Senator Bernie Sanders critiques the 1958 Brooklyn Dodgers relocation as a catalyst for his anti-corporate stance, arguing that billionaires like Elon Musk exploit Citizens United rulings to fund Super PACs that primary dissenting politicians. He exposes how the Democratic establishment prioritizes wealthy donors over working families, noting stagnant wages despite rising productivity and contrasting American teacher pay with Finland's model. Sanders proposes capping billionaire wealth at $900 million, nationalizing drug pricing via Medicare negotiation, and adopting universal healthcare to dismantle an oligarchy that threatens democracy through unchecked financial influence. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Jackie Robinson's Legacy00:08:04
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to Flagrant.
Our guest today is one of the only people in politics who hasn't traded conviction for convenience.
And somehow, he is still here.
For decades, he has stood in the middle of the storm, unbought, unbossed, untethered, saying what so many were too afraid to say, that working people deserve dignity, that healthcare is a right, that the system isn't broken.
It was built to screw you over.
He has been mocked, sidelined, betrayed.
And that's just by his own party.
And still, he shows up not for power, not for fame, but because he actually gives a damn.
In a country drowning in cynicism, he made people believe, maybe for the first time, that someone in Washington was actually fighting for them.
So please give a warm, flagrant welcome to the last honest man in politics from Brooklyn, New York, Senator Bernie Sanders.
All right, I'm getting out of here.
Settle down, Ed.
I have a question, okay?
Listen, and this is probably a sensitive topic.
It might be too soon, actually.
It actually might be too soon.
Okay, so if you don't want to answer it, I totally understand.
In 1958, I think you know where this is going.
Going when Walter O'Malley.
Oh, God.
I know.
I know.
This one cuts deep.
When he moves the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles, and he does it for corporate greed and profits, and he doesn't care about the community that built up that team.
That's right.
It broke a young Brooklyn boy's heart, probably many.
Yep.
It seems like, and it could be a coincidence that ever since then you've had it out for the billionaires.
Is that where it all starts?
I'll tell you something.
Two things.
There was a joke going around my neighborhood, Flatbush, and what it said, the three worst people in modern history were Hitler, Stalin, and Walter O'Malley.
And not necessarily in that order.
That was a joke.
But, you know, what I did learn is that you're not.
In fact, he was first.
You're kind of joking about the question.
But I'll tell you something.
When you grew up as a kid, they have a thing called the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Of course.
So when you're a kid, the idea that it could be moved someplace.
It's insanity.
When you're a kid, you can't, that it's privately owned, run for profit, and then it could be moved to California was literally beyond your comprehension.
Beyond my comprehension.
So it was a real shock.
And if you're asking me, did that have an impact on my political views?
It did, actually.
It did.
Because the Dodgers were a cohesive force in Brooklyn, bringing people together, Jackie Robinson, et cetera, et cetera.
So yeah, that had an impact on me.
Really?
So it all starts there.
I don't think it all starts there, but I learned something from that.
But again, I mean, you think about it.
He was something so important.
Yeah.
The crucial people didn't give a damn.
Make more money.
Let's go to California.
It was as simple as that.
Like there was a giant trade.
There was a huge market out there in California, right?
Right.
Everybody, they can make more money.
I think he starts baseball on the West Coast.
Yeah, he and the Giants got you.
That's right, that's right.
And was it, I don't know.
I mean, we don't have to get too much into it, but I heard Robert Moses was pushing back a lot on rebuilding of a stadium.
That could be bullshit.
But it doesn't matter.
That raises a whole other issue.
But, you know, sports and professional sports and all that stuff.
But, yeah, it was a big deal.
That's the first exposure to.
You know, what you're seeing today, and it's something we haven't looked at enough.
It's something I want to is it hasn't really changed.
You have the, what is the function of professionals?
Plus, all of these teams are owned by billionaires.
Yeah.
And if Baltimore doesn't give you enough money, you're going to move someplace else.
And no matter, you know, you break the hearts of kids, nobody cares.
Can I ask you a question about that?
Like, why is it the city puts up money for these new stadium builds and we don't get any of the equity in the team?
Very good.
Well, now you're raising another question.
I was mayor of Burlington and Burlington, Vermont.
We'd love everybody to visit us in Vermont.
And we had no professional baseball at all.
When I got elected way back in 81, I said, one of the things that I want to do is see if we can bring back.
You bring the Brooklyn Dodgers.
That was a little bit too ambitious.
That's how you silence Bernie.
But could we bring professional baseball?
So we got to work on it.
And we ended up getting a double, I think it was a AAA team, very good team in the Cincinnati Reds franchise.
And we were talking hard about how we can municipally own it.
And we actually love it.
Yeah.
And we would have put public money into it.
It would have been, we would have made money off of it and all that stuff.
We ended up losing it on the city council, but it was an effort that we tried to make.
Anyhow, we brought the team in.
It was really good for the community.
But years later, they left, et cetera, et cetera.
But the idea that taxpayers are putting huge sums of money.
Hundreds of millions of dollars.
The school systems are falling apart.
They're putting billions of dollars or huge sums of money to build these huge stadiums.
These guys make a fortune.
And then, you know, 10 years later, they move out.
And then there's this excuse that they all use.
They're like, yeah, but we're providing jobs.
It's like, yeah, so you can have a business that functions.
You can't have a basketball team that functions without people working there.
And you're not doing bad.
Jobs are part-time, low-paying jobs, by the way.
This whole thing of professional sports owned by a small number of very wealthy people is something that what's the irony?
You want to go to a Red Sox?
We go to Red Sox again.
Do you go to Yankee games?
How much does it cost to take a family?
If you're a husband and wife, two kids.
Hundreds of dollars.
Yeah.
You buy a Coca-Cola, it costs you five bucks, ten bucks, whatever it is.
I mean, that's kind of crap.
I mean, when I was a kid going to Ebbetsfield in Brooklyn, you remember Ebbetsfield?
You know what it was?
No, no, I'm a little bit new, yeah.
I called himself a New Yorker.
Ebbettsfield was with the Dodgers.
Yes, of course.
All right.
Yes, yes, yes.
All right, absolutely.
So we used to sneak in and get 60 cents, you know, sitting in the bleachers.
And during that period, you know, a family could go to a game.
Yeah.
And now it's, you know, pretty odd.
Yeah.
And that's unfortunate.
It really is great athletes out there.
People want to see them.
Yeah.
Can't afford it.
And also, in that time, you saw Jackie Robinson play.
I did, really.
I remember.
Yes, I did.
What was the energy like in the stadium watching Jackie Robinson?
I remember what I remember about him when he was in different Brooklyn back then.
What we used to do is hang out after the games to see if we got autographs.
And I remember him coming out.
He had problems with his ankle or his foot or something.
And he came out holding his shoes.
How'd you know it was Jackie Robinson?
Oh.
Hard one.
But the, I mean, you talk about impact as a kid.
We used to do, this is true.
I mean, the Dodgers were like your family.
Yeah.
So I can tell you today the Dodger lineup.
How's that?
Wow.
Everyone hear Gil Hodges in first place?
No.
Jesus.
How do you people do?
I totally the educational system is pulling away.
I mean, he didn't learn the Dodgers.
He came in the United States.
Gil Hodges is a great guy.
Very quiet guy.
He coached the, he managed the Mets years later.
Junior Gilliam.
Nothing.
Yeah, yeah.
Peewee Reese showed stuff.
That name I know.
He was, I think, very friendly with Jackie Robinson, right?
He really liked to be a little bit of a bad thing.
You know, the movie, they probably played it up a little bit, but he came from Kentucky.
Yeah.
You know, it's a southern at that point, a lot of racism, but he befriended Robinson.
Third base was Billy Cox.
Left field was Gene O'Manski.
Centerfield was Duke Snyder.
Probably heard of Duke Snyder.
Right field, Carl Farillo.
Roy Campanella catching, bunch of.
So I can remember.
Now, what's my point?
I can't remember what happened yesterday, but I remember that stuff from a long time ago because it was an integral part of your life.
And what you remember.
All right, the Dodgers are two games out of first place.
Preachero was pitching.
You know, Robinson is batting, you know, 308.
If he gets two hits, we knew what the averages were.
You learned arithmetic through baseball.
Healthcare System Struggles00:04:56
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, I could, as a kid, most of the kids on the block could tell you how many games the pitchers had won who they were playing.
I think now we call that autism.
Okay, Senator Sanders, we've got a very interesting situation, especially this last election.
You've spoken about it a lot, where it's like a lot of unions decide to not endorse the Democratic Party.
Some even endorse the Republican Party.
If the Democratic Party cannot win the votes of union workers, who are they for?
Good.
Okay.
