Bernie Sanders Interview | Lex Fridman Podcast #450

00:00:00.000 | The ideas that I am talking about are ideas

00:00:03.740 | that are widely supported.

00:00:06.420 | Everything that I talk about, raising the minimum

00:00:08.180 | wage, healthcare for all, a tax system which

00:00:10.840 | demands the billionaires pay their fair share,

00:00:13.220 | those are all popular ideas, but people didn't know.

00:00:16.000 | You gotta run for president and have 20,000

00:00:18.500 | people come out to your rallies and win 23 states.

00:00:21.300 | They say, "Hmm, well, maybe those ideas are not

00:00:25.100 | "so crazy after all, and we gotta entertain 'em."

00:00:28.100 | The establishment doesn't like that, they really don't.

00:00:30.660 | They wanna tell you, and this is their main,

00:00:33.140 | this is how they succeed.

00:00:34.660 | What they say, Lex, is the world is the way it is,

00:00:37.980 | it always will be this way, we got the wealth,

00:00:40.600 | we got the power, and don't think of anything else.

00:00:43.180 | This is the way it is.

00:00:45.200 | You have no power, give up.

00:00:46.940 | That, they don't say it quite that way,

00:00:48.220 | but that's really what the intent is.

00:00:50.260 | And what we showed is, guess what?

00:00:52.860 | You know, running an outsider campaign,

00:00:57.740 | we took on the Democratic establishment,

00:00:59.380 | we came close to winning it, and we did win 23 states,

00:01:03.260 | and the ideas that we're talking about are the ideas

00:01:05.780 | that working class people, young people, believe in.

00:01:08.380 | - The following is a conversation with Bernie Sanders,

00:01:13.440 | senator from Vermont and two-time presidential candidate,

00:01:17.940 | both times as the underdog who, against the long odds,

00:01:22.240 | captivated the support and excitement of millions of people,

00:01:26.620 | both on the left and the right.

00:01:29.780 | This is the Lex Friedman Podcast.

00:01:32.580 | To support it, please check out our sponsors

00:01:34.660 | in the description.

00:01:35.900 | And now, dear friends, here's Bernie Sanders.

00:01:39.640 | Growing up, did you ever think you'd be a politician?

00:01:43.140 | - Nope, not in a million years.

00:01:45.740 | - Yeah, I know that you hate talking about yourself,

00:01:49.540 | which is rare for a politician, I would say.

00:01:51.420 | (laughing)

00:01:52.900 | What's your philosophy behind that?

00:01:54.140 | You like talking about the issues, you like talking about--

00:01:56.140 | - I mean, you know, everybody talks about themselves.

00:01:58.540 | It's not about me, you know, nice guy, not a nice guy.

00:02:00.900 | What politics should be about is the issues facing

00:02:05.220 | the people of our country, the people of the world,

00:02:08.060 | and how we're gonna address it.

00:02:09.180 | That's what it should be.

00:02:10.100 | - That said, there's interesting aspects to your life story.

00:02:13.260 | For example, in 1963, you were very active

00:02:17.220 | in the Civil Rights Movement, got arrested even

00:02:20.540 | for protesting segregation in Chicago,

00:02:23.420 | and you attended the famous March on Washington,

00:02:27.160 | where MLK gave his "I Have a Dream" speech.

00:02:29.740 | What was that like?

00:02:30.900 | - It was extraordinary.

00:02:32.340 | Took a bus ride down with fellow students

00:02:34.340 | from the University of Chicago,

00:02:36.700 | and there was a zillion people there.

00:02:39.260 | I'm not sure if it was the first time I'd ever been

00:02:40.980 | in Washington in my life, but it was, you know,

00:02:43.980 | it was a very impressive moment.

00:02:46.780 | And what he was talking about,

00:02:47.940 | what people very often forget about that,

00:02:49.980 | it was not only racial justice, it was jobs.

00:02:53.300 | Jobs and justice, that was the name of that rally.

00:02:56.820 | And so, it's something I've never forgotten.

00:02:59.740 | - What influence did he have on you?

00:03:01.420 | What'd you learn about the way he enacted change

00:03:06.380 | in the world?

00:03:07.220 | - King was a very impressive guy.

00:03:08.800 | More impressive, I think, than people think that he was.

00:03:13.740 | And what he did is he created his movement

00:03:17.820 | from the bottom on up.

00:03:19.860 | So, he developed real organization,

00:03:23.580 | grassroots organization, which put pressure

00:03:26.980 | on communities and officials to end segregation,

00:03:30.420 | to open up voting patterns.

00:03:33.280 | And I think what has to also be remembered about King,

00:03:36.540 | which is really quite extraordinary,

00:03:39.100 | is, you know, he won the Nobel Peace Prize,

00:03:41.540 | and everyone's, "Oh, you're great, you're wonderful."

00:03:44.340 | But then, to the end of his life,

00:03:46.260 | he took on Lyndon Johnson on the war in Vietnam.

00:03:49.500 | And as soon as he did that, suddenly the editorial pages

00:03:52.860 | throughout America, establishment papers,

00:03:55.880 | no longer thought he was so great.

00:03:57.300 | In fact, the message sent out,

00:03:59.060 | "You're black, deal with civil rights.

00:04:01.140 | "Don't worry about foreign policy.

00:04:02.420 | "We'll take care of that."

00:04:04.260 | But he said, "You know, if I talk about peace

00:04:06.840 | "and nonviolence, I can't sit back

00:04:09.400 | "and allow what's going on in Vietnam

00:04:11.140 | "to continue without speaking out."

00:04:12.640 | Incredible courage to do that.

00:04:14.740 | And, by the way, when he was assassinated

00:04:17.940 | at a fighting for the rights of AFSCME workers,

00:04:22.740 | garbage, guys who delivered the garbage,

00:04:24.940 | who were treated terribly, low wages,

00:04:27.540 | bad working conditions, and who went out

00:04:29.180 | to support their right to form a union,

00:04:31.300 | that's when he got killed.

00:04:33.220 | - So on the war front, one of the things

00:04:36.180 | that people don't often talk about your work in politics,

00:04:40.740 | you gave what I think is a truly brave speech

00:04:44.300 | on the Iraq war in 2002, I believe.

00:04:48.220 | You voted no on the Iraq Resolution,

00:04:52.220 | you voted no on the Patriot Act,

00:04:54.420 | and you basically predicted very accurately

00:04:59.420 | what would happen if we go into Iraq.

00:05:01.860 | What was your thinking at the time

00:05:03.820 | behind those speeches, behind voting no

00:05:06.540 | on the Patriot Act, on the Iraq Resolution?

00:05:09.300 | - It maybe, ironically, came out of maybe

00:05:11.580 | the war in Vietnam and the ease and lies

00:05:14.620 | that people told.

00:05:15.780 | We went into Vietnam under a lie.

00:05:18.940 | We lost close to 60,000 Americans,

00:05:22.100 | millions of people in Vietnam.

00:05:25.140 | Cambodia died as a result of that.

00:05:27.500 | So you think twice about it.

00:05:28.780 | And then the war in Iraq, you had people

00:05:33.340 | like Dick Cheney and others telling us,

00:05:34.980 | oh, they have nuclear weapons and all that stuff,

00:05:37.100 | it's the only way we can resolve the issue.

00:05:40.140 | I didn't believe it.

00:05:42.260 | I didn't agree with it.

00:05:43.380 | And you're right.

00:05:44.220 | Turns out, historically, I was right.

00:05:46.700 | - What's the way to fight this thing

00:05:49.580 | that Martin Luther King tried to fight,

00:05:52.380 | which is the military-industrial complex?

00:05:54.140 | - It's huge.

00:05:54.980 | I mean, it gets to the broader issue

00:05:56.420 | of where we are as a nation.

00:05:58.260 | And what I, almost uniquely in Congress,

00:06:02.020 | talk about is the fact that we are moving

00:06:03.820 | Lex to an oligarchic form of society.

00:06:06.820 | And not a lot of people are familiar

00:06:08.300 | with that term, but what it means,

00:06:09.700 | we talk about oligarchy in Russia,

00:06:11.500 | and oh, Putin is surrounded by the oligarchs.

00:06:13.780 | Well, guess what?

00:06:14.620 | What do you think is happening in the United States?

00:06:16.860 | So what you have right now is an economy

00:06:20.420 | with more concentration of ownership

00:06:22.180 | than we've ever had, right?

00:06:23.700 | That means whether it's agriculture,

00:06:25.260 | transportation, healthcare, whatever it may be,

00:06:28.020 | fewer and fewer massively large corporations

00:06:30.520 | control what's produced and the prices we pay.

00:06:33.580 | And then you look at our political system,

00:06:35.740 | and it's, we don't talk about it.

00:06:37.700 | What is the reality of the political system today?

00:06:40.560 | And that is that billionaires are spending

00:06:43.260 | huge amounts of money to buy this election.

00:06:45.800 | In Trump's campaign, he got three multi-billionaires

00:06:49.100 | spending over $200 million, three people.

00:06:52.720 | Democrats have their billionaires

00:06:54.140 | not quite as concentrated.

00:06:55.740 | But at the end of the day, billionaires

00:06:57.500 | play an enormous role in terms of electing politicians,

00:07:02.020 | and in Washington in determining

00:07:04.460 | what legislation gets seen and not seen.

00:07:07.220 | - But it's not just single billionaires.

