Bloomberg adviser slams Bernie Sanders’ decades-old writings about sex, cancer

Bloomberg campaign adviser Tim O’Brien ripped Democratic frontrunner Sen. Bernie Sanders in a CNN interview ahead of the South Carolina primary, accusing the Vermont senator of saying "loopy stuff" about orgasms and cervical cancer, children’s nudity and women’s rape fantasies.

Yes, you read that right. Not your typical morning on CNN.

"Bernie has all of this loopy stuff in his background, saying things like women get cancer from having too many orgasms, or toddlers should run around naked and touch each others' genitals to insulate themselves from porn," O’Brien told CNN "New Day" anchor Alisyn Camerota.

"Why has this stuff not been more surfaced?" O’Brien said. "He's written about women's rape fantasies. That hasn’t been surfaced. That’s the loony side of Bernie."

Orgasms. Rape fantasies. Children running naked. All there.@NewDaypic.twitter.com/EUckLVYNR0

O’Brien’s claim caught our attention and generated a number of headlines, so we decided to check it out.

Galia Slayen, a spokesperson for former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s campaign, said O’Brien "misspoke" with regard to the claim about cancer and orgasms.

"He meant that Sanders believes it was a lack of orgasms that leads to cancer," she said.

Now that that’s cleared up, here’s what we found: The Bloomberg adviser was drawing from essays Sanders contributed to a left-leaning alternative newspaper about 50 years ago. Not everything O’Brien said needs a correction.

Bloomberg’s campaign cited 2015 articles in the New York Times and Mother Jones that examined Sanders’ writings for the Vermont Freeman in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

According to the New York Times, Sanders wrote roughly a dozen pieces when he was in his late 20s and early 30s, before his political career took off.

The writings became a source of controversy for Sanders during his presidential campaign in 2016. We fact-checked a claim related to his essay on women’s fantasies of rape. At the time, Sanders campaign spokesman told CNN the 1972 essay was a "dumb attempt at dark satire in an alternative publication" that "in no way reflects his views or record on women."

Sanders downplayed the writings as "bad fiction" and told late-night host Seth Meyers that he "learned my lesson."

He said the "poorly written" article mentioning rape was meant to confront "gender stereotypes of the period," according to the New York Times. (The Sanders campaign pointed us to his remarks during the 2016 campaign when we asked about his writings.)