Tim O'Brien, a senior adviser for former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg's presidential campaign, ripped Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., for "loopy stuff" he wrote in his 1960s essays, Mediaite reports.
"We have a candidate who has risen in the polls because of this track record," O'Brien said of Bloomberg on CNN Tuesday. "Bernie has loopy stuff in his background, saying women get cancer from having too many orgasms or toddlers should run around naked and touch each other's genitals to insulate themselves from porn?"
O'Brien appears to be referencing an essay Sanders wrote in 1969 and which was published in the Vermont Freeman. In it, he criticized attempts to shield children from nudity.
"In Vermont, at a state beach, a mother is reprimanded by Authority for allowing her 6-month-old daughter to go about without her diapers on," he wrote, according to Mother Jones. "Now, if children go around naked, they are liable to see each other's sexual organs, and maybe even touch them. Terrible thing! If we [raise] children up like this it will probably ruin the whole pornography business, not to mention the large segment of the general economy which makes its money by playing on people's sexual frustrations."
When asked about his past essays by Mother Jones, the Sanders campaign said: "These articles were written more than 40 years ago. Like most people, Bernie's views on many issues have changed over time."