Bernie Sanders Doesn’t Drop Out Of Presidential Race, But News Nets Drop Speech Midway Through

With the primaries over and Hillary Clinton having wrapped up the Democratic nomination, Sen. Bernie Sanders is still not going quietly into the political night. However, once it became clear the Vermont senator wasn’t going to concede tonight during his latest speech that began at 5:30 PM PT, MSNBC and other cable news networks cut away after about 15 minutes.

In his 30-minute speech live-streamed to his supporters and also shown on cable news channels, Sanders slammed Democratic leadership but said defeating Donald Trump in November was his top concern. The senator also said he would be announcing how he would be participating in the general election “at some point very soon.” This marked the point at which the news nets began to tune out.

The Democratic Party’s convention will be held in Philadelphia from July 25-28. The Obama- and Biden-endorsed Clinton is expected on the first ballot to be the first woman nominated by a major American party for President.

Sanders’ speech comes on a day that saw the President and Vice-President in Orlando meeting with victims of the fatal shooting at the Pulse nightclub saw 49 people killed. The speech also comes as the NBA Finals gets down to the near-wire with the Golden State Warriors and the Cleveland Cavaliers facing off in what could be a clinching Game 6 for the defending champions.

The Sanders speech was short for him, and he reiterated the issues his campaign has long been focused on and urged supporters to keep fighting until the convention.

Clinton has been the presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee since winning the California primary on June 7. At the time, Sanders vowed to keep campaigning to force a contested convention. As part of that, the Vermont senator played hard to voters in Washington, D.C. in advance of the final Democratic primary held there Tuesday, coming out in support of statehood for the U.S. capital. Clinton still decisively won the D.C. primary.

The Sanders campaign said last night he would be giving a speech today about the “future” of his campaign, and Sanders followed that up today with a tweet saying he’d be addressing supporters online.

Late yesterday, reports indicated that Sanders was not among the potential VPs that Clinton was considering as her running mate. Among those named as hopefuls were Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren; Labor Secretary Tom Perez; Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro; Reps. Xavier Becerra of California and Tim Ryan of Ohio; senators Tim Kaine of Virginia, Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Cory Booker of New Jersey; and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.