Filmmaker and prominent Bernie Sanders supporter Michael Moore waved off former Vice President Joe Biden’s decisive South Carolina primary win on Monday night, claiming the state “is not representative of the United States.”
With moderate and establishment Democrats rallying around Biden ahead of Super Tuesday, including candidates Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg dropping out and endorsing the ex-veep, Moore appeared on MSNBC’s The Beat With Ari Melber to call the maneuvers a “Hail Mary” motivated by their fear of Sanders.
“Whatever discussions went on before yesterday, they were convinced that this is the move,” Moore said. “They should have been allowed to go through the election tomorrow and have their voters vote for them.”
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“This is what bothers me about, really, either party,” he added. “But I hate to see it in when it happens in our party where we want to take the right of the people to have their say and that’s tomorrow. Let them have their say, whether they want Biden or Bernie or Pete or Amy. But we’re going to take that away.”
Host Ari Melber, meanwhile, brought up a previous Moore interview from October 2019 in which he claimed Biden was “this year’s Hillary” and wouldn’t be able to excite the Democratic base because “70 percent of the people voting” will be women, people of color, and young people.
“How do you square that with South Carolina?” Melber wondered aloud, referencing Biden’s dominant victory.
“South Carolina is not representative of the United States,” the Fahrenheit 9/11 director said. “That’s just the facts. South Carolina will have absolutely no impact on the Nov. 3 election.”
Moore, after dismissing a state in which roughly 60 percent of the Democratic electorate is African-American, went on to say that a large percentage of voters in November will be people of color and “they’re going to decide the election.”
Moore’s comments immediately sparked anger online, particularly over the suggestion that the filmmaker was being dismissive of black South Carolina voters.
“Yes, Michael Moore said South Carolina (the first primary state with a significant black population) is not representative of the United States,” CNN commentator Keith Boykin noted on Twitter.
