Former President Bill Clinton's sex scandals were "totally, totally, totally disgraceful and unacceptable," Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said Friday, before promising that he won't use them against Clinton's wife, Hillary Clinton, in the battle for their party's nomination.
"Hillary Clinton is not Bill Clinton," the Vermont independent senator told a questioner at a town hall in Toledo, Iowa Friday night, reports
The Washington Post.
"What Bill Clinton did, I think we can all acknowledge was totally, totally, totally disgraceful and unacceptable," Sanders continued. "But I am running against Hillary Clinton. I am not running against Bill Clinton. And I thank you for the question in this sense: What we need to do as a nation is focus on the bloody issues facing this country."
The man who asked Sanders the question left the meeting before reporters could speak with him, but told Sanders that he was tired of seeing or hearing anything about Hillary, but wanted to know if "isn't one of the qualifications to be president to have some kind of moral authority?"
"I mean, how can you tell a Secret Service agent that he has to be fired for having an affair with a prostitute in a hotel room, but support a president who has an affair — a known affair — in the White House. It seems to me she isn't qualified."
And after Sanders answered the question, the questioner stood up to say the issue wasn't "personal," as it was "in the office," but the senator went on to take another question from the audience of about 100 voters.
But Sanders has always said the same thing about the former president's scandals, reports The Post. For example, back in 1998, he also slammed Republicans for investigating "where Bill Clinton touched Monica Lewinsky" as "forty-three millions of Americans have no health insurance, millions of senior citizens cannot afford their prescription drugs, and this House is going to send to the Senate for a trial, to go month, after month, after month?"
Sanders also isn't attacking Hillary Clinton personally in the race for the Democratic nomination, instead focusing on their different plans on taxes, education, and the economy.
Bill Clinton's past has come under scrutiny once again after Donald Trump called him "one of the great woman abusers of all time," and called the former president's history "fair game" after Hillary Clinton said the GOP front-runner has a "penchant for sexism," reports
The Hill.
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Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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