CNN hosts town halls with Sanders, Buttigieg and Klobuchar

Pete Buttigieg tied his military experience to the active shooter drills students in schools are now involved in Tuesday night after being asked about ending gun violence in schools by an educator in the Las Vegas area. 

“I'm thinking about terms like dispersion of targets and the difference between cover and concealment -- things I learned as part of military training,” the former South Bend, Indiana, mayor said. 

“Part of why I believed I was in the military to serve potentially in conflict zones so that kids at schools in America would never have to have that experience. And to see what we are accepting, in terms of the expectation that this is just normal -- that kids are going to have active shooter drills, sometimes before they're old enough to learn how to read -- shows you this country has its priorities wrong,” Buttigieg said. 

He quickly added, “Actually, no -- Washington has its priorities wrong.” 

Hear Buttigieg’s comments:

Pete Buttigieg said on Tuesday – for the first time – that he believes Attorney General Bill Barr should resign because of his handling of politically sensitive cases like that of longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone

“Absolutely,” Buttigieg said about Barr stepping down. “This really is an emergency, it's an emergency of legitimacy in our justice system. Our justice system only works if it is immune from the interference of politicians.

President Donald Trump has denied that he pushed Barr to intervene in the Stone case, where top DOJ officials reduced the recommended sentence against the Trump adviser. That led all four federal prosecutors who took the case to trial to withdraw. Late last week, Barr also ordered a re-examination of several high-profile cases, including that of former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

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Former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg has taken the stage. CNN's Erin Burnett is moderating.

Bernie Sanders dismissed a question about whether he is the Democratic frontrunner.

The Vermont senator delivered a strong performance in Iowa and then won the New Hampshire primary, leading many within the Democratic Party to believe he has not supplanted former Vice President Joe Biden as the party’s frontrunner.

Sanders is also atop a number of recently released national polls.

Sanders, though, has little interest in whether he was atop the field.

“I know we take no votes for granted. We are a hardworking campaign. We're so appreciative of the hundreds of thousands of volunteers we have,” he said. “So I can tell you, we're working right now in Nevada trying to bring out the vote.”

Hear Sen. Sanders' response:

Late last December, three months after he suffered a heart attack in Las Vegas, Bernie Sanders released three letters from physicians attesting to his good health.

On Tuesday night, Sanders said that if the public wants any more information about his health, they should join him on the campaign trail, where he keeps a busy schedule.

Sanders argued that the letters, including one from the attending physician at the US Capitol, amounted to a "detailed report" and, when pressed on whether he would release new details, said, "I don't think we will."

On October 1, Sanders was rushed to an urgent care facility following a grassroots fundraiser in Las Vegas after experiencing chest pains. Sanders then was taken to the hospital in an ambulance and remained there for days before returning home to recuperate.

He was back on the campaign trail about two weeks after he initially fell ill.

Dr. Brian Monahan, the Capitol Hill physician, said in a Dec. 30 letter addressed to Sanders, "You are in good health currently and you have been engaging vigorously in the rigors of your campaign, travel, and other scheduled activities without any limitation."

Monahan also more directly addressed the senator's heart health.

"Several of the medications you initially required (blood-thinner, beta blocker) were stopped based on your progress," Monahan wrote. "Your heart muscle strength has improved. You have never had symptoms of congestive heart failure. The heart chamber sizes, wall thickness, estimated pressures, and heart valves are normal. Several 24-hour recordings of your heart electrical activity indicated no significant heat rhythm abnormality."

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Bernie Sanders on Tuesday night sought to fully divorce himself from supporters who have harassed others online and questioned whether anyone who believes in his agenda would attack a union leader.

Top officials at the Culinary Union in Nevada accused Sanders backers of swarming them online after flyers distributed by the union, which said Sanders would "end" their health care, went viral.

Sanders also questioned whether some of the social media comments cited by critics were, in fact, written by his supporters.

He also pointed out that members of his own staff had been the targets of online harassment.

"Talk to the people in my campaign, often the African American women in this campaign, talk to my wife, about the kind of ugly attacks that have come in to us," he said.

On the broader issue, Sanders was -- in his final point on the question -- unequivocal.

“I do not believe in online bullying," he said. "End of discussion.”

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Bernie Sanders rejected the idea on Tuesday that Donald Trump tweets about him so frequently because the President wants to face him in November.

After CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked Sanders why Trump wants to face him,” Sanders sarcastically replied, “Oh, really?”

Sanders lauded his devout following as the “kind of grassroots movement that we need to defeat Trump.”

“And what Trump understand that is the way he's going to lose is when we have the largest voter turnout in the history of this country,” he added.

Trump and a number of top Republican elected officials and operatives often publicly comment on Sanders, sometimes suggesting that the Democratic establishment is seeking to deny him the nomination because they oppose his more progressive platform. The strategy by Republicans appears to be to pump up Sanders and his supporters as a way to help him gain the nomination because Republicans believe Sanders, who self-identifies as a “Democratic socialist,” would be the easiest general election challenger.

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Bernie Sanders called Michael Bloomberg's strategy of skipping the first four states "obscene" and said the former New York mayor was trying to "buy the presidency."

The Vermont senator suggested Bloomberg had insulted both voters and the democratic process, noting that all of the other primary candidates had spent months engaging the electorate.

"He said ‘I don’t have to do that, I'm worth $60 billion,'" Sanders said, mimicking Bloomberg. "'I’ll buy the presidency.’”

Sanders also ripped Bloomberg's embrace of "stop and frisk" policing during the billionaire businessman's three terms as mayor.

”His policies humiliated and offended hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people,” Sanders said.

Bloomberg has apologized for supporting "stop and frisk," but his past comments about the practice have added fuel to the controversy surrounding his record.

Sanders will get the chance to face Bloomberg on the debate stage for the first time on Wednesday.

Hear Sen. Sanders' comments:

Bernie Sanders didn’t answer a question about whether he would accept hundreds of millions of dollars in help from Michael Bloomberg if the Vermont senator becomes the Democratic nominee. 

Sanders told CNN’s Anderson Cooper he doesn’t have a super PAC and hasn’t asked for one, but then ignored a question about whether he’d accept Bloomberg’s money. 

Instead, Sanders touted raising seven million individual contributions, averaging $18.15 from a broad base of Americans. 

“There is a point at which money ceases to be significant,” he said. “We will have enough money to run a strong campaign. We will have enough money to defeat Donald Trump.” 

Bloomberg has been self-funding his own presidential campaign, spending hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising alone.

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