00:07:08.620 | It's companies with lobbyists.

00:07:10.380 | - You got it.

00:07:11.500 | Let me give you one example, lobbyists.

00:07:14.460 | We pay in the United States by far

00:07:16.340 | the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs.

00:07:18.500 | This is an issue I've been working hard on,

00:07:20.140 | with some success.

00:07:21.440 | Take a wild and crazy guess.

00:07:23.880 | How many lobbyists are there from the drug companies

00:07:26.540 | in Washington, D.C.?

00:07:28.420 | - Well, over 1,000.

00:07:29.660 | - Over 1,000, right?

00:07:31.180 | There are 100 members of the Senate,

00:07:32.860 | 435 members of the House, 535 members of Congress.

00:07:36.940 | There are 1,800 well-paid lobbyists

00:07:40.900 | representing the drug companies,

00:07:42.420 | including former leaders of the Republican

00:07:44.660 | and Democratic Party.

00:07:45.700 | That is why, one of the reasons why,

00:07:48.080 | we pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs.

00:07:50.420 | Military-industrial complex.

00:07:52.300 | You got a revolving door.

00:07:54.020 | People go from the military into the General Dynamics,

00:07:57.700 | into Lockheed Martin and the other large companies.

00:08:00.780 | And what we see there is an institution in the Pentagon.

00:08:04.620 | We spend a trillion dollars a year on the Pentagon.

00:08:08.560 | It is the only federal agency that cannot,

00:08:11.980 | is not able to submit to an independent audit.

00:08:14.820 | So if you think there's not massive fraud and waste

00:08:17.820 | and cost overruns in the Pentagon,

00:08:20.300 | you would be sorely mistaken.

00:08:22.540 | - Do you think most politicians are corrupt

00:08:26.320 | in accepting the money, or is the system corrupt,

00:08:28.560 | or is it a bit of both?

00:08:30.300 | - If the corrupt means that, "Hey, here's $10,000.

00:08:34.620 | "Vote this way."

00:08:35.980 | Doesn't work like that.

00:08:36.900 | Very, very rare occasionally.

00:08:38.500 | Very, very rare.

00:08:39.340 | That's corruption.

00:08:41.340 | What happens is that if you are in a campaign,

00:08:46.140 | and right now, the amount of money

00:08:47.580 | that people have to raise.

00:08:48.700 | You're running for Senate in Ohio.

00:08:50.340 | You're talking about 50, 60 million dollars.

00:08:52.900 | Where the hell are you gonna get that money?

00:08:54.340 | It's not gonna be $10 donations.

00:08:56.220 | You're gonna be surrounding yourself

00:08:57.660 | with people who have the money.

00:08:58.500 | You're gonna go $5,000 plate dinners, et cetera.

00:09:03.220 | So you surround yourself with those people who say,

00:09:05.180 | "Oh, these are my problems.

00:09:06.860 | "This is what I need.

00:09:08.140 | "I need a tax break for billionaires."

00:09:09.660 | Blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:09:10.900 | So you become, you live in that world.

00:09:13.220 | They are your financial support.

00:09:15.860 | They are, in a sense, your political base.

00:09:19.220 | So you're very cognizant of what you do

00:09:21.460 | in terms of not upsetting them.

00:09:26.100 | So it's not corruption in the sense of people

00:09:29.340 | taking envelopes with huge amounts of money

00:09:31.820 | to vote a certain way.

00:09:32.820 | That very, very rarely, if ever, happens.

00:09:35.340 | It is the power of big money

00:09:37.660 | to make politicians dependent on those folks.

00:09:41.180 | And that's why, when I ran for president,

00:09:42.860 | what I'm probably maybe most proud of

00:09:44.980 | is the fact that we received millions and millions

00:09:47.460 | of campaign contributions,

00:09:49.060 | averaging 27 bucks apiece, I think, in 2016.

00:09:52.140 | - Have companies, lobbyists ever try to buy you,

00:09:54.780 | try to influence you?

00:09:56.140 | - We don't welcome them into our office.

00:09:57.980 | I do deal with these guys,

00:09:59.260 | but it's usually on a confrontational tone, no.

00:10:01.380 | So they don't come into my office very often

00:10:03.540 | telling me their problems.

00:10:04.780 | - So how do we fix the system?

00:10:06.560 | How do we get money out of politics?

00:10:08.620 | - This is not, you know, like many other issues,

00:10:11.900 | we don't have to reinvent the wheel here.

00:10:13.500 | It exists in other countries.

00:10:15.220 | If you go to, you know,

00:10:17.700 | every country has their own election system,

00:10:19.940 | but nobody has a system where billionaires

00:10:22.740 | can spend unlimited sums of money through super PACs

00:10:25.780 | to elect the candidates of their choice.

00:10:27.260 | So first thing you gotta do,

00:10:29.100 | and it, you know, one of the things, Lex,

00:10:31.740 | I found that the more important the issue,

00:10:33.740 | the less discussion there is.

00:10:35.260 | The less important the issue,

00:10:37.100 | the more discussion there is.

00:10:38.700 | A number of years ago,

00:10:39.980 | the United States Supreme Court,

00:10:41.620 | in one of its more pathetic decisions,

00:10:45.380 | passed the Citizens United decision.

00:10:48.500 | And what Citizens United decision said is,

00:10:50.500 | you're a multi-billionaire.

00:10:52.260 | You want the freedom.

00:10:53.880 | You're a free person in a free country.

00:10:56.180 | You want the freedom to buy the government.

00:10:58.940 | And how terrible it would be

00:11:00.740 | to deny you the freedom to spend

00:11:02.340 | hundreds of millions of dollars on a campaign

00:11:04.520 | to elect the candidates.

00:11:05.580 | And they said, that's your freedom,

00:11:07.940 | and that's what Citizens United is about.

00:11:10.940 | We've gotta end that.

00:11:12.780 | In my view, we move to public funding of elections.

00:11:15.100 | That means you wanna run for governing,

00:11:17.460 | you wanna run for Senate,

00:11:18.700 | show that you have some support,

00:11:20.980 | get $5 contributions from X number of people

00:11:24.460 | to show you you're not a flake.

00:11:26.860 | You have some support,

00:11:28.020 | and government will pay a certain amount more,

00:11:30.660 | and there will be a limited amount of money

00:11:32.220 | that can be spent.

00:11:33.060 | So it'll be a real,

00:11:34.140 | you can run against me,

00:11:35.220 | and I'm not gonna outspend you 10 to one.

00:11:37.020 | That's what we should be moving toward in my view.

00:11:39.660 | - How do we make that happen

00:11:40.740 | when there's so much money in the system,

00:11:42.580 | and the politicians owe to the people

00:11:47.060 | who paid for their election?

00:11:48.340 | Does it have to come from the very top,

00:11:49.700 | essentially sort of a really strong,

00:11:52.660 | popular, populist president?

00:11:54.900 | - Well, you're right.

00:11:55.740 | You raised exactly the question.

00:11:57.900 | If I am getting a huge amount of money from billionaires,

00:12:01.180 | do you think I'm gonna go out and announce,

00:12:03.060 | I think billionaires should not be involved

00:12:05.180 | in buying elections.

00:12:06.060 | I doubt that very much.

00:12:07.380 | So what you're gonna need,

00:12:09.320 | and you tell me if I'm missing something,

00:12:11.300 | but I pay attention,

00:12:12.700 | you don't hear either of the major candidates

00:12:14.740 | talking about that issue, do you?

00:12:16.420 | - I think what happens is,

00:12:18.140 | when an individual politician speaks out about it,

00:12:20.980 | they get punished.

00:12:21.940 | But I think this is a popular idea.

00:12:25.180 | So if a lot of them speak out,

00:12:27.620 | that's why if it came from the top,

00:12:29.500 | if a president was using a very large platform

00:12:32.400 | to basically speak out,

00:12:33.740 | it provides a safety blanket for the other politicians

00:12:37.420 | to get it all out of the system.

00:12:38.900 | But there has to be a kind of a mass movement.

00:12:40.660 | - Yes, there does.

00:12:41.500 | I mean, and every place I go,

00:12:43.220 | I always speak about the issue.

00:12:44.820 | And it always, people understand it.

00:12:46.700 | You're a Republican, you're a Democrat,

00:12:49.060 | you're progressive, you're conservative.

00:12:51.080 | Who really believes that we are a democracy

00:12:54.500 | when billionaires can spend tens and tens

00:12:57.420 | of millions of dollars to buy elections?

00:12:59.700 | So it is a very popular issue.

00:13:01.260 | It's important, you're right.

00:13:02.260 | We need political leaders to be speaking out on that.

00:13:05.100 | But we need a grassroots movement to say,

00:13:07.220 | when somebody is at a town meeting,

00:13:08.580 | you're running for the Senate,

00:13:09.780 | you're running for the House,

00:13:10.820 | what's your view on Citizens United?

00:13:12.260 | Are you prepared to vote to overturn that decision

00:13:14.700 | and move to public funding of elections?

00:13:16.780 | Extraordinarily important.

00:13:18.900 | - So many of your policy proposals are quite radical.

00:13:23.140 | - No, they're not.

00:13:24.100 | I beg to differ.

00:13:25.120 | - Okay, great.

00:13:25.960 | - Go through.

00:13:26.780 | (laughing)

00:13:27.620 | - Well, they're popular.

