Transcript of #635 - Sen. Bernie Sanders

Today's is a senator from the state of Vermont. Before that, he was a congressman. He was a mayor. He's a mitten to meme, actually. I'm thankful for his return to the show. Today's guest is Senator Bernie Sanders.

I love this. This is an historic hotel.

Oh, yeah. Leonard Cohen used to spend time in here. Oh, really? Yeah. My mom used to play Leonard Cohen for us when we were kids. She liked him, and so she would play his When the walls came down. Remember that? Yeah.

The other here is Hallelujah.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Here in New York City, there is a It's called the Youth Choir of New York City. Does that ring any bells? It's kids-Pull them up.

The Youth Choir of New York City, was that it?

Yeah, it's beautiful. Among other things, they do a beautiful rendition of Cohn's Hallelujah, which I love very much.

Yeah, I haven't been to see them. I would like to go check them out, though. Do they perform pretty often?

What's beautiful about it, these are kids from the city, often working class kids. The guy does a fantastic job, and the quality is really wonderful. We're trying to do something in. There it is. God, you can't say a word here. It's up in. There it is. Those are the kids, and beautiful, and wonderful.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's nice. No, I haven't gone to see it. What did I go? I went to see a Knicks game. They haven't won a Championship in 53 years.

Right?

I didn't even even realize that.

Well, I'm done, that'll change.

Yeah, there we go. That's why we'll start maybe getting some more foreign players. Hey, they got some good guys in the Euro stuff. Changed a lot of things. I saw that you were out there on the nurses' picket line, the New York nurses. Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. We went the other day, too. We had a great time. Oh, wow. That's a nice crowd. Jesus. That's when you were. That was there. Was that-Oh, that's me today. There I am. That's you this morning.

Who's that handsome guy in the brown coat? Oh, that's me. All right. Who's that kid with him? Oh, that's the man.

Oh, yeah, that's Zora. Yeah. There we were. We went out there the other day. We had a good time. We stayed for a few hours, walked around, shook some bells. Great. Got out to my sister's-I love nurses.

My sister's a nurse.

Where is she a nurse? She's a nurse down in Louisiana. Good. But I figured that if things start here in New York, a lot of big things start here.

Theo, let me just say something. I really appreciate the work you do. And other podcasters do. This is one of the technological revolutions that is really good. Sometimes I go on TV and I'm asked to deal with an issue in seven seconds. I can't deal with it. You can't deal with it, right? Yeah. Takes a little bit of time. So thank you for what you're doing.

Well, I appreciate that. Yeah, we're trying to learn as we go, too, and it changes a lot. But were you at Mount Sinai? Which one did you go?

Mount Sinai?

Yeah, that's where we went. Yeah.

Well, I tell you, I was really proud to go there and be alongside Mayor Zeran Mamdani. I'm the former chairman of the Health Education Labor Committee. I'll tell you, Theo, I have met with nurses all over this country. I love nurses. It's no great secret that our The healthcare system is broken. Everybody knows that. The people who are keeping it going are, in fact, the nurses. They're with you when babies are born, they're with you when you die. They're with you in between. They're at your bedside. They're the backbone of the healthcare system, and I love them. I'll tell you something, time and time again, nurses would come into my office, and they'd start talking, and suddenly they'd start crying. You know what they were crying about? They were crying about the fact that they were unable to do the jobs, to do the work that they were trained and wanted to do, that they didn't have the number of nurses they need, the staffing ratios that they needed. They broke down. I was just a couple of years ago, not the symbol of what's going on in New York City right now in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

These nurses went on strike. You know why they went on strike? Because they needed help to provide better patient care. It wasn't even about money.

They're just saying, Hey, I can't even be a nurse. This is my calling in the world, and I can't even do it to a decent potential. Exactly. It's tough enough. We talked last time about patients being stressed to the gills, not only dealing with their physical ailments, but having to deal with the stress of begging for insurance companies to support, just all of that. Now you're going to put the nurses under the same stress.

Exactly. It's pathetic. I'm sure you know this, the CEO's there. Of these big, huge hospitals. One guy is making 26 million a year. Another guy, I think, is making 16 million. Another guy make it five. They're bringing in all these traveling nurses spending hundreds of millions of dollars rather than sitting down and negotiating a decent contract with these dedicated nurses. There they are. You got them up there.

Yep. And I'm grateful. I want to just mention these wonderful CEOs by name today, just so... Because Look, it's time where we put a name with people who are making certain choices. And so we have Brenda Carr. I know he's over at Mount Sinai. Brian Donnelly. There he is. Look at that big smile. I'd be smiling, too, if I just made $15 million this year. That's Philip Joe O'Ozuwa, who looks like a guess who character, and Steven Corwin from Monopoly. I don't know. That's alleged. These are the CEO's current, and I think one is just leaving one of his posts, who are These are who nurses are asking for help from. Is that right? Just to be clear, Bernie, what are the nurses asking for?

What they're asking for, what they call safe nurse-patient ratios. That means if you're a nurse on duty and you have too many patients to take care of, you can't do your job. A patient calls out, needs your help, you can't get there. They want more staffing to be able to provide the quality care that patients deserve.

I know in addition to that, I think they wanted health care benefits not to be cut.

Right, for themselves.

Which is pretty… If you think that nurses, nurses can't get health care. They can't be sure that they're going to have health care. They're working with the sick. We can't say, Hey, we're going to do our best to make sure you don't get sick.

That's pretty crazy. And the other thing they're worried about, and I hope we can discuss this a little bit, is AI and robotics. They've raised that issue as well.

Have they really?

Yeah. And there was a Dr. Oz, who's head of CMS in Washington right now, was talking the other day. Let me get it straight. I think it was Alabama, rural Alabama, where they're weak on the number of obstetricians that they have. He was proudly talking about how they have robots now who are providing examinations for pregnant women.

Who's controlling those robots? It's not some pervert at his house, huh?

Well, but the point is, if you're a patient, do you really want a I'm not going to talk about examining you? Right. I think all of this, Theo, adds up to the fact, and I'll tell you, I've been all over the country, and wherever I go, I talk about this. Whether you're conservative, you're moderate, you're progressive, you understand the healthcare system is broken We are spending, this is insane, do you know how much we spend per capita? Add everything else, right? Medicaid, Medicare, what you pay out of your own pocket. How much do we spend per person on health care in the United States of America? Take a wild and crazy guess.

Per year?

No, per person.

Okay.

$15,000 per person. Okay. So a family of four spends, theoretically, $60,000. Oh, wow. That is double what any country on Earth is spending. You got it? Yeah. You would think that if we are spending... If I buy a $100,000 car, you buy a $50,000 car, my car should be a little bit better than your car, right? And yet, despite all of those expenditures, our system is worse than others. We're the only major country not to guarantee healthcare to all people.

But it's because there's these darker agreements between hospitals and insurance companies, right? And the cost of drugs. Yeah.

It has to do essentially, look, in this day and age, running a healthcare system is very difficult. Technology changes. It ain't easy. I admit that. But what is the goal of a rational healthcare system? It is to say, first of all, to answer the fundamental question, is healthcare a human right? What do you think? Should everybody, regardless of income, get health care?

