Bernie said Hillary isn’t qualified to be president. That’s substantive.

Some people on Twitter — yes, this is a Twitter hot take, please forgive me — are outraged that Bernie Sanders doesn’t think Hillary Clinton is qualified to be president.

The outrage seems to stem from the idea that he was discounting her experience. He wasn’t: Hillary obviously has line after line on her resume. So many lines.

Some think this is a low blow, a personal attack. It’s not: Bernie’s attacking her record — what she did under each line on her resume — which is legit.

Let’s see what he actually said, in context. (If you prefer video, go to 47:40–50:05 of the rally footage.)

“Now the other day, I think, Secretary Clinton appeared to be getting a little bit nervous. We have won, we have won seven out of eight of the recent primaries and caucuses. And she has been saying lately that she thinks that I am, quote unquote, not qualified to be president.

Sidenote: To be fair, Hillary never directly said Bernie wasn’t qualified. But, in response to a question about whether he was, she refused to say yes and instead said that he hadn’t done his homework. Back to the show:

“Well let me, let me just say in response to Secretary Clinton: I don’t believe that she is qualified if she is, if she is, through her super PAC, taking tens of millions of dollars in special interest funds. I don’t think you are qualified if you get $15 million from Wall Street through your super PAC.

I don’t think you are qualified if you have voted for the disastrous war in Iraq. I don’t think you are qualified if you’ve supported virtually every disastrous trade agreement, which has cost us millions of decent paying jobs. I don’t think you are qualified if you supported the Panama free trade agreement, something I very strongly opposed and which, as all of you know, has allowed corporations and wealthy people all over the world to avoid paying their taxes to their countries.”

And yet:

Uh. Less substantive?

Bernie’s argument is all substance. Here are the substantive issues he mentioned:

• Massive campaign contributions from the financial sector
• The Iraq War vote
• Trade agreements, generally (and jobs!)
• U.S.- Panama Trade Promotion Agreement, specifically (and tax evasion!)

Plank, who writes for the prominent news website Vox, is in a double-bind: either (a) she didn’t do basic research to see the comment in context, or (b) she knows the context, in which case she’s being deliberately disingenuous.

You can agree or disagree with Bernie’s argument. What you shouldn’t do is swap that argument out for a low-substance strawman. Bernie’s full statement offered several examples to support his claim.

It’s not hard to figure this out. I often slam bad news coverage, but the media — including Politico, AP, and the Washington Post — did a decent job, reporting Bernie’s comments and the reasoning he gave.

There’s a lesson here: Always find the full context of claims. Soundbites are stupid.