00:13:28.980 | So what I mean is relative to what,

00:13:31.740 | the way other politicians speak,

00:13:33.720 | it's usually a little bit more moderate.

00:13:35.660 | So from everything you've learned from politics,

00:13:37.600 | is it better to go sort of a radical,

00:13:41.120 | maybe we can come up with a different word,

00:13:42.920 | versus a more moderate, safe, ambiguous kind of policy?

00:13:46.340 | - Let's talk about it, fair enough.

00:13:48.260 | We talked about one issue, very important,

00:13:49.860 | money in politics.

00:13:50.700 | - Money, yes.

00:13:51.620 | - Getting money out of, big money out of politics.

00:13:53.540 | Do you think that's a radical idea?

00:13:55.340 | - Well, I mean, yeah, it's a popular idea.

00:13:58.860 | It's an idea that makes sense.

00:14:00.700 | But in order to implement it and actually make it happen,

00:14:03.820 | it requires, I mean, to flip the system upside down, right?

00:14:08.340 | In that sense, it's radical.

00:14:09.460 | - In that sense, it's radical.

00:14:10.900 | But if you go to walk down the street here and you say,

00:14:13.180 | "Do you think billionaires should be able to spend

00:14:14.860 | "as much money as they want to buy politicians?"

00:14:17.480 | I would say nine out of 10 people say, "That's crazy.

00:14:19.400 | "That's not what America's supposed to be about."

00:14:21.360 | So in that sense, it's certainly not radical.

00:14:23.360 | Let's talk about healthcare.

00:14:24.960 | I'd go out on the street, do it, or do a poll.

00:14:27.560 | I've done the polling.

00:14:28.960 | Is healthcare a human right?

00:14:31.680 | Should every American be able to go to a doctor

00:14:34.160 | when they need, regardless of their income?

00:14:35.880 | You know what people say?

00:14:37.000 | I would say about 85, 90% of the people say, "Of course."

00:14:41.200 | The idea that healthcare is a human right

00:14:44.600 | available to all exists, Lex, in every major country

00:14:49.600 | on earth except the United States.

00:14:52.940 | So you're here with me in Burlington, Vermont, right?

00:14:55.940 | You got a car, go 50 miles north to Canada.

00:14:59.020 | Walk a little Canadian, you know, walk into Canada

00:15:01.800 | and ask people, "When you go to the hospital,

00:15:05.360 | "how much does it cost you?

00:15:06.280 | "Which kind of bill?"

00:15:07.120 | And they'll say, "What are you talking about?

00:15:08.980 | "It doesn't cost us anything.

00:15:09.900 | "It doesn't cost us a nickel."

00:15:11.580 | That's the case in virtually every country in Europe.

00:15:14.620 | So the idea that healthcare should be available to all,

00:15:19.140 | that there should be no out-of-pocket expense

00:15:21.500 | because it's a human right, is widespread around the world

00:15:25.980 | and very much agreed to in this country.

00:15:30.980 | Bottom line is that because of our corrupt political system,

00:15:36.020 | we have a healthcare system designed

00:15:38.820 | not to provide healthcare to all people,

00:15:40.660 | to make huge profits for the drug companies

00:15:42.620 | and the insurance companies, and that is what's happening.

00:15:44.700 | And we gotta change that system.

00:15:46.540 | So I'm a strong advocate and I've led the effort

00:15:49.060 | on Medicare for All.

00:15:50.540 | - Okay, let's talk about Medicare for All.

00:15:53.500 | If you could snap your fingers today

00:15:54.980 | and implement the best possible healthcare system

00:15:57.780 | for the United States of America,

00:15:59.860 | what would that look like?

00:16:01.960 | - Well, we have a pretty good system, not great,

00:16:04.420 | but a pretty good system in Medicare.

00:16:06.780 | So it's there for the elderly, and Lyndon Johnson

00:16:09.380 | passed that in the 1960s, so huge step forward.

00:16:11.900 | It is being chopped away by the private insurance companies

00:16:15.980 | through Medicare Advantage.

00:16:17.100 | But if you strengthen Medicare and you do away

00:16:20.980 | with the kind of deductibles that seniors now have to pay,

00:16:23.660 | and you do away with other stuff,

00:16:25.860 | and you say basically, right now,

00:16:27.300 | you're a senior in America, go to any doctor you want.

00:16:30.240 | When you're in the hospital,

00:16:33.340 | Medicare will pay the entire bill.

00:16:35.920 | If you expand Medicare to cover dental, hearing,

00:16:38.540 | and vision, which it doesn't now cover,

00:16:40.540 | you do all of those things.

00:16:41.980 | And then the next thing to do is say, okay,

00:16:44.420 | to be eligible for Medicare, now you have to be 65.

00:16:48.700 | First year, we're gonna lower it to 55,

00:16:50.660 | then we'll lower it to 45, then we'll lower it to 35,

00:16:52.820 | then we'll have everybody in the system.

00:16:55.260 | So I think in a four or five year period,

00:16:57.780 | you can strengthen Medicare and have everybody in the system.

00:17:01.660 | And when you do that, and this is not just me talking,

00:17:04.300 | a number of studies have pointed this out,

00:17:06.640 | when you take the profit motive out of it,

00:17:09.100 | from the insurance companies and the drug companies,

00:17:11.400 | you can end up providing quality care to all people

00:17:14.000 | at no more than we're spending right now.

00:17:16.520 | Because right now, we are spending twice as much

00:17:19.120 | per person in healthcare as the people of any other nation.

00:17:22.000 | Incredibly wasteful system.

00:17:23.840 | - So the way to pay for the system is to increase taxes,

00:17:26.520 | but you're saying if you cut that cost

00:17:28.960 | and increase the taxes, you're saying it's going to--

00:17:31.400 | - Here's the story, and I've gotten my share

00:17:34.160 | of 30 second ads attacking me on this.

00:17:36.840 | Bernie Sanders wants to raise your taxes on healthcare.

00:17:40.940 | It's true, in a progressive way.

00:17:43.760 | But right now, do you have health insurance?

00:17:46.120 | - Yes. - Okay.

00:17:47.320 | Somebody's paying for your health insurance.

00:17:49.280 | It depends.

00:17:50.120 | If you are working, most people get their health insurance

00:17:52.640 | through their jobs, okay?

00:17:54.680 | So if you're working for a large company,

00:17:56.360 | your employer is paying your health insurance,

00:17:58.960 | and by the way, that comes out of your wages.

00:18:01.000 | Healthcare costs in America are very high,

00:18:02.560 | and your employer will tell you honestly,

00:18:03.880 | look, I can't give you more than a 3% wage increase

00:18:07.000 | 'cause I got a 10% increase in your healthcare cost.

00:18:09.360 | You want that?

00:18:10.280 | Or if you're a union negotiating,

00:18:12.340 | you know what they'll say?

00:18:13.180 | Hey, you want decent wages?

00:18:14.440 | We're going to have to cut back on your healthcare.

00:18:15.940 | That's what every union has to deal with

00:18:18.080 | every negotiating session.

00:18:19.420 | So we're paying for it through employers out of pocket.

00:18:24.840 | We pay through it through Medicare, Medicaid,

00:18:26.720 | Veterans Administration, et cetera.

00:18:28.940 | What I am proposing is really not radical.

00:18:33.080 | It's what exists in Canada and other countries.

00:18:35.000 | It is publicly funded like the police departments

00:18:38.760 | and like libraries are and like public education.

00:18:41.040 | This is publicly funded in a progressive way.

00:18:43.960 | So right now, rather than paying out of your own pocket,

00:18:47.340 | if you are a family, let's just say

00:18:50.440 | you're self-employed right now,

00:18:52.520 | and you are, you know, you have a couple of kids and a wife,

00:18:57.520 | it could cost you $15,000, $20,000 a year in insurance cost.

00:19:02.160 | Well, that's all eliminated.

00:19:05.160 | Will you have to pay more in taxes?

00:19:06.520 | Of course you will.

00:19:07.360 | Maybe it depends on your income level,

00:19:09.080 | but it could be that you'd be paying $12,000 more in taxes,

00:19:11.840 | but not $20,000 more in premiums,

00:19:14.760 | copayments, and deductibles.

00:19:16.320 | You save money.

00:19:17.520 | So it's paying taxes rather than paying money

00:19:20.360 | to the insurance company.

00:19:21.560 | You got a better deal through the tax system.

00:19:23.960 | - So the most painful thing in today's system

00:19:26.720 | is the surprise bills, the number one cause of bankruptcy,

00:19:30.560 | and the psychological pain that comes from that,

00:19:33.160 | just worrying, stressed, in debt.

00:19:36.280 | - You got it.

00:19:37.120 | - And just basically afraid constantly of getting sick

00:19:39.520 | because you don't know if insurance is gonna cover it,

00:19:41.360 | and if you're not insured,

00:19:42.920 | you don't know how much it's going to cost,

00:19:44.800 | so you're not gonna go to the hospital

00:19:46.080 | even if there's something wrong with you,

00:19:47.660 | if there's pain and all that.

00:19:48.960 | So you just live in a state of fear, psychological fear.

00:19:52.480 | That's the number one problem.

00:19:53.660 | It's not just financial, it's psychological.

00:19:55.560 | - Look, and I think you said it very well.

00:19:58.920 | I'm chairman of the committee that deals with this stuff,

00:20:01.240 | so I talk to a lot of doctors.