I believe that based on how much money our country has, I think it's wrong not to provide that to people because we waste it in so many other ways.

Okay, good point. The issue here is why is the wealthiest nation on Earth, the United States of America, the only major country not to guarantee health care of all people? Okay, that to me, is a fundamental issue. So today, despite spending so much money, 85 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured. And if Trump gets his way and throws another 15 million people off of Medicaid, raise that number to roughly 100 million. There are estimates out there that when you have that many people uninsured, no insurance, and underinsured means high deductibles, right? So if you got a high deductible, you may be insured. I've talked to people. I suspect you have. They had deductibles, $10, $15,000 a year, right? So if you don't have any money, how do you go to the doctor? Yeah. So you add all that together. People get sick. They can't go to the doctor. Some 50, 60,000 people die a year in America, unnecessarily, because they don't get to a doctor on time. That is pretty insane. In my view, I push very hard to introduce the legislation, what we call Medicare for all, expanding Medicare to cover every man, woman, and child without out-of-pocket expenses.

We could do that without spending, to your point, not a nickel more than we're currently spending.

How can we get that move forward, though? Why does this just continue to be this thing? Why does it continue to feel like nobody really who wants to take care of us.

Now you're getting into another issue. All right, you want to go there?

I mean, yeah, I think we can go to a couple of these places.

All right, let's do it. All right, look, in one respect, the healthcare system is working extremely well, not for ordinary people, not for you, not for me. It is working very well for the insurance companies who make zillions of dollars in profit, the drug companies who charge us the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs, and that's the function of the current healthcare system.

Right.

Okay. So again, running a healthcare system, whether it's in Canada, Europe, wherever it is, it ain't easy. They all make mistakes, they all have problems. But if your goal is, if you and I sit down and say, Okay, how do we provide a health care to all people, and how do we do it in a cost-effective way? All right. Will we come up with a perfect system? No. But that's our goal. But if we sit here and say, Okay, how can we charge the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs and make 38 billion dollars next year? How can we deny people the insurance that they paid for, the benefits that they paid for? That's a whole other scam, and that's the scam we're working on. It is an effort to make huge profits for the drug companies and the insurance companies. That's why we've got to end this broken system. Again, I will tell you, I've been all over this country. Nobody or very few people think this healthcare system is working. We got to expand Medicare over a four-year period to cover every man, woman, and child.

But is there a real way to get there?

Yeah, there is. Look, the goal is, and then that takes us to another area. You ask the question, why are we perhaps the only country on Earth not to guarantee health care to all people? Why if you are in Canada right now, I live 50 miles away from the border there, you get seriously ill, you're in the hospital for a month. You know what the bill is when you come out? Zero. Yeah. Okay. And they spend half as much per person on health care.

And they are good posture, too. Have you been over there? Yeah, sure. Of course, I've been.

The answer has a lot to do with who controls the United States and a corrupt campaign finance system. All right? If I'm the insurance companies and if I'm the drug Companies and you're running around and you're campaigning and say, I'm going to cut, as I do, we're going to cut prescription drug costs in half. We're going to guarantee health care to all people. What are you going to do? You're going to spend a whole lot of money on candidates to defeat me, right? So you got a corrupt campaign finance system in which billionaires in both political parties, by the way, I think Republicans now more than Democrats, but both parties spend huge amounts of money. Elon Musk, the richest guy on Earth, spent some $270 million to elect Donald Trump President. So, Musk has his own agenda. He wants Trump president. Others, billionaires, have their agenda. That's called a corrupt system. What democracy, in my view, and you can argue with me if you want, is you and I, you're running for office, you want to run against me? Good. What are your ideas? Take them to the people. People like your ideas better than me, you're going to win.

All right? It's not me going out raising money, billions of millions of dollars to defeat you, to lie about you, to put ugly 30-second ads on the air, right? Right. Okay. That's what democracy is, a real debate on the issues. Yeah. All right. You disagree with me. So what? It's called democracy, right? Yeah. Okay. But increasingly, what the politics in America is about are superpacks, where if you're a billionaire, you can put, that's what Musk does, hundreds of millions of dollars. And again, it's not just Musk, democratic billionaires do the same.

Oh, yeah. There's the Coat brothers over the years. There's the Adelsons. There's all these different huge It's just big pockets that are influencing things. Absolutely. Yeah.

So when these guys control the political process, you're not going to have a government that works for ordinary people. And it's not just health care, it's many, many other issues. So to my mind, by the way, when we talk about bringing about the necessary changes this country needs, a campaign, finance reform, and doing away with Citizens United, that terrible Supreme Court decision, top of the list.

Citizens United, bring that decision up.

Citizens United was the Supreme Court decision that said, you're a billionaire, okay, you got it? You have the freedom of speech, First Amendment, to say anything you want about Bernie Sanders. You want to put ads on the air. You can spend zillions of dollars, freedom of speech. And that's what Citizens United said. And obviously, that undermines democracy because it allows billionaires the right to buy elections.

And can we bring this back to a vote? Will Mike Johnson bring this back to a vote?

No, he likes Citizens United because it works very well for those guys. I got to tell you, some Democrats like it, too. But I think the American people, you go out and you talk to, again, people all across the political spectrum, they understand you're not a democracy when billionaires buy elections.

Yeah, well, here's the thing. It doesn't even feel like either one of these parties works for anybody anymore. If anything, in the past few years, it's really started to feel like, oh, all these guys are working for somebody else, and we're just this other group of people down in here because you have like there are politicians online that are yelling at voters for support about stuff. It's like, we voted for you. Like, yell upwards. I don't know. Yeah, it feels like a total dead end now. It just feels like it feels like most people just want to be elected now so they can make a profit somehow themselves. It almost feels like a business venture if you want to be a politician.

I wouldn't frame it in that way. I would frame it.

It feels like as a regular person or that's how it seems a lot of times.

Okay. I would say it's cool to be a congressman or descendant. That's super cool. Get your name in the paper, you get on nice shows like this one and all that stuff. And you have a certain amount of power. I mean, that's real. And you We associate with the rich and the famous, and that's cool, I guess. But that speaks to where we are as a nation today. Here's, I think, maybe the major point that I want to make. You're living in the richest country in the history of the world. Theoretically, at least, that should mean that all of our people have a decent standard of living. We should not have people a few blocks from here sleeping out on the street. We should not have people unable to afford health care, kids unable to afford to go to college, people literally unable to feed their families. And yet in America today, and I know this is really an astounding fact, 60% of our people, Theo, are living paycheck to paycheck. I grew up in a family. I don't know your background, but I grew up in a family to live paycheck to paycheck.

Oh, yeah, I knew exactly how much money we had. But no, I knew what we had left at the end of each week, and it was in mom's wallet.

The simple question that we have to ask ourselves is, how do we feel, and again, you can disagree with me, you're living in a society today where we have more income and wealth inequality than we've ever had in the history of this country. You got the top 1% doing phenomenally well, owning more Wealth on the bottom, 93%. You got one man, Mr. Musk, one man owning more wealth than the bottom, 52% of American households. What do you think?

