Bernie Sanders was just "trying to keep warm," guys

Bernie’s seen the memes, y’all, perhaps in between viewings of Melancholia on his iPad, but he’s not all that interested in speaking about them. “I was just sitting there trying to keep warm, and trying to pay attention to what was going on,” he told Seth Meyers on Thursday night, speaking, of course, of the wildly viral image of the Vermont senator and his magnificent mittens during Wednesday’s inauguration, the likes of which have been grafted onto just about every photo in existence. (Including a cozy sweatshirt that the Sanders camp is selling to raise money for Meals on Wheels Vermont.)

In a separate statement to CNN, he celebrates the meme’s virality for making people “aware that we make good mittens in Vermont.” That particular detail hasn’t gone unnoticed, with Vogue and other publications quickly sharing the essential details of said mittens. Jen Ellis, the Vermont resident and mitten-maker in question, even did an interview with Slate in which she reflected on the public’s sudden need for her mittens—”I think my Gmail has crashed now,” she says—and shared her preference for Vermont-specific Bernie memes.