00:20:02.800 | And doctors in Vermont and all over this country

00:20:06.000 | tell me that they are astounded.

00:20:08.520 | People walk into their offices

00:20:11.600 | much sicker than they should have been.

00:20:14.260 | And the doctor said, "Why didn't you come

00:20:15.560 | "six months ago when you first felt your symptoms?"

00:20:19.760 | And they said, "Well, I have a high deductible of it,

00:20:22.460 | "$10,000 deductible, I don't have any money to pay.

00:20:25.320 | "I'm uninsured."

00:20:26.840 | Some of those people don't make it.

00:20:28.360 | Other people, and this is what is totally crazy.

00:20:30.760 | They end up in the hospital at huge expense to the system

00:20:35.360 | rather than getting the care they need when they needed it.

00:20:39.800 | So that is how, I'll give you another example of it.

00:20:42.880 | We pay the highest prices in the world

00:20:44.380 | for prescription drugs.

00:20:46.360 | One out of four Americans can't afford

00:20:49.000 | the drugs their doctors prescribe.

00:20:50.440 | So you walk into the doctor's office,

00:20:51.960 | and they say, "Okay, Lex, you got this, that,

00:20:53.280 | "and the other thing, here's your prescription."

00:20:55.320 | You can't afford to fill it.

00:20:57.120 | What happens? You get sicker.

00:20:58.580 | You end up in the emergency room,

00:21:00.280 | which is an extremely expensive proposition.

00:21:02.600 | Or you end up in the hospital.

00:21:05.880 | Rather than dealing with the problem when it occurs.

00:21:09.120 | And what is not talked about, I mentioned earlier

00:21:11.880 | how we don't talk about some of the major issues.

00:21:14.080 | The estimate is that some 60,000 people in America

00:21:17.960 | die every single year, unnecessarily,

00:21:20.440 | because they can't get to a doctor when they need

00:21:22.860 | because of financial reasons.

00:21:24.320 | And you wanna hear it even crazier,

00:21:26.620 | one out of four people who get cancer treatment

00:21:28.760 | in this country either go bankrupt

00:21:30.760 | or deplete their financial resources or their family.

00:21:33.240 | So your point is right.

00:21:34.480 | If somebody diagnoses you with cancer,

00:21:37.440 | you're scared to death, you're worried about

00:21:38.880 | how you're gonna live, you're gonna die,

00:21:40.160 | what's gonna happen?

00:21:41.000 | And then on top of that, you gotta worry about

00:21:43.560 | whether your family goes bankrupt.

00:21:44.700 | How insane and cruel is that?

00:21:46.840 | So to me, I think healthcare is what unites us all.

00:21:51.840 | Everybody has family, they get sick.

00:21:54.880 | We'll get born, we all die, we all want care.

00:21:57.980 | And we all have gotta come together

00:21:59.980 | to create a system that works for all of us,

00:22:01.620 | not just the drug companies or the insurance companies.

00:22:03.860 | - There's just so many stories.

00:22:05.620 | And not even the horrific stories,

00:22:07.140 | there's countless horrific stories,

00:22:08.420 | but just basic stories of cost.

00:22:10.340 | Like my friend, Dr. Peter Atiyah has this story

00:22:14.140 | where he happens to be wealthy so he can afford it,

00:22:18.140 | but he had to take his son to the emergency room

00:22:20.340 | and the son was dehydrated and the bill was $6,000.

00:22:23.780 | They just did a basic test and gave him an IV,

00:22:26.840 | the basic thing, and he has really good insurance

00:22:29.200 | and the insurance covered $4,000 of it.

00:22:31.680 | So he had to, at the end, pay $2,000

00:22:35.080 | for a basic emergency room visit.

00:22:36.880 | And there's a lot of families for whom that one visit

00:22:40.280 | for such a simple thing would be just financially devastating

00:22:43.200 | - And you know what?

00:22:44.400 | People know that and you know what they say?

00:22:47.360 | I don't feel well today, something's wrong.

00:22:49.680 | I ain't gonna go to that emergency room

00:22:52.040 | because I don't want a $6,000 bill.

00:22:54.260 | And what happens, he had insurance

00:22:55.860 | that paid 2/3 of it, right?

00:22:57.860 | - Yes.

00:22:58.700 | - So what happens if he didn't?

00:22:59.520 | What happens if he didn't have money?

00:23:01.040 | He'd be hounded by bill collectors

00:23:02.380 | for the rest of his life.

00:23:03.220 | So it is a disgusting system, it is an inhumane system,

00:23:07.820 | but the insurance companies and the drug companies

00:23:11.620 | are very powerful and they make a lot

00:23:13.180 | of campaign contributions, have a lot of lobbyists

00:23:15.820 | and we are where we are.

00:23:17.260 | But I think the American people

00:23:20.220 | want fundamental changes there.

00:23:21.820 | - So that's another good example of a really popular idea

00:23:25.720 | that is not implemented because of the money in politics.

00:23:29.660 | - That's a wonder.

00:23:30.980 | And I'll tell you that, not only that,

00:23:33.160 | not only is it not implemented because of money,

00:23:35.620 | it's not even discussed.

00:23:37.880 | All right, so I'm saying here, and no one disputes me,

00:23:40.900 | we are spending twice as much per person

00:23:44.200 | on healthcare, right?

00:23:45.300 | And yet 85 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured

00:23:51.280 | and our life expectancy is lower

00:23:53.020 | than virtually every other major country on earth.

00:23:55.780 | Do you think that might be an issue that we'd be discussing?

00:23:59.100 | - Again, if a single politician discusses it,

00:24:01.980 | they get punished for it.

00:24:02.940 | So there needs to be a mass movement

00:24:04.980 | and probably, I mean, from my perspective,

00:24:08.500 | it has to come from the very top,

00:24:09.580 | it has to come from the president.

00:24:10.980 | And the president has to be a populist president

00:24:12.940 | where they don't care about the parties

00:24:15.820 | with the rich people, they just speak out

00:24:18.380 | because they know it's a popular message

00:24:19.900 | and they know it's the right thing.

00:24:22.120 | So speaking of that, you had a historic campaign

00:24:26.920 | run for president in 2016.

00:24:28.800 | And in the eyes of many people, mine included,

00:24:35.180 | you were screwed over by the DNC,

00:24:39.000 | as especially the WikiLeaks emails showed.

00:24:42.620 | What's your just looking back feelings about that?

00:24:45.320 | Are you angry, are you upset?

00:24:47.320 | - Yeah, of course I'm angry and of course I'm upset.

00:24:50.080 | But when you take on, in this case,

00:24:54.480 | the democratic establishment

00:24:56.000 | who have controlled that party forever,

00:25:00.320 | moneyed interest in the democratic party,

00:25:04.600 | you're taking on corporate America

00:25:06.320 | when you're taking on the corporate media.

00:25:09.060 | And when you're calling for a political revolution

00:25:12.240 | that creates a government that works for all

00:25:14.160 | and not just the few,

00:25:15.760 | the opposition is going to be extraordinary.

00:25:20.180 | But what I am extremely proud of

00:25:22.840 | from that campaign in 2020 as well,

00:25:25.980 | is that we took on the anointed candidate

00:25:28.760 | of the establishment and we showed,

00:25:32.260 | you know, we showed, despite the fact,

00:25:33.940 | the entire establishment.

00:25:35.300 | I had in the Senate, I had one supporter.

00:25:38.780 | There were 50 Democrats, I had one supporter.

00:25:42.380 | I had no governor supporting me, I think.

00:25:44.780 | Maybe a few people in the House.

00:25:46.820 | But we took on the whole political establishment

00:25:49.500 | and we did, you know, got millions of votes

00:25:51.700 | and the ideas that we brought forth

00:25:54.460 | were ideas that they had to eventually

00:25:57.700 | deal with in one way or another.

00:25:59.020 | And if you look at the American Rescue Plan,

00:26:01.620 | which I'm proud to have helped write

00:26:03.980 | during the midst of COVID,

00:26:06.660 | a lot of the ideas that we fought for

00:26:08.220 | were implemented in that bill

00:26:09.660 | and I want to make them obviously permanent.

00:26:12.180 | - And you almost won.

00:26:13.340 | And a lot of people thought

00:26:14.500 | that you would win against Donald Trump.

00:26:17.580 | - I think we would have.

00:26:18.700 | I think we would have.

00:26:19.800 | You know, I think Trump is a very,

00:26:23.100 | you know, I think he's a little bit crazy

00:26:24.520 | between you and me, but he is a smart politician

00:26:27.940 | and he's appealing to a lot of the anger

00:26:30.340 | that working class people feel.

00:26:33.520 | And you know what?

00:26:34.360 | Working class people should feel angry,

00:26:36.540 | but they should make sure that their anger

00:26:39.020 | is directed in the right direction

00:26:41.300 | and not against people who are even worse off than they are,

00:26:44.180 | which is what demagogues like Trump always do.

00:26:47.820 | So, you know, I think we had,

00:26:49.380 | as I went around the country then and now,

00:26:51.820 | we have a lot of support from working class people

00:26:54.420 | who understand that there is something wrong.

00:26:57.260 | And this is an incredible fact that no one talks about.

00:27:00.380 | All right, I'm going to ask you a question.

00:27:01.460 | Are you ready for this, Lex?

00:27:02.420 | - Let's go.

00:27:03.260 | - Here we go.