Well, I think it's tough. I think there's two ways to look at it. Well, I think in a bigger scope for me, you have, yes, you have these billionaires, you have these guys that have all this wealth. It does feel unfair. They used to say, well, just because one person has more money doesn't mean that other people have less money. But I don't just visually, it doesn't even start to seem like that's the truth. Optically, for me, it doesn't seem like that's the truth. Do I think there should be a cap on how much money people could have? I do think that there should be. To me, in my heart, it doesn't feel like people need so much money and so much control. That's the point.

I think most people think, and I believe, look, you go out, you're doing it, you start a business, you're making money, right? Congratulations. We appreciate that. You make money. Great. You really need hundreds of billions of dollars?

No. Really? No.

At that point, these guys, whether it's Zuckerberg or whether it's Bezos, they own their islands and their jet planes and their spaceships and all this crap. Bunkers. Right, exactly. Anyhow, so I don't begrudge people. Come Come up with a great idea, work hard, make money. God bless you. But you don't need billions and billions of dollars when people are struggling to put food on the table or afford health care. That's one of the issues that concerns me right now. When I talk about fighting oligarchy, I was on a tour.

Oh, yeah, I know you had a tour with the AOC. How many cities did you go to?

We have been now, I was in New Jersey last night. It's the 24th state that I've been in. I think we've done 35 events. Well over 300,000 people have come out. I got to tell you, I've been to conservative areas. People of this country are not happy about a situation in which so few people, I mean, really, a handful of people have such enormous political and economic power. That's not what America is supposed to be about. You got rich and you got poor, fine, but not so few having so much power over the economy and power over our political systems.

Well, here's what I would think. But I don't We always say, let's tax these people. That's the term a lot of people use. We need to tax them more. Maybe so. But sometimes with billionaires, I at least look at billionaires as people that are more often than not creating jobs, creating environments where other people have the ability to make money. You have Larry Ellison. You have a lot of people that are Amazon workers, people that work at Oracle, people that work in data. You have Elon Musk. You have a lot of people that work for Tesla or that might work for his Uber type company if he gets it going. But at least those people are creating jobs, a lot of them. Now, do they still deserve to have that much wealth or hold that much wealth? I don't think so. But then you also have this argument, let's get them to pay taxes. But then you have things that happen in Minnesota, like with this Somalian fraud. You have this young man who's been going around, nick Shirley, who's going door to door, like trick or treating about fraud, and figuring it out. That almost is like, it's like, why get people to pay taxes?

Who even cares about paying tax anymore if we're just going to let them slip out of the bottom?

But the answer is fraud is disgusting, and especially to steal money from hungry kids. If you have a program to feed hungry kids, you steal that money. That is probably as bad as it gets. I think way back in the early '20s, under Biden, they started an investigation. Those people should be severely punished. I don't care if you're Somali, if you're green, you're blue, whatever you are.

Right. I'm using the term Somali fraud because that's the term people are using.

But anyway, that should be punished. That's disgusting behavior. But understand, and I'm sure you do, it's fraud is not just in a child nutrition program in Minnesota. I deal with this a little bit. We are spending a trillion dollars a year on the military. Okay? There is not one major defense contractor that has not been charged with Fraud, providing fraud to the United States government. Their CEOs make huge amounts of compensation. They cannot even undergo an independent audit. They're the only government agencies. So they don't even know what they own. It is so massive. But nobody, nobody, nobody, Republican, Democrat, independent, nobody doubts that there's massive fraud. There's fraud all over the place, unfortunately, in this country, and we got to do our best to eliminate that. But at the end of the day, we got to revitalize, in my view, we got to revitalize our democracy. We got to hold elected officials accountable. We got to run cost-effective, efficient government.

But having been in government a long time, do you think that those things are actually possible or at a certain point, are you start to... Do you lose hope? Because as a regular person, it feels like our political system works against us and it works for big business interests, and that's not even up for debate anymore. It feels like you're lucky to find a couple people who seem semi-human, that work in politics, who have some semblance of a connection. At least they will talk about things that they feel like they really want to do or will show by some of their actions. But otherwise, it feels pretty hopeless. Does it feel like that to you more and more?

Yes or no. Again, I'll give you some examples. This is my own You have a political point of view. You agree with me, you don't. It's okay. Right here in New York City, we're sitting in New York right now. A year ago, there was a guy named Zaran Mamdani, who nobody had ever heard of. He was an assemblyman in New York. Nobody heard of him. He decided he wanted to run for mayor. He was at 1% in the polls. He was taking on the democratic establishment to say, Who the hell do you think you are? Taking on the Republican establishment, taking on the oligarchs in the city, people, front page New York We're going to spend tens of millions of dollars to defeat this guy. You know what he did? Not only... I mean, he's a brilliant guy himself and a very good politician, but he had 90,000 plus people in this city knocking on doors for him. So you ask me, Am I optimistic? Can we bring about change? I would say New York City is a pretty good example of what happens when people come and he said, You know what? I'm going to make this city work for working people, not just the billionaire class.

Amen. And he's just been in office for three or four weeks. I think he's doing great. But you ask me about my optimism. When I see 90,000 people going out on the streets volunteering for this guy, and he's implementing. He was out. We talked about being on the nurses picket line today. He was there with me, standing with the nurses. I've seen this other great members. Media doesn't do a great job, but you got dozens of young men and women in the House of Representatives, strong working class members of Congress. So, yeah, I am in that sense optimistic. On the other hand, Donald Trump worries me very much. You remember? It's a funny story here. He was an I had been inaugurated just about a year ago, and I was there. For whatever reason, I got pushed into the front row.

I fell out of my chair. I was in a chair that broke. Yeah.

My chair didn't break, but I was almost as close Of course, the Trump is as I am to you now. And you remember who was behind Trump at his inauguration?

Oh, yeah. Who was up there? You had Zuckerberg, you had Elon, you had Bezos. You got it.

Yeah, and it does another billionaire. Okay, so you ask me where I get pessimistic is, and literally, this is not just saying this, it's true. I was thinking, you remember Abraham Lincoln in Gettysburg, but he said, Lincoln went to Gettysburg, the scene of this horrible battle during the Civil War, tens of thousands of soldiers killed. A few days later, Lincoln goes to the battlefield, and he jots down some notes. Basically, I'm paraphrasing. What he says is, these soldiers who are fighting against slavery did not die in vain. They died so that we will have a continuing government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Amen. Then I'm looking at what Trump and his inauguration, and I'm seeing these billionaires there, and I'm thinking this is the government of the billionaires, by the billionaires, for the billionaires. That's how it's evolved.

I'm not surprised. I'm not surprised that this is where we've ended up. I don't know if this happened overnight. It doesn't feel like this happened overnight with Trump. It feels like this has happened more and more over time. At least Trump, it feels like to me this is messed up, but at least he brings his billionaires up there and shows them off. You're right. That is something that's crazy about him. It's no secret that Prizepicks is America's number one sportspicks app, and it's easy to use. That's what I enjoy about it. It's got everything that's going to from players' picks, team picks, and now culture picks. That's right. On top of picking player lineups, you can now pick teams on prize picks. Pick the winner, total, and spread on every game through the playoffs. Team picks are now available in 30 states, including California, Texas, and Florida. And culture picks. They cover everything else. Make pics on the price of crypto, entertainment awards, and even politics. I love the player picks because they're easy to use. You just choose more or less in a certain stat number for each player. And while we're at it, here are my picks for this weekend's games.

