 So I'm not sure how many people know this, but Think Progress is a news organization that is essentially the media arm of the so-called Center for American Progress, which is a neoliberal, pro-corporate, billionaire-funded think tank that's run by Neera Tandon, who hates Bernie Sanders. She hates progressives, and she is fighting with everything she possibly has to protect the status quo. Now, I'm not gonna say that Think Progress is a horrible media outlet because they've done some genuinely objective pieces of journalism that I've shared, that I recommended people read because I thought that, you know, they do good work from time to time. It's the same thing like Media Matters. They're run by David Brock, but every once in a while they'll do really good compilation videos of Fox News. So I'm not going to dismiss the totality of the organization, but with that being said, in the event, the so-called Center for American Progress needs Think Progress to act as an attack dog for them, they will do that. And they recently just did that. They released a series of political hatchet jobs at the behest of the so-called Center for American Progress in an effort to attack and delegitimize Bernie Sanders. So just last week, they put out this hit piece that they tried to pass off as quote, analysis where they basically just attack Bernie Sanders for being a millionaire. And they additionally released a video where they played all of the different times Bernie Sanders talked about millionaires and billionaires, but they tried to frame him as being a hypocrite because as he denounces the millionaire and billionaire class, his wealth was substantially increasing simultaneously due to the sales of his best-selling book. Now, to be clear here, Bernie Sanders never took a vow of poverty nor did he say that wealth was intrinsically bad, but when he talks about the millionaire and billionaire class, you have to be clear, he's talking about their greed. So in the event, Bernie Sanders suddenly became a millionaire and then tried to dodge his taxes, he stored his earnings in the Cayman Islands and then started enacting legislation that would cut his own taxes, then I think it would be reasonable for us to deduce that he's hypocritical, but just the mere fact that he's now a millionaire does not make him inherently hypocritical. That's absurd. He always is very specific in calling out the greed of the millionaire and billionaire class. And there's countless videos of him doing this, but think progress wasn't actually trying to be honest and put out an objective piece of journalism that demonstrates how Bernie Sanders is now a hypocrite, all they were trying to do is act as the attack dog for the Center for American Progress, again, run by near attendant who despises Bernie Sanders and they just simply wanted to find whatever issue they could lob at Bernie Sanders because look, we've seen this for multiple years now. Whatever scandal they can throw at Bernie Sanders, they throw at him because they want something to stick and nothing's really stuck because there's no scandals of Bernie Sanders. You can comb through decades worth of footage and he's being consistent. He's talking about how the greed of the millionaire class is ruining the economy. He talks about wealth and income inequality. So there's nothing that's sticking because there's no real scandals. But with that being said, the media think progress, Center for American Progress, they're trying to manufacture some type of scandal in order to delegitimize Bernie Sanders because again, he poses a threat to what they're trying to protect. The status quo. Now, what's ironic is that near attendant, the head of the Center for American Progress, she constantly denounces attacks on Democrats. So if you recall back in December, David Serota, before he was working for Bernie Sanders, he published an article about Beto O'Rourke and basically just outlined how conservative his record was. And near attendant basically had a conniption fit. She literally suggested that it's unacceptable for any Democrat to be attacked. And she even called it quote seriously dangerous, implying any attack on a Democrat would help Trump. And she even called on Sanders to repudiate this quote attack, which was actually just Beto O'Rourke's own record. But now that think progress is attacking Bernie Sanders after she previously denounced attacks on Beto O'Rourke and attacks on any Democrat because it helps Donald Trump. Well, now what does she have to say? If anyone's a hypocrite, it's not Bernie Sanders. It's near attendant because how are you going to denounce attacks on any Democrats? And then you're going to allow the media organization of think progress of the Center for American Progress to attack Bernie Sanders. I mean, you've got to understand what's happening here. The Democratic Party establishment and Democratic Party elites, they have a set of standards that they apply to progressives that they don't follow themselves. And that's what we're seeing here. And thankfully Bernie Sanders saw it and he finally decided to call it out. So he actually penned a letter to them that the New York Times picked up and he questioned why if it's totally unacceptable for anyone to attack any Democrat, then why is the Center for American Progress' media arm publishing right-wing attacks on Democrats? Not just Democrats like Bernie Sanders, but Democrats such as Elizabeth Warren, Democrats such as Cory Booker and also why are they publishing ad hominem attacks on Bernie Sanders? So he writes Center for American Progress leader near attendant repeatedly calls for unity while simultaneously maligning my staff and supporters and belittling progressive ideas. I worry that the corporate money cap is receiving is inordinately and inappropriately influencing the role it is playing in the progressive movement. I and other Democratic candidates are running campaigns based on principles and ideas and not engaging in mudslinging or personal attacks on each other. Meanwhile, the Center for American Progress is using its resources to smear Senator Booker, Senator