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Schultz Warns Democratic Candidates to Cool Rhetoric to Make It Easier 'to Reunify'

April 24, 2016

Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D., Fla.) warned the remaining presidential candidates in her party to tamper down their rhetoric to make reunification easier during an interview on Fox News Sunday.

Host Chris Wallace asked Schultz whether Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) in particular needed to tone down his harsh words against Hillary Clinton, particularly in light of his bruising loss in the New York primary to Clinton that all but assured she will be the eventual nominee.

Schultz initially said she was "proud" of both candidates for running substantive campaigns, but Wallace called her out for dodging.

"But if you could answer my question, does Bernie Sanders need to tone down his attacks?" he asked.

"I'm about to," she said.

"OK, I was waiting," Wallace said.

"I need to preface it for a moment, because they've done a great job at being substantive, comparatively, but what I have cautioned over the last several weeks is that we need to make sure that the rhetoric that each candidate uses is such that it doesn't make it more difficult for us to reunify," Schultz said. "I think it's expected in a campaign like this one, as we get towards the narrow end of the funnel, we've only got 19 primaries left, that it's going to get a little more intense.

"But we need to make sure that we focus on the end game, which is to obviously make sure that we can elect our nominee president of the United States, which I'm confident that we will."

Clinton and Sanders attacked each other with particular ferocity heading into the New York primary last week, with Sanders going so far as to list the ways she was not qualified to be in the White House. With the loss in New York, Sanders' path to clinching the nomination before the Democratic National Convention is almost completely closed.