At Tuesday's CNN town hall, Las Vegas caretaker Maria Carrillo asked Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) about the culture of online harassment surrounding his supporters. Sanders firmly condemned bullying behavior at the hands of the "Bernie Bros" — and called on other candidates to join him in watching the tone of their supporters as well.
"Hello, Senator Sanders," said Carrillo. "So I'm a big supporter. For those who still need to hear it, will you condemn the Bernie Bro behavior?"
"I will condemn absolutely anybody, including my campaign or any other campaign, that makes vicious personal attacks against people," said Sanders. "What our people are involved in — we are a campaign which believes in compassion, which believes in justice. So I don't tolerate ugly attacks against anybody. But let me just say this. Talk to the people in my campaign, often the African-American women in this campaign, talk to my wife about the kind of ugly attacks that have come in to us. So right now, which is a very serious national problem, we have an internet which is essentially the Wild West. Somebody could say, 'hey, I'm Anderson Cooper' and zippo, say some ugly things, and right now that cannot be stopped."
"So, yes, I want to have this campaign focus on the important issues facing the American people," continued Sanders. "I have just said a moment ago, as I've said many times, I'm going to support — if I don't win this thing, I'm going to support somebody else who wins it. All right? And I don't want to see terrible personal attacks. We can disagree on the issues, not personal attacks. But that is not just my campaign. We've got millions of supporters out there. We've got millions and millions of supporters and I dare say, 99.9 percent are people who would never, ever do that. And I urge other candidates also to be mindful of these ugly personal attacks that have come into my campaign."
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