Bernie Sanders told “Nightly Show” host Larry Wilmore at a taping Wednesday evening that scheduling Southern states early in the Democratic primary “distorts reality.”

Sanders’ remarks came after Wilmore asked him whether he believed the Democratic primary system is “rigged.”

“Well, you know,” Sanders said, “people say, ‘Why does Iowa go first, why does New Hampshire go first,’ but I think that having so many Southern states go first kind of distorts reality as well.”

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Despite his Southern struggles, Sanders insisted to Wilmore that he can win the Democratic nomination, despite lagging by more than 200 pledged delegates. “Our path is with the math,” the Vermont senator said. “We started off this campaign having to run in the Deep South—”

The office of the pope moved quickly to distance the pontiff from Sanders’s visit. Father Federico Lombardi, the Pope’s spokesman, said Sanders had been invited “not by the pope but by the pontifical academy of social sciences.” Lombardi told the Italian news agency Ansa: “For the moment there is no expectation that there will also be a meeting with the pope.”

“That was what was thrown at me,” he said, noting Clinton's strategy has been described as “disqualify him, defeat him and then unify the party later.”

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Sanders said Clinton started the fight over being qualified for the Oval Office and that he was responding in kind. He also blamed the media, which he accused of being uninterested in covering his calls to help the middle class.

Sanders makes it sound like Clinton is raising such obscene amounts of money for her campaign. In actuality, she’s raising money for herself, the Democratic Party and state Democratic parties around the country. Those funds would then be used to finance everything from “get out the vote” operations to phone banks and email blasts not only for the presidential nominee but also for House and Senate candidates down the ballot. In an election year in which the Republican presidential nominee could be Donald Trump, the prospects of Democrats holding the White House and possibly retaking the Senate AND the House are not remote. Having money to do this for the November elections will be essential.
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So far, the Hillary Victory Fund has raised $26.9 million with more than $22 million of it going to the DNC and the state party committees. Clinton has a formidable delegate lead but that doesn’t mean that Sanders still doesn’t have a chance. The Bernie Victory Fund is practically dormant. But the fundraising haul of $43.5 million in February and his goal to surpass that record-breaking effort for his presidential campaign in March means Sanders is in the race until the bitter end. And if he threads the needle, he very well could become the 2016 presidential nominee.

Now, here’s where the Sanders hustle comes in. While most people still assume that Clinton will win the Democratic nomination, all that money she is raising for the DNC and state parties will go to helping said nominee in the general election — even if that ends up being Sanders. The master fundraiser who hasn’t lifted a finger to help his adopted party. The fiery campaigner who has hammered his opponent for raising the money to fortify the DNC for the general election. The person who stands to benefit enormously from Clinton’s big-money prowess without sullying his carefully crafted aura of campaign-finance purity.

If he doesn’t want to “[waste] my time going to rich people’s homes begging them for their campaign contributions,” if he really is “not even interested in” the kinds of money Clinton has access to, then he should forego all the money she has raised for the DNC and state committees if he were to become the Democratic nominee.

Sanders would need every dime of that money to fight the Kraken released on him by the Republicans. But given all that Sanders has said, wouldn’t it be the height of hypocrisy to capitalize on the money he’s so gleefully scorned? Sure would be. And not relying on it would be unbelievably stupid. Sanders is not stupid, even though his campaign rhetoric in this regard is.

LAUREL, Miss. – Officials say a family dog in Mississippi recently came home with more than a bone or toy to play fetch – the pup had a big bag of marijuana. The Jones County Sheriff’s Office says in a statement that narcotics deputies were sent to the home Saturday to investigate the unusual incident. According to the statement, the homeowner told deputies that when his dog came home with the bag, he initially thought it was garbage. But he inspected it and found that it contained a leafy substance that smelled like marijuana. Authorities say they recovered about a pound of the drug. How or where the dog got the bag is not known.