All right, let's take a deep breath.
You ready?
Okay, I'm ready.
All right.
Here we go.
Is it a fair question?
Yeah.
It is a very fair question.
All right.
Politics, you know, what politics, how politics is conveyed in the media is, you know, who's running for office, what Donald Trump said, and all that stuff.
And that's all important.
But if you take a deep breath and you think about real politics, serious politics, what's it about?
It's about three things, it seems to me.
Number one, where are we as a country today?
And that seems like a simple question.
It is not a simple question.
Okay, how did we get to where we are?
And equally important, where do we want to go in the future?
All right.
Reasonable questions?
Absolutely.
All right.
Andrew, where are we today?
We're in New York City, New York.
What do you mean, where are we politically?
No, where are we as a nation?
And what are the things that we should be looking at?
If I asked you, how are we doing as a nation?
I would say we're struggling financially.
That's right.
Quality of life.
I think quality of life.
That's exactly right.
And I think that we are dissolution with the institutions that should be supporting and protecting us.
Excellent.
All right.
All right.
So that's right.
All that's right.
So start off with, in one sense, we are the richest country in the history of the world, right?
We have enormous wealth.
Is that wealth, does that wealth apply to the vast majority of the people?
Absolutely not.
So unbelievably, and nobody talks about this.
You ask me, we start off on the Democratic Party.
The first thing you got to do is be honest with people and say, look, this is where we are at.
We can blame whoever you want, but this is where we are.
We're here.
That are at Dollar Ted.
So you're living in a country where 60%, let me underline that.
60% of people live paycheck to paycheck.
Got it?
I grew up in a family that lived paycheck to paycheck.
All right.
Where paycheck to paycheck is living under enormous stress.
How am I going to pay the rent?
What happens if my landlord raises my rent?
What happens if my kid gets sick and I can't afford to take him to the doctor?
You know, what happens if my car breaks down?
You know that significant numbers of people in this country, you have money, you don't think about it.
But if you don't have any money and your car breaks down and it's a $1,000 bill to get it fixed and you can't afford it, you tell me what happens.
Yep.
All right.
Bottom line is you got millions of people, working class people, lower-income people, struggling to put food on the table.
Okay.
That is the first profound reality.
And the question we've got to ask, why is that?
In the richest country on earth.
All right.
That's number one.
Number two, you have a health care system.
How's the healthcare?
You tell me.
Got a great healthcare system in America?
Well, what do you think?
I mean, if you can afford it, it's pretty good.
That's right.
Yeah, I think that's a better way to look at it.
That's exactly right.
All right.
If you got the money, you got the best healthcare system in the world.
But most people don't.
How many nations do not guarantee healthcare to all people as a human right?
You guys know?
How many?
One major country.
You're living in it.
See, here's the insanity.
We are spending twice as much per person on healthcare as most of the European countries.
Guarantee free health care.
Not to correct you, but we won't refuse care if you need it.
Oh, wait, we will.
It's a little bit more subtle than that.
Yeah.
All right.
Let's say you have a $10,000 deductible.
Okay.
Not unusual.
Yeah.
Okay.
You got sick.
What do you do?
You don't have any money.
Go to the doctor?
I go to the emergency room.
I say, I'm sick.
Yeah, but you go to the emergency room, but you're not like, it's not an emergency.
They'll say, I'm just a little bit of sick.
I just avoid it.
That starts to fester.
It gets worse.
You got it.
And that actually probably causes more strain.
It does.
You know what else it results in?
60 some.
The study from YALE was that 68,000 people a year die precisely.
You go talk to the doctor.
Next time you go to a doctor say, are people coming into your office much sicker than they should be?
Yeah, and the answer is yes, they are.
And that's just avoiding copays, avoiding exactly yeah yeah exactly okay, fair enough.
Some people do die by by the large numbers.
What about our educational system?
Psychologists tell us that zero through four most important years of emotional and intellectual development makes sense.
Right yeah okay, so we must have a great child care system.
Right, because we love our kids, we nurture our kids.
Citizens United Money Issues00:10:20
We pay childcare professionals really, we appreciate them and respect them.
We pay child care workers Mcdonald's wages.
It's yeah, it's shocking.
It's also shocking how much competition there is to get your kid into like a favorable preschool right like, you have to start lobbying these preschools at one year.
My daughter is 15 months and already now you're like he's like a pharma company, exactly like you're kind of walking in, you're meeting people, they're exchanging pleasantries and it's all under this guise of.
I hope they accept my kid because you have a massive shortage.
Yeah, and if people don't have any money.
It is really difficult and so it I don't know what it costs here in New York City, you know, in Vermont costs fifteen, twenty thousand dollars.
So if you, you know, just imagine if two kids forget it.
That's right, forget it, yeah.
But again, take a deep breath and say okay, if we as a nation understand that that's the future of America yep, we want the best.
You would say okay, we're gonna have really great teachers for them.
We'll treat these teachers with respect, pay them well.
They're doing really important work.
Yeah, taking care of your daughter is important stuff.
Agreed, we don't public schools.
I was talking to a principal in Vert, in the southern Vert.
They're starting teachers off at thirty two thousand dollars a year.
So kids, your young people graduate uh, school in debt.
We're not getting the best and the brightest people.
Do we respect you, tell me, do we respect education in this country?
No, we don't really.
What do you mean by respect it?
Like that we say man, you're going to be a teacher.
Oh educators, I don't think.
I don't think educators get close to enough respect.
We give them a lot of platitudes.
Yeah, how noble is that?
We don't treat them with respect.
We don't feel the same way as if they're like some finance bro or something.
Yeah exactly yes yeah yeah yeah, just to that point.
Take a look at it, Harvard College, one of the best colleges in America something like five percent of the graduates will go into education, and they're not going into public education.
50 will go to Wall Street.
Uh, they'll go to uh consulting.
You make a great point, though.
If college loans are so expensive, they don't Don't even have a choice to go into it.
Exactly.
So, is there some sort of system built in where, like, if you choose to go into education, that there's a way that the loan will be forgiven?
Something like that.
Yeah, there are small programs.
They have something like that.
But that's a good idea.
And again, I'm not making this up.
I'm sure there was some system like that, but I imagine maybe back in your day, no, that there was a version where like highly educated, not highly educated in terms of master's program, but like people that went to elite universities before they went and got their master's or their doctorate spent some time educating.
Was that commonplace?
I'm not sure.
I don't recall that.
But if there was a way to incentivize that, that might be.
That's right.
But what we have to do, you give you an example.
And what also bothers me is we don't look at what goes on around the rest of the world.
You know, we kind of think that we're an island unto ourselves.
You know, what we should be doing is what is working around the rest of the world.
So you take a country like Finland to be a teacher is a big deal in Finland.
Wow, you're a teacher.
It's like being a doctor in this country.
You know, people respect them.
They're well-paid.
They have a lot of autonomy, etc.
But all that I'm saying here is that if you look at the fundamental institutions in America, healthcare, education, childcare, distribution of wealth in America, we are not doing well.
And it's important that we acknowledge that.
So, I mean, nobody, you talk about your very kind introductions and talking about things that others don't talk about.
How many people will talk about the reality that Elon Musk himself owns more wealth than the bottom 52% of American households?
Is that a moral issue?
Are we comfortable with that?
It's a simple question.
And there are some people who say, hey, yeah, that's okay.
It's a dog-eat-dog world.
Elon's a brilliant guy.
He's a hard-working guy.
Other billionaires start their own companies.
They're really bold and brave.
Fine.
They deserve it.
And if you are trying to get by on $40,000 a year, well, tough crap.
How do you think Elon feels about it?
I don't know.
I've only talked to him many years ago, so I don't know him personally.
But I'll tell you what I do think.
I think there is a new breed of Uber capitalists out there who really believe, and this is, and they write about this as well, who really believe that they are superior human beings.
You know, I'm telling you, this is the quote-unquote high IQ guys who say, look, we work hard, we're smart, we have started these businesses.
To the victor go the spoils.
Not only that.
I think what that's yes.
It's a dog-eat-dog world.
I made it.
You didn't make it.
Hey, man.
That's the way life goes.
It's deeper than that.
You have some writing on the right, on the far right, which really diminishes democracy and that really the smart and the wealthy and the powerful have the right to rule.
So this is not just, oh, I want a tax break.
There's nothing new about that.
Yeah.
This is, we have the right.
It's the divine, you know, used to be the divine rights of kings.
Or manifest destiny.
Exactly, yes.
All right.
Back in the 19th century, the 1850s, you know, I am the king.
God made my family king.
And sorry, you're starving to death, but that's the way life goes.
God told me my family rules.
There was some of that.