00:27:04.360 | Over the last 50 years,

00:27:05.960 | there's been a massive increase in worker productivity

00:27:09.540 | as a result of technology, right?

00:27:11.980 | Everyone agrees with that.

00:27:13.020 | And it's, I don't know exactly what it is,

00:27:14.900 | but the worker today is producing a lot more

00:27:16.660 | than the worker 50 years ago doing something similar.

00:27:19.220 | Is the worker today, in real inflation accounted for dollars,

00:27:23.660 | making more money than that worker 50 years ago?

00:27:26.060 | - Well, there's a lot of close arguments there,

00:27:28.860 | but your point is well taken.

00:27:31.100 | It's either the same or a little bit higher

00:27:33.460 | or a little bit lower, depending on the statistics.

00:27:35.500 | It has not increased significantly.

00:27:37.100 | And the wealth inequality has increased significantly.

00:27:40.220 | - That is the point.

00:27:41.060 | - You would think that if a worker is producing a lot more,

00:27:45.620 | that worker would be better off,

00:27:47.380 | would be working lesser hours, et cetera.

00:27:50.140 | That hasn't been the case.

00:27:51.860 | And what has happened in that 50 years

00:27:54.540 | is according to the Rand Corporation,

00:27:56.860 | there has been a 50 trillion, trillion with a T,

00:28:01.380 | redistribution of wealth from the bottom 90%

00:28:03.740 | to the top 1%.

00:28:05.420 | So you got CEOs today making 300 times more

00:28:08.100 | than their workers.

00:28:09.660 | You got three people on top owning more wealth

00:28:11.780 | than the bottom half of American society.

00:28:14.140 | So that's why people are angry.

00:28:16.640 | And they're worried that their kids

00:28:17.820 | may have a lower standard of living than they

00:28:20.140 | in the wealthiest country in the history of the world.

00:28:22.580 | So there's a lot of anger out there.

00:28:24.340 | And I think we tap some of that anger in a constructive way.

00:28:27.520 | Essentially saying, you know what?

00:28:29.380 | We don't need so few to have so much in wealth and power.

00:28:32.980 | Let's distribute it more fairly in America.

00:28:35.140 | - I gotta get back to 2016

00:28:37.980 | 'cause it's such a historic moment.

00:28:39.780 | So there's a lot of fans of yours

00:28:43.640 | that wanted you to keep fighting

00:28:46.260 | because you forgave in the end the establishment

00:28:48.820 | and joined them in support.

00:28:50.980 | And your fans wanted you to keep fighting

00:28:52.900 | for a takeover, for a progressive takeover

00:28:55.020 | of the Democratic Party.

00:28:56.260 | If you just look back and had to do it all over again,

00:29:01.280 | what would you do different?

00:29:02.620 | - Well, by the way, in terms of a takeover

00:29:04.140 | of the Democratic Party, we did try.

00:29:07.180 | We ran, do you know who Keith Ellison is?

00:29:09.660 | Keith is now the attorney general

00:29:12.060 | of the state of Minnesota.

00:29:12.980 | He's doing a great job, really.

00:29:14.180 | One of the outstanding attorney generals in the country.

00:29:17.300 | And Keith was then a member of Congress.

00:29:19.840 | And we ran Keith to become the head of the DNC

00:29:23.420 | and the establishment

00:29:25.500 | from the president of the United States on down, went crazy.

00:29:29.100 | And they beat him by a few votes, not a whole lot.

00:29:31.580 | So it's, look, you're faced,

00:29:34.980 | and that's the exact same position

00:29:37.460 | that many of us are in right today.

00:29:39.780 | So people say, well, why did you support Hillary Clinton?

00:29:42.860 | Yeah, what's the alternative, Donald Trump?

00:29:45.420 | I think Donald Trump is an extremely dangerous person

00:29:48.460 | trying to undermine American democracy.

00:29:50.940 | So I can't support him.

00:29:53.220 | Hillary Clinton, obviously,

00:29:54.660 | his views are very, very different than mine.

00:29:57.460 | But in that moment,

00:29:59.340 | that's where politics becomes really tricky.

00:30:02.140 | And it ain't easy.

00:30:03.820 | And, you know, sometimes you have to do things

00:30:06.780 | that you're not really all that excited about.

00:30:09.620 | But I think it was right to try to do what I could

00:30:12.880 | to prevent Trump from getting elected.

00:30:16.940 | And in 2020, I did the same with Biden.

00:30:19.420 | We had more success with Biden than we had with Clinton.

00:30:21.940 | - Well, there's this interesting story

00:30:24.980 | about a long time coming meeting

00:30:26.820 | between you and Obama in 2018, I believe.

00:30:30.980 | So Ari Rabenhoft, who was a former deputy campaign manager,

00:30:34.940 | wrote a great book, I would say, about you,

00:30:37.260 | called "The Fighting Soul on the Road with Bernie Sanders."

00:30:40.340 | And he tells many great stories,

00:30:42.540 | but one of them is your meeting with Obama.

00:30:45.860 | And he says that Obama told you,

00:30:48.100 | "Bernie," I wish I could do a good Obama impression,

00:30:50.900 | (laughing)

00:30:51.900 | "Bernie, you're an Old Testament prophet,

00:30:53.980 | "a moral voice for our party, giving us guidance.

00:30:57.180 | "Here's the thing, though.

00:30:58.440 | "Prophets don't get to be king.

00:31:00.600 | "Kings have to make choices, prophets don't.

00:31:03.220 | "Are you willing to make those choices?"

00:31:05.940 | Basically, Obama's making the case

00:31:07.460 | that you have to sort of moderate your approach

00:31:11.380 | in order to win.

00:31:12.580 | So was Obama right?

00:31:14.860 | - Look, and again, that's why politics

00:31:17.300 | is very, very fascinating.

00:31:21.100 | Sometimes you can run and lose and you really win

00:31:24.020 | if your goal is not just individual power,

00:31:28.100 | but transforming society.

00:31:30.620 | - One of my heroes, you mentioned Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

00:31:33.360 | Who is one of my heroes?

00:31:35.240 | Another one of my heroes is Eugene Victor Debs.

00:31:37.680 | That ring a bell?

00:31:38.600 | - Yeah, yes.

00:31:39.920 | - Okay.

00:31:40.760 | - For many reasons, yes.

00:31:41.880 | - All right, Debs, many listeners may not know

00:31:45.960 | who Debs was.

00:31:47.560 | Debs was a union organizer in the early 1900s,

00:31:52.080 | helped form the American Railway Union,

00:31:54.800 | ran for president I think five times,

00:31:58.540 | ran the last time while he was in a jail cell

00:32:01.380 | because of his opposition to World War I

00:32:03.440 | and got a million votes doing that.

00:32:06.500 | Debs lost badly in every race that he ran in.

00:32:10.100 | 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt ran for president.

00:32:13.800 | And much of what Roosevelt ended up doing

00:32:16.640 | was at least some of what Debs had talked about.

00:32:18.800 | Debs helped lay the groundwork for ideas.

00:32:21.760 | So sometimes you can lose and win

00:32:23.700 | if you're into transforming society.

00:32:27.280 | What my view is, where I disagree with Obama,

00:32:30.320 | is I think you have got to raise consciousness

00:32:33.720 | among ordinary people.

00:32:36.240 | And when people know what's going on

00:32:38.000 | and are prepared in an organized way to fight for change,

00:32:41.800 | they can make incredible changes.

00:32:43.480 | And we've seen that in recent years.

00:32:45.840 | You know, today we take for granted,

00:32:48.280 | we have a woman running for president of the United States,

00:32:50.280 | so I'm supporting.

00:32:51.180 | We have had other women running for president.

00:32:54.000 | We have women governors and senators.

00:32:55.800 | Not so many years ago in the United States Senate,

00:32:58.080 | there were 98 men, two women, all right?

00:33:00.960 | Even before that, 1920,

00:33:03.080 | it was when women got the right to vote.

00:33:05.160 | How did that change?

00:33:06.520 | How did women's role in society change?

00:33:08.520 | It changed because women and their male allies

00:33:10.800 | stood up and fought.

00:33:11.760 | Gay rights.

00:33:12.720 | I'm old enough to remember that anybody I knew who was gay,

00:33:16.000 | you think they would talk about it?

00:33:17.820 | Come out about it?

00:33:18.660 | No, they wouldn't.

00:33:19.480 | That's changed.

00:33:21.680 | We have seen, you know, in terms of civil rights,

00:33:24.160 | massive changes.

00:33:25.220 | Change happens when people at the grassroots level demand it.

00:33:29.560 | We talked about healthcare a moment ago.

00:33:31.160 | We will get universal Medicare for all

00:33:34.420 | when millions of people make it clear

00:33:35.920 | that's what they want.

00:33:37.000 | So I believe politics starts at the grassroots level,

00:33:39.640 | and that's how you gotta bring about change.

00:33:42.280 | - So just to go back to Obama, though,

00:33:44.600 | in many ways, he too is a singular historic figure

00:33:48.200 | in American politics who has brought about a lot of change.

00:33:52.040 | He's a symbol I think that'll be remembered for a long time.

00:33:55.000 | What do you admire most about Obama?

00:33:59.080 | - Well, you know, I know him.

00:34:00.600 | We're not best friends, but I know him well,

00:34:02.560 | and we chat every once in a while.

00:34:04.600 | First of all, don't underestimate what it was

00:34:08.960 | in 2008 to be the first black president

00:34:13.000 | in the history of this country.

