Sanders Says He Has No Regrets Over Backing Platner, Won't Say If He Vetted Other Endorsed Candidates

Since Maine Democratic delegates voted 566-5 on Saturday to swap Troy Jackson in for Graham Platner, Senator Bernie Sanders has had one message: no regrets. He said so directly Sunday on CBS's "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan."

Brennan asked Sanders point blank whether he wished he'd pushed Platner out sooner, given the warning signs, which could have given Jackson more runway before Election Day. Sanders said no.

"When we heard the serious allegations made against him, I wanted to get on the phone. I wanted to talk to him. I did," Sanders said, according to the CBS transcript. "I asked, along with virtually all his supporters, that he should get out of the race, and he did."

Platner did withdraw earlier this month after a former girlfriend accused him of sexual assault, which Platner denied. But Sanders's framing skips over everything that happened before that final allegation.

Platner had already been dogged for weeks by a Nazi-linked tattoo, offensive old social media posts, allegations of abusive conduct, and reports that he exchanged explicit messages with women while married, according to Fox News. Sanders kept campaigning with him through all of it. When Fox News Digital asked Sanders in June whether the explicit-messages report changed his thinking, he answered with two words: "Certainly not."

Sanders also declined to tell Fox News Digital whether he believed the women accusing Platner of abuse. He only picked up the phone once the sexual assault allegation surfaced.

"I don't know who has been fully vetted"

Brennan pushed further, asking Sanders whether he's confident the other progressive candidates he's endorsed have actually been checked out.

"Well, look, I think, you know, there are hundreds of candidates. I don't know who has been, quote unquote, fully vetted," Sanders said. "All I know is, Margaret, that the candidates that we are supporting are standing up for the working class of this country."

Sanders is one of the most prominent endorsers in Democratic primaries this cycle. Saying he doesn't know who's been vetted is either an admission that his operation doesn't do due diligence, or that he doesn't consider it his job. Either way, voters in Michigan, Minnesota, and elsewhere are left to figure out for themselves whether the next Platner is already on their ballot.

No endorser can guarantee a candidate's private conduct will never surface as a problem. Opposition research and personal scandal can blindside any campaign, and Platner's most serious allegation only became public deep into the race. The tattoo, the old posts, and the messages reports, however, weren't secret opposition research dumps. They were public and reported well before the final allegation, and Sanders kept campaigning at Platner's side anyway. That's a choice, not bad luck.

The bigger fight: Rahm Emanuel and the "Bernie Bros" warning

Sanders used the rest of his CBS appearance to push back on a warning from Democrat Rahm Emanuel, who wrote in a recent op-ed that so-called "Bernie Bros" could again fracture the Democratic base and hand Republicans winnable races.

Sanders rejected that framing outright. "There's no debate, there is a strong division within the Democratic Party," he said, adding that "people are sick and tired of the Rahm Emanuels and Democratic establishment and Republican establishment."

He pointed to Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who is challenging Rep. Haley Stevens in the state's August primary, and Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, running for the Senate seat Tina Smith is vacating. Sanders noted that super PACs have put $50 million into the Michigan race to back Stevens, which he framed as billionaire-class money protecting "establishment candidates."

Sanders predicted some working-class Republican voters could even cross over for El-Sayed and Flanagan, calling them people who "can't afford to send their kids to college" or "afford decent retirements."

What's unresolved

Troy Jackson now has roughly 100 days to build a campaign against six-term Republican incumbent Susan Collins, a compressed timeline that exists specifically because Platner's candidacy collapsed under scrutiny Sanders continued to wave off for months. Whether Sanders applies any different standard to El-Sayed or Flanagan before their August primaries, given his own admission that he doesn't know who's been "fully vetted," remains an open question he didn't answer on air.