Bernie Sanders’s wife to MSNBC anchor: ‘Don’t ever use me to demean my husband’

Jane Sanders, the wife of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), blasted an MSNBC host on Wednesday after the anchor said Sanders is “an incredibly dubious prospect” as an authority figure amid the current sexual misconduct conversation.

“I didn’t answer your biased reporting about Bernie during the last 2 years @JoyAnnReid. But don’t ever use me to demean my husband,” Sanders wrote to “AM Joy” host Joy Reid.

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Reid was engaged in a Twitter conversation earlier in the day about the credibility of men in positions of authority starting to “crumble” amid a wave of sexual misconduct allegations — and consequences — against men in high-profile positions.

One Twitter user suggested Bernie Sanders as an example of a credible male authority figure.

“Um… I get that he has a hardcore following, but his own attitudes toward women, from his weird early writings to his physical dismissal of women in his presence (including his own wife) make that an incredibly dubious prospect,” Reid responded. 

“I am very happy & very proud to be Bernie’s wife,” Jane Sanders said in her response. “Your perception couldn’t be more wrong. Have you ever talked with him? You’ve never spoken w/me.”

Um… I get that he has a hardcore following, but his own attitudes toward women, from his weird early writings to his physical dismissal of women in his presence (including his own wife) make that an incredibly dubious prospect.

— Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) November 29, 2017

I didn’t answer your biased reporting about Bernie during the last 2 years @JoyAnnReid. But don’t ever use me to demean my husband. I am very happy & very proud to be Bernie’s wife. Your perception couldn’t be more wrong. Have you ever talked with him? You’ve never spoken w/me. https://t.co/SZG7uV8cfO

— Jane O’Meara Sanders (@janeosanders) November 29, 2017

Reid’s reference to early writings may have been to a 1972 essay Sanders wrote in a Vermont newspaper, which resurfaced in a Mother Jones article in 2015.

“A woman enjoys intercourse with her man — as she fantasizes being raped by 3 men simultaneously,” one line from the essay reads.

A spokesperson for Sanders’s presidential campaign dismissed the essay at the time, calling it a “dumb attempt at dark satire in an alternative publication.”

“It was intended to attack gender stereotypes of the ’70s, but it looks as stupid today as it was then,” Michael Briggs told CNN in 2015.