*Record scratch* *Freeze frame* Yep, that’s Tom Steyer. You’re probaly wondering how he found himself between Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders during the most talked about moment of Tuesday’s Democratic presidential debate, which came seconds after it ended.
The Warren and Sanders camps are saying little about the exchange, which began with the senator from Massachusetts leaving the senator from Vermont hanging, and lasted all of 15 seconds. So reporters were hoping the billionaire from California would have something to say about it.
In the roughly 12 hours since the moment occurred, Steyer has been asked what went down at least three times. And each time he answered with the rhetorical equivalent of a ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
“I was just going up to say good night,” he told CNN after the debate. “They were talking about getting together or something, I really didn’t listen. It was one of those awkward moments where I felt like, you know, I need to move on as fast as possible.”
Later on MSNBC, he told Chris Matthews, “I don’t know what they were saying … Whatever they were going on between each other, I was trying to get out of the way as fast as possible.”
That wasn’t the end of it. On Wednesday morning Steyer again appeared on CNN and was again asked about Warren and Sanders.
“I didn’t really hear anything,” he said. “They were in the middle of a moment, so I just said my good nights as fast as I could.”
When Steyer tried to steer the conversation back to his own talking points about being able to challenge Donald Trump on the economy, CNN’s Alisyn Camerota steered it right back to the only question anyone is interested in having him answer: What did he hear???
