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In February 2020, news reports broke that Russia was once again working to meddle in the United States presidential election. These reports renewed concerns about U.S. President Donald Trump's connections to Russia, but also about alleged ties of his Democratic opponents, chiefly U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders. Critics of Sanders were quick to claim that he had honeymooned in the Soviet Union, implying that the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate may have some sort of nefarious ties to, or at the very least a soft spot for, Russia. Former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, for instance, posted on Twitter: Likewise, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani claimed that Sanders liked Communism so much that he honeymooned in the Soviet Union: Fox News anchor Sean Hannity went so far as to claim that Sanders honeymooned in the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War. A bit of truth exists to this claim. Sanders did travel to the Soviet Union shortly after his wedding in 1988, and Sanders himself has described this trip as a very strange honeymoon. However, a romantic getaway was not the main focus of this trip. Sanders, who was the mayor of Burlington, Vermont, at the time, took a 12-person delegation of city representatives and officials, including his new wife Jane Sanders, the director of the Mayor's Youth Office, on a trip to the Soviet Union to establish a sister city relationship with Yaroslavl. Furthermore, this trip occurred in June 1988. This was not the height of the Cold War, as Hannity claimed. This trip occurred during the final years of the Cold War (which ended roughly in 1991) while tensions were de-escalating. Sanders explained the purpose of this trip in a November 1987 news article published in the Burlington Free Press: On May 31, 1988, a few days after Sanders' wedding and the day the Burlington delegation was set to leave for the Soviet Union, The Associated Press reported that this trip wasn't exactly a honeymoon: Critics of Sanders were not the first to claim that the Democratic presidential candidate had honeymooned in Russia. In fact, Sanders himself described this trip as a romantic honeymoon in his 2015 book Outsider in the White House. However, this appears to be a bit of a tongue-in-cheek reference as he describes the trip a few sentences later as a very strange honeymoon. A spokesperson for Sanders' campaign told us that the senator has joked for years, including in the above-quoted passage, that this trip was a strange honeymoon. Furthermore, the spokesperson told us that this trip was pre-scheduled before Sanders' marriage proposal, and that the wedding date was set to coincide with that trip because they didn't want to take more time off. Bernie and Jane Sanders took their real honeymoon the following year in St. Lucia in the Caribbean. The New York Times reported in December 2015 (emphasis ours): It should also be noted that the suggestion for Yarsovl to become Burlington's sister city did not originate with Sanders. An April 1988 article from the Burlington Free Press reported that Robert Daniels, a University of Vermont history professor, suggested Yaroslavl to be Burlington's sister city, noting that the two cities share similar forest and dairy environments, and that Yaroslavl's university was comparable to the University of Vermont. In summation: A spokesperson for Sanders told us: St Lucia was the real honeymoon, Yaroslav was a pre-scheduled trip the day after they were married. It was a fun joke to call it a honeymoon, but not a real one.
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