So there's something about this that's quite interesting that I've seen lately.
And it's actually not lately.
There is a trend with the ultra-wealthy, which is upon their death, a lot of them have decided to give away their money, right?
Some of their money is.
Or some, some.
Okay.
Some of the most prolific, right?
And, or as they get closer to death, they're like, our goal is to give away all our money.
Okay.
Which seems to tell me that they think that there is an issue with them having all that money.
If they truly felt entitled to it, like it seems to me, it's an admission that they agree with you.
They're like, it's kind of wrong that we should just keep all this in our family.
We should probably not have it.
Now, they're not, it's almost like Benjamin Franklin freeing his slaves on his death.
He's like, you know what, he's like, he's like, this is wrong, but I don't want to leave it until I might need some shit and my back hurts.
But what do I do?
So when you see billionaires do that, right?
Or this elite class that you're talking about do that.
Is there a part of you that goes, you're getting it?
Why don't you do that maybe 40 years earlier?
No.
Okay.
Look, I just, I mean, these guys are very competitive.
They're smart.
They're very innovative, hardworking.
And I really think it's very competitive.
And I think they want it all.
I really do.
And I think what is, if you stop for a moment, you know, and I hope we can talk a little bit about a corrupt campaign finance system.
Please.
Yes.
All right.
All right.
Getting back to the Democrats and the Republicans and all that stuff.
Understand, I mean, I'm in the middle of it.
I work in Washington, D.C.
So you're just using Musk again as an example.
He's only one.
I don't mean to pick on Mr. Musk, but the guy contributes because of a broken and corrupt campaign finance system, which as a result of Citizens United Supreme Court decision, allows billionaires to start super PACs.
So can you really quickly just tell the audience exactly what it is?
Because I feel like we hear these words like Citizens United, and a lot of people like we just...
Super PACs.
Yeah, we just kind of pretend that we know what it is.
We have the First Amendment that says you have freedom of speech.
Of course.
Okay.
So wealthy individuals in a case called Citizens United, and I don't remember all the details, basically said, look, we had at that point, Citizens United, I think is 15, 20 years, that decision from the Supreme Court, Supreme Court decision.
So people go into the court and say, look, I have a First Amendment right to tell the people of America how I feel about an issue or a candidate.
Absolutely.
I don't like Andrew, and I want to spend $20 million on television ads telling people what a jerk he is.
Making me feel like Jamal Bowman.
All right, that's another story.
All right.
And the Supreme Court says, no, we have campaign finance.
There's campaign finance law which limits the amount of money you can spend on a campaign.
So there's already a law in place.
There's a lot of legislation that says you cannot do that.
That's what Citizens United did.
It said the Supreme Court ruled that billionaires, that advertising is freedom of speech.
And you can't limit my speech.
So if I want to spend $100 million on TV ads, I have the right to do it.
They say, you're right.
So the issue is democracy versus billionaires being able to spend unlimited sums of money.
Supreme Court went with that.
And then the form it took was what's called a super PAC.
You saw it in organization Americans for Freedom.
Okay.
And billionaires can put as much money as they want into that.
That organization then runs ads on television.
It does political stuff.
That's what it's about.
So bottom line, though, most importantly, is if you are a billionaire, you can put as much money as you want into a super PAC.
And in Musk's case, he spent $270 million to help Donald Trump get elected president.
Do Democrats have billionaires putting money into super PACs?
Absolutely.
All right.
What does that mean in real life?
This is what it means.
Right now, we're dealing with a bill called the Reconciliation Bill.
It's a fancy Washington term for a very big bill, which will have a lot of stuff in it.
In any case, if a Republican stands up and says, you know what?
In the House of Representatives, I don't like this bill because it's giving tax breaks to very wealthy people and it's going to cut Medicaid and cut nutrition programs.
It's a bad bill.
What do you think happens the day after that Republican stands up and says he opposes it?
Those super PACs organize and they primary out the politicians.
Undermining Political People00:15:15
Exactly.
Now, and how effective is that?
It is enormously effective.
Sure.
Right now, you're a Republican.
Yeah.
You got to.
Wait, what?
I don't mean you.
I mean, it's going to go viral.
All right.
So you have two elements.
Trump is enormously popular within the Republican base.
Elon Musk has unlimited sums of money.
Right?
Double whammy.
Double whammy.
So it is very hard for any Republican to sustain.
To stand up and authentically speak their mind.
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Give you another example because I don't want to, I'm an independent, right?
Caucus with the Democrats.
Democrats are better than the Republicans, to my mind.
But Democrats, all right, I happen to believe that providing more military aid to Netanyahu's extreme right-wing government to do the horrible things that are going on in Gaza right now.
As you may know, as we speak, it's horrible.
Absolutely.
Children are starving to death.
Absolutely.
Malnutrition growing and all that stuff.
All right.
I introduced legislation to say we're going to block the sale of certain military weaponry to Israel.
I got 15 Democrats to support me.
I got zero Republicans.
Why do you think more Democrats didn't support me?
Because if Democrats support me, they will have to take on APEC.
You mentioned Jamal Bowman.
Yeah.
That's what you're talking about.
Suppose what they spend like 15 or 20 million to get them out of there?
This is up in Westchester, too.
You got it?
Okay, Bush in Missouri, St. Louis, was defeated.
A woman in the state of Washington, Pramila Jayapol's sister ran.
So if you want to speak out against Notting Yahoo's government and oppose military sales, APAC, which is also funded by billionaires who support both Democrats and Republicans.
So we'll go after that.
How can they do this effectively?
Like, how can they sway a vote if the people don't support the idea?
You know how you do it?
How?
This is rather amazing.
Great question.
You don't talk about the issue.
Oh, you make that person so radioactive.
They went after Bulls.
I was up in Westchester.
Now you're undermining the Democratic process.
I was up in Westchester campaigning for Bowman.
Yeah.
And I supported Corey Bush as well.
To the best of my knowledge, and I'm 99% sure I'm right, they didn't say one word about Israel.
The argument was he's a bad Democrat or whatever the usual negative advertiser.
Didn't talk about Israel.
So this is quite interesting because if a group, like if a super PAC was honest about what they were raising against, for example, they spent that $20 million specifically defending their position on Israel.
I wonder if we would be more amenable to that because that is the issue at hand instead of using funding to make this person radioactive, which they might not exactly be.
It's undermining.
It is duplicitous.
You're undermining the people.
And that's where you remove.
Wow.
That's a very good point.
All right.
I mean, I think they should not have unlimited amounts of money.
But your point is: hey, if that's what your goal is, be honest about it.
And I say this with you because you raise money not from a few billionaires, but like you guys raised, what is it, Sunrise, and then Democrat Justice or Democracy Justice?
There are these groups that are a little different than the super PACs, but they are raising money on a grassroots level.
We do.
But you are being honest about what you're raising money for.
Exactly.
You're right.
So your point is right.
If somebody says, look, I love Nan Yahoo.
I think they're doing a good job.
You oppose him, and I'm going to oppose you for that reason.
Just being honest about it.
Exactly.
But you know what?
I think one of the reasons they don't do that, you know why?
Because it wouldn't be supported.
That's right.
So is there any solution beyond getting Citizens United overturned by another?
That's a great question, man.
Thank you.
You're asking really good questions.
We're working on it right now.
And here is, without going too much into the weeds, we need to end Citizens United.
That's not going to happen tomorrow.
But what you can do is within the Democratic Party or the Republican Party, you can have rules that say you want to be the candidate of the Democratic Party.
Well, guess what?
You tell, and this is again tricky, you tell that you announced very clearly you do not want any super PACs supporting you.
And by the way, if super PACs support you, for every dollar they put in, we're going to put another dollar in supporting you.
There are things you can do.
We're going to run ads.
We're going to offset it.
I'm sorry.
I have to ask this.
Sorry, I hate to interrupt you.
We have a question we want to ask about what happened to you in 2016 with this Bernie Bros movement, where your followers are seeing they have a racism problem, a massaging problem.
Do you think that's a super PAC thing behind that?
No, it was the Democratic establishment.
That was the...
Oh, wow.
Okay.
You know, that was just, they were sitting there.
We had a lot of young people.
We had people of color.
And, you know, they create this kind of myth with the help of the corporate media and all that stuff.
You know, it's kind of interesting to that note is during this election, the podcast space, which the Democrats largely avoided, they feel had some influence in the election.
And they started to label us, the podcast, bros and said that we were sexist and we were racist and bigoted.
It's almost like it's the exact same strategy to get you out of there.
Yeah, that's what the liberal elite China does.
They run away.
Look, getting again, I would hope that everybody who's watching the program is that we as a nation have got to end all forms of bigotry, right?
Yes.
