At the end of the press conference, CNN's Dan Merica said to Sanders, "Your press secretary came in here and said not to ask about ISIS. Is there a reason that you do not want to talk about ISIS?"

Sanders responded with an irritated laugh: "Ha ha. All right, what about ISIS guys?" he asked, posing the question to the ministers. "How often are these people talking about the issues that we talked about today?" he continued, as the pastors nodded and said "yes" in agreement.

"Of course I'll talk about ISIS. But today what we're talking about is a community in which half of the people don't have jobs. We're talking about a community in which there are hundreds of buildings that are uninhabitable," he said. "We're talking about a community where kids are unable to go to schools that are decent. You wanna ask me about ISIS, we'll talk about ISIS. But what I said, and let me repeat — and you can agree with me or not — what I have said is that obviously ISIS and terrorism are a huge national issue that we've got to address. But so is poverty ... so is unemployment, so is education, so is health care. So is the need to protect working families.

"And I will, I will continue to talk about those issues. Thank you very much."