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Search and understand the risks involved. Crypto trading can be volatile and you could lose your investment. Moonpay is a tool to facilitate your transactions, not a source of financial advice. Trade responsibly. But I I love your energy about how do we stay hopeful, right? How do we stay hopeful when it feels almost impossible? How do you vote somebody in that would be able to stay in the tide of it all?

Theo, this is where we got to take a deep breath and accept our very serious responsibilities as citizens, okay? You think back, and I don't want to romanticize this, but you think back on American history. We read all about this when we were in the third grade. Those were pretty brave guys, George Washington and Jefferson and all those guys, taking on the British Empire. No one in a million years thought you could defeat the British Empire. For sure. And they did. And a lot of thousands died. Thousands of them died. It was a pretty bloody situation. And then you think about the Civil War, where very brave people said, You know what? Slavery is a moral abomination. We're not going to accept it anymore. God knows what that Civil War was about. Hundreds of thousands of people on both sides died. Then you think about, and I think about this, December was a December seventh, 1941, the United States was attacked by Pearl Harbor. We were totally unprepared. Do you know that? We were totally unprepared. We We got to fight a war against Japan, a war against Hitler in Europe, right? Totally unprepared. And yet the country came together.

Instead of building cars, they built tanks and planes. Literally in two or three years, we had put the Nazis on the defense of the war was won. What I'm saying is this is perhaps the most difficult moment, in my view, in modern American history. It's because Trump is an authoritarian who happens not to believe in democracy, and I think he's corrupt. It's tough. But we have won great battles in the past, and I believe if we do not allow our people to become divided up, we will win this as well. And not only defeat Trumpism, which I work very hard to do, but also create the nation that we can become. Health care is a human right. You know what? If you have some kids, children, they have a right to get all the education they need. We are not some poor third-world country. We have got to have a vision of where we want to go as a nation. I think if we fight for that vision, if we bring people together, we can succeed.

When Did you speak with guys like Mamdani? Did you have any suggestions for him? Did you give him any advice?

Well, actually, he followed my political career pretty closely. He studied what I did as mayor of Burlington back in the '80s, the campaign that I ran. We chat every now and then. I am extraordinarily impressed by his energy, his intelligence. He has a really good persona. He's out there with the people, and I think he's going to do a really great job for the city of New Do you feel like the Democratic Party takes him seriously as a future candidate for elections or for presidential elections? Now you are raising a sensitive issue.

Or is it a sensitive issue? Sensitive issue, sure is. But yeah, or do they look at him as a one-off, like an outsider? No.

Look, what does it mean to be the establishment? The establishment means in a corrupt political system. Or if you're the establishment, what you do, you leave this, you get on the phone and you talk to your billionaire friends and say, Look, I'm setting up a super pack. I want your help to win the Congressional race in Arizona and California. I want you to put in $30 million each, okay? I have $300 million. Ten of you put $300 million. I get the ads going next week. We're in business, right?

That's crazy.

That's the way the system works. Every now and then, you have somebody like Mamdani who comes along and says, I don't want your money. Not only do I not want your money, we're going to take you baskets on. Do they want to? No. The Democratic Party right now is split. I am an independent, to be honest with you. I have the longest-serving independent. I caucus with the Democrats, but I'm an independent. Proud of it.

They get really independent, too, when it's time to put you on the ballot, too, I noticed. Right. That's fair.

I work with people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Primillo Jaibhol and Ron Connor, and a bunch of other people. We are trying to move the Democratic Party to be a party that stands with working-class Americans and has the courage to take on powerful special interest. Now, there's another faction of the Democratic Party that doesn't like Trump for, I think, a lot of right reasons. I agree with him, but basically cuddles up to the moneyed interests. That's the vision that we have. Mandani is part of the movement that I've helped try to build, Alexandria as well, and others, many, many others. That's the split that we're seeing within the Democratic Party. Got it.

Do you feel like you've been in politics for a long time and you're growing in to be an adult now in your years?

Why an adult? My grandchildren will tell you I'm not, but I don't know.

But I just mean, do you feel like at some point it's time to start a new party more than ever? Do you feel that? Because you talk about guys like Roe. People are inspired by him. I got to sit down with him. I like a lot of things he has to say. He's a good guy. An internet bill of rights. I feel like he has… He's a forward thinker. Yes, he is. Smart guy. Yeah. I feel like if you got a band of people, it's not that hard to find the people that people love.

Here's your problem. Good. All right. Have I thought about it? Yeah, for about 400 years.

That's how you thought about it? All right.

But here is the reality that I have to deal with every day. In my view, the Republican Party, which used to be a conservative party, a small government-type party, has become under Trump a right-wing extremist party. There are some exceptions, to be sure, but that's where it is. Democratic Party, as I've mentioned to you, their establishment more or less wants to protect the status quo. Then there are those of us who want to bring about fundamental changes in the economic and political life of the country. That's where you are. Now, starting the third party is something when I was mayor of the city of Burlington, in a sense, we did. I took on, I defeated a Democratic mayor.

Yeah.

And so we had Republicans, we had the Democrats.

That must have felt awesome, was it?

It felt pretty good. A guy who had been mayor for 10 years, and nobody thought we could win. We won by 10 votes. Oh, yeah. And by the way, I say that to people, if you think it's hard, you could do it. We did it. All right. That was a long time ago, and we started unofficially. We called it an independent party of sorts. So it can be done. And there are strong independents today running for office who have a chance to win. But you ask about starting a party within today's political climate, it is very hard. For example, you want to start a party in many states, you're going to have to get enormous numbers of signatures in every county in the state to even get on the ballot because the two-party system does not want you on the ballot. Of course. Okay? And you likely don't have a lot of money to do all that stuff. It ain't easy, but there are people who are thinking about it. Right now, where my energy is, is to transform the Democratic Party. When many years ago on the Franklin Delano Roosevelt, on the Harry Truman, the Democratic Party was considered to be the party of the American working class.

Unfortunately, that has changed over the years. I want, once again, to have a Democratic Party which has the guts to stand up to the billionaire class and create an economy that works for everybody and not just the very rich.

We hear a lot about the... We've interviewed some of these tech CEOs and billionaires, really, and they talk about this a universal basic income, right? But it feels like it's led by the tech industry. And if that gets created, that's not the same thing as one that's led, it feels like by the government. Does that make sense to you? Yes. Because one that's subsidized by the government is more like it doesn't feel as controlled. Well, I guess it It feels like controlled by two different groups.

Again, what I want to see, and I suspect you want to see, is you want to see, let's not use the word, the government is not Tesla Corporation. The government, theoretically in a democratic society, is you. To some degree, you don't like people, you can get rid of them. Our job is to create a more democratic with a small D, not a big D, small D, where government is responsive to the people. But I want to say a word on the issue that you just raised. I have, over the last six months, become very, very concerned about AI and robotics. There are a lot of reasons why. Number one, the easiest, I think most apparent reason is what these data centers. I don't know, are you following these data centers?

