On "Fox & Friends" on Monday morning, Daily Caller editor in chief Tucker Carlson recounted his visit the day before to a pro-Sanders demonstration in Philadelphia, site of this week's Democratic National Convention.

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"They think it was stolen from them," Carlson said of the people he met. "They have frankly a lot of evidence to support that. What I'm so struck by every time I got to a Bernie rally is how sincere the people are. I'm not sympathetic to a lot of the ideas, obviously. ... They are sincerely aggrieved, and I believe many of them are not going to vote for Hillary Clinton."

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Conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt tweeted his condolences to Sanders fans later Monday morning.

Limbaugh followed with Facebook messages about the email leak and the Democratic convention, punctuating one by noting that "there's a whole bunch of Democrats out there that would prefer Bernie."

I think you might be able to see this week the phony confidence that these Democrats are expressing on TV when they're... Posted by Rush Limbaugh on Monday, July 25, 2016

CNN commentator Jeffrey Lord, a Donald Trump supporter, said on the air Sunday that "something was rigged here, when you look at these e-mails."

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And Hannity on Friday painted Sanders as a victim of a conspiracy. "I think with the release of those e-mails and the DNC colluding with Hillary and trying to smear him on issues related to religion and planting stories in the press that his campaign is a mess and in shambles, I don't know if this is going to — this is not going to go over very well or win over many Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders people, right?"

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The motive is pretty clear here; as Carlson said, these conservatives don't actually agree with Sanders's policy proposals. Had the senator from Vermont won the Democratic nomination, you can bet that Hewitt, Lord and the rest wouldn't be so charitable.

But standing up for Sanders in the DNC email scandal allows conservatives to promote the idea that Clinton's primary victory is illegitimate, or at least tainted — a notion that makes her seem vulnerable in the general election. If she needed some sneaky help just to beat Sanders, the argument goes, how can she possibly take down Trump?