Forget the headline, there's a pretty fucking major bombshell a few paragraphs in

NOT LONG AFTER meeting with Sanders at the end of 2018 to discuss her impending presidential run, Warren hosted an off-the-record dinner with a number of journalists, according to sources with knowledge of it. At the dinner, Warren was asked about her meeting with Sanders, and in the course of the discussion, she relayed that Sanders had warned that he didn’t believe a woman could beat Trump in 2020. Different reporters recalled the comments differently, a mirror image of the dispute between Warren and Sanders over exactly what Sanders said — with Warren saying that Sanders argued a woman couldn’t beat Trump, while Sanders said that he only said Trump would weaponize misogyny against a woman, not that it would work. (The Intercept was not at the dinner. Most politicians hold informal, off-record dinners or meetings with journalists, though it’s not something Sanders is known to do. Occasionally details from those meetings leak, but it’s rare.)

From there, the piece of news entered the journalistic bloodstream, circulating among reporters as gossip but not finding its way into print. On Monday, it finally did, with CNN’s M.J. Lee reporting that according to four sources — described as “two people Warren spoke with directly soon after the encounter, and two people familiar with the meeting” — Sanders had told Warren, according to CNN’s paraphrasing, that “he did not believe a woman could win.”

It was widely assumed in the immediate aftermath of the story that Warren’s campaign had planted the story. Indeed, CNN anchor Erin Burnett said as much on air. But Burnett was merely making an assumption, and had no inside knowledge of the sources, two CNN sources told The Intercept.

Warren told some reporters, in an off-the-record meeting right after meeting with Sanders, that he told her a woman can't beat Trump. The media knew that story for over a year, and waited until right before Iowa to leak to themselves, then CNN publicly "made an assumption" that Warren's campaign was the source and had just leaked it. Not only did they smear Sanders by turning "A woman can't beat Trump in 2020 because he'll use sexist attacks" into "A woman can't be president", they smeared Warren by framing her for the attack and putting her into a position where she couldn't deny it because there were reporters who'd say she told them at the time. The successfully damaged both progressive candidates while starting a feud between supporters of both that will carry on past this election and hurt progressives going forward on other issues by making it harder to work together. They played us like a goddamn fiddle!