Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said Tuesday night that the Republican Party was motivated by racism in its base when it came to obstructing President Barack Obama, and candidates like Donald Trump were only adding fuel to the fire.

“What you are seeing today in this Supreme Court situation is nothing more than the continuous and unprecedented obstructionism that President Obama has gone through,” Sanders said at a CNN town hall. “And this is on top of this birther issue, which we hear from Donald Trump and others, the racist effort to try to delegitimize the president of the United States. Can you imagine that? To say ‘He’s not really the President. He wasn’t born in the United States,’ which is nonsense.”

Sanders recalled his family’s own immigration story. Like Obama, Sanders’ father was born in another country, Poland.

“It’s a funny think on that issue. My dad came from Poland. I’m running for president,” he said. “Guess what? Nobody has asked for my birth certificate. Maybe it’s the color of my skin. I don’t know.”



When asked if he thought Trump, who voiced doubts about the authenticity of Obama’s birth certificate during the 2012 election cycle, was motivated by racism, Sanders said that he wasn’t a “psychoanalyst.”

“I’m not going to [apply this] to Trump, but do I think at least in some parts of that Republican base there is race involved in that? Absolutely,” he said. “Absolutely.”