00:34:16.080 | And I think fewer deny that he's an extraordinarily

00:34:20.420 | intelligent guy, very, very articulate,

00:34:23.400 | one of the best speakers that there is in America,

00:34:27.200 | and that he and his family, and again,

00:34:28.640 | it's a lot harder than it looks.

00:34:30.960 | He and his family, for eight years,

00:34:33.080 | that's his wife, Michelle, and his kids,

00:34:35.920 | really held that office in a way that earned,

00:34:40.920 | I think, the respect of the American people,

00:34:44.400 | even when people disagreed with him politically.

00:34:46.680 | So he deserves, and again, don't ever underestimate.

00:34:52.760 | I think years ago, there were people who said,

00:34:55.680 | "A black president in our lifetimes?

00:34:57.520 | "Never gonna happen, can't happen.

00:34:59.240 | "Too racist a country."

00:35:00.520 | He did it, and that is a huge accomplishment.

00:35:03.320 | And I think he has had some significant achievements

00:35:08.720 | in his presidential tenure.

00:35:11.280 | He and I did disagree on a number of issues.

00:35:16.280 | I think he will tell you, I think his public stance

00:35:20.160 | is that, "Yeah, if you had to start all over again,

00:35:22.480 | "he would do Medicare for all, single-payer,

00:35:24.820 | "but where we are right now, the best he could do

00:35:26.560 | "is the Affordable Care Act."

00:35:27.720 | Well, we disagree on that,

00:35:29.640 | and we disagree on other things.

00:35:30.960 | But I think he deserves an enormous amount of credit

00:35:35.240 | for what he has accomplished.

00:35:36.640 | - And he, like you, also gave a damn good speech

00:35:39.920 | opposing the Iraq War before running for president,

00:35:43.240 | and that takes courage.

00:35:44.520 | - Yes, it does.

00:35:45.540 | - But then it also shows that, once again,

00:35:47.320 | to office, it's not so easy to oppose

00:35:50.400 | or to work against the military-industrial complex.

00:35:53.560 | - It is very hard.

00:35:55.760 | People do not fully appreciate

00:35:57.400 | how powerful the establishment is,

00:35:59.280 | whether it is the healthcare industry,

00:36:01.740 | whether it's the military-industrial complex,

00:36:05.420 | whether it's the fossil-fuel industry.

00:36:07.920 | These people have unlimited amounts of money,

00:36:10.040 | they are very smart lobbyists in Washington, D.C.,

00:36:13.040 | and they are very, very greedy people.

00:36:14.720 | They want it all.

00:36:15.560 | - I have to ask you about capitalism, the pros and cons.

00:36:19.440 | So you wrote a book,

00:36:21.080 | "It's Okay to be Angry About Capitalism,"

00:36:23.360 | that is a thorough, rigorous criticism

00:36:27.560 | of, I would say, hyper-capitalism.

00:36:29.560 | - Yes, that's right.

00:36:30.400 | - A certain kind of capitalism that you argue

00:36:33.600 | that we are existing in today in the United States.

00:36:36.220 | But a lot of people would attribute to capitalism

00:36:38.960 | all the amazing technological innovations

00:36:42.880 | over the past 70-plus years

00:36:45.680 | that have contributed to increase in quality of life,

00:36:49.920 | in GDP, in decrease in poverty,

00:36:53.760 | decrease in infant mortality,

00:36:56.480 | increase in expected life expectancy.

00:37:00.680 | So how do you see the tension,

00:37:05.440 | the pros of capitalism and the cons of capitalism?

00:37:09.060 | - Some of my European friends, they say,

00:37:11.060 | "Bernie, in the United States,

00:37:12.620 | "you're considered to be very radical.

00:37:14.060 | "If you were here in France or Denmark or someplace,

00:37:19.060 | "you'd be kind of mainstream left guy,

00:37:21.540 | "not all that radical."

00:37:23.340 | So this is what I think.

00:37:24.680 | I mean, I think the best that we could do right now,

00:37:26.720 | where we are right now,

00:37:27.920 | is to create a society which does two things.

00:37:33.900 | It encourages innovation,

00:37:36.380 | but at the same time,

00:37:39.160 | it makes sure that all people in a wealthy nation

00:37:43.600 | have a decent standard of living.

00:37:45.320 | In some countries, if you look at Scandinavia,

00:37:47.560 | and this shocks people

00:37:48.600 | 'cause we don't talk about this at all.

00:37:50.480 | So in Scandinavia, it has been the case,

00:37:52.400 | you know, Denmark, Finland, Norway,

00:37:55.400 | for years that people have healthcare.

00:37:58.520 | That's not a big deal.

00:37:59.440 | You end up in the hospital, so what?

00:38:00.780 | They don't pay a bill.

00:38:03.160 | You have, and this shocks people.

00:38:06.220 | In America right now, we have people who get one week,

00:38:09.220 | two weeks off paid vacation.

00:38:11.300 | Sometimes people get nothing, you know that?

00:38:12.780 | There are people out there who have no vacation at all.

00:38:15.120 | You know, in Germany, you get six weeks paid vacation

00:38:18.900 | and other holidays as well.

00:38:20.700 | People are shocked by that.

00:38:22.060 | In America, we don't have paid family and medical leave.

00:38:25.620 | The only major country not to do it.

00:38:27.660 | You know, other countries, you know,

00:38:28.940 | your wife gets sick, you stay home with her.

00:38:31.620 | Your kids get sick, not a big deal.

00:38:33.240 | You get a certain amount of paid family and medical leave.

00:38:36.720 | Cost of prescription drugs are far more affordable.

00:38:40.160 | So what you wanna do

00:38:41.600 | is create what's called a social safety net.

00:38:44.280 | That means, I don't care what your income is.

00:38:46.380 | Of course, you're gonna have healthcare as a human right.

00:38:48.800 | Of course, you're gonna have housing that is affordable.

00:38:51.580 | Of course, your kids are gonna have

00:38:52.960 | great quality education from childcare to university

00:38:55.840 | without much cost.

00:38:57.880 | You know, every country has a little bit different,

00:39:00.120 | but there are countries in the world right now,

00:39:01.900 | I think in Germany,

00:39:03.220 | I think college is now tuition-free, as I recall,

00:39:06.560 | for obvious reasons.

00:39:09.940 | They want to have the best educated workforce they can.

00:39:13.100 | So in terms of government playing a role

00:39:17.020 | in a civilized democratic society

00:39:19.460 | of providing all basic needs,

00:39:21.620 | healthcare, education, housing, retirement benefits,

00:39:26.180 | yes, that is what we've gotta do.

00:39:27.940 | Now, does that mean then that the government

00:39:30.320 | is gonna run every mom-and-pop store on the corner?

00:39:32.320 | Of course not.

00:39:33.400 | You want innovation.

00:39:35.000 | You wanna go out and start a business,

00:39:37.120 | produce a product, good luck to you, make money.

00:39:39.600 | But on the other hand, in terms of even making money,

00:39:42.400 | we want you to be able to do that,

00:39:43.720 | come up with good products, good services.

00:39:46.360 | But do I think you should end up with $100 billion?

00:39:49.400 | No, I don't.

00:39:51.860 | And you know what's funny?

00:39:52.700 | I did an interview with Bill Gates,

00:39:55.940 | who is, I think, the third wealthiest guy in the country,

00:39:58.840 | struggling behind Musk and Bezos, I think.

00:40:04.200 | And he's only worth 100-plus billion, but he gets by.

00:40:07.840 | And I said to him, "Bill."

00:40:08.840 | He was supposed to ask me questions.

00:40:10.240 | I asked him the question.

00:40:11.080 | I said, "Bill, tell me something.

00:40:12.420 | "You're an innovator with Microsoft and all that stuff.

00:40:15.680 | "Did you know that you'd become a multi-billionaire

00:40:18.180 | "and was that what motivated you?"

00:40:20.680 | And he said, "No."

00:40:21.720 | And I believe he was honest.

00:40:22.560 | He said, "I love doing what I do.

00:40:23.640 | "I love programming."

00:40:24.480 | You know, he was a kid.

00:40:25.320 | He started doing that.

00:40:26.140 | He loved it.

00:40:26.980 | He was motivated by it.

00:40:28.240 | Do you think that there are scientists out there

00:40:30.720 | who work day and night trying to develop drugs

00:40:33.520 | to deal with Alzheimer's or cancer,

00:40:35.600 | that they motivate, "Oh, boy, if I come up with this drug,

00:40:37.600 | "I'm gonna become a billionaire"?

00:40:39.240 | So I think we want to reward success.

00:40:42.160 | Fine.

00:40:43.080 | But you don't need a billion dollars.

00:40:45.380 | We want people to get satisfaction

00:40:47.280 | from what they accomplished, the work they're doing,

00:40:49.500 | whether it's cleaning the street

00:40:51.080 | or developing a new drug.

00:40:53.440 | So I think we have gone a little bit too far,

00:40:55.480 | and you're right in talking about the book

00:40:56.960 | was an attack on, I call it hyper-capitalism

00:40:59.960 | or uber-capitalism, but right now,

00:41:02.300 | and this is not an American issue,

00:41:03.680 | this is a global issue, you know,

00:41:06.000 | it's not an accident that Musk is over there

00:41:07.680 | in Saudi Arabia talking to the, you know,

00:41:09.720 | trillionaire families in the Mideast.

