Eh.
Let's see - these come to mind:
- When he claimed that white people do not know what it's like to be poor, but something like 15-20 white million Americans live below the poverty line. Whilst it may be the smallest % of all ethnicities, its an incredulous statement to appease people of other backgrounds to subscribe to this worldview, based off a bullshit statement.
I googled these, hence wouldn't know it at the time but have anyways looked at it both from a normal reporting and factcheck links.
The above statement was in the context of a larger issue and not poverty alone. The full quote being
"When you’re white, you don’t know what it’s like to be living in a ghetto. You don’t know what it’s like to be poor. You don’t know what it’s like to be hassled when you walk down the street or you get dragged out of a car".
Hence, in the context of all the quote, I think Bernie was making a point about systematic racism and poverty cropped onto that systematic racism. White's would not understand this. In any case Bernie's pro-poor socialist policies do not say "for the benefit of non-whites only", they cover anyone who is poor. I'd personally put that down to a freudian slip rather than anything malicious, because when you take any other speeches about benefiting poor people, Bernie includes everyone.
The way he cherry picks information to tell his narrative (ie - gun control). Mind you, I am anti-gun, but instilling fear based on inaccurate data is not the way to win people over (unfortunately, both sides of the aisle can be charged with offence, but hey! no one is really policing it). This is in reference to his 40+% of all gun purchases have no background checks.
Yep wrong data used, however again, I'd take all of his speeches, about this topic, into consideration before making an assessment if he's a liar or not. Why? None of these politicians go researching stats and data themselves, they have staff who go out and find those details. As much as politicians would like to attract honest, intelligent, attention to detail staff, the plain fact is they don't. Hence from time to time you get these sort of anomalies. Just look at Trump, he doesn't do the research, he uses scum buckets like Stephen Miller to do his research, to write his policies, to deal with the nitty gritty stuff
Now at this stage you may think I'm making excuses, but as I said, I don't take one off statements as the check-mate move, for me personally there has to be several instances of misusing data on that issue where I think that particular politician is full of shit.
Stating that he had a definitive date of when to pull troops out of (I think it was Iraq or Afghanistan) - but then backtracking on that later and saying that was not the case, as they will still need a presence. How anti-war are you exactly?
And whilst not necessary a lie - his typical political response about Maduro had me seeing red. To call him undemocratic (OH DURRR), but stop short of calling him a dictator, despite Maduros complete disregard for human life under his regime... What are you hiding? The reforms he is asking for is obviously not lead the US down the path of Venezuela, but he is talking to a model that works towards a socialist system. Was he ever in bed with their government at all?
I'm adding the pulling troops out and Maduro ones together because they deal with appeasing domestic policies and acting out foreign policies.
Every politician is full of shit when it comes to this topic, there isn't a single politician who is even close to telling somewhat of the truth. Simply because domestic populations do not understand foreign policy. Unfortunately politicians have to appease the domestic population because the majority of domestic population are friggin morons. It's all well and good to say I'm going to pull out troops from Afghanistan and Iraq, however the fact of the matter is there are massive logistic, political issues in doing so (e.g. Turkish slaughter of Kurds which funnily enough all the pro-Trump idiots went eerily quiet because of Trump's screw up).
The logistics of pulling out of Afghanistan only the sitting government/president can know, no one else. Because it's top secret issues no one else has a right to see the data. So any politician who isn't president or in the sitting government, is just blowing smoke of what they'd like to happen but deep down they know there's no way in hell anyone can confirm until they get all the briefs from the military.
Maduro this is as much the same as the above predicament. Once you come into Presidency, the fact of the matter is you're going to have to deal with Maduro in trying to resolve the situation in Venezuela. So calling him a dictator is not going be of benefit, if Bernie becomes president and then has to deal with him. For years the US did not hold talks with Kim Jong Un, until up steps this orange oompa loompa moron. Trump gave Kim Jong recognition by meeting him and that North Korea had equal footing at the foreign diplomacy talks. In a series of meet and greets, Trump completely gave away USA's bargaining chip, i.e international legitimacy recognition for Kim Jong. What was the result of these talks? Absolutely nothing, Kim Jong played Trump like an idiot. So yes Bernie is going to stop short of calling maduro a dictator, because unfortunately thats the nature of the beast of foreign policy, keep the door closed enough so it's just ajar for the dictator to make the right moves and come to the table.
It's all foreign policy mate, it's quite a different political world than domestic policy. You're dealing with appeasing your public, doing things in the best interest of your nation (this doesn't mean the right things), appeasing your allies, fighting proxy wars, etc etc.
His UN comments and figures about refugee increase due to climate change - read a few articles of that being debunked. Again, leading comments astray, taking well out of proportion. Note - I am not a climate change denier.
While there aren't any conclusive studies in regards to how many people will be displaced, I hardly think saying hundreds of millions of people will be displaced is out of whack. It's a reasonable assumption, nothing wrong with it.