Nomiki Konst, a former surrogate for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) presidential campaign, on Friday said that the “Me Too” movement has been weaponized against the senator in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations against staffers from his 2016 presidential campaign.
“This is an issue on all campaigns. This is not a Bernie Sanders issue,” Konst told Hill.TV’s Krystal Ball and Buck Sexton on “Rising.”
“I think, unfortunately, the ‘Me Too’ movement has been used as a political weapon in this case,” she continued. “It has to be dealt with no matter what, but it is not something that feeds into this old Bernie bro narrative.”
“The deputy campaign manager for Bernie Sanders was a woman. The chief of staff for Bernie Sanders had been a woman for years. I mean, there is always a need for women in leadership to address these issues, but I’ve seen this played out in the media. We have to remember that there are women that have been part of this movement, and they shouldn’t be erased,” she said citing female Sanders supporters such as herself, former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner (D) and actress Rosario Dawson.
“I don’t think that their leadership should be erased, and that’s something that his opponents have done by lumping ‘Me Too’ into the Bernie bro narrative that is somehow coming back in 2019,” she said.
Konst’s comments come after Politico first reported that a former Sanders campaign staffer accused senior aide Robert Becker of forcibly kissing her during the Democratic National Convention in 2016.
The New York Times reported last week that over a dozen women who worked for the campaign said they were harassed and that their allegations were not handled properly
Sanders publicly apologized on Thursday to the women alleging they were victims of sexual misconduct on his campaign.
— Julia Manchester
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