Does it really matter whether Senator Bernie Sanders really told Senator Elizabeth Warren that a woman couldn’t win?

Maybe. Maybe not.

But now both Sanders and Warren have gone on record with contradictory stories.

“It is ludicrous to believe that at the same meeting where Elizabeth Warren told me she was going to run for president, I would tell her that a woman couldn’t win,” Sanders said. “It’s sad that, three weeks before the Iowa caucus and a year after that private conversation, staff who weren’t in the room are lying about what happened. What I did say that night was that Donald Trump is a sexist, a racist and a liar who would weaponize whatever he could.”

(Now that’s technically not a denial, in the legal sense. But I doubt Bernie is lawyerly enough to play these Hillaryesque games. Nor do I think that even he could get away with walking this back and saying that it would be ridiculous to believe it, but he did say it.)

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said in a statement on Monday that fellow presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) told her in a private meeting in 2018 that a woman could not win the White House.

“Bernie and I met for more than two hours in December 2018 to discuss the 2020 election, our past work together and our shared goals: beating Donald Trump, taking back our government from the wealthy and well-connected, and building an economy that works for everyone,” Warren said in a statement. “Among the topics that came up was what would happen if Democrats nominated a female candidate. I thought a woman could win; he disagreed.”

Warren may be shading things, just as Bernie may be, but there’s a clear and definite contradiction here.

One of them is definitely lying.

And considering that both Sanders and Warren are potential presidential nominees, that question is worth exploring. Their followers claim that Sanders and Warren are the soul of integrity. This confrontation makes it clear that at least one of them is a liar. And that is the real issue.