That I start off as a basic assumption.
Unless it's to your close friends, right?
Whether it's racism or sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, whatever it is.
But, and, you know, liberal Democrats talk about that all the time.
And then you get to what we call identity politics.
You're black, you're wonderful, you're tremendous, you're gay, you're the greatest human being on earth.
Yeah, yeah.
And rather than saying, what do you, what do you stand for?
Exactly.
Gay, that's fine.
Who cares?
Yeah.
But what do you stand for?
Yeah.
You know, is every gay person brilliant and wonderful and great?
No, of course not.
Everybody's a human being.
Yeah.
So the issue is what you stand for, which gets you back to what we discussed earlier, class politics in the sense of which side are you on?
Are you going to stand with working families?
Are you going to raise the minimum wage to a living wage or not?
Are you going to fight to guarantee health care to all people or not?
Are you going to demand that the wealthiest people stop paying their fair share of taxes or not?
Those are the issues.
And no one cares what color you are, you know, what your gender is, et cetera, et cetera.
I'm sorry.
I do feel like vowing to stop taking super PAC money is a great first step, but also being an honest politician.
You put up a bill to stop the sale of weapons to Israel, and there's no amount of money APAC can spend to not get you re-elected.
And I feel if we had more honest politicians than courageous ones.
Well, this is a good discussion.
Why are you shocked?
I'm shocked.
Because they're racism so far.
You're asking questions that are not often asked.
This episode has been promoted by Walter O'Malley's Foundation.
All right.
It's a painful issue.
I mean, because I deal with it every day in Washington.
This is that you're running for office.
If you, in your heart, understand what's going on in Gaza right now.
And again, it's almost painful to talk about it.
The United States is complicit in the starvation of children as we speak right this moment.
Okay.
Mass malnutrition, et cetera.
And you say that's wrong, man.
And I'm not going to give Netanyahu another nickel, but I know that the day I say that, APAC is going to pour a huge amount of money.
So what's the choice you have?
The choice you say you have is, okay, they're going to throw a lot of money at me, but I'm going to make this a major campaign issue.
Are you going to run away from it?
What do we stand for as a nation?
And I'll tell you something, getting back to the Democratic Party.
What the Democratic establishment people say, well, Gaza, yeah, it's an issue out there.
It's not the main issue.
It's not the pocketbook issues, you know, more important.
Healthcare is more important.
But you know what?
I'll tell you this, is my own view.
Is what people have a sense consciously and unconsciously, if you are turning your back on starving children in Gaza, why the hell am I going to trust you on anything?
That's a great point.
Is that a fair point?
I think it's a very fair point.
I think if you turn your back on starvation in general, especially if you're complicit in it, I think that's where a lot of at least voters feel like there is some sort of separation.
And if you make them realize that there isn't, right?
If we are protecting or funding or rewarding this in any way, then you are complicit.
But I think voters feel like they're too derivative from it.
They're like, oh, that's not exactly what I'm voting for.
And I do think, not to undermine those other issues, but like, I do think the, what is it, the kitchen table issues, or I think those are incredibly important.
And I think the more that people are struggling internally in our country, the less of a concern we have externally.
So it is a tough balance.
If you make your entire campaign about Gaza, the people in whatever small area that you represent will go, hey, listen, that's horrible.
It's happening over here.
But we're struggling too.
So don't forget about us.
You got it.
You got it right.
So how do you balance those two?
Well, that's what politics is about.
I mean, you make.
I feel like you've done it well.
I feel like you talk way more about internal issues than external ones.
I do.
And Gaza then becomes a moral issue that you cannot run away from.
But at the end of the day, we have to ask ourselves, why are we where we are?
And it's a funny thing.
I was talking to my staff when we were driving in today and reviewing.
There was a, I think it was Pew, P-E-W, they do these.
The polls.
Yeah, they do things.
And they asked the question, I may be a little bit wrong here, but they said they do it.
And they say, are you better off today than somebody in your situation, middle class or whatever you are, were 40 years ago?
That's the question.
What do you think the answer was?
This is an insane statistic.
I've seen this research.
They're like that people are making inflation adjusted the same wage that they were making 50 years ago.
I don't mean that.
I don't even mean statistically.
I'm going beyond definitely.
Oh, are you better off than somebody?
How do you feel?
Do you think somebody in your condition was living better 40 years ago, or are you living better today?
I think the average person would say no.
That's right.
And that's an astonishing.
All right.
So, let's go through the economics of it, then we'll go through the broader issue.
Economics.
This is an amazing fact.
And again, it's something that people don't talk about because you got a lot of the Republicans want to make change.
It's almost always the wrong kind of change.
And the Democrats want to maintain the status quo, which is unsustainable.
That's what the choices that people have.
But sometimes, if the status quo is horrible, any change looks better.
And I think that.
Which is why Donald Trump is the president.
That's what I think a lot of Democrats don't understand.
Like, you've been very critical.
We're lifelong.
I can't speak everybody, but I grew up in New York City.
I'm a lifelong Democrat.
And we were very critical of the Democratic establishment.
And it was through the lens of, hey, you're not addressing the concern to the people.
And by doing that, we were framed in a way that I think, and we continue to be framed in a way, I think it was very unfair.
Oh, you don't know nothing about being friendly.
You don't feel sorry for you.
It's just a refusal to look in the mirror.
That's exactly what it is.
All right, here's a fact.
This is an astounded effect.
Nobody talks about it.
And this is the other thing.
More important than anything else is people want to say, do you know what is going on in my life?
And if you don't talk about that reality, no one's going to trust you at all.
Yeah.
All right.
Fact.
But let's call people Latinx, Bernie.
That's right.
That's right.
That's the issue.
All right.
Over the last 52 years, I may be off a little bit here, but more or less I'm right.
Over the last 52 years, there's been an explosion in technology, right?
This stuff that we're looking at did not exist.
Every worker in America is more productive, correct?
Absolutely.
Okay.
Computers, et cetera.
How much have real inflation accounted for wages increased in that 52-year time?
Obviously, with all of that worker productivity increasing, we must be making a lot more money right now.
Nothing.
0%.
Zero.
Yeah.
In fact, there's an argument a little bit less in real housing costs, healthcare.
Because TVs are cheaper, you think that you're living a more luxurious life.
But take a deep breath about that fact.
What does it say?
Meanwhile, during that same period of time, there was a massive, according to Rand Corporation, not a socialist organization, there was a massive transfer of wealth from the bottom 90% to the top 1%.
Open Election Doors00:10:06
But Bernie, surely they're paying taxes on all that new profits they're making, right?
Right.
But that is, getting back to this important issue, which I kind of started, you know, what is reality?
So if you're the average worker out there, you're seeing people on the top getting phenomenally rich.
You're no better off.
And by the way, the likelihood is your kid is going to be worse off than you are, right?
Yeah.
That's a tough reality.
Why is that?
Who the hell is he even talking about?
A, why is that?
And B, what the hell do we do about it?
I think that was the appeal of Trump as he appeared to be tough with us.
Exactly.
Whereas Democrats are kind of condescending and ignoring it.
Essentially, Democrats say, status code is working okay.
We're going to tinker around the edge.
Let's make a little bit of a change here.
Trump says the whole goddamn...
The system is broken.
But he said, I will fix it.
Well, his solutions will make it worse.
But he at least acknowledged that the system is broken.
Democrats often don't.
They don't acknowledge it.
And there's a lot of finger wagging, or at least recently.
I didn't feel that when I was growing up, but at least recently there's a lot of finger wagging.
And then there's almost like this detachment from working class people, which is really sad because you'll see them echo certain sentiments.
They'll be like, look, look at the Biden stock market.
And it's like, guys, 50% of Americans aren't even invested in the fucking stock market.
Like, you're so detached from working class people, you don't even know the talking points to make them feel good about the economy.
Do you even lie to them, Brother?
Yeah, it's like, so what happened?
How do we get here with the Democrat establishment?
That's a great question.
And the answer is that we do know.
And that is during the 70s, 60s, Democrats caught on that.
You can raise a lot of money from wealthy people.
And it gets back to campaign financing and all that stuff.
So you got a Democratic establishment now, which is funded by wealthy people.
You have consultants who are really way out of touch with reality, who make a lot of money in campaigns.
And working class is ignored.
Donald Trump comes along and says, you know, I care about you, which was a lie.
So the.
I don't know if that's a lie.
I'd give pushback on that.
I think that it has to be proven that it's a lie.
All right, I'll prove it.
Yes.
And you're right.
I could look through rose-colored glasses, but the idea, I think that when people are struggling, anybody who goes, hey, I'm going to help you out.
