Senator Bernie Sanders’ former adviser Tezlyn Figaro has called out his response to the 2024 presidential election, saying on a recent NewsNation segment that he needs to “take a seat.”
Figaro, who worked as a campaign adviser to Sanders in his 2016 presidential election bid, hit back at the Vermont senator after he launched a critique of the Democratic party.
Donald Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election and will become the next president of the United States when he is inaugurated in January.
MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty
Posting on X, formerly Twitter, Sanders wrote: “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working-class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.
“While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right.”
Newsweek reached out to Sanders via email outside of normal working hours for comment.
It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.
While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change.
And they’re right. pic.twitter.com/lM2gSJmQFL
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) November 6, 2024
Figaro hit back at Sanders. “Let me just address Bernie Sanders right out the gate,” she said.
“I want him to go back and have a seat in that folding chair,” Figaro said, referencing the viral photo of Sanders from President Joe Biden’s presidential Inauguration in 2021.
“The bottom line is, although what he said may be true, Bernie Sanders never supported VP Harris,” said Figaro, who stated that she was “appalled,” by Sanders’ statement.
Figaro then called Sanders out for allegedly not fully supporting Harris’ presidential bid. “He waited until the very last minute to endorse, very much like he did with Hillary Clinton,” she said. “He did not do anything to try and help get her elected. So he’s not in position to really speak.”
Figaro added that, “He did not do that with Joe Biden, he immediately endorsed Joe Biden, he threw the progressive movement completely under the bus and said that Joe Biden would be the most progressive president in our recent history.”
“I don’t appreciate his take, because I think it’s disingenuous,” she said.
Discussing the vice president’s campaign, Figaro said that there was not a “chance in hell,” that Harris would have won the White House, calling the 100-day campaign, “a disaster.”
Newsweek reached out to the Harris campaign and Figaro via email outside of normal working hours for comment.
The Democratic party is currently engaged in a blame game, with party infighting as they try to make sense of the election loss.
“There’s a lot of finger pointing going on,” Figaro said, before blaming Harris’ loss in part on political consultancy firms who in her words “fumbled a billion-dollar bag.”
“They have literally come into these cities, they did not listen to the grassroots, they said that they knew it all, they spent all the money internally, they spent all the money on celebrities, they did not listen to the needs of the people.”
“They got exactly what they earned,” she said.
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