Jane Sanders to Wolf Blitzer: CNN helped elect Trump and 'fans the flames' of vicious rhetoric

Jane Sanders -- wife of erstwhile Democratic candidate for the 2016 presidential nomination Sen. Bernie Sanders (VT) -- sparred with CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Thursday, accusing him and the network he represents of helping to enable the rise of President Donald Trump and exacerbating the stark divisions in U.S. society.

Mediatite.com reported that Sanders was appearing as part of a discussion of the ambush shooting of members of the Republican charity baseball team at a baseball diamond in Alexandria, Virginia.

Blitzer asked Sanders if her husband went too far in his criticisms of Trump from last weekend, calling Trump "the worst and most dangerous president" the U.S. has ever had.

“I don’t think so, Wolf,” Sanders said. “When you throw 23 million people off of health care without even a hearing, that’s dangerous -- to those 23 million people. We have to be able to discuss the issues without demonizing the opponent.”

“Honestly, Wolf," she continued, "I think the media needs to look at itself as well. The media characterizes every conversation as an adversarial one. Your job — the media’s job, I think, is to illuminate the facts, not fan the flames. And the media continues to cover the latest scandal, the latest back-and-forth, but not the issues so much.”

"With all due respect, if a President, or a Senator, or someone of authority is making very, very strong statements, you want us to simply ignore those statements?" Blitzer replied. "Do you want us to censor those words as part of the news media? What are you suggesting?"

“Well, I’m suggesting that just like the Democrats and the Republicans and the Independents and the progressives are all thinking about what happened in this presidential race, that the media needs to do some self-reflection as well," said Sanders.

Watch the video, embedded below: