Do you really want to know what happened to Bernie Sanders? They got to him nine years ago - the real reason he won't confirm RFK Jr for HHS

Lest you think it’s an exaggeration that we need members of congress with no spouse or kids to be used against them

What happened to Bernie? Even if you never felt the Bern, or even a bit of a single payer healthcare tingle, you may at one point have admired Senator Bernie Sanders for (at the very least) being a man of his word. People in Washington talk a lot of big talk, but an elected official who actually votes the way he waxes poetically (or rants non-rhoticly) on the Senate floor is a rare bird indeed: Bernard Sanders was a person of sincerity who lobbyists could consistently rely on to vote the way Bernie wanted to which may or may not have anything to do with what the lobbyists wanted, but if it did, it was entirely a coincidence. I deeply admired him and was one of many Millennial supporters of his early campaign (read on to find out the exact words Trump said at a rally that made me board the Trump train).

Now, ever since the first RFK Jr Senate Confirmation Hearing, people are sharing that they are so surprised that Bernie has changed his anti-Big Pharma tune or they’re suggesting that Bernie is a hypocrite for saying he won’t be voting in favor of Kennedy for HHS Secretary.

This DM from a friend expresses the sentiment well.

And consider this remark from Publius on X.

“You are the biggest fraud imaginable!” says Publius.

But wait — has Bernie really changed? Yes; a resounding yes. But not recently. The about-face Bernie made from a guy who delivers soapbox diatribes about “millionais and billionais” in front of throngs of supporters to a guy who would go cuckoo over “militantly anti-vaxx onesies” (Bernie’s own words — and if you have a moment, please watch my impression of them in my tiktok/X video here), eagerly and vociferously rejecting the most populist member of Trump’s would-be cabinet, RFK Jr. — well, truth be told, that profound political shift happened years ago.

Between April of 2016 and July of 2016, to be exact. In April of 2016: when asked at a townhall whether or not he would use his influence to get his supporters to vote for Hillary if she won the primary, Bernie in essence said, “If I tell you who to vote for, don’t listen to me.” (Snopes fairly points out that what he said verbatim was, “…we are not a movement where I can snap my fingers and say to you or to anybody else what you should do, because you won't listen to me. You shouldn't. Uh, you'll make these decisions yourself.”) Fast forward to July of 2016: at the Democratic National Convention, Bernie tells his supporters to vote for Hillary, prompting Trump to famously declare that “Bernie Sanders endorsing Hillary Clinton is like Occupy Wall Street endorsing Goldman Sachs.” (As a brief aside, that line spoken by Trump at that rally is what made me decide to vote for Trump.)

But why? How? What happened to precipitate the new blue-no-matta-who Bernie? As I’ve said (in my post from April of last year, regarding Speaker Mike Johnson), there are a few tried and true ways to induce compliance in someone very quickly: threaten their life or limb, threaten the person they love most (that’s what happened to Bernie, and it was a threat to his wife Jane), blackmail, or bribery. Long story short, in January of 2016, a Vermont native who was also a lawyer for the Trump campaign learned of a filing showing that Burlington College, the school that Jane Sanders, Bernie’s wife, had formerly been president of, was failing financially after a stunning $10 million loan was approved — under Jane’s tenure — for the tiny school’s “Sky’s the Limit” remodel/rebrand endeavor back in 2010. Years after she left the role, the local bank got spooked by the school’s potential loss of its accreditation and closed the line of credit it had extended to the college. After much digging (a.k.a. opposition research by the lawyer) it was discovered that — possibly with Jane’s knowledge — some details might have been fudged on the loan docs, including listing a bequest as a recurring donation, an error in whose absence the $10 million loan probably would not have been approved. The Trump team lawyer then sent a four page letter to the US attorney for Vermont in January of 2016, advising of possible loan fraud; and the Obama DOJ opened an investigation into “the matter,” as Comey would have said. Bernie himself lawyered up and also hired the same lawyer who represented Scooter Libby to represent Jane! (Talk about being willing to do anything to protect the person you love most.) It all seemed like a nonissue at first, and the press treated it that way too. But gradually, it got very very serious. The writing was on the wall. Someone wanted the Bernie problem solved. Interestingly, when I moved to DC in 2018 as a Trump supporter, more than a few people told me that Trump thought that Bernie would be harder to beat than Hillary. While Hillary benefited by Bernie bowing out, Trump had even more to gain by making Hillary overconfident in her ability to coast to victory and eliminating the threat of another populist candidate. The hashtag #BernieWouldHaveWon was born November 8, 2016 but conceived earlier that year in January.

That spring and summer, the obviously rigged caucuses and primaries were just the tip of the demoralization iceberg; we didn’t know then that there was even more horror to come. The avuncular Bernie stumping for wicked step-motherial Hillary at the Democratic National Convention in July would fully disabuse every young (read: not yet hardened) Bernie supporter of any remaining notion of fairness and hope in our electoral process. The underdog giving up his galvanizing run was one thing. Actually endorsing Hillary was quite another. It was astonishing to those of us who had supported him for over a year by that time. We saw the tears in his eyes at the convention. The words that came out of his mouth did not match the devastation written all over his face. The great Independent Senator from Vermont, brought to his knees, telling us to vote for who — a former First Lady? What? It would be laughable if it wasn’t so mindboggling! What did she have on him?? What was going on? Nothing could have pushed (8% of) us into the arms of Trump (and likely kept the other 92% of Berners home on election day) more effectively than the combination of Bernie’s broken spirit and Hillary’s visibly maniacal glee at the belief (hallucination) that all of these Bernie supporters would now be voting for her.

Once Trump did win in November, despite and because of Bernie’s endorsement of HRC, the investigation into the possible loan fraud connected to Jane Sanders’ former employment would eventually be closed. The “they” in “they got to him” was Obama’s Department of Justice.

Now, it could be inferred that the investigation would also have been closed had Hillary won. After all, Bernie played ball and jumped on the Hillary bandwagon, as requested. And suddenly ended up with new cars and big expensive houses too.

But as far as the performative abandonment of a once-intact moral compass we witnessed at the Senate Confirmation Hearing last week, please know that this isn’t “new” behavior for the Vermont Senator.

We lost Bernie back in 2016.

On a nostalgic note, I rummaged through my old Messages to Millennials blog (2011-2022) in order to find my posts about that historically infamous summer, and even at the time, I had speculated that someone in power, somewhere, had threatened someone Bernie loved very dearly. I posited that no bribe could ever tempt a man of Bernie’s moral stature. Can you imagine the headlines if “they” hadn’t found a different way to manipulate him (I speculate, within the context of presenting you evidence that supports my claim)? COLLEGE LOAN FRAUD SCANDAL — SANDERS DROPS OUT OF POTUS RACE AS DOJ INVESTIGATES WIFE JANE on every news website, faux outrage on Fox and CNN blaring from the glowing oracle-of-truth box (the TV) all spring. Instead, he was used to sheepdog his supporters over to Hillary’s camp.

Once I flipped from Bernie to Trump officially, I took to twitter to tweet nonstop about why everyone in the country should join me. I repeatedly linked to this Messages to Millennials blogpost to inspire other Berners specifically to board the Trump train too.

I also found this gem from October of 2014 — more than ten years ago! In the post entitled, “The Hillary Problem: Why She Can’t Win and What We Must Do About it Now Before It’s Too Late,” I predicted then that Hillary could not win the presidency and outlined 5 reasons why, along with my suggestion for 3 possible alternatives: Bernie, Elizabeth Warren or Jesse Ventura.

Little did I know that I would end up happily voting for Trump in 2016, and then doing it again two more times after that!

Life is funny.

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