Michael Moore hits out at Elizabeth Warren for 'stabbing Bernie in the back' and helping Trump

Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore said Elizabeth Warren's campaign insistence that Bernie Sanders said a woman couldn't win the presidency had "paralysed" him.

On his podcast, the filmmaker said: "I was paralysed — paralysed — that her staffers would say such a thing ... Any of us who have known Bernie forever know automatically, we don't even have to hear him denying saying it, because there's no way he'd say that."

Mr Moore said the allegations, which appeared on Monday and stem from a 2018 meeting, were a "knife in the back".

On Twitter, the filmmaker said: "Elizabeth & Bernie have appeared in my films. I love them both. Why Elizabeth chose to stick a knife in Bernie's back is beyond me. At a time when job #1 is to remove Trump, how did this help?"

During their appearance on Democratic debates on CNN this week, Mr Sanders unequivocally denied the allegation, pointing to his support for Ms Warren during early discussions to back her for the 2016 nomination and the popular vote win for eventually candidate Hillary Clinton.

He said: "Anybody who knows me knows it's incomprehensible that I would think a woman could not be president ... If any of the women on this stage, or any of the men on this stage, win the nomination, I will do anything in my power to make sure they are elected to defeat the most dangerous president in this country."

After Mr Sanders' denial that he had ever said a woman couldn't be president, debate moderator Abby Phillip then asked Ms Warren: "What did you think when Senator Sanders told you a woman couldn't win the election?"

Ms Warren said: "I disagreed. Bernie is my friend."

She did not explicitly say that Mr Sanders had made the comment but pointed indirectly to the "this question whether or not a woman can be president has been raised."

On Monday, CNN had reported that Mr Sanders made the comment to Ms Warren during a meeting in 2018 about the 2020 election.

In a statement, Ms Warren said: "Among the topics that came up was what would happen if Democrats nominated a female candidate. I thought a woman could win; he disagreed. I have no interest in discussing this private meeting any further because Bernie and I have far more in common than our differences on punditry."

On his podcast, Mr Moore said: "I'm thinking, 'What is going on here?' I'm thinking, on Monday night, I got so sad. I thought, 'Oh my God. Are we going to mark this date, Monday, January 13, 2020, as the day that Donald J Trump actually won re-election because the Democrats couldn't keep it together? Because we had to fight each other?'"

Following the debate, microphones captured Ms Warren telling Mr Sanders "I think you called me a liar on national TV."

Mr Sanders responded: "Let's not do it right now. If you want to have that discussion, we'll have that discussion.

On his podcast, Mr Moore said: "We have only one job right now and that's to defeat Donald Trump ... That's what we should be spending our time doing. The fact that we're even talking about this on our podcast is taking time away from what we need to be doing."

Mr Moore echoed his comments on Twitter, where he said: "Whether u believe Warren or not, we all agree on 1 thing: Whether it's her name on the Dem side of the ballot on November 3rd, or if it's Bernie (or Uncle Joe or Mayor Pete or Oprah), that's who we're voting for. We have 1 shared mission: DUMP TRUMP."

He also suggested the chaos inside the White House and off the debate stage is "way more terrifying than anything happening on it"