At that time, I had 30 or 40 mittens for sale and being a little naïve about Twitter, I put my Gmail account on that, which someone picked up yesterday and retweeted it. So I put it out there that I made the mittens, they were a gift, and they’re not knitted, they’re sewn from repurposed and up-cycled sweaters. I’m not really on Twitter-I have an account, but I don’t really participate - but a lot of my younger colleagues do and they were like, ‘You’ve gotta check this out.’ A year ago, when Bernie was on the campaign trail, he was wearing those mittens and Twitter buzzed about it then. Īnd then there was this little side nagging thing of every five minutes I was getting several hundred more emails about the mittens. I wish that she was president, although I think Biden is pretty great. I’m 42 and I’ve waited four decades of my life - I’m tearing up just thinking about it- to see a woman be vice president. How did you feel about watching Biden be sworn in as president?Įllis: Oh my gosh, I cried. Hampton: Speaking of bittersweet, you supported Bernie. 21, the elementary school teacher indeed told writer Rachelle Hampton:
According to a transcribed version of that conversation, which Slate published on Jan. To support the claim, The Federalist cited a portion of Ellis’ interview with Slate. The Vermont school teacher who made Bernie Sanders’ mittens, featured in the most recent viral meme, said she had to stop making them after the federal government taxed her too much. Two days after the inauguration, the website published a page with the headline, “Woman Behind Bernie Sanders’ Iconic Mittens Quit Making Them Because High Taxes Killed Her Business,” reading:
She gave multiple interviews to news outlets including NPR and Slate in which she discussed her support for Sanders and reaction to the memes social media users and other websites republished those comments, in part to harness the virality of the moment.Īmong the latter group was The Federalist, an online hub of articles with a conservative bent. The viral image of Sanders wearing Ellis’ gift and sitting with his arms and legs crossed made the teacher famous by the viral standards of 2021. (Photo by JONATHAN ERNST/POOL/AFP via Getty Images) “I sent him these mittens kind of as a shoutout to who he is, and I put a note in that said something to the effect of, ‘I hope you run again,'” she told Slate. Here’s some background: Jen Ellis, a Vermont elementary school teacher, said she made the mittens out of discarded wool sweaters and gifted them to the senator after he lost the Democratic presidential nomination to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race.
Snopes received numerous inquiries to investigate the validity of the claim, which attempted to expose hypocrisy of people who support the Vermont senator’s goals of imposing new taxes to pay for various proposals, including free universal health care. Bernie Sanders wearing hand-crafted mittens at Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration plastered the Internet in early 2021, rumors surfaced alleging that the creator of the mittens had stopped selling recycled wool products because of high federal taxes.