The Washington Post headline made a bold statement: Clinton questions whether Sanders is qualified to be president.

We’ll come back to that in a bit, but last night Bernie Sanders responded to the headline by attacking Clinton for her vote to authorize the Iraq War and saying she was not qualified to be President.

These schoolyard “I know you are, but what am I” arguments are bad enough coming from a 12-year old, but in a presidential campaign they’re embarrassing on a national level.

But let’s go back to the Washington Post article that launched this pissing match. Is it true that Clinton questioned Sanders’ qualifications to be president? Go ahead and read it. What you’ll find is…. not a single quote from Clinton in which she actually said this.

She criticized him for seeming unprepared to discuss his policy issues in that now-famous New York Daily News interview (which he clearly was), and questioned his commitment to the Democratic Party — another fair criticism considering Sanders has always run as an independent until this election.

The article is based on a Clinton appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” in which she explicitly declined to say Sanders was not qualified, not once but three times. Scarborough actually admitted he was trying to goad her into saying that, and couldn’t.

I tried to get Hillary Clinton four times — three or four times to say that Bernie Sanders was unqualified to be president of the United States and just like my interview with Rick Santorum, you know, I start asking a question, I keep going until I get an answer or give up. And after three or four attempts with Secretary Clinton I gave up because she was not going to say the words “He is unqualified to be president of the United States.”

She simply never said she questioned his qualifications to be president. The WaPo headline is exactly opposite to the reality.

So in my view, there are two apologies needed today: one from the Washington Post for ginning up this controversy with a highly misleading headline, and one from Sanders for reacting to the headline apparently without bothering to actually read the article.

But it doesn’t look like either of them intend to do that.

Sanders explained at a press conference in Philadelphia that he was responding to attacks from the Clinton campaign, which he says has been trying to “disqualify” him. 

“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.”

We all knew the Democratic campaign was going to get ugly. But it’s still depressing to see it happening.