00:41:12.560 | These guys that were Putin and his friends.

00:41:14.760 | You got probably not more than, you know,

00:41:16.760 | five, 10,000 extraordinarily wealthy families

00:41:20.300 | who have unbelievable economic power,

00:41:22.240 | over seven billion people on this planet.

00:41:24.920 | - Well, Elon Musk is actually an interesting case

00:41:26.740 | because he's investing all the money back

00:41:28.840 | into the businesses.

00:41:30.300 | So I think there is a balance to be struck,

00:41:34.120 | and you just spoke to it, which is we can still celebrate

00:41:37.160 | even big companies that are bringing wealth to the world,

00:41:40.000 | that are building cool stuff,

00:41:41.220 | that are improving quality of life,

00:41:42.860 | but we can question of why is it that the working class

00:41:47.580 | does not have a living wage in many cases,

00:41:50.440 | and sort of trying to find that balance.

00:41:52.400 | - That's right, that is the, look,

00:41:54.480 | I am no great fan of Elon Musk,

00:41:57.000 | especially in the role that he's playing right now

00:41:58.640 | in Trump's campaign.

00:42:00.000 | But is he a brilliant guy?

00:42:01.960 | Of course he is.

00:42:02.840 | Does he work like a dog?

00:42:03.920 | Of course he does.

00:42:05.200 | Does he come up with these incredible innovations

00:42:07.200 | in companies?

00:42:08.040 | Yes, he does.

00:42:08.860 | Does he deserve credit for that?

00:42:09.700 | Yeah, he does.

00:42:10.800 | But, you know, even in terms of encouraging innovation,

00:42:15.000 | I would hope that we are focusing on the important issues.

00:42:18.800 | I would love to see great innovators figure out

00:42:21.240 | how we build the affordable housing that we need,

00:42:23.440 | come up with the great drugs that we need to solve

00:42:25.760 | many of the terrible illnesses that plague people,

00:42:28.840 | climate change, for God's sakes.

00:42:30.720 | All right, do we need innovation?

00:42:32.080 | You know, we're making good, some progress in this country.

00:42:34.680 | Should we do more?

00:42:35.520 | What kind of technologies out there

00:42:37.160 | can really cut back on carbon emissions?

00:42:41.520 | So, you know, I hope we focus

00:42:43.360 | on some of the most important issues that impact humanity.

00:42:46.360 | But, you know, reward innovators,

00:42:47.800 | I don't have a problem with that,

00:42:48.760 | but I do have a problem when three people

00:42:50.800 | end up owning more wealth

00:42:51.640 | than the bottom half of American society.

00:42:54.000 | - Maybe you can briefly speak to something

00:42:55.560 | you tweeted recently about Donald Trump

00:42:58.560 | going to McDonald's and the minimum wage,

00:43:01.120 | I believe, of seven and a half dollars.

00:43:03.680 | Can you just speak to that tweet?

00:43:05.920 | - Look, nothing new.

00:43:07.160 | Trump didn't invent it.

00:43:08.240 | That's, of course, a photo opportunity.

00:43:09.720 | I don't want it to in my life, too.

00:43:11.640 | So, you go to a place, he puts on an apron.

00:43:13.480 | He, good old Donald Trump,

00:43:15.220 | just another McDonald's worker.

00:43:17.160 | But, anyhow, he was civilized.

00:43:18.880 | He did his photo op, that's fine.

00:43:20.560 | Kamala Harris was in North Carolina

00:43:22.040 | handing out food to people who were victims

00:43:23.840 | of the hurricane, fine.

00:43:25.600 | That's what politicians do.

00:43:27.120 | But some reporter asked him, they said,

00:43:30.680 | you know, Mr. Trump, are you for raising the minimum wage?

00:43:35.600 | And that was a fair question,

00:43:36.960 | because you got, I don't know how many,

00:43:38.320 | but many, many thousands of McDonald's workers

00:43:41.320 | and millions of other American workers right now

00:43:45.040 | are trying to get by on nine, 10, 11 bucks an hour.

00:43:48.480 | Federal minimum wage is seven and a quarter.

00:43:50.840 | You have people working at McDonald's right now,

00:43:52.840 | for sure, who are working with 12, 13 bucks an hour.

00:43:55.880 | So, the reporter said, you know,

00:43:57.840 | what do you think about raising the federal minimum wage?

00:43:59.960 | And he's, oh, these are great workers.

00:44:01.480 | I love McDonald's, so forth.

00:44:02.880 | He didn't answer the question.

00:44:04.500 | Well, I think that in the richest country

00:44:06.760 | in the history of the world,

00:44:08.080 | if you work 40 hours a week,

00:44:09.520 | you should not be living in poverty.

00:44:11.080 | And that means we should have a federal minimum wage,

00:44:13.120 | not absurdly seven and a quarter an hour,

00:44:16.600 | but in my view, $17 an hour.

00:44:20.160 | Will that solve all the economic problems

00:44:22.080 | for working class people?

00:44:23.080 | No, it won't.

00:44:23.920 | It'll help, it'll help.

00:44:25.720 | - Since running for president,

00:44:27.040 | you've often been attacked, especially from the right,

00:44:29.640 | about being worth, I believe, $2 million

00:44:32.800 | and owning three houses.

00:44:36.680 | So, from my perspective, the answer to that

00:44:38.680 | is most of your wealth has been earned

00:44:41.520 | from writing books and selling those books.

00:44:45.680 | And you are one of the most famous politicians

00:44:48.040 | in the world, and so your wealth and the context

00:44:50.840 | in comparison to other people of that fame level

00:44:54.120 | and other politicians is actually quite modest.

00:44:56.600 | So, what's your response, usually, to those attacks?

00:44:59.720 | - Do I own three residences?

00:45:02.240 | Yeah, I do.

00:45:03.140 | I live here in Burlington, Vermont.

00:45:04.440 | We live in a middle class neighborhood, nice house.

00:45:10.240 | Guess what, I'm a United States senator,

00:45:12.320 | and I own a home in Washington, D.C.

00:45:14.840 | as do most senators.

00:45:15.880 | You know, you live there year after year.

00:45:17.600 | When I first went to, actually, when I was in Congress

00:45:19.980 | for 16 years, I rented all the time.

00:45:22.000 | But I got elected, okay, got a six-year term.

00:45:23.960 | You know what, let's buy a house.

00:45:25.120 | So, we bought a house, and guess what?

00:45:27.760 | Like many thousands of people in the state of Vermont,

00:45:30.120 | I have a summer camp, it's a nice one, on Lake Champlain.

00:45:33.440 | That's it.

00:45:34.580 | Now, how did I get the money?

00:45:35.720 | You're right.

00:45:36.800 | I wrote two best-selling books,

00:45:40.280 | including this book on capitalism.

00:45:42.200 | It was New York Times bestseller for a while.

00:45:45.120 | And also another book was a youth book.

00:45:47.920 | And that's, and I make, I don't know, 175,000 a year.

00:45:51.600 | And that's more or less how I became

00:45:54.880 | the zillionaire that I am.

00:45:56.240 | (laughing)

00:45:57.080 | - Well, I should also mention that sometimes

00:45:58.520 | the word "mansion" is used, and I think your residences

00:46:01.440 | are quite modest, at least from my perspective.

00:46:03.280 | - Yeah, normal houses in Vermont.

00:46:05.080 | And they're not, you know, they're middle-class houses,

00:46:06.880 | very nice house.

00:46:07.760 | - So, when you started in politics,

00:46:09.180 | I read you were worth $1,100.

00:46:12.520 | - That much?

00:46:13.360 | - Yeah, that much, that's right.

00:46:14.960 | Has the increase in wealth changed your ability

00:46:18.560 | to relate to the working class?

00:46:20.640 | - Oh, that's a good question.

00:46:21.560 | And obviously growing up in a working-class family

00:46:24.360 | has been maybe the most singularly significant

00:46:30.600 | aspect of my politics.

00:46:33.400 | It's, you know, I grew up without money

00:46:35.680 | in a family that lived in a rent-controlled apartment

00:46:37.840 | in Brooklyn, New York.

00:46:39.100 | So that has impacted me.

00:46:40.720 | I'll tell you, I don't really give a damn about money.

00:46:43.560 | I drive a car that's 11 years old, you know,

00:46:45.520 | it's an old car.

00:46:47.440 | And money, here's my jewelry, it's a solar watch.

00:46:50.920 | - Nice.

00:46:51.760 | - And my wedding ring, that's about it.

00:46:52.600 | I don't have a Rolex watch, would not be interested in it.

00:46:56.280 | But I'll tell you what has impacted me.

00:46:58.800 | My wife, who also grew up in a working-class family,

00:47:00.920 | will tell you the same.

00:47:02.960 | We don't worry.

00:47:03.800 | You raised that issue, you know,

00:47:05.040 | if we have to go to the doctor,

00:47:06.160 | if our kids have to go to the doctor, we go to the doctor.

00:47:08.520 | I don't spend nights worrying.

00:47:10.080 | I used to, there was a time I had to worry about

00:47:11.720 | how to pay my electric bill.

00:47:13.640 | I don't worry about that anymore.

00:47:15.200 | So what has happened, that stress,

00:47:16.760 | that economic stress of not worrying

00:47:19.680 | about a financial disaster, that's gone.

00:47:22.160 | And that is enormous.

