Actress Rosario Dawson, who has campaigned with Sanders on several occasions, brought up the former White House intern on Saturday during a Sanders rally in Wilmington, Del., referencing the work that Lewinsky now does to combat cyberbullying. Dawson said she and other Sanders supporters were being bullied by Clinton’s allies.

PROVIDENCE — A brief mention of Monica Lewinsky by a prominent Bernie Sanders supporter sparked controversy on the campaign trail this weekend, with Hillary Clinton’s team accusing her Democratic presidential rival of condoning ‘‘vitriol.’’

“We are literally under attack for not just supporting the other candidate,’’ Dawson said in remarks introducing Sanders to the crowd. ‘‘Now I’m with Monica Lewinsky with this. Bullying is bad. She has actually dedicated her life now to talking about that. And now as a campaign strategy, we are being bullied, and, somehow, that is okay and not being talked about with the richness that it needs.’’

During an appearance Sunday on CNN’s ‘‘State of the Union,’’ Sanders deflected a question about whether the remark was appropriate.


‘‘Rosario is a great actress, and she’s doing a great job for us,’’ he said. ‘‘And she’s been a passionate fighter to see that we increase the voter turnout, that we fight for racial, economic, environmental justice.’’

Pressed by host Jake Tapper about whether his surrogates ‘‘should be talking about Monica Lewinsky,’’ Sanders said: ‘‘I have no idea in what context Rosario was talking about her, but I would hope that all of our people focus on the real issues facing working people and the massive level of income and wealth inequality that we have.’’

Clinton campaign spokesman Nick Merrill later told CNN that his campaign will ‘‘absolutely not’’ address Dawson’s comments referencing Lewinsky, whose sexual dalliances with former President Bill Clinton led to his impeachment.

Merrill added: ‘‘You could ask the Sanders campaign why they encourage this vitriol in the vicinity of their candidate by staying silent.’’


The Sanders campaign had no immediate comment on the issue. In recent weeks, the campaign has sought to tamp down over-the-top comments from other supporters, including those known as ‘‘Bernie bros,’’ who have taunted Clinton supporters online, sometimes in crude terms.

Although the Clinton campaign has no desire to discuss Lewinsky, the candidate has spoken out on the same issue that Lewinsky is seeking to combat: cyberbullying.

‘‘I follow what’s happening online and in schools,’’ Clinton said Friday at a round-table discussion on working women, in Jenkintown, Pa. ‘‘I mean, the online culture of bullying young women is horrible. And even the most confident, well-prepared girl has to be worrying, like: ‘Why are people picking on me? Why are they saying these things about me? What is happening here?’ So we have got to stand up against that. We have to, first of all, surface it, so that it’s not happening under the radar screen, and we have to help more young women support each other and come to the rescue of those who are the target of the weak.’’

Clinton, whose event included Lilly Ledbetter, the equal-pay-rights figure who was the namesake of the first law President Barack Obama signed, also suggested that a general-election contest against Republican front-runner Donald Trump could play out like ‘‘vile’’ Internet bullying.

People make ‘‘the most vile, hateful’’ insults online, things they would never say to someone’s face, Clinton told her audience. She suggested that coarseness is evident in politics, and particularly with Trump, the Republican front-runner.


Trump has showed no reservations about referencing Lewinsky. Last year, he brought her up while taking a shot at Bill Clinton, whom Trump accused of having a terrible record of ‘‘abusing women.’’