Now that Bernie Sanders announced his bid for the 2020 presidential candidacy, he's already coming up with tactics to face off against Donald Trump for the debates.
Senator Sanders (I - VT), along with many of us, knows that 45 is a pathological liar, and the Democratic hopeful is hellbent on exposing one of Trump's "bigly" shortcomings.
When Wolf Blitzer asked the independent senator during Monday's televised town hall how he would engage with Trump during the presidential debate, Sanders quipped:
"We'll bring a lie detector along."
The constituents burst into laughter and applause.
He continued:
"And every time he lies it goes 'beep.' That would be the first thing."
We could only imagine what that would look like.
His wit potentially earned him another constituent.
Other suggestions on how to debate Trump poured in.
After he broke the ice with levity, he shifted his tone into one of urgency.
"I think the fraud that Trump is, the pathological liar that he is, has to be exposed," the senator said. "We are going to hold him accountable for what he said and what he did."
Trump's propensity of spewing lies have become synonymous with his administration.
In December 2018, Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post's resident fact-checker, introduced a barometer called the "Bottomless Pinocchio" which rates politicians "who repeat a false claim so many times that they are, in effect, engaging in campaigns of disinformation."
In the column, Kessler wrote:
"The president keeps going long after the facts are clear, in what appears to be a deliberate effort to replace the truth with his own, far more favorable, version of it."
"[Trump] is not merely making gaffes or misstating things, he is purposely injecting false information into the national conversation."
Sanders admitted he didn't meant to come off as facetious when he joked about the lie-detector. But he did say his conservative friends "believe what they believe, and I believe what I believe, and that's called democracy and that's a good thing."
We'll be watching, and I predict a new drinking game will be played by home-viewers. Bottoms up!
