I'm joined Now by Senator Bernie Sanders thanks for taking the time my pleasure so we're in the aftermath of an election that was largely predicated on this idea that Trump would be lowering cost for Americans this was the the high grocery cost election now Trump and Elon have come in taken an ax to the federal government through the Doge commission is what they're doing lowering costs no of course it's not but let's back up just for a little bit and see where we are because Brian we are in literally an unprecedented moment in modern American
history uh when we look at Mr musk everybody has got to understand this is the wealthiest guy in the world right now worth over 400 billion uh you talk about Trump's getting elected and inaugurated musk put over $270 million into Trump's campaign and guess what he's now the most important person in government what does that sound like you does that sound like a a democracy a government of the People by the people or for the people or is it really an oligarchy doing the bidding of the very richest people right that's number one number two
what concerns me very much is the move toward authoritarianism in this country you have Trump circumventing and bypassing Congress deciding hey doesn't matter what Congress did Congress put money into this project we're going to do away with it I don't want to spend that money it's gone and that means programs for lowincome workingclass people going to be gone fortunately the cour are the courts are beginning to put a stop to what he's doing but that is what he wants to do but you don't have a democracy if you circumvent uh the uh legislative body and
then he's going after the courts you heard JD van saying well the courts don't have a right to stop what the president is doing no really I mean that's what 100 100 plus years of American jurist jurist Prudence has been about so you got oligarchy and then you have uh this movement toward authoritarianism now to answer your question what is the goal what do the end goal here the end goal of oligarchy is to make the richest people who are already phenomenally Rich even richer so how do you do that well you do that through
massive tax breaks well where do you get the money to provide trillions of dollars of tax breaks you cut programs that working people need just today the house brought forth their budget reconciliation Bill an outline of it talking about huge tax breaks the very richest people while they're cutting Medicaid very significantly and I suspect other programs as well so you're asking me are they going to cut cost for working people no they're not they're going to give tax breaks to the rich and they're can make massive Cuts in programs that Working Families desperately need well
to that point Senator the Republicans just released their budget plan and they're seeking a $4 trillion increase in the debt limit and that would offset 4 and. half trillion in tax cuts Ryan is that could that possibly be true the Republicans who've been telling us for years years what a big concern it is that we have a large national debt they want to increase the national debt by $4 trillion right and obviously they want to do that to feed the hungry and to house the homeless and to make sure that everybody has health care right
well maybe not I mean it is so ugly and so ridiculous what they want to do is to increase the national debt they want to cut Medicaid and the desperately needed programs for working people to do what to give massive tax breaks primarily to the wealthy and large corporations that's what this whole thing is about keep your eyes on the price that's what it's about well you know a lot of The Branding a lot of the the the messaging that Republicans have been putting forward is that they're cutting waste Fraud and Abuse and so they
immediately go after usaid they immediately go after the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and so what does it say that while they're nickel and diming these programs which by the way as far as the cfpb is concerned that's a that's a program that cost $800 million a year return $21 billion to Consumers who've been ripped off by predatory Banks you look at usaid a half of 1% of the budget delivers essential programs like clean water food for for refugees um HIV prevention and helps us with soft power around the world and so you have these massive
benefits for a fraction of the cost and that's to nickel and Di us out of those programs but when you're looking to pass tax cuts that would cost us $4.5 trillion do apparently that's totally fine I think as a nation we've got to take a deep breath I think you framed the question exactly right uh they look is there waste in every government program yeah there is is there waste in every corporation yeah there is but what they will do is use the issue of waste to kind of destroy entire programs in terms of USA
ID you make very important points this is a program which is keeping hungry children alive treating people who have HIV and other preventable diseases and in terms of quote unquote soft power what it means is that all over the world people are saying thank you Americans thank you for keeping us alive for feeding our children for giving us some housing uh and that is a positive for us in terms of uh dealing with global issues all over the world winning support from people uh going after the Consumer Financial uh cfp I always get the initials
wrong Consumer Financial Protection Bureau cfp all right this is something that protects consumers from predatory Banks uh and going after that will just make it easier for banks and large corporations to rip us off so to answer your question this is exactly what is going on when there are programs that help desperate people we kill them when there are programs that help large corporations of big Banks those are the programs Republicans will support So then what's your message to Trump supporters who voted in this election because they believed after listening to Trump that it was
a referendum on high prices on the cost of goods and yet instead of doing lifting a finger to do anything to to mitigate the the cost of high prices they're instead focused on stripping programs to give them the pretense of cutting waste while at the same time delivering yet another hand out to Millionaires and billionaires what I would say to Trump's supporter are two things Focus not on what Trump says but what he does and what he's going to do is cut programs that you and your families need do you really think it's appropriate to
