Warren, Sanders accuse each other of lying

CNN mics catch post-debate confrontation

Elizabeth Warren accused Bernie Sanders of calling her “a liar on national TV” as she refused his handshake after Tuesday’s Democratic debate.

Despite downplaying their growing feud onstage in Des Moines, Iowa, tensions between the longtime friends and U.S. senators boiled over after the debate. The result was a tense exchange, audio of which was captured by CNN and released Wednesday night.

“I think you called me a liar on national TV?” Warren said as she approached Sanders.

“Let’s not do it right now,” Sanders replied. “You want to have that discussion, we’ll have that discussion.”

Warren, hands raised, interjected with “anytime,” before Sanders started again.

“You called me a liar,” Sanders said, pointing his index finger at Warren, before cutting himself off.

“All right, let’s not do it now,” he said, turning away toward California billionaire Tom Steyer, a silent onlooker to the tete-a-tete.

The long-held campaign-trail truce between the Massachusetts and Vermont senators has crumbled in recent days, sowing division within the party’s progressive wing as its two leading candidates continue to bicker.

The spat began with a Politico report Sunday about a Sanders organizing script that instructed volunteers to paint Warren and her supporters as elite. Warren accused Sanders of “sending his volunteers out to trash me.”

Then, on Monday, Warren confirmed a CNN report based on anonymous sources that Sanders told her during a private 2018 meeting that a woman couldn’t win the presidency. Sanders, responding to the initial CNN report, had accused Warren staffers of “lying.”

Sanders and Warren initially seemed to downplay the feud when it came up during Tuesday’s debate.

“I didn’t say it,” Sanders said, denying that he told Warren a woman couldn’t win and going on to say, “It’s incomprehensible that I think a woman could not be president of the United States.”

Warren said she was “not here to try to fight with Bernie,” and instead made a case for a woman’s electability — including her own.

“Can a woman beat Donald Trump? 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 that they’ve been in are the women, Amy (Klobuchar) and me.”