Like I'm sure when Obama, I remember Obama, I remember the impact of Obama, he ran on reform and he ran on hope, right?
Yes.
He ran on this idea of we're going to make it better for you instead of Kamalo seemed to run on this idea, like, hey, it's good.
We're going to keep doing the exact same thing, which is a losing strategy.
You got it.
So that was her bloody consultant.
I mean, I know Kamala.
She's a friend.
She's very smart.
That was what her bloody consultants told her to say.
I beg them.
I'm just between you and Jesus.
Why can't she push back?
You're right.
Look, there's no argument.
And this is the problem I think a lot of voters had: they didn't even know if it was her.
We didn't even know if Biden was president.
We didn't even know if these were her talking points.
And we felt that over the last four elections, Democrats, we felt, that we didn't have a say on who could be president.
We talk a lot about the Republicans being autocrats and oligarchs and taking over democracy.
But from the Democrat perspective, and I'm a lifelong Democrat, I felt like the Democratic Party completely removed the Democratic process from its constituents.
And I think they need to have some accountability of that.
No argument here.
I don't need for you.
I mean, I wanted you to, like, 2016, I was like, this is going to happen.
This guy's going to do it.
And it felt like they stole it from me.
And I'll be honest, it broke my heart when you supported him.
Look, but you have, in the world that I live in, you got a choice.
And I mean, a lot of people, including my wife, agree with you.
But, you know, you're down to a choice.
Is it going to be Hillary Clinton or is it going to be Donald Trump?
Not a great choice.
But it ended up being him anyway, so why don't we burn it down?
Well, because it's easy to say burning it down means that children are not going to have food to eat, that the schools will deteriorate, people will not have health care.
I got it.
And I'm an elected official.
I'm going to represent the people of South Carolina.
And I can't turn my back on.
But then could we not also say, ostensibly, there hasn't been a fair primary for the Democrats since 2008.
Are they not also a threat to democracy?
We often hear.
Fair enough.
That is.
That is.
Yeah, I'm not going to argue with that point.
And that's why I'm proudly an independent.
What we're trying to do now.
And I will just reinforce the point both of you made.
The hatred that we felt in 2016, 2020 from the Democratic establishment.
I'll give you an example.
We would do rallies and we have thousands of people, often young people.
People of color coming out, working class people coming out.
They were great, full of energy.
And then we go to Democratic Party events.
There'd be a few hundred people, mostly older, whiter, wealthier.
And you saw the clash.
And the establishment did not want to open the door.
They hated the idea that all these people whose hands were a little bit dirty, who didn't have PhDs or weren't wealthy.
Imagine walking in.
It's my party, man.
You ain't getting in.
Yes.
We will fight you in the most ruthless ways that we can.
And that's the struggle.
Are they going to open the door or are they prepared to lose elections, literally, and maintain status?
They'll go down with the Titanic.
Do you think you're forcing the door open?
Because it seems like that's what's happening right now.
Exactly what we are trying to do.
Right now, in the last month, we have enlisted some, I think, the latest 7,000 people who are prepared to run for office from school board to Congress.
Wow.
You know, not all of them will run, but they've shown interest.
There are training programs that we're undertaking with other groups right now.
And by the way, a good percentage of them don't want to run as Democrats.
They want to run as independents.
So do you sense from the Democratic establishment that they're more willing to listen to people like you?
Or are you guys just going to have to kind of take it by force and win elections?
Are they more willing to listen to me?
No, they're not.
But they'll take on some of your ideas for salvation.
They realize they can't ignore it.
Orphan lip service.
Yes, they will take on the ideas.
But these guys, they want to protect what they have.
So your question is a, you would say, look, okay.
And by the way, Joe Biden, to his credit, I know everyone beats up on Biden.
But what Biden did, unlike Hillary Clinton did, is he and his people saw that we had a movement.
And what he did is was prepared to put together task forces.
We sat down with their people, and we brought people like Alexandria Casio-Cortez and some of the strongest, sit down with, you know, establish and come up with a program.
A lot of what went into the American Rescue Plan, which got us out of the COVID pandemic economically pretty well, and some other stuff.
So the Biden people were more open to sitting down, understanding that we represented millions of people than other people in the past or are right now.
I feel like most politicians are swayed by money and lobbyists and that like, I wouldn't say dictates, but it definitely influences their decisions.
You feel like one of the last honest politicians.
Can you tell me what other politicians have the Bernie stamp of approval that they're like honest?
Yeah, who's not bought?
Oh, there are a number of people.
Look, one of the successes that we've had that doesn't get a lot of attention is in the House of Representatives now, there are dozens and dozens of young, often people of color, often women, who are there.
I mean, Alexandria is maybe the best known.
But Bramila Jayapol from Washington State, Greg Kazar from Texas, Mark Bukan from Wisconsin.
There are many of them.
And they're doing a great job.
And they don't take corporate PAC money and they stand up for the working class.
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Now let's get back to the show.
Another form of, I think, corruption that many Americans see within both Democrats and Republicans is this idea of the stock trading.
And they see that as kind of like another way to, you know, take some money off the top.
And people have talked about Nancy Pelosi and her husband, for example, but I think it happens across the aisle.
What is your take on that issue?
And is there a way to curb that?
I don't own any stocks, so it's not my thing to follow it.
I'm not sure that that has, you know, if the implication is that these members of Congress are aware of what's going to happen tomorrow and are putting their stock, I'm not sure how I'm sure it happens.
I don't know how prevalent it is.
But what was interesting, by the way, on that subject, is you may recall, just was it a month ago, where Donald Trump said something like, today is a great day to invest and all the whole he changes his years on the tariffs.
Do I think insiders knew something about that?
Probably.
That felt awesome when he did that.
I felt like a politician.
Like I was privy to the information that I feel like Pelosi and Schumer are privy to and the Republicans do as well.
I don't want to make it a partisan issue, but like it felt, I think a lot of Americans, instead of rejecting this insider trading idea, finally felt like the train wasn't running away without them.
We were on the inside for that.
Exactly.
Where it would be great if nobody did it.
Doctor Profession Culture00:11:39
Like that's the ideal situation.
But I think a lot of times what we've seen is like this great frustration with government.
And then whoever pulls the veil off, there is an appreciation of it rather than a rejection that there is corruption in general.
Got it.
All right, let me ask you a question.
All right.
Do we talk enough about where we want to be as a nation?
And I think culturally, what Trump represents to me, he lies all of the time.
He is interested in himself and more money.
And almost what bothers me is that is the kind of culture that we advertise to young people.
This is the world.
If you lie and you cheat and you steal, you sue someday can be a multi-billionaire.
Is that where we want to go as a nation?
And what's the alternative?
I think the most important question is: what do we want as Americans?
And I think it is hard to.
I think the way that we teach in school is that people came here for freedom.
And I think if we were being more honest, I think people came here for money.
And I think it was freedom from a lack of opportunity.
There was freedom from oppression.
Otherwise, my mother is an immigrant.
But I think.
Where'd your mom come from?
Scotland.
So, you know, she didn't have maybe a lot of opportunity.
Stopped going to school at 15 years old, came here to America.
She started a dance school and she had immense success here teaching dance lessons in New York City.
Who would have thought?
But I think the reality is that opportunity, I think Akash's family also came here for financial opportunity.
My family as well.
Exactly.
And I think, so I think it's very hard to tear that away.
I think that the fuel of the American machine is this idea, the delusional hope that one day we'll all be millionaires.
Right.
But is I don't know if that's right, but I think that is.
Look, I think this city is what, the melting pot city in a sense, where my father came from Poland.
He dropped out of school at 14.
You came here at the age of 17, really incredible without any money.
All right.
And that's the story of millions and millions of families.
We all came different ways.
But what I'm getting at is, should the goal, and everybody wants to live comfortably.
Right?
Absolutely.
There's nothing to be ashamed of.
You don't have to worry about whether you can pay the electric bill.
You want to make sure the kids get an education.
All right.
But does the culture have to suggest that to be a success, you need to be a billionaire?
What I'm getting at is, you know, I'm the former chairman of a committee that deals with all this stuff.
So we don't have enough doctors in America.
We don't have nurses.
We don't have enough dentists.
I brought in several billion dollars into the state of Vermont for infrastructure to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure.
We did that all over America.
We don't have enough construction workers who make good money, by the way.
Be a sheet metal worker.
You want to be a welder.
You want to be an electrician.
You want to be a, we don't have enough.
What I'm saying is, I would like to see us say, you want to make America great?
Good.
I want to have doctors so you could have to wait two months to get into a doctor's office.
This is, this is, this is, it's so important.
It's like, what does the cultural award?
I think Acox can speak on this, maybe the best of all of us.
Like within your community, what is the highest doctor?
