Saagar Enjeti blasts New York Times editorial board over interview with Sanders

Hill.TV’s Saagar Enjeti blasted The New York Times editorial board over its interview with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) that was published on Monday.

Enjeti accused the Times of trying to control the narrative on the 2020 White House contender and publishing “dubious fact checks” on his remarks.

“This is a small window into how The New York Times controls the narratives,” Enjeti said Tuesday. “They interview candidates and then publish dubious fact checks right next to their statements — you don’t have any real recourse to correct them.”

Enjeti, a former White House correspondent for The Daily Caller, specifically took issue with the Times challenging Sanders over his ability to reach across the aisle and make legislative deals in Congress.

“Why do I care about this?” he asked. “Well, it’s because this is how the New York Times and Washington Post fact checkers have stacked the deck against conservatives for years.”

The Times editorial board challenged Sanders over a number of issues in a wide-ranging interview. The board pointed to a 2019 study by the Lugar Center and Georgetown’s McCourt School of Public Policy that showed that he was the senator least likely to co-sponsor legislation across party lines.

Though Sanders acknowledged that he had not seen the report, he pushed back its claim by pointing to his record on passing amendments while he was a member of Congress.

“You may want to go back to my role in the House where year after year after year — guess which member of Congress got more amendments passed on the floor of the House than any other in a bipartisan way,” he said.

The Times board noted that while the then-representative passed more amendments than any other member in Congress, it didn’t mean that “this is not necessarily evidence of working across the aisle to sponsor legislation.”

The interview comes as Sanders surges in early state and national polls. Two recent polls show Sanders at or near the top of the pack in Iowa, the crucial first-in-the-nation caucus state.