Oh, yeah, it's crazy. What are the side effects? They're taking over, they're absorbing water in a lot of communities. I know they just built one in Louisiana, like Basque in Louisiana. They're not even going to end up keeping that many jobs for people once they're open.

There will be a decent number of construction jobs.

But after that, it's not going to be many.

To run the place like almost nobody.

Security guards, basically.

Exactly. The result of that is it drains, as you've just said, scarce, in some cases, water resources, and it raises electric bills. Okay, so that's number one. Number two, to me, even the big issue, let me quote, I wrote this down here. Elon Musk, our good friend. Musk, now, when you understand to understand AI and robotics, understand that a handful of the very richest people on Earth are investing hundreds of billions of dollars. That's Mr. Musk, Mr. Bezos, Mr. Ellison, Mr. Gates, and others. These are the richest guys on Earth. Now, why are they doing it? You think they're doing it? You think they're doing it? You think they're doing it? They stay up nights, and they're staying up nights worrying about working people. You think they're investing hundreds of billions of dollars to say, How do we make this world a better place for working people? Between you and me, I don't think so. These guys have huge money, but getting back to the point you made earlier, it's not enough that they're worth hundreds of billions of dollars. They even want more and more wealth and more and more power. Okay, so let's talk about what are the implications of AI and robotics?

Okay.

Well, they're going to take away jobs, so then people won't have purpose.

You got it. All right, good. You hit the nail on the head. Let's start off in that one. Now, the answer is nobody knows exactly. All right? No one can predict what happens tomorrow, next year, five years. This is what Elon Musk, leader of this whole effort, says, I'm quoting Mr. Musk, quote, AI and robots will replace all jobs. Working will be optional. End of quote. Then he later said, Yeah, you want to do a garden in the backyard for a hobby, that's great, but you don't need to do that. Bill Gates, worth a few hundred billion, heavily invested in this, Microsoft. Humans, won't be needed for most things. Dario Amodai, head of Anthropic, half of all entry-level jobs will disappear. There are other estimates out there that we're talking about over a period of years, nobody knows exactly when tens of millions of jobs in the next decade disappearing. You tell me, what happens when tens of millions of jobs that people now make an income from disappear? What happens to those people?

Well, I think there's some of what I've heard is that some of these same companies would then offer some share. It's a vague terminology a lot of times of a universal basic income token or something. Really? No kidding. I agree.

And how much you're getting? I have no idea. Who's going to determine that?

I have no idea, dude. It sounds like you get like one 11th of a Rubik's Cube every two weeks or something. But also, I think if you could get to a place where it was like that and people did feel a sense of some sense of purpose or peace or part of something, again, it could be. Good. There's a chance it could be something beautiful. All right. There's a chance.

All right. Good point. I agree with you.

But my questions would be, do we just end up working for these companies that are paying us this What's UBI? What's the psychological effects of it? What's the long-term effects of it? Then do we still have a sense of individuality if we don't have exactly anything to do? Or do we just turn into those kids from Wally? Can you bring that kid up? Yeah, there you go. Like a young Bert Kreischer there.

All right, but then what we need to do is to take a deep breath because this thing is moving really fast. I don't know. Have you seen some of these robots on the internet?

Oh, yeah. Unfortunately, some sites I shouldn't have been on, Bernie, to be honest with you, but yes.

All right. I mean, they are moving very, very rapidly.

Yeah, a couple. The ones from Atlanta are for sure. I'll tell you that.

And in Amazon, I think half of the workers have, I'm not sure about this, I think half have already been replaced.

Well, yeah, especially if you start thinking that way more cars are going to pick you up, it's just like, what are people? There's going to be a really tough. Does anybody have a plan for the first two years of this thing?

You got it. Okay, you're hitting the nail on the head here. The point is this thing is moving at revolutionary speed. I can tell you absolutely and positively, as a member of the United States Senate, that Congress is in no way prepared to deal with this. The United States got attacked tomorrow by some enemy. We got a large military, they know what to do. Ain't nobody been thinking about how to respond to this extraordinary monumental change Which that's hitting the America. So I have proposed, and I got criticized for this every day, a moratorium on data centers. Why am I doing that? Well, number one, I want to protect people's communities. That's number one, electric rails, water, and all that. But also, I got to take a deep breath. Your point, what the hell is happening? Are we prepared if tens of millions of people lose their jobs in the next decade? All right, what happens? How do they stay alive? So the economics is one thing, but I want to take it a step further. And now you're in the crazy world, okay? This is science fiction, except it ain't science fiction.

Yeah, we're here.

That's right. We're here. Okay. So you understand this AI now. You know what you know based on what you've read, what you've seen, your life experience, right? Mm-hmm. Me the same. Every human being the same. These AIs have absorbed all knowledge, every book that's been written, every mathematical formula, every physics proposition, they got it. That's what they got. What worries not just me, and this is, do you remember, what was it, 2001, the movie?

Do you ever see that movie? Oh, yeah. Space Odyssey?

Yeah, Space Odyssey. All right. You remember, and this is done many years ago, how is the computer that runs the spaceship? One day the guy says, How I'd like you to do this. How says, Well, sorry, I'm not going to do it. Rebellion. Everyone's, Oh, really big joke. Funny. I had a public meeting in Georgetown a few months ago with a guy named Jeffrey Hinton. Really nice guy.

Yeah, he's the godfather of AI, right? Right.

He's been studying the issue.

Alleged, yeah.

He's been studying the issue for decades, came He got a Nobel Prize in physics. Okay, it's a big deal.

There he is right there. I've heard a couple of his speeches.

Yeah, and this is what he says. He says there is no question in his mind that at some point, sooner than later, AI will be smarter than human beings. It is not science fiction to worry about whether or not AI is going to communicate with each other in a language that people don't know. It ain't going to be English. And that They may see the human race as an impediment to their progress. Okay? You're with me? All right. That's the doomsday scenario.

So that the computer is like, God, these people are slowing us down. You got it.

Okay. Now, again, Some people... I think nobody thinks that that is crazy anymore. Some people say, Well, it's unlikely, maybe 5: 00 to 1: 00, maybe 10: 00 to 1: 00, but it is incredibly risky, and they don't have the safeguards to protect us. All right, now let me give you something that I am seeing today, and you're seeing, and that is we are living in a country with a lot of emotional distress for a variety of reasons. A lot of young people are turning to AI for emotional I'm in companionship. I broke up with my girlfriend.

Yeah, that's ridiculous.

Okay, and what do I do? Or my mom is safe. We're seeing people not relating to other human beings, but relating to AI. What is the long term implications of that? I mentioned earlier that robots are now treating patients. Musk talks about creating millions of robots in the next few years through Tesla.

Oh, it's Orwellian at some point. It's this very thing where it's like, would we even... Here's my question, would we even notice the day when we switch over from thinking that we have control and we are making choices for ourselves to the day where we are just following along what the computer says. Do you think we would notice?

