Sanders, a Democratic strategist, shut down pro-Trump pundit Jeffrey Lord on CNN on Thursday after he compared the president to the civil rights icon. Worse, Lord drew the parallel in defense of Trump’s threat to freeze healthcare subsidies for poor Americans if Democrats in Congress don’t compromise with him to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Sanders admonished Lord to “not equate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a humanitarian, a Nobel Peace Prize-winner, to the vagina-grabbing president Donald Trump.”
Reached by phone, Sanders was still stunned by Lord’s comments. “I was like, ‘Is he really going there?’” she said. “Donald Trump is saying, ‘I’m going to withhold healthcare and possibly kill people if I don’t get my own way.’ That’s not the same thing.”
Sanders said Republicans have done nothing to convince Democrats to negotiate over health care. “Democrats are in a very good position here to hold the line,” she said. “Democrats are only coming to the table to build on the enormous success of the Affordable Care Act, not to tear it down.”
Thursday’s episode was just the latest blunder by Trump defenders this week, after White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s epic Holocaust gaffe on Tuesday.
“There are just some things you don’t invoke—Hitler, MLK, I’d say Gandhi is up there as well,” she said. “Just steer clear. Steer clear.”