign, told Hill.TV.

The two progressive rivals have engaged in a war of words after a CNN report alleged that Sanders had told Warren during a private meeting in December 2018 that he did not believe a woman could become president, which Sanders has strenuously denied.

Warren sought to confirm those reports on Monday, saying Sanders had “disagreed” with her when she told him she believed a woman could in fact win the White House.

During Tuesday’s debate in Iowa, CNN moderator Abby Phillip, who has since faced criticism for her framing of the question, addressed the feud head-on, but both candidates defended their versions of events.

Sanders said it was “incomprehensible” to suggest he believes that a woman couldn’t win. He also asserted that he had at first “stayed back” in 2016 to see whether Warren would run for president before eventually launching his own bid.

Warren, meanwhile, stuck to her story, though she called Sanders a “friend” and used the issue as a segue to address questions over female electability.

“Look at the men on this stage. Collectively, they have lost 10 elections,” Warren said. “The only people on this stage who have won every single election they’ve been in are the women.”

Supporters of both candidates have been bitterly fighting online over the alleged conversation.

“No one knows what happened in that room, but we are all humans,” Uygur said the next morning.

“In being fair to Elizabeth Warren, I think it must have been a misunderstanding,” he added later.

The two top-tier candidates garnered even more attention after they were shown engaged in what appeared to be a tense conversation after the debate. Sanders was seen reaching out his hand to Warren as she approached him onstage following the event, but the pair did not end up shaking hands.

—Tess Bonn