Maybe not, because they would create the environment. It's... Dang, burning. It's pretty crazy stuff. It's crazy. Then you got even things like warfare. Right now, to some degree, at least, certainly not in the Ukraine or in Gaza, but to some degree, political leaders are constrained about going to war because they don't want to be telling their parents of their young men and women who died in war, right?

Well, every week there seems like a new place that we're trying to attack or bully or take control of.

We'll get to that one in a minute. But generally, what happens? What happens now? If I'm President of the United States, I don't have to send your kids off the war. I send robots off the war. What does that mean in terms of farm? Am I going to go invading every country in the world? I don't have to tell any parent that the kid was lost, right?

You could sit up at night in your in your white house or whatever and just use a remote control. You got it.

And no loss of life.

Right. All right, so what does this mean? Not here, not for us anyway. Right, exactly.

So what does this mean about international instability? It's incredible.

Well, there's going to be not much communication anymore. If someone doesn't know if a drone just showed up in the middle of the night and did a bunch of horrible things to their country. You got it. All right.

All that I'm saying, and I think this stuff is moving very, very quickly. It is being pushed by the wealthiest people in the world who, in my view, could care less about ordinary people who want more wealth and more power. Now, they deny all that stuff. That's my view. I think we got to slow it down and ask the question that you asked. All right, if AI can, and it can, do some good medical diagnosis, do some good blood testing, is that a good thing. It is a good thing. If you're working in a crap job in a factory, right? Ai can increase worker productivity so you could work 20 hours a week rather than 40 hours a week. Is that a good thing? I think it is. Et cetera, et cetera.

If the company then shares some of the profits that the company is making with the workers. That's the issue.

It's a very simple proposition. Who is AI and robotics going to work for? Does it work to improve human life? Or does it work to make the billionaires even richer? That's the question that we've got to focus on.

Yeah, it's definitely getting in. It's definitely... Yeah.

I would urge you on the show, keep talking about it, bring knowledgeable people on. I have my views, other people have different views. But I'll tell you this is monumental stuff that we are unprepared for. We need to discuss it a lot.

Well, it feels like we're not going to be, I don't know. It starts to feel a little bit hopeless that we're not going to have things that could change it down the line, or it starts to feel like with AI stuff that we're getting there too late. But also with AI, it starts to feel like, remember the internet? Remember Y2K? People thought It was going to be crazy or everybody was going to start, everything was going to disappear, that a website name was going to be the biggest thing, and that never amounted really to anything. Right.

So the answer is we don't know. We don't know. I mean, that's fair enough. I'm telling you what my fears That's all.

You know 100%, and I think those are a lot of people's fears.

You know what? They can put up an AI figure that looks exactly like you. That sounds exactly like you that is saying something you have never said. That's already been done to me. It could be done pretty easily, which raises... Come in election time, you're going to see somebody, Wow, why are they saying that? Can't vote for that guy. Turns out to be a total fraud, right? Yeah. Okay.

Do you feel like it's a time where we just need to be in the streets more than ever, where people need to be revolting? Do you think it takes a revolution to change? What's really going to change? It doesn't seem like voting is going to get us there. Now, I do like the idea that you have a guy like Mamdani that inspires you and makes you feel hope, and you feel like it's different. He's against an establishment, even if it feels like it's a local one, whatever that is, that he feels like it's different. I agree. That is exciting. That is exhilarating. But is a guy like that, is a Tom Sawyer like him? Can he go through all the rapids of the dirty Mississippi that is fucking politics and get us to somewhere new?

Mandani, he's not a savior. He's going to be a good mayor. We need 100 Mandantis. We need what I call a political revolution. And that is what the establishment does. They're very greedy people. They could care less about ordinary people. They want more wealth and power. But the ugliest thing that they do is through the media that they own, et cetera, et cetera, is they tell people that they are powerless and they have no power. The answer is when people are organized and stand together, they do have power. That's what we're trying to do all over this country, bring people, not allow Trump and his friends, I don't care if you're black, you're white, you're gay, you're straight, who cares? You're Muslim, you're Jewish, whatever you may be. Let's stand together because, again, I've been all over this country. People understand that health care is a right. They want a good education system. They don't think they should be 1% owning more wealth than the bottom, 93%. They're concerned about climate change. They don't want this country involved in endless wars. Are there disagreements on abortion and other issues? There are. But by and large, you'd be surprised.

A few months ago, I went to Mingo County, West Virginia. You know where that is?

I don't know where it is. I've spent some time in West Virginia, though. I like it.

Yeah, I love West Virginia. It's a beautiful state. It's a poor state. I went to the county, Theo. Trump won Trump won West Virginia by over 70% of the vote. I went to the county where he did the best. He got 74% of the vote. I went to that county precisely because he got 74%. I want to hear what people are thinking about. Walk into a meeting, wasn't the largest rally we ever did, four or 500 people in the middle of nowhere. This is nowhere.

That's it.

There's a picture of it.

A lot of people thought you were probably giving away free Ben and Jerry's out there, too.

No, I'm giving... No. And there it is. There's a picture of the-Oh, that's nice. Yeah, a big gym there. And it turns out this is Trump country. He's a decent people. They're worried about their kids, a veteran up there, worried about the needs of veterans. Mom worried about a baby. So I'm not saying Vermont is a liberal state, West Virginia is a conservative state. I'm not saying that there aren't differences of opinion. There are. Oh, yeah. But you'd be surprised. This is the good news that as Americans, we There are a lot of common values. We know that so many people fought and died for democracy. What does democracy mean? It means that just because I'm the President, I don't have the right to shut you up. I don't have the right to politically prosecute you because you're against me. You disagree with me? Fine. I'll argue with you. You beat me in an election? Fine. I'm unhappy. That's the way life goes, right? Mm-hmm. All right. See, the American people don't want a few people, billionaires, controlling the economy. They don't want an authoritarian society. They want an economy that works for all. Those are the common threads, I think, that we can build a political movement around.

I don't think people care if they're... I think people less and less even associate with a party anymore. I think that's happened in the past two years. That, to me, feels like it's happened more than ever. It feels like if you even look at the fraud case in Minneapolis, and I know it's like we don't know all the information about it, but it's like the fact that a vigilante journalist type of kid, this nick Shirley kid, has to go door to door, and that he's even bringing it, that whether or not everything he's saying is true or factual, I don't know.

My understanding on that issue, and again, I haven't studied it. I'm the senator from Vermont, but I think there was massive fraud in terms of child nutrition. That's absolutely right. I believe that was investigated on the Biden's attorney general in 2021. Actually, I believe dozens of people were arrested. So it is a real issue, and it's ugly, and it's disgusting. It's, again, stealing money from hungry children. I don't know that you could do worse than that. Yeah, it's like how do-But this childcare thing, I think, is largely exaggerated. I don't think you could take a camera and go someplace and the childcare center is closed, the something, oh, nobody's there. I don't think the childcare is an issue. The nutrition issue is real.

Yeah, I agree. Well, I agree that there's some parts of it that it's tough to know. And if you just see a clip, it's tough to know what the full reality is. I agree. But the thing to me, well, there's two things. One is that we're getting to a place where vigilante journalism, where somebody hitting the streets, knocking on doors, like you're saying, whether it's to get somebody to vote, to get somebody to open their ideas to a new thought, to make sure that something that their tax dollars is going towards is going to, that is becoming more important than ever. And I think that's going to start happening more than ever. But two, it's like, why didn't our gut... It makes us feel as regular people like, dude, we can't even trust that our government is going to figure this out for us, that there's money just falling out of the bottoms here?

