Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.) said Tuesday on MSNBC that "Wall Street money" backed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during the 2016 Democratic primary.
Wall Street preferred Sanders–a self-declared socialist who ran on castigating the financial industry, breaking up the country's biggest banks, and raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans–over Clinton, according to Whitehouse.
"They did not want Hillary Clinton to win," Whitehouse said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "That is why Wall Street money supported Bernie Sanders in Democratic primaries to take her out, because they thought she would be the stronger candidate."
"You can't pretend that didn't happen," Whitehouse continued. "She [Clinton] may have been the Democrat with the closest ties, but the Republicans are married at the hip, so it's not much of a conversation."
Whitehouse's comments may be surprising to some, as Sanders has been a vocal critic of Wall Street. Beyond his campaign platform to target the financial industry with heavy regulation, the senator has blamed the 2007-2008 financial crisis on the "greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior on Wall Street."
Clinton, on the other hand, received significant backlash from the Democratic base on the campaign trail for her ties to Wall Street. She said in 2016 that she wanted to toughen regulations on Wall Street but received millions from the securities and investment industry during the campaign.
The former secretary of state also came under fire for receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars to speak to Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs in 2013.