It's doctor.
Doctors will make the most money.
They're hedge fund managers to make more money.
But if they're in a group, like you speak to it, if you're in the family gathering.
There's an honor.
I get to brag to my parents get to brag to other friends.
My son is a doctor.
And I don't even know if it's about helping people.
That is the thing.
It's not the most lucrative profession.
No, no, no, it's not.
But it garners the most.
My dad told me, he was like, I'm really proud of your success.
I'm proud of how far you've come.
I want you to know no matter how famous you get, I would still rather you be a doctor.
And so maybe there's a version of that in America where, like, obviously we want financial success, but can we reward some of these other positions as they offer societal utility?
Right.
And then you go even deeper than that.
And that is, I mean, now you're going really deep.
Is you get into the issue of human happiness.
All right.
These guys sit in Wall Street, they get up four o'clock in the morning to see what the stock market is in Japan and they're doing and they make zillions of dollars doing crap.
I mean, what's the usefulness of the society?
Yeah.
And you got a kindergarten teacher here in New York City who is nurturing and making life better for some low-income kid.
Who's doing more important work?
I mean, the teacher, without a doubt, there's no question.
The problem is that we're not rewarding those positions.
And if we did reward them, like if it was this great honor to hold these certain positions, which I still do think doctor is.
Yes, yes.
But I think there are few and far between.
And first of all, doctors make a lot of money.
So let's not act like they don't.
But I think there are few and far between positions that don't make a lot of money, but still command immense respect in America.
I do think that we are tied to the dollar, unfortunately.
And how do we change that?
That's exactly the question.
I want, I want, I mean, again, getting to the, it seems to me, you know, you talk to, I'll tell you, so we do a thing in Vermont.
It's called the Burning Buzz.
It's a newsletter that goes out.
Did an interview with a woman who works in a nursing home.
God knows what she makes.
It's not a lot of money.
And she talked about her satisfaction helping seniors fixing their hair, the women, getting their nails and all that stuff.
And the pride.
She's a religious woman.
Okay.
And the pride she had in how she feels good.
I want us to feel good about doing good stuff.
Yes.
Not just ripping off other people.
I don't want to be.
But the problem is much deeper than a Donald Trump to give some pushback.
Yes.
Gordon Gecko is celebrated as a hero of the country.
Exactly.
I grew up listening to rap.
I still love it, but it's all about access, wealth, being rich, being billionaires.
It doesn't matter how you get the money.
It doesn't matter if it's honorable or not.
We were growing up, there is a million movies about, and there's a lot of criticism for this, but like some teacher who's well off that goes to the hood and really commits to like revitalizing that school, right?
And initially the teacher's not accepted, but then the teachers see that, so the kids see that he's like a good or she's like a good force on humanity and it's really rewarded.
I don't think they make those movies anymore.
I think it's a bunch of Gordon geckos, right?
And or every Marvel movie is about, you know, in Elon Musk's character type, which is, you know, Iron Man is Tony Stark.
So, so yeah, the culture is clearly rewarding whatever makes you money.
And I don't want us to completely get away from that.
I think like success is important.
Ingenuity and innovation is important.
Absolutely.
But there has to be something else that's important.
Exactly.
That's what I'm saying.
So how do we do that?
How do we instill that?
That's the kind of thing.
We're all just got to start sleeping with teachers.
This is the kind of discussion we need to have as a chain.
And it gets back to this thing, you know, this blew me away, this Pew poll about whether you feel better off.
And it's like, and we got diverted a little bit.
It's not just economics, whether you're better off inflation accounting for dollars today than you were 40 or 50 years ago.
It's more than that.
It's do you feel part of your community?
All right.
Or are you feeling isolated and alone?
Are you spending half your time on a goddamn cell phone?
Yeah.
Right.
And, you know, how do we, I mean, the craziness is we have more potential wealth now with all of this exploding technology.
So we don't have to be working 50 or 60 hours a week.
We can be thinking about how do we, what does it mean?
A, should we be dealing with the economic issue?
Should everybody have a decent standard of living in America?
Can we do that?
The answer is, yeah, we can.
Do you think it's realistic to effectively tax billionaires in a way that still encourages innovation within America?
Yeah, I do.
I happen to believe that we should not have billionaires.
All right.
So you want to get rich, fine, get rich.
How much do you need?
All right.
Yeah, so I would have a very steep.
99 million.
Something like that.
You want a billionaire.
Maybe 900 million.
But we want to change the culture around.
You know, I talked to Bill Gates, did an interview with him on Netflix.
And I said, Bill, you know, you're worth a zillion dollars.
Were you motivated as a young man with the dream that you become a zillion?
He said, no, he said, I love computer programs.
That's what I loved.
That was his passion.
Then he ended up making huge amounts of money.
So, you know, I don't begrudge people making a lot of money, but I think there should be a limit to how much you make.
And also, then getting back to economics, is we are looking at a nation today not only with massive income and wealth inequality, but incredible concentration of ownership.
You want to hear a fact.
Yeah.
You got three Wall Street investment firms, BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard.
Vanguard, who combined, combined, are the major stockholders in 95% of the corporations in America.
Go look at your favorite corporation, see who owns it.
It'll be one of those who's a major stockholder.
They'll be there.
What do you think about that?
That's power.
What is the impact of that?
Like, how does that power wheel?
It means that you have three entities with boards of directors who have significant control of every major corporation in America.
What that means is, do they stay in America?
Do they go abroad?
Do they pay their workers a decent wage?
Do they treat them like crap?
That's what it means.
Enormous power in the hands of three Wall Street firms.
So what's interesting is when you start to get any kind of money, they'll tell you, put your money in a Vanguard.
Is that good for America?
Because it seems like to us, oh, this is how you get to participate in capitalism.
That's right.
That's your retirement goes into Vanguard.
But that's one thing.
But the other thing is that Vanguard, State Street, and BlackRock have enormous economic power, which is not a good thing.
And they're not using it benevolently.
They're not.
They're using it to make more money.
So the issue is that we got to take a look at is we got to ask questions that I got to tell you in Congress is very rarely asked and in the media is very rarely asked.
In the wealthiest country on earth, should everybody have a decent standard of living?
Americans, yes or no.
Some people will say, No, hey, it's a tough world out there.
I'm sorry.
I'm smarter than you.
I work harder.
My dad gave me a lot of money.
You don't have it.
Tough crap.
At least they're honest.
Yeah, that's what some people will say.
Most people will not say that.
Most people will say, you know what?
Yeah, I don't think anybody should be sleeping out on the street.
I don't think anybody should not be able to go to a doctor.
That's what most people will say.
Okay.
What does that mean in terms of practical politics?
It means, among other things, that we need an educational system, which is very strong from child care to graduate school.
All right.
You want to become, your dad wants you to become a doctor, but if you want to become a doctor, you may leave school half a million dollars in debt.
You know that?
Absolutely.
All right.
Does that make sense?
You need doctors.
Should we, as the richest nation on earth, say, good, you want to be a doctor?
You want to be a nurse?
You want to be a dentist?
We need you desperately tuition-free.
We love you.
Yeah.
Do it.
Because we desperately want to.
Subsidize it.
Yeah.
Subsidize the job.
Absolutely.
If we need more engineers, don't make the education so expensive.
Exactly.
We need it.
We need more engineers.
And also, like, I wonder if there's a certain point in time where if you squeeze the consumers of your products so much, they won't be able to buy them.
So isn't it in the best interests of these, you know, you refer to them as oligarchs, but isn't it the best interest of these oligarchs that they make sure that life is fruitful enough for the people that are going to consume their products?
That's a very good question.
And I'm not sure that that's a legitimate question, I think, a right question.
I don't know that they think about it that way.
Tuition Inflation Crisis00:03:10
They talk about the markets all the time, but it's like the market's going to fucking decide for you, buddy.
And eventually they're going to realize we can't buy a new iPhone every year.
And then your iPhone sales tank.
Or we could create a system that in some way is, I don't know.
And again, this is way smarter than me to figure out, but like that is some way allowing people.
Slightly more equitable.
Yeah, it's just like making enough money.
And I don't know if Henry Ford did this, but of course in the lore, you always hear like everybody on the line could afford a car.
Right.
Like you would like to believe that everybody that is, you know, working 40 hours a week can afford the average goods that the American consumer would want to buy.
I don't know how we do that.
And I don't know if it's the same thing.
If that is the debate, good.
And that is the honest debate that we should be happy as a country.
And can we bring these billionaires, can we bring these oligarchs into that conversation?
And they're clearly brilliant, right?
Many of them.
Obviously, there's a bunch of them that are just Nepo babies.