Look, the answer is yes.

And then that makes people not care about either party. That's what I'm saying. It's just like-But.

Okay. Let's put this thing in context. Okay. The answer is what you're saying is true, period. Okay?

And I'm not yelling at you about it. I know. Okay, good.

All right, but context. You got 340 million people in this country. Guess what? A lot of them are dishonest. There are politicians who are dishonest. There are business people who are dishonest. There are media people who are dishonest. That is the reality. I mentioned to you before, we spend a trillion dollars a year on the military. Every single major defense contractor has been involved in fraud. That's what they do. The insurance companies, every day, they're ripping off people. Drug companies lying every single day. You got fossil fuel companies saying, oh, carbon emissions don't cause climate change. Total absolute lie. You had the tobacco companies, oh, you can smoke nine packs a day. Ain't going to cause you. Look, fraud exists. We got to fight it wherever we can in government, in the private sector. No argument. And you're right. When people see it in government, it discourages them. But you got to put it in a broader context. You have, for example, a social security system. 99 plus % of the checks that go out, go out to people who need them. All that I'm saying is when you're dealing with hundreds of millions of people, you can find an aberration, you can find fraud.

Put it in a context.

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With 30,000 therapists, Betterhelp is one of the world's largest online therapy platforms. Having served over 5 million people globally, you can't step into a lighter version of yourself without leaving behind what's been weighing you down. Therapy can help you clear space. It has for me. Sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp. Com/theo. That's betterhelp. Com/theo. One thing that's really changed a a lot of people's, like young people's opinions, too, I think is Trump's relationship and our funding of Israel, especially during the Gaza conflict. It was like one of the first times in my life where you got to see, you saw children getting killed. You saw a lot of... I know that there's conflict between those Palestine and Israel on those October seventh. I know the history of it. But it felt like Trump just went with Netanyahu on whatever he wanted to do there. It felt also like as a regular American, we were supposed to be the ones to go help in some instance. I think a lot of young people are discouraged about our relationship with Israel and what does that mean, especially with APAC and influencing our elections and stuff like that.

Let me just say a word on that because it's an issue I've been deeply involved in. On October seventh, Hamas committed a real atrocity. They went in, they invaded Israel, they killed It was 1,200 men, women, and children, a lot of kids, committed sexual abuse, et cetera. Disgusting. They were a terrorist organization. Israel had a right to respond, like any government that's attacked. But Israel did not have the right to go to war against the entire Palestinian people. There are 2. 2 million people in Gaza. That's not a lot of people, right? There are 9 million people in New York City or 8. 5 million people. That's all there are, and they're poor people. Over Over the last several years, Israel has killed over 70,000, mostly women, children, and the elderly. It has injured, I think, 160,000 or even more than that. Over 10% of the population has been killed or wounded. Again, often children, the elderly. Israel stopped humanitarian aid coming in so that children were starving to death in violation of all international law. The United States, under Biden and under Trump, continued to fund a guy who I considered to be a war criminal.

Okay, war is disgusting business.

The ICC voted him in war. Didn't the ICC say he was a war criminal? Yes, they did. Except for America. Yeah.

Look, war is a disgusting business. But out of World War II, remember the Geneva Conventions? What they said is, look, war is disgusting, but you don't starve children in a war. You want to kill an enemy, you kill enemy. It's this horrible business. We want to eliminate war. But there are rules of war, engagement. Starving children is under any definition a horror. That's what happened. Bombing all of the entire People don't realize this. Not only killing people, virtually every medical facility has been bombed. Schools have been bombed. Water systems, waste, the place has been laid desolate. Those are war crimes. I did my best With some success, I managed to turn around. It started, the war started. Almost everybody would say, Oh, Israel, we're going to support Israel, Netanyahu. That has changed. And your point is very important that a lot of the impetus for those changes in Congress came from young people, and not just people on the left. You got conservative Republican kids who are saying, You know what? Not a great idea to fund Netanyahu.

How much control do you feel like? What is that relationship with Israel like? Because I think it seems that because of some of the atrocities? Yes. It makes a lot of Americans question why we fund Israel. Why do we give money to Israel?

The answer is getting back to a corrupt campaign finance system. If you check the record, and again, it's not just APAC. It is the crypto industry. It is the insurance companies. It is the drug companies. But APAC is a significant funder of, I would imagine, hundreds of members of Congress. It's customary, you're there, we'll send you a check for $10,000. If you're a leader, we may make it over a period of years, hundreds of thousands of dollars. You're in the club, you're going to be pro-Israel. But having said that, we're seeing for all the reasons that you have suggested, we're seeing more and more people saying, APAC, thank you. I don't want your money, actually, because the people in my district are not happy with what Netanyahu is doing. I think we're turning that around a little bit. But to my mind, I have long advocated not another bloody nickel to go to the Netanyahu government. But it's not just Netanyahu. Switch gear a little bit. In that part of the world, you got Saudi Arabia. You know who runs Saudi Arabia? You got a guy named Mohamed bin Salmon. Okay. Remember Mohamed? Mm-hmm. According to American intelligence, Mohamed killed-Right here.

Yeah, they call him Pizza Head.

There's a guy named Jamal Khashoggi. That didn't mean anything to you? Yeah.

You remember him? He was a reporter that got killed.

He was a Washington There he is.

That was under his rule, right? That's right.

What the intelligence agency said that the leader of Saudi Arabia, Mr. Muhammad bin Salmon, murdered. This guy, Khashoggi, went into an embassy someplace. Was it a turkey or somewhere? I don't know where he was. Walked into an embassy, came back, carved up, and put into a suitcase, okay? Dismembed. He murdered. And yet, when bin Salmon came to the United States, do you remember a few months ago? The White House rolled out the red carpet. Where are the Marines there welcoming them? Why was that? Why does a guy who the American intelligence says is a murderer, a guy, by the way, who runs the country, you try to protest this rule?

Can't even do it, huh?

Good luck to you. I mean, thousands of people are in jail. They execute people. There's no dissent.

Even when Netanyahu came and he pulled his chair out for him, remember that? That's the thing to people, to regular people. It's like, what are we doing? It It feels like our intelligence agency does not work for us.

It's not a question of intelligence. They did work. Why is it that Musk is investing huge amounts of money in Saudi Arabia? Why is it that Trump loves this guy? Why is it that Saudi Arabia is now allowing the Trump family to build, I don't know what it's, resorts, golf courses, whatever the hell they do there. Okay, why is that? The answer is, and this will upset some people, it is my view, that is the government that Trump likes. It is an authoritarian government. They don't tolerate dissent. It is run by the... That family happens to be the wealthiest family in the world. Ben Salmon.

Ben Salmon?

Yeah. They are, I think, combined. They're probably richer than Musk. Meanwhile, we are attacking Europe every day. We're going to invade Greenland because Trump didn't get a prize or something.

