Bernie Sanders perfectly sums up Trump’s 2024 game plan in decades-old video

The Independent

Bernie Sanders perfectly sums up Trump's 2024 game plan in decades

Transcript

00:00The question is, how does the Republican Party do so good?

00:03And now I'm going to tell you something that very few people in Congress will tell you.

00:09If you are the Republican leadership, and this is what your goals are.

00:13Your goals are to give huge tax breaks to the very richest people in this country.

00:16Your goals are ultimately to privatize Social Security so that Wall Street can make money from that.

00:22Privatize Medicare so the insurance companies can make more money.

00:26Privatize education. Do away with public schools.

00:29If those are your goals and you said that to the American people, you think you got a lot of...

00:34There are many members of the Congress today, Republicans, who not only will not raise the minimum wage,

00:38which is $5.00, $15.00 an hour, you know what they will tell you, honestly?

00:41They believe in abolishing the minimum wage. Did you know that?

00:44Check it out. I'm telling you the truth.

00:46So that if Americans can work for $3.00 an hour or $2.00 an hour, not a problem.

00:51Now if you had an agenda like that and you went before the American people,

00:55tax breaks for the rich, destruction of Medicare, destruction of Social Security as we know it,

01:02lowering the minimum wage or abolishing it, how many votes do you think you'd get?

01:06Not a whole lot. Maybe the richest 1% would vote for you.

01:10That's not a lot of votes. So what do I do? I've got a problem.

01:13You package it. How do you package it? And here I want you to pay attention to me.

01:18This is bad stuff. I don't mind debating people who say, I was on the Hannity show, Sean Hannity yesterday,

01:24and Hannity, extreme right wing guy, he loves these tax breaks for the rich and so forth,

01:30so we had a little bit of a discussion about that. Actually it was a loud discussion.

01:34But I don't mind people who are up front about that.

01:40Give the rich more tax breaks, we can argue that.

01:43But that doesn't win you elections. So this is what you do.

01:46What you do is divide people up.

01:50When you ask me your question, how do I get elected, I try to bring people together.

01:55We fight for women's rights. We support the rights of minorities.

01:59We support the rights of workers. We bring the majority of people together.

02:02And occasionally honest people will have differences of opinion. In this room there will be differences of opinion.

02:06But everybody in this room is in agreement that everybody should have health care, right?

02:10Question number two, should we increase funding for education or should we lower funding for education?

02:15Raise your hand if you think we should increase funding for education.

02:17Okay, you're on the side of the vast majority of Americans.

02:21So on those issues we bring people together.

02:25Now what do the Republicans try to do?

02:27And they use it in what we call, you know, kind of language that they're not up front about.

02:34What do we do? We divide people up by races. Affirmative action becomes one issue.

02:38All them black people are getting the jobs that we white people used to have.

02:42Split people, working class, white against black.

02:45Instead of working together to create decent jobs for all.

02:48Those uppity women now, they want the right to choose.

02:52We'll split people up on the abortion issue.

02:54We'll split people up on the gun issue.

02:56We'll split people up on religious issues.

02:58You follow what I'm saying?

03:00So you split people up and then they end up, if you're a middle class person,

03:04voting against your own interests and the rich go laughing all the way to the bank.

03:09Okay?

03:10And they very often play white workers off against everybody else.

03:14And we try to bring people together to say, look, we're all in this boat together.

03:19Whether you're black or white, whether you're Hispanic, whether you're Muslim, whatever you may be.

03:24Everybody needs healthcare.

03:26How do we create a healthcare system that works for all people?

03:28Not divide people up.

03:30Everybody knows that the kids, young people, do not make it into the middle class

03:35unless they have a decent college education.

03:38So how do we make college education accessible to all people?

03:41Not an expensive proposition.

03:42A tiny, tiny fraction of the President's tax breaks for the rich,

03:45if we put into financial aid, would make sure that every young person in this country

03:50could go to college without going deeply into debt.

03:53You know what? The vast majority of the people support us.

03:55But in order to do that, we've got to bring everybody together.

03:58And many of these, not all, and I'm not here to disparage all Republicans.

04:01Some very decent people happen to be conservative.

04:03I respect that.

04:04But some people who I don't respect will play off women against men, black against white.

04:09Oh, the gay issue. Very, very big issue.

04:11Okay?

04:12Straight against gay, right?

04:14We're all supposed to hate gay people.

04:15So we split that group up.

04:17And then the argument, some of us are not patriotic.

04:20We have concerns about the war in Iraq.

04:22I voted against giving the President authority to the war in Iraq.

04:25Well, that makes us unpatriotic.

04:26We hate America.

04:27Divide those things up.

04:28And that's how they succeed.

04:31And they succeed with the help of the media.

04:34Because the media will not talk about how, in a sense,

04:37the common problems that Americans face and how we bring people together.

04:41And that's what I believe.

04:43I believe that on issues like everybody in this room thinks, I think,

04:47that instead of giving tax breaks to the rich, we should increase federal aid to education.

04:51Anyone disagree with that?

04:52Well, you know what? Most Americans agree with that.

04:54All of you think that every American should be entitled to health care.

04:58I suspect most of you think we should not have a trade policy

05:01which allows corporations to throw American workers out on the street and run to China.

05:05Most Americans agree with that.

05:08And our job is to bring people together on common interests

05:12and some of these extreme right-wing people.

05:15You watch the issues that they talk about.

05:17Affirmative action they use to divide.

05:19The issue of abortion they use to divide.

05:21The issue of guns they use to divide.

05:23And our job is to say, let's focus on basic economic issues.

05:27How do we expand the middle class?

05:29This is a great country.

05:31Why is it the average American is working longer hours for low wages than 30 years ago?

05:35Let's talk about that.

05:37Okay?

05:38Okay.

05:39That was a long answer to a good question.

05:41I apologize for going on too long.

05:42Other questions?

05:43Yes.

05:44Let me get to...

05:45Did you ask the first one yet?

05:46No, you didn't.

05:47She did.

05:48Okay.

05:49Yes.

05:50I just wanted to know how you feel about school vouchers

05:52and do you feel that they benefit public schools?

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