Comedian and Bernie Sanders doppelgänger Larry David said his counterpart in the U.S. senate "should drop out" of the 2020 presidential race, telling a New York Times columnist over the weekend that "everybody" should support former Vice President Joe Biden's campaign.
The Seinfeld creator and Saturday Night Live Sanders lookalike poked at a few political issues during a lengthy quarantine discussion with Times columnist Maureen Dowd. David responded to President Donald Trump retweeting a clip from his show in February and declaring "Tough Guys for Trump!" and relayed his views on a Hulu documentary about former Trump and Sanders rival Hillary Clinton.
David took a few swipes at both Clinton and the president before suggesting that Sanders -- who he said feels like "family" when they've had conversations -- should pull out of the Democratic presidential primary race.
"I feel he should drop out," David told Dowd in the Times piece published Saturday. "Because he's too far behind. He can't get the nomination. And I think, you know, it's no time to fool around here. Everybody's got to support Biden."
Sanders currently trails behind Biden in the Democratic presidential primary with 914 pledged delegates versus Biden's 1,217. A total of 1,991 delegates are needed in order to secure the nomination at the August Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee, which was recently delayed by one month over coronavirus concerns. The state Democratic primary elections have been put on hold amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
David and Sanders, who are both Brooklyn natives and from Jewish families, learned on a 2017 PBS program that they were actually distant relatives. The Curb Your Enthusiasm comedian noted that when they ran into each other earlier this year at a taping of the Today show Sanders greeted him by exclaiming, "Cousin!"
"When I see him, it does feel like I'm talking to somebody in my family,'' David said. He added that Clinton's remark earlier this year that "nobody likes" Sanders in Congress was "a little harsh."
David conveyed that he'd also recently had a change of heart about Clinton's political and personal life as well after watching a documentary about her while in quarantine. "I'm not the first person to say this, obviously, but you never got the feeling that you were really seeing her. There was a problem warming up to her. But you see her in this documentary and you love her."
Asked about his opinions of another New York native, Donald Trump, David sniped at the president's character: "You know, it's an amazing thing. The man has not one redeeming quality. You could take some of the worst dictators in history and I'm sure that all of them, you could find one decent quality. Stalin could have had one decent quality, we don't know!"
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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Benjamin Fearnow is a reporter based out of Newsweek's New York City offices. He was previously at CBS and Mediaite ... Read more
