Bernie Sanders is remaining defiant in the face of calls from Democratic leaders to condemn unrest fomented by his supporters follow the Nevada Democratic State convention Saturday night — doing little to cool the passions of some of his supporters and prompting concerns of a fractured national convention this summer.
Sanders supporters threw chairs, started fights, and booed officials, including a top Sanders surrogate, at the convention in Las Vegas, which was the final step in allocating Nevada’s delegates to the Democratic National Convention. The supporters felt the party had conspired against them to tip the scales in favor of Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.
After the convention, the party’s headquarters were vandalized with pro-Sanders graffiti and the chairwoman of the party received threatening text messages, phone calls, and social media posts.
All this over very low stakes — just two pledged delegates out of more than 4,000 total Democratic delegates.
RELATED: The fallout from Nevada’s Democratic unrest
“I’ve got, threats to my family, to my grandson, to my husband,” chairwoman Roberta Lang told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Tuesday. “They have attacked my workplace and they have said very awful things.”
The chaos in Nevada has Democrats across the country worried about the national convention in July, which Sanders’ campaign has threatened to disrupt if they are not treated in a way they consider to be fair. State Democratic Party chairs are meeting in Philadelphia, the site of the national convention, later this week for their quarterly meeting and the issue is sure to come up.
But in a statement issues Tuesday afternoon, Sanders was hardly apologetic.
While the senator condemned “any and all forms of violence, including the personal harassment of individuals,” that comment was placed in the third paragraph of his statement, while the rest of it seemed to blame the Nevada Democratic Party for the unrest.
Sanders called “ridiculous” the notion that his campaign has a “penchant for violence,” and noted that his field office in Las Vegas had been shot at. He also noted that he had held numerous rallies in the state, including in high crime areas, and that no crimes had ever been reported.
The statement went on to detail alleged malpractice by the Nevada Democratic party, and it issued an ultimatum to the Democratic Party.
“The Democratic Party has a choice,” Sanders’ statement read. “It can open its doors and welcome into the party people who are prepared to fight for real economic and social change — people who are willing to take on Wall Street, corporate greed and a fossil fuel industry which is destroying this planet. Or the party can choose to maintain its status quo structure, remain dependent on big-money campaign contributions and be a party with limited participation and limited energy.”
The Nevada Democratic party said that wasn’t good enough.
“We respect and admire Senator Sanders for his values and leadership in the United States Senate, but the Sanders campaign is continuing to be dishonest about what happened Saturday and is failing to adequately denounce the threats of violence of his supporters,” the party said in a statement.
Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver seems unconcerned by what the party has to say. “They want to use this as a pretext for mistreating us at the National Convention,” Weaver told MSNBC’s Chris Jansing.
Nina Turner, a former Ohio State senator who is one of Sanders’ most prominent surrogates, said it was a “gross exaggeration” to paint Sanders supporters as violent. “This is the Clinton campaign trying to paint them as something they’re not,” she told Jansing. Asked if this could spill over the national convention, Turner replied, “Yes absolutely. It can and it will.”
RELATED: Dems fear chaos at Nevada convention portends July mess
Earlier in the day, DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said Tuesday that the DNC was “deeply concerned” by the “troubling” events, and called on Sanders to publicly condemn the violence. “There is no excuse for what happened in Nevada, and it is incumbent upon all of us in positions of leadership to speak out,” she said.








