Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) says he isn’t bothered by harsh criticism contained in emails stolen from former presidential rival Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
Despite apparently stolen messages in which Clinton advisers call him a “doofus,” among other dismissive remarks, Sanders is shrugging it off.
“Trust me, if they went into our emails — I suppose which may happen, who knows — I’m sure there would be statements that would be less than flattering about, you know, the Clinton staff,” Sanders told The Washington Post in an interview published Monday.
{mosads}“That’s what happens in campaigns.”
Multiple emails allegedly stolen from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta have contained coarse words for Sanders, Clinton’s opponent for the Democratic presidential nomination.
In one January note, Podesta claimed that Sanders’s healthcare proposal “sucks.” In another, Neera Tanden, a Clinton ally and head of the liberal Center for American Progress, called a former colleague “a f—er” after it was revealed that he was advising Sanders.
Other messages show the Clinton campaign as exceedingly calculating, with multiple advisers weighing the political pros and cons of various policy proposals and announcements.
“The way they work is very, very different than the way we work,” Sanders told the Post. “We did not have a committee deciding what kind of jokes I would be telling.
“The way they do politics is very different.”
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has attempted to use the stolen emails to attack Clinton for being untrustworthy and callous.
In some cases, he has appeared to appeal to supporters of Sanders by criticizing the Democratic National Committee’s treatment of the Vermont senator. In one case, emails appear to show Clinton’s camp receiving a question from a senior DNC official in advance of a Democratic primary town hall event.
“Was I shocked to find out that the DNC was partial toward Clinton? Not exactly,” Sanders said. “That’s something we knew from day one.”
Clinton’s camp has declined to confirm or deny the authenticity of the emails.
The messages have been slowly released by WikiLeaks in batches, with the apparent intention of dragging out their news coverage. Intelligence officials have suggested that the hacking of Podesta’s account was part of a broad campaign by Russia to interfere with the U.S. political system.