Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Sunday was noncommittal on whether he would accept an appointment within President-elect Joe Biden’s administration.
“I talk to the Biden administration. I want to do my best in whatever capacity, as a senator or in the administration, to protect the working families of this country,” Sanders told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”
Sanders earlier suggested he might be willing to serve as Labor secretary in a Biden administration.
“If I had a portfolio that allowed me to stand up and fight for working families, would I do it? Yes, I would,” he said last week.
Progressives are pushing for Biden to pick Sanders and other left-leaning Democrats for his administration, while other Democrats are worried about turning off moderates. The debate comes amid a blame game between progressives and moderates in the party over who is at fault for this month’s underwhelming election results and whose agenda should be front and center.
In the interview Sunday, Sanders pushed back on some conservative Democrats’ claims that calls to defund the police hurt them in congressional races.
“Nobody I know who is running for office talks about defunding the police,” Sanders said. “What we talk about is making police officers accountable, making sure that police departments do what they can do best, figuring out how you deal with mental illness, how you deal with homelessness, whether those are, in fact, police responsibilities, making sure that police officers are not killing innocent African Americans.”
Sanders also said he was “less and less worried about” President Trump’s refusal to concede the election, “because, as more and more victories state by state are confirmed for Biden.
“I think public support, in any way, shape, or form for the president is now going down,” he added.
However, he said, “the idea that he continues to tell his supporters that the only reason he may have lost this election is because of fraud is an absolutely disgraceful, un-American thing to do.”