Former “West Wing” actor Rob Lowe blended the lines between political reality and drama on Monday, invoking his character Sam Seaborn on Twitter to criticize Bernie Sanders’ tone in CNN’s Democratic Town Hall.
The Democratic presidential candidate regularly bemoans income inequality and has proposed raising taxes on the nation’s wealthiest to fund programs aimed at changing the shape of incomes in the United States. The town hall was no exception, with Sanders hitting Wall Street hard for “greed” and “recklessness.”
While Sanders’ fiery language against the nation’s wealthiest has endeared him to many, Lowe pushed back, writing on Twitter, “Watching Bernie Sanders. He’s hectoring and yelling at me WHILE he’s saying he’s going to raise our taxes. Interesting way to communicate.”
This prompted some to ask Lowe what would his “West Wing” character, an idealistic Democratic deputy White House communications director, have told the Vermont senator to do instead? Lowe answered, “He would say: ‘modulate, senator.'”
Lowe went on to post a clip from the show, where his character took issue with some people on his own side pushing for increased taxes on the country’s highest earners.
“I’m not talking about policy. I’m talking about rhetoric, and the men you work for need to dial it down to five,” Lowe says in the clip.