And I'm curious your thoughts on like the Nepo babies, the trust fund kids who have taken along like, you know, taken up politics and are finger wagging at people who actually work for a living when they've never had a real job.
I'm curious your take on them being so opinionated.
Well, I echo what you're saying.
You know, it's some of these folks born with huge amounts of money think that they have the right to be telling everybody else what they can be doing and have enormous power.
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Drug Price Industry Control00:13:23
I want to bring it back to something you mentioned, and you mentioned the hyperinflation of college tuition is something that you don't hear talked about a ton, but growing up in a family where the more degrees you have, the more respected you are, it seems as though it's getting to the point where you brought up where the product is not worth the cost.
College, having an undergraduate degree, it's not worth how much you're going to make in the long run.
If we're not at that point, we're getting very close.
Is there a solution to that?
What would you say to that?
I would love to hear your thoughts on that.
Well, I happen to think that education itself is something that should be a lifelong pursuit.
My wife tells me this every day.
I mean, and I don't mean to be romanticize it, but you know, learning is a pretty good thing, you know?
I tell my grandchildren that, you know, school sometimes almost discourages them from learning, you know, things.
I hate school, grandpa, you know.
So I think learning is important.
And I think we probably have to, in this day and age, revolutionize education.
But I personally believe in my soul is if you want to get a graduate degree, we need you.
And I don't, you shouldn't be going in debt.
There should not be impediments.
You know, I got to figure a way to fund it.
But bottom line is anybody.
I want to say to every kid in America, you're interested in physics, you're interested in science, you're interested in engineering, you're going to do it.
I don't care what your income is.
We will, in one way or another, you're going to achieve that.
And you know why?
Because as a nation, we need you hear a lot of these people saying, especially folks that are attached to these big corporations, like America doesn't have enough engineers.
America doesn't have all these things.
So we have to go higher abroad.
It's like, well, I don't know.
Maybe if you had access to billions of dollars, there's something that you could do to make sure that we could grow them here.
Now, I'm not putting that 100% on them, but you would hope that there would be some sort of benevolence that would recognize a problem here.
Not benevolence, it's self-interest.
Ooh, so reward their own selfishness.
We need engineers.
All right.
We need people in order to build funnels.
In case you haven't heard, there is a climate crisis.
All right.
How do you transform our energy system?
Easier said than done.
We need some really, really smart people to figure out how we create cheap, sustainable energy, right?
Yeah.
All right.
I will send you to graduate school daily.
Yeah.
He needs it.
We need it badly.
We need you.
And that's what we should be thinking about as a nation.
And as far as subsidizing that, do we have room in the budget?
And where's the best place to pull it?
Subsidize.
What does that mean?
We're subsidizing this bill right now, the so-called reconciliation bill, the big Trump's big, beautiful bill.
We got 200 in the House.
The Republicans are putting in $235 billion over a 10-year period to go to the top two-tenths of 1%.
So if your billionaire father is going to leave you money, the exemption is now up to a married couple of $30 million that you don't have to pay any taxes on.
So this goes to the top two-tenths of 1%.
Do we have enough money?
This is what you got to get in your head.
We have enough money in this country to do any goddamn thing you want to do in this particular budget.
We're now spending a trillion dollars on the military.
They want to spend $150 billion more.
We're spending more than the bottom, the next nine nations combined.
So what we're doing is giving tax breaks to the rich, spending more money on the military, and then we're going to cut Medicaid.
So the way in this country, literally, and by the way, when I say these things, they're not radical ideas.
All right.
How much does it cost to go to college in Sweden?
Nothing, nothing.
Oh, wow.
No kidding.
But that must be the healthcare system is really expensive, right?
It must be.
How much does it cost to health care in Sweden?
Nothing.
Oh, my God.
Nothing.
Childcare must be really off the wall.
How much does that?
In other words, if you slaughter off with a value system that says we're going to use, and they're rich people in Sweden, believe me.
But it's a value system that says, look, we're in this together as a people.
We want the best educated people.
We want our kids to do well.
We want everybody to have health care for a lot of reasons.
Sweden does it.
Norway does it.
Finland does it.
The pushback we often hear is that population in America is too big to support this.
That is just, that is the pushback.
And we're a multicultural, you know, multiracial, and they're kind of a homogeneous.
Yeah, so what?
We're richer than they are, as a matter of fact.
Well, Norway is particularly rich.
They have a lot of oil money, but we can do it.
So here's my suggestion for that.
I think if a single state provided universal health care, let's say, for example, Vermont, and they proved that it could be done, they would put so much fucking pressure on every other point to do it.
It's like legalizing weed.
Yeah, exactly.
We've seen it happen with weed, right?
Like one state does it, starts to make a lot of others say, oh, maybe we should do it.
People are only incentivized by their own salvation, unfortunately.
How do we prove that?
Which state is going to go make it happen for them and then make New York look embarrassing?
We have all this wealth and we can't provide health care to our citizens?
Well, I think you make a very good point.
The problem is the people in the insurance industry and the drug industry understand that as well.
So they're not dummies.
They understand, oh, geez, Vermont managed to provide free health care to all of their people.
That will become a model for the rest of the country.
And we're up the creek.
So they fight it tooth and nail.
And how do they fight it?
Like, for example, what are they doing?
Jesus.
You buy the, you know, you just have lobbyists there up the kazoo and put advertising on.
I ran it.
Look, I am an advocate of what we call Medicare for all, expanding Medicare to cover every man, woman, and child in the country.
Yes.
All right.
Oh, and the argument we had 30-second ads.
Bernie Sanders wants to raise your taxes outrageously.
Take away the health insurance that you have.
Well, what they forget to tell you is that you're not going to be paying any more out-of-pocket, any more deductibles, any more premiums.
You're going to get higher wages because your boss doesn't have to spend a fortune on healthcare to cover you.
They forgot to tell you that.
It's like your taxes go up six grand, but your health care yearly costs goes from 12 grand to zero.
That's right.
So you just save six grand.
All right.
And the healthcare system will get me going on that one.
We're spending twice as much per capita as the people in Sweden who have a better healthcare system than we do.
Why?
Well, maybe coincidentally, insurance companies, you know, made, what did they make?
100, I think they made 70 billion last year.
Drug companies that charge us the highest prices for drugs made $100 billion.
So it is a healthcare system designed to make what?
Drug companies and insurance companies are rich.
How do you keep the quality of insurance, sorry, high, or quality of healthcare high?
Because anecdotally, I hear from people in the UK and Canada, their healthcare is not very good because it's, I guess, subsidized.
The UK is under a lot of pressure right now.
And that's true.
And that's a political decision.
The same factors that would impact the state, the big money interests are putting a lot of pressure trying to destroy the UK healthcare system, and its quality is going down.
Although it is still a very beloved institution in England.
In Canada, there are waiting lines.
It ain't a perfect system by any means.
But don't believe all the right-wing stuff.
In Canada, if you ask the people in Canada, do they like their healthcare system as opposed to America's?
That's come out much better.
Speaking on healthcare, Trump recently signed an executive order to lower drug prices.
How do you feel about that?
You believe what you saw in the payback.
Not quite.
There's no way you've been living in Vermont for 50 years.
There's not going to be a lot of people.
What he did is say, we're going to give the drug companies a certain period of time to tell us how they're going to lower drug prices.
And if they don't, we're going to do A, B, and C. We're not quite sure what A, B, and C will be.
But the likely is that A, B, and C will be thrown out in the courts because the president doesn't have a right to tell companies how to fix prices.
Just coincidentally, Bobby Kennedy, the secretary of HHS, was before the committee that I'm the ranking member of.
And I asked Bobby, and I said, look, the president talks about substantially lowering prescription drug prices.
You do.
We're going to introduce legislation that will do just that.
And will you work with me?
He said they will.
So to answer your question, the president talks a lot.
Don't believe what he says.
We're going to put him to the test.
We are going to bring forth legislation that would make sure that Americans don't pay a price any higher than people around the rest of the world.
We'll see if they can.
So isn't a better framing of that, not to be contentious here, but like, isn't a better framing of that?
Hey, Trump is saying this thing we agree on.
We agree with you, and we're going to hold you to your word instead of you're a liar.
That's what I'm doing.
Well, if I didn't say it, that's exactly right.
Yeah.
Like, I think that's like, because sometimes we get caught up in this partisan shit where it's like sometimes both sides agree.
And it'd be nice if we at least get drug prices lower.
Trump's idea of substantially lowering prices is exactly right.
It's exactly what I fought for for years.
Yeah.
Okay.
So if Trump is willing to work with us, we'll do it.
Absolutely.
Do I think he will?
Probably not.
But I may be surprised.