Warren and myself, among others. This is hardly the way to build unity or to win the general election. I will be informing my grassroots supporters of the foregoing concerns that I have about the role cap is playing. Should your actions evolve in the coming months, I am happy to reconsider what kind of partnership we can have. This counterproductive, negative campaigning needs to stop. The Democratic primary must be a campaign of ideas not of bad faith smears. Please help play a constructive role in the effort to defeat Donald Trump. Now, I think that this is a brilliant move by Bernie Sanders because he's basically using their own words against them. How can they say that any and all attacks are seriously dangerous but yet do it themselves constantly? It's because Nira Tandon is an opportunistic Democratic Party establishment crony. She's just doing their bidding and she doesn't really care about any Democrat being attacked because she's all in favor of attacks on Bernie Sanders. And she signed on to basically every single smear that the establishment has thrown at Bernie Sanders. And she's someone who probably still hates Bernie Sanders because she was most likely hoping to get a cushy job in Hillary Clinton's administration. But since Hillary Clinton lost, well, she's trying to use that as evidence that Bernie Sanders somehow must have hurt Hillary Clinton in the general election because he was so dirty against Hillary in 2016, which is just nonsense. But here's what Nira Tandon is. She is a bully. She is everything that she accuses everyone else of being. And it's not just that she's a bully towards progressives and Bernie Sanders. She's a bully towards her own staff because there was a story that came out in 2018 about how she literally outed the name of an anonymous staffer from the Center for American Progress who accused someone else of harassment. Now, the reason why you want to make sure that staffers identities are protected is because one, you want to make sure that they're protected from harassment or blowback. And two, you want to make sure that you don't discourage others who are the victims of harassment at your organization from speaking out. But she knows this in a professional environment. You can't not know this and become the president and CEO of an organization, but she's a bully. And she purposefully outed that staffer. Otherwise, I think she's just so incompetent that she needs to resign. But here's what I think a lot of us were thinking. How is Nira Tandon going to respond because what he did here was expose her blatant hypocrisy. So how is she going to respond? Well, I think that my initial prediction was that she was just not going to say anything. However, now she's forced to act because an individual who matters the most actually acknowledged Bernie Sanders letter and surprisingly took Bernie Sanders side. So I'm talking about one of the Democratic Party and caps billionaire donors, Tom Steyer, who states voters deserve a fair and unbiased primary election. And I will use my voice on the Center for American Progress Board of Directors to discourage any such attacks on any candidate seeking the Democratic nomination in the future. Now, can you guess what happened after a billionaire came out and denounced the Center for American Progress? Then she responded like that and she put out her own statement saying that think progress has editorial independence, although the video that they put out in her view was overly harsh. This is what we're going to have to deal with for the next couple of years. We're going to have to deal with these types of bad faith smears against Bernie Sanders. And I'm not saying that Bernie Sanders is above criticism. I've been critical of Bernie Sanders. I've stated that I think he needs to do better when it comes to reparations. I've stated that he needs to speak out on behalf of Julian Assange. I've stated that he needs to do better with regard to Israel Palestine. So there are good faith criticisms from the left of Bernie Sanders that you can lob against him. But what I am saying is that there's a lot of bad faith arguments that are trying to do anything to delegitimize Bernie Sanders. And the one thing they think they're going to be able to get his own base to flip on him over is this issue. Oh, well, if you hate millionaires, then why do you support Bernie because he's a millionaire now? We support Bernie because he's going after other millionaires. He wants to tax them as well as himself. And that's what we care about. It's the greed of the millionaires, not their existence. Now, billionaires is something else. I think that every single billionaire is in fact a policy failure. But there's a difference between somebody who's a millionaire and a billionaire. And if you don't acknowledge that, then I don't know what to say. But regardless, this is an argument that they're using against Bernie Sanders to frame him as a hypocrite. That's just not going to stick. But they're trying to make it stick. And I'm glad that he decided to speak out against what they're doing because it's just it's wrong. And if anybody should stop attacking Democrats, don't you think it's a Democratic Party think tank that should stop attacking other Democrats? Because you can say he's not a Democrat because he's been independent for most of his career. But he's more Democratic than Joe Manchin, who literally endorsed a Republican Susan Collins. So regardless, I mean, they're going to keep doing this. And once they move on from the millionaire issue when they realize that it's not going to stick, they're going to find something else. But I like that Bernie Sanders essentially issued a warning to them. Play nice or my grassroots supporters are going to know what you're doing and what your agenda really is. So I'm glad Bernie Sanders is fighting fire with fire because if you just try to ignore these attacks and you don't respond, then you're allowing them to monopolize the narrative, which is something you never want to happen in the midst of a campaign. So good on Bernie for speaking out and condemning this here.