Fox News host Pete Hegseth said on Thursday that the Bernie Sanders campaign's massive fundraising haul is a signal that the Vermont socialist's "truth-telling" is resonating with voters.
“I thought that Bernie would be the nominee at the beginning of this process," Hegseth told “Outnumbered,” "Then everyone [in the Democratic field] became Bernie Sanders. Then, Bernie Sanders had a heart attack. Everyone thought, 'There is no way that he comes back.' Here he is roaring back. I think that is because they [Democratic presidential candidates] have inched to the left, trying to look like him, but they are not the real deal.”
BERNIE SANDERS ANNOUNCES MASSIVE OCTOBER-DECEMBER CAMPAIGN CASH HAUL
The Sanders campaign announced early Thursday that it had raised more than $34.5 million in the final three months of 2019.
The massive fundraising report followed a surge for Sanders in national and early-voting-state polling over the previous two months.
SANDERS, IN IOWA, DANCES HIS WAY INTO 2020
The campaign said that it had received more than 1.8 million donations in the final quarter of 2019, including contributions from 40,000 new donors on New Year’s Eve. They added that Sanders hauled in more than $18 million from more than 900,000 contributions in December, his best single month of fundraising.
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Campaign cash, along with public opinion polling, has been a crucial barometer of a candidate’s popularity and a campaign’s strength. Fundraising dollars could be used to run TV, radio and digital ads, beef up grassroots voter outreach and build up staff. And the fourth-quarter fundraising figures – the last quarterly report before Iowa kicks off the presidential nominating calendar on Feb. 3 – will be scrutinized heavily by political pundits.
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