And then if he doesn't, let's hold him to his word and let's make sure he puts a pressure on those same senators that he would have primaried.
Exactly.
Like, this is what you were saying you want.
You get your senators in line, right?
Actually, I don't know if you're like infringing on the democratic process by saying to do that, but like it would be really great, especially those of us who have like older parents who are really relying on these drugs right now.
Yes.
But don't get me going on the drug industry.
I kind of want to get going.
We want you to get going on everything.
Well, I got to get going to the airport.
They got a plane, as a matter of fact.
We'll fly you private.
All right.
There we go.
All right.
Look, you got a pharmaceutical industry that makes made $100 billion in profit last year.
We had a guy before the committee, CEO of a major company, makes $50 million a year.
They do stock buybacks.
So, you know, it is a, and meanwhile, the same medicine that you buy in this country, whether it's Ozempic or Wagovi, whatever it may be, is in some cases five, eight times more expensive than it is in Canada or in Europe.
It's insane.
It is insane.
Of course it's insane.
And they do it because they can do it, because we are the only guy.
You know why they do it?
All right, question.
You know how many paid lobbyists there are for the drug companies in Washington?
They say, take you guys.
200, 500.
15,000.
1,500.
All right.
So you got 535 members of Congress, 1,500.
These are former leaders of the Democrats.
So that's a lot of power.
And then their campaign contributions.
So up until Biden, and I work with Biden on this, we have never, what other countries do is they say, good, you got a drug, that's great.
Let's negotiate the price you're going to charge us, right?
That's what they do.
Every other country on earth.
For us, you got a job.
You charge any price you want.
Doesn't matter.
For the first time, what we did is now have a law that says we are going to negotiate.
Medicare will negotiate drug prices.
We started off with 10.
It'll be expanding.
Is it enough?
No.
Is it a thought?
Yes, it is.
Yeah, I just feel like there should be a certain point in time where patriotism kicks in.
If you're an American fucking company, you're going to gouge your own citizens, but let the Canadians and the Europeans pay way less.
I don't look at it like that, but I'll tell you where it becomes not funny is there are kids around the world who die from easily preventable diseases.
And these drugs cost, you know, once you do the research, which is expensive, and the development, which is expensive.
But once you have the product, it sometimes costs you a few cents to manufacture the drug, you know?
And there are children around the world who die, you know, in Africa and Asia from preventable diseases because these drug companies are charging prices that those countries can't afford.
And that is, so you talk about pay, then you talk about humanity, whether we let kids die for profit.
It's excessive profit.
I know you got to go.
Real quick, before you go, we hear the term lobbyists all the time.
Yes.
I don't think I know what that means.
Does somebody like meet you at a coffee shop?
No, not you, obviously, but how does that, how does a lobbyist?
This is what it means.
I represent, you know, Mr. X represents a large corporation.
We'd love to sit down with you and your staff.
We slept with the staff to talk about the problems that we have.
And these are our needs.
And by the way, we got a great, the company has great staff.
We can write legislation, help you write it, because we know how busy you are.
Oh, wow.
And by the way, we'd love to do a fundraiser for you.
So the combination of, and we have friends who come together, we have superbacks.
Oligarchy Tour Revolution00:07:20
So it, and by the way, some of these guys will know members of the Senate and the House because they're formers.
What do you think most senators, when they retire, do?
Where do you think they go?
They sleep around Washington.
They see they work.
So, hey, Joe, how are you?
How's the wife?
Kids going to do well?
Listen, this is what we got.
They know each other.
So, and it's Republicans and Democrats.
Check it out.
I mean, former, literally leaders of the Republican and Democratic Party who are lobbying.
So it's money, it's connections, it's friendship, it's ability to write tough legislation.
You think writing a tax bill is easy?
It's not.
No.
You know, you need really sophisticated accounts.
Line 48, section 3, da, da, da, da.
Just inject this one sentence in there.
It's a bill that's great for you.
That's what it's about.
Please answer yes.
Are you going to run for president?
Please ask yes.
I'm 83 years of age, so that is, I think I've run my last race.
Now, does that mean zero fare races?
Does that mean that this oligarchy tour is you passing the baton?
No, don't look at it like that.
The oligarchy tour is I think we're all looking at it like that.
No, it's not a passing the baton.
I happen to, you know, I think Alexander is great, but it's not my job to determine who the new leaders are.
You know, people have each of them, as I mentioned in the House, there are a lot of great people in the Senate.
There's some good people.
And there are people who are not in office right now.
But the oligarchy tour was an effort. to say to the country that there are people all over America who are going to stand up to this oligarchy.
They don't want a government of billionaires.
They're going to stand up to authoritarianism.
There are people, as I'm sure you're familiar with, a young woman from Turkey, for God's sakes, was in Massachusetts, went to Tufts University.
You remember that?
This woman walks down the street.
Suddenly, guys grab her with masks on, throw her into a van, take her to a detention center.
Why?
Because she wrote an op-ed critical of the war in Gaza.
Really?
That's what goes on in America?
And we're seeing that.
So, you know, this was an opportunity for people by the zillion.
We were shocked, to be honest with you.
When I ran for president, we had very large turnouts.
These are larger.
I mean, in L.A., we had 36,000 in Denver.
We had 34,000.
I mean, insane, insane turnouts.
We went to Idaho, the most conservative state in the country.
We had 12,000 people outside of Hawaii.
So we wanted to give people the opportunity to stand up and say, no, we're not happy with the direction that Trump is taking this country.
Wow.
So I want to go ahead.
I'm curious.
I find you very brave, and I find the work that you do.
No, I am not brave.
I find you brave personally.
And because I recognize that what you're doing disrupts, or at least you are attempting to disrupt, many powerful people and their access to unthinkable amounts of wealth.
So I'm curious, in your work and in your political career, have you ever felt that your personal safety was ever threatened?
Well, I don't want to get into that, but do we have security issues?
Wow.
Is that your question?
Of course we do.
And I'm not the other.
And the more power that you have, the higher the concern of that security?
I don't want to get into it.
But we are.
Those are issues.
That's why I find it.
I just want to let you know.
But it's not, look.
Bernie, we're here to bang for you, bro.
We're here to bang for you.
If you need anything, you let us know.
I still got a lot of love in New York City.
You're safe here, man.
I can't say anything for Idaho, but if you need anything in the five boroughs, we got you.
So if I may follow up on one thing that you brought up earlier, revolutionizing education.
How would you do that beyond paying teachers more?
I just need to know.
I think sitting kids at a desk for long hours is probably not the best way to create the kind of creativity that we want in kids.
At the end of the day, if you are excited about learning, you're going to learn.
And if I pound that excitement out of you that every child instinctively has and tell you to memorize what George Washington did, I'm going to make school a painful experience.
So interesting, I use Finland as an example because their kids, they usually do better.
Their kids, they allow their kids to be kids, to play a lot, to socialize a lot.
But you've got to keep the spark alive.
And once that spark is alive, curiosity is alive.
Learning takes place.
Learning takes place.
The rest takes place.
So I think you need a revolution in that sense of the word.
And also, of course, the financial barriers should be eliminated.
I don't care if you're low-income, you want to become an engineer, you'll be able to do that.
So those are some of the things.
Before you leave, how can people who feel like your message has really resonated with them today help you, help the cause?
Yeah, look, we are trying to build, to do something which is very, very difficult.
And I think we're having some success, and we've had some success is, you know, come to our social media.
You know, we have a Senate page and we have a campaign page, more political.
We are supporting and will be supporting more progressive candidates running for Congress, Senate, and so forth.
And I will tell you, think outside of the box in your own lives.
These are unprecedented times, and we've got to respond in an unprecedented way.
And you think, and each and every one of us is different.
You don't want to run for office, fine.
What else can you be doing?
Help people form a union.
Become involved in education in a way you did not be involved before.
You think it through.
But we need more participation.
We don't need what the system really, and this I've experienced, I've seen it a million times.
What the oligarchs and the ruling class want you to believe is that you're powerless.
You have no power.
And once you accept that, they win.
They win.
We have power.
We're a lot more, a lot more.
The joy that I've had in my life is to be in every state in this country and talk to, I've been in rallies where you see these wonderful people, often young people.
They're black and they're white and they're Latino and they're gay and they're straight and they're out there and they want a different America.
And that's what inspires me.
I've seen it with my own eyes.
They're out there.
They don't believe in greed and they don't believe in, you know, so many of the things that we're seeing right now.
Those people are going to stand up.
You've got to come to the plate.
And we've got to do what we can to transform the country.
Time is late.
We're dealing with very dealing with authoritarianism.
We're dealing with climate.
Let's get involved in ways that we've never been involved before.
Senator Bernie Sanders, thank you so much for being here.