cut Medicaid substancially those are families your families may not be able to get the health care that they need your mother may not be able to get into the nursing home that she has to get into because Medicaid pays a substantial part of that we're going to do away with Aid to students who want to go to college you're going to have your kids are going to have to go more deeply into debt when we cut back on higher educational uh programs so the other thing that I would say is that if you are an
honest conservative you believe in the Constitution of the United States you do not believe that the richest guy in the history in in in modern history can go around unilaterally cutting programs that were authorized by Congress so if you're a trump supporter and you're a workingclass person uh understand that they're going after you and if you believe in the Constitution and democracy they're also trying to undermine that but Senator um we've seen we've seen Trump deploy this strategy before he did it in 2016 where he came into office on the back of promises that he
would uh make a healthcare plan that was more uh comprehensive and and more affordable of a job boom that never materialized a manufacturing Renaissance that never materialized of an infrastructure plan that never materialized and now he's doing the same thing here and so so what what do you how do you how do you square that Gap square that Circle basically where you have him saying one thing consistently failing to deliver and yet the message doesn't seem to get through it's not just it's just not just failure to deliver he lies all the time and and
this is a whole other problem and Trump has you know I'm not going to say the politicians throughout the ages haven't lied people lie but he has taken it to an entirely new level and part of their strategy is just to lie and lie and lie you go after usaid you come up with some crazy outrageous lies to justify what you're doing right like like they're sending $50 million worth of condoms to I mean these guys yeah and musk amplifies that on Twitter Etc um I think what we have got to do which the Democrat
party is at the moment incapable of doing is organizing at the Grassroots level and I'm going to be going around the country trying to do that trying to get working people and young people people of college just the majority of the people to stand up and say you know what when 60% of our people Liv in paycheck to paycheck when 85 million people have no health insurance you do not need to give tax breaks to billionaires and cut programs that Working Families desperately need let's focus on the needs of workers what we need to do
we need to raise the minimum wage to a living wage you think Trump and the Republicans are going to do that ain't going to do that we need to make it easier for workers to join unions you think Trump and the Republicans are going to do that no they've actually neutered the National Labor Relations Board which will make it harder for workers to get their Union victory certified uh do you think Trump is going to do anything real about lowering the cost of prescription drugs I doubt it very much so what we have got to
do is focus on the needs of working people what are they Health Care system is broken child care system is broken housing crisis of enormous consequence climate change is threatening the entire planet and we can create a whole lot of jobs moving to sustainable energy stay focused on what is important to working people expose the hypocrisy of trump I think that's kind of what we got to do there are those who would say that Democrats did focus on those issues and the lead up to this past election cycle that you had people talking about Healthcare
Reproductive Rights uh workers rights and that it wasn't enough to over over come the messaging that was coming out of the right and so and so how do you contend how do you contend with that quite agree I don't think people were talking about Healthcare very much at all I mean what they were saying is we will defend the Affordable Care Act Right against Cuts Republicans will want to cut it we will defend that fine that's good do you think that's enough the current health care system is broken it is a disaster we're spending twice
as much for person in healthcare any other Nation 85 million uninsured 60,000 people a year dying because they don't get to a doctor yeah we pay the highest prices in the world for prescription dos it's not enough to defend the Affordable Care we need to do what Every Other Nation on Earth does guarantee Health Care to all people as a human right that's why I strongly support Medicare for but what the Democrats have got to do is come up with a strong Progressive agenda not only do we have 800,000 people who are homeless you know
what else we got millions of people spending 40 50 60% of their limited incomes on housing what about a massive housing program putting people to work good union jobs lowering the cost of housing you got to think big not small to Trump's credit I mean he lies all the time Etc he thinks big yeah Democrats think incrementally maybe in 18 years we will have accomplish this not good enough to that exact point you know in in 2016 you mobilized a massive movement around the country among Grassroots Democrats we've since lost that same Vigor in the
party and in fact we've seen an an an exodus of folks out of the Democratic Party and so looking looking forward in terms of how to rebuild the brand given the success that you've had at at mobilizing folks on the grass Grassroots level what what advice would you give moving forward to get people excited about the party and not running it ain't complicated not running away from the brand anymore you got to stand for something bottom line you got to be honest and stand for something are you prepared to take on the billionaire class who
have unpreceded ented levels of wealth and power right now and fight for the working class of this country Democrats by and large with some exceptions are not prepared to do that uh and we need people workingclass people young people to come in and say you know what this is the richest country in the history of the world you got to back up for a minute take a deep breath we talk about throwing more people off of health insurance when we're the only major country not to guarantee Healthcare to all people really are we a poor
