Story highlights
- "No, he doesn't have a point," Sanders said of Trump's claim that the DNC election was "rigged"
- Sanders implied he would not give the DNC his presidential campaign's massive email list
(CNN)Bernie Sanders said on "State of the Union" Sunday that he doesn't believe his candidate for Democratic National Committee chairman, Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, was defeated Saturday because the election was rigged, but the system could use some retooling.
The Vermont senator was responding to a question from CNN's Jake Tapper about whether President Donald Trump had a point when he tweeted early Sunday: "Bernie's guy, like Bernie himself, never had a chance."
"No, he doesn't have a point," Sanders said, before offering a criticism of an election process that put the party leadership decision in the hands of the mere 447 voting members of the DNC. "That's what the system is -- and one of the things [new DNC Chairman Tom Perez] is going to have to change is to figure out how we elect national Democratic leaders. I'm not quite impressed with the process that exists."
The race for DNC chair had come to be seen as a proxy war between Sanders' progressive wing of the party and the Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton centrist supporters, who backed Perez.
Sanders also implied in response to Tapper's questioning that he would not give the DNC his presidential campaign's massive email list, which shattered previous records by raising $218 million online from 2.8 million donors.
The list will be used "to transform the Democratic Party into a party that stands for working families," he said, implying that he wants his new group, Our Revolution, to decide which candidates will get access to that list and reap its benefits.