That's really crazy. That is really crazy. I mean, for a second, it is. It's so crazy sometimes. You got to laugh at it. You have to laugh at it. It's like we've had police officers on and they say, sometimes there'll be murders inside. There'll be victims. People have been shot, horrible things. And you'll see us in the front yard laughing. And it's like, because sometimes you have to. You have to step outside of the absurdity and laugh for a second.

All that I'm saying, and this size is a whole longer discussion, but it used to be that the United States was a strong advocate of democracy. We became a model for countries all over the world saying, We would like to be like the United States. Our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence was an inspiration to a lot of people. Now you got the President of the United States having his best friend, a dictator in Saudi Arabia, supporting a war criminal in Israel, Mr. Netanyahu, et cetera. And by the way, going to war, if you like, hopefully not literally, figuratively, at least with Europe. Why is that? Europe is a democratic government. Some are Conservatives, some are Progressive, but they are elected by the people. Trump does not like democracy. So that worries me very much. Maybe one or two more questions, if we could.

Okay, great. That sounds good. Recently, with the ICE raids that have happened in Minnesota, and they're happening everywhere, right? I mean, it's become a big thing. And for me, a lot of it is in response to there was such a border policy that was allowing a lot of extra people here, extra people that were not meeting up with their probation officer, not probation officer, but their attendance officer at times, that situation. It resulted, it seems like in this situation, we had to hire a lot of extra ICE agents, some of them even unqualified. Anyway, it's left us in a unique place in America right now, but also just another place where people in the streets are having to figure things out, and we are all the ones fighting about it online.

Let me briefly tell you my view. People agree with me. Well, not agree with me. I agree with you that our border security was weak. There is no excuse. My dad came from Poland. Other people's parents came from all over the world. You come through it. There are reasons why people have tried to slip into the United States. 99% of the times, it's poverty, it's drug violence, and wherever it is, Mexico, Guatemala, or whatever. But that's illegal, and it should be prohibited. We need strong borders. We need an immigration process. In my view, that's number one. Number two, we have between 10 and 14 million undocumented people in this country right now. No one knows exactly. Yeah. All right. But the vast majority of those people work hard and obey American law right now. During COVID, by the way, those were the people who were working in the meatpacking plants. Those are the people who got a lot of the virus. Those are the people who died. They kept the economy going in many respects. All right. In my view, and I think what most Americans agree with, if you have lived in this, even if you came across the border illegally, but if you have You obeyed the rules of America, you haven't committed crimes, you're working hard, you're raising your family, you need a path towards citizenship as part of comprehensive immigration reform.

And by the way, given the fact that we have worker shortages all over this country, we need those workers. So that's, I think, what we need.

Especially, the skilled labor we need right now. That's right.

And a lot of these people are doing important work keeping the economy going. What Trump has done is in this big, beautiful bill of his greatly expanded funding for ICE. And in my view, what he is doing is not just trying to get, and by the way, it used to be, we're trying to get the criminals out of America. Remember that? Yeah. Rapists and the murderers. We're well beyond that. Now you're knocking on doors of American citizens. You're arresting Americans. The arresting people have never had.

Oh, now they're finding anybody that makes good tapas.

You got it. That's right. That's exactly right. Okay. And I think this is what frightens me. What Trump What is using ICE for now is a domestic military operation, and it's part of this intimidation. And if you stand up, and that woman in Minnesota, Good is her name.

Yeah, Renee Good.

Renee Good, all right? I saw that video. You don't shoot somebody in the head who is in that car. I think it's Trump saying, I have the power and we got domestic army. It's called ICE, and we're going to go out there and we're going to arrest and we're going to intimidate. Part of that, this is what Trumpism is about. It's intimidation. You're in the media, you're CBS, you say something, I'm going to sue you. Theo, you say something I don't like, I may sue you. I don't like Venezuela I'm going to send in the troops. I got the power and I'm going to use it. That scares me because that's what authoritarianism is about. Should we deal with immigration through comprehensive reform? Absolutely. I think that's what the American Do we want guys with masks around their face, dragging people out of their apartments, out of their cars? I don't think so. I don't think that's what the American people want. More and more resentment to that.

We're in a tough spot, too, because we see things more now, right? We see all of it. We see it. So before you would just hear about it, you would knew it was a plan, but you didn't have the visual effect of it and how the visual effect makes you feel.

Cel phones have revolutionized politics in that sense. Everybody got a cell phone, can take a video.

And I think that's one of the side effect. I agree, like Trump has an authoritarian energy, right? There's this, and there's positive parts about that, and there's negative parts about that.

No, I don't agree that there's anything positive about authoritarianism.

Well, maybe authoritarian I think somebody that feels-Decisiveness, yes. That's what I mean then.

Decisiveness, yes. Making bold decisions, yes. Yes. That's the thought that I think. Authoritarianism, disregarding the Constitution and the rule of law. Sorry. No.

I agree. I agree with that. That's what I meant. One last question before you go, Mr. Sanders. Nick, will you bring up those CEOs one more time? I just want to see the faces of those good gentlemen who have made 15 million, allegedly, I believe in 26 million, allegedly, as well.

Not allegedly. I think that's the fact.

Oh, there you go, Bernie. I'll take that. While nurses are trying to make sure that their health care doesn't get discontinued at certain points. Just real quick, people can get involved by donating to the NYSNA fund, and we'll put the link to that, and where you can show up to support the strike. It's going on every day right now. There's one other big concern that people have is that there is with the Epstein stuff that there are people really protecting pedophiles. Do you think That's as big of a thing as people think, or do you think it's more of a political kickball that gets kicked around a lot?

Hard to say. We don't know. All I can tell you is when Trump ran for office, what did he say? Got to release all, underline all the files. Yeah. Okay. I think you should. I think the thing about the Epstein files is it touches on everything we've talked about it, is there is a sense we're living in two worlds. You go out, you go through a red light, or you do something stupid, get drunk and drive, you're going to be arrested, right? Right. But if you're a very, very wealthy person, you do some really disgusting things with women and girls, well, you're rich and you're powerful and you have friends, you don't have to pay the price.

With children, that's the fear. It's like you said, we can't even protect our children.

And these guys get away. It's a two tiers system. You get punished, you're an average person, you're a billionaire, you could do horrible, disgusting things. Hey, no problem. That's what it is. My own view is Trump said, release all the files, release all the files.

We should release them. But you never knew it. But you don't hear anything super that we don't know by being in your position.

All you hear is speculation. I don't want to engage in that speculation. Just release all the information, let people decide.

People to decide. All right? Yep. One more time. Bring those CEOs up. I just want to see them. Bernie Sanders, thank you so much. I just appreciate your time.

Well, it's my pleasure. Thank you very much for the work you're doing.

We're trying, man. I'm learning as I go.

Look, Theo, the important point is, honestly, you and I can agree or not agree, but having serious discussion about serious issues is exactly what the country needs right now.

Yeah. Well, thanks, man. Yeah, I do care. I know that.

I know you do. Now, I'm just floating on the breeze, and I feel I'm falling like these leaves. I must be cornerstone. Oh, but when I reach that ground, I'll share this peace of mind I found I can feel it in my bones. But it's going to take...