country are we Haiti I don't think so we're the richest country in the history of the world you tell me why can't we guarantee healthare to all people as a humanite why can't we have the best educational system in the world from Child Care all the way through graduate school you think we can't afford to do that we can why aren't we leading the world in combating climate change and creating jobs doing that think we can't do that we can bottom line of all of this is you're looking at enormous power and wealth in the
hands of a small number of people who could care less about Working Class People not on their agenda for some reason which frankly I cannot understand they suffer from the addiction very serious problem of greed you got 50 billion ain't enough we're going to cut Social Security so I can get a tax break and maybe get $55 billion that's the world we are living in have Democrats made that clear no do we have to make it clear yes can we rally the American people conservatives progressives around that approach I think we can why do you
think it's so difficult to convince workingclass Americans that the billionaire class is not interested in them and that their economic policies aren't actually redounding to their benefit if you look back to the Reagan days of of trickle down 1980 uh uh is is really when this plan was implemented and that is when income inequality exploded in this country I'll put a graph right here on the screen U to Overlay over on top of this video to to give an indication of what that graph looks like but since those days we have seen income and inequality
explode and yet they continuously you you have a republican base that continuously Falls for this trap of thinking that so long as we continue to rig the rules in the favor of of the millionaire and billionaire class that will somehow redown to the benefit of the working class and and all the while income and inequality continues to explode in this country but we continue to perpetuate this cycle all right but you're being I don't quite agree with you I agree with what you're saying but I think you're letting the Democrats uh get off a little
bit easy here I think what is going on is not that people really believe you know Trump has a lot of fervent supporters I know that but I don't think there's overwhelming support for the Republican ideology giving tax breaks to billionaires and cutting Medicaid but I think what has happened is people looked at the Democratic parties and they say you know you've been talking for years what do you to do yeah you know you had Bill Clinton oh and Bill Clinton developed these terrible trade agreements that led to the shutting down of tens of thousands
of factories in America you had Obama well Obama bailed out the banks didn't he did he really protect workingclass people to the degree that he should have no he did not uh you know and I think you know in Biden you had actually the most Progressive president but not doing all that had to be done by any means so I think people it's not so much an attraction to the Republican ideology is saying you know Democrats really you say these things but you don't do it so to get back to the bottom line here you
need you need a Democratic party that actually stands for the working class not just rhetorically but in reality that means taking on the big money interests and fighting for working families and fighting for an agenda which will improve life for Working Families practically speaking though do you have any concern that by that by going after these interests we've seen how when when Republicans and Trump embrace them all these people Heap Heap money onto him Heap attention onto him and so you have for example all of these Tech billionaires once once they recognize that he would
be better for them well they through threw their support these are the great liberals of a few years ago right right but but it it it it Stacks the deck against Democrats in such a way that they're able to then rig the rules in Trump's favor because he would be more favorable to let let me look at it a little bit differently here and that is at the heart of everything is a very very corrupt campaign Finance system yeah okay and to be honest with you uh I don't know how you change things fundamentally when
you have people like musk not just musk musk himself contributed what was it $270 million one person you know I ran for president of the United States we raised hundreds of millions of dollars you know what the average contribution was one case it was $27 you know millions of people trippy in a little bit when you are representing big money interests you don't have to worry about small donors you got to bring 10 people into the room you can raise billion two2 billion dollars that's it and for these guys it's a good investment so bottom
line is on that you got to get rid of the citizens united it has got to be one of the major priorities of any serious political person get rid of that billionaires should not be allowed to buy elections and finally Senator if if you had one message to Democrats right now I mean look the 2026 election cycle started January 21st 2025 if you have a message to the to the to your colleagues in the Senate the Democratic house caucus what would you say moving forward to put us in the best position got understand the strategy
of the last many years has failed all right years ago the white working class deserted the Democrats more recently the Latino workingclass deserted the Democrats some black the strongest supporters are also deserting the Democratic party and you got to understand why that is the case and so what I would say to my Democratic colleagues is you got to break with the past uh you got to stop worrying about the campaign contributions they will come in small donations if you stand to you need to have the courage to address the crisis of oligarchy in America take
these people on and if you're clear in your message and you're willing to fight for working people working people will support you Senator Sanders thank you so much for the time thank you Brian [Music]