00:47:24.160 | I, you know, maybe as much or more

00:47:27.320 | than any other member of the Senate,

00:47:29.240 | work hard, not only for, but with working-class people.

00:47:32.760 | I'm chairman of the Committee that Deals with Labor Issues.

00:47:35.000 | We have been involved probably in dozens of strikes,

00:47:38.800 | all over this country, I've been on picket lines.

00:47:41.160 | So, you know, I do my best.

00:47:43.200 | It's a very easy trap to fall into.

00:47:45.160 | You can get separated from ordinary people

00:47:48.360 | and their struggles, not hard to do.

00:47:50.840 | I try as hard as I can not to do that.

00:47:53.440 | - So sometimes people say, "Can money buy happiness?"

00:47:55.680 | I think I agree with you, that worry,

00:47:57.680 | sort of being able to fill up your car

00:48:00.080 | and not worry about how much it's going to cost,

00:48:03.040 | or be able to get food for dinner

00:48:05.680 | and not worry about how much it's gonna cost.

00:48:09.060 | Or even, you know, I've been poor most of my life,

00:48:14.000 | but I've been very fortunate recently

00:48:15.400 | to have enough wealth to not worry about healthcare,

00:48:19.280 | to have insurance and be able to afford

00:48:21.480 | an emergency room visit.

00:48:23.040 | And that worry is just such a giant lift

00:48:25.740 | off your shoulders.

00:48:26.720 | - Lex, I think you said it very well.

00:48:28.760 | I remember, even to, and I saw this change in myself.

00:48:32.000 | When I used to go out and I'd do the grocery shop.

00:48:35.560 | My wife does a lot of the cooking.

00:48:36.800 | I do the grocery shop.

00:48:37.960 | And I used to look at the prices of everything.

00:48:39.880 | I do that less now.

00:48:42.840 | You know, I said, "What the hell?

00:48:43.680 | "So what?

00:48:44.500 | "It costs 50 cents more for this can of stuff, so what?"

00:48:47.440 | But that's a luxury you have

00:48:49.720 | when you don't have to worry about that.

00:48:50.940 | And I don't have to worry about it.

00:48:52.120 | But your point is, again, to me,

00:48:55.800 | I don't like big fancy cars or big fancy homes.

00:48:59.640 | Don't go on.

00:49:00.480 | My wife will tell you we've not been on a real vacation

00:49:02.520 | for God knows how long, 'cause I work pretty hard.

00:49:05.280 | But the major thing about having money,

00:49:08.340 | which is enormously important, is just what you said.

00:49:11.080 | I don't have to worry.

00:49:12.240 | If somebody in my family gets sick,

00:49:14.680 | I don't have to worry about that.

00:49:16.080 | I don't have to worry about putting food on the table

00:49:18.600 | or paying the mortgage.

00:49:19.520 | So that's what money has done.

00:49:21.920 | - Okay, let me ask you about the future

00:49:24.760 | of the Democratic Party.

00:49:25.800 | So one of the biggest impacts you've had

00:49:28.520 | is you've been the fuel, the catalyst

00:49:30.380 | for the increase of the Progressive Caucus,

00:49:32.560 | the progressive movement within the Democratic Party.

00:49:35.160 | Do you think that is the future,

00:49:37.320 | the progressives, even Democratic Socialist leaders

00:49:41.180 | will take over the party?

00:49:42.720 | - That is the most important question

00:49:44.520 | regarding, to my mind, American politics.

00:49:46.960 | One of the successes that we've had,

00:49:50.000 | and I'm proud to have played a role in this,

00:49:52.200 | is that if you go to the House of Representatives right now,

00:49:54.720 | you will see almost 100 members of the Progressive Caucus

00:49:59.520 | led very well by a woman from Washington,

00:50:02.120 | Pramila Jayapal, does a great job.

00:50:04.960 | You know, it's people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,

00:50:09.040 | and Ilhan Omar, and many others.

00:50:10.920 | Many of them are young, often women, people of color,

00:50:14.720 | and many of them come from working class backgrounds.

00:50:17.880 | So what we have been able to do in recent years,

00:50:20.160 | elect a number of strong progressives

00:50:23.840 | who represent working families very, very effectively.

00:50:27.520 | The struggle in the Democratic Party

00:50:29.920 | is between the corporate wing and the progressive wing.

00:50:33.740 | And the corporate wing takes a whole lot of money,

00:50:38.360 | sees its salvation in getting a whole lot of money

00:50:41.360 | from wealthy individuals and large corporations,

00:50:46.360 | and is not very vigorous, in my view,

00:50:51.000 | in representing the needs of working class people.

00:50:53.900 | If they were, we would have health care for all,

00:50:57.180 | we would have a minimum wage that was a living wage,

00:51:00.820 | we would not have a housing crisis,

00:51:02.880 | we would not have a tax system

00:51:05.480 | in which billionaires pay an effective tax rate

00:51:08.060 | that is lower than a truck driver or a nurse.

00:51:11.280 | So I think one of the reasons

00:51:12.800 | that Trump has had political success

00:51:15.440 | is not so much his ideas.

00:51:17.760 | Most working class people don't think

00:51:19.500 | we should give tax breaks to billionaires,

00:51:22.080 | or worry about the size of Arnold Palmer's genitalia.

00:51:25.920 | But they are angry, people are angry.

00:51:29.920 | And the Democrats have not responded

00:51:32.360 | effectively to that anger.

00:51:33.400 | So the struggle that we are waging right now

00:51:36.240 | is the future of the Democratic Party.

00:51:38.480 | Will it be a party of the working class

00:51:40.880 | and represent working class issues,

00:51:42.480 | whether you're black or white or Latino or Asian,

00:51:44.400 | or whatever you may be?

00:51:45.840 | Or will it be a corporately dominated party?

00:51:47.960 | That's the struggle we're in right now.

00:51:49.820 | - Did you consider running in 2024?

00:51:52.020 | From my perspective, I would have loved it if you ran.

00:51:54.220 | I think you would have had a great chance

00:51:55.700 | of winning not just the primary, but the presidency.

00:52:00.620 | - I gave it about five minutes, though, to it.

00:52:02.900 | And the reason was, we have a slogan,

00:52:05.380 | the progressive movement, it's not about me, it's about us.

00:52:08.640 | And to have taken on Biden, who, in my view,

00:52:13.540 | on domestic issues, has been quite strong,

00:52:18.120 | would have really split the Democratic Party

00:52:20.720 | and laid the groundwork for an easy Trump victory.

00:52:24.160 | And that I did not wanna see.

00:52:25.960 | So sometimes in life, and I know that a lot

00:52:29.440 | of younger people don't agree with me,

00:52:31.920 | but you gotta make choices which are painful.

00:52:35.780 | So I strongly supported Biden,

00:52:37.260 | because I liked his domestic record.

00:52:40.120 | He's done some good things against a lot of opposition.

00:52:43.940 | And I'm supporting Kamala right now.

00:52:45.740 | But I'm doing my best to see that a dangerous guy

00:52:48.900 | like Donald Trump does not become president.

00:52:51.380 | - And the hope for you is that there will be

00:52:53.180 | future candidates that are populist, that are progressive.

00:52:56.380 | - Yes, absolutely.

00:52:57.300 | - Let me ask you about AOC.

00:52:58.860 | She's become one of the most influential voices

00:53:01.300 | for the progressive cause in the United States.

00:53:03.940 | You two had a great conversation on your podcast,

00:53:07.040 | and in general, you worked together.

00:53:08.980 | So what's, to you, is most impressive about her?

00:53:12.180 | - I really like Alexandria a whole lot.

00:53:14.180 | She is a young woman who comes

00:53:18.640 | from a working class background.

00:53:20.660 | She helped her mother clean houses.

00:53:23.400 | She was a bartender in the Bronx, New York.

00:53:28.180 | And I'm very proud that my campaign

00:53:31.980 | for president inspired her to run.

00:53:35.100 | And she ran on a progressive working class program.

00:53:39.900 | And she took on one of the more powerful guys,

00:53:42.660 | a guy named Joe Crowley,

00:53:44.660 | who was pretty high up in the Democratic Party.

00:53:47.520 | And she knocked on doors.

00:53:48.860 | She had no money.

00:53:50.580 | She did a very strong grassroots effort.

00:53:53.460 | And I appreciate that.

00:53:54.420 | So that's number one.

00:53:55.300 | I like what she stands for.

00:53:57.020 | She's incredibly smart.

00:53:58.700 | And she has that certain charisma

00:54:01.180 | that, you know, maybe you're born with it,

00:54:03.140 | maybe you develop it, I don't know.

00:54:04.060 | She, a couple of years ago,

00:54:05.780 | she came up here to Vermont at some time.

00:54:08.340 | She and her partner, Riley, came up.

00:54:12.100 | And we were out in the street,

00:54:14.820 | and people saw her, and they said,

00:54:16.100 | "Oh, Congresswoman," and she just smiled.

00:54:19.340 | And she had an approach to people which was beautiful.

00:54:22.740 | I mean, it wasn't phony, it was real.

00:54:24.900 | But to be a politician, you gotta know how to,

00:54:26.980 | you know, you could be a great intellectual,

00:54:28.500 | but you can't relate to people.

00:54:29.740 | She relates well to people.

00:54:31.300 | And so I think both from a personality perspective,

00:54:36.220 | from an intellect perspective,

00:54:39.020 | from an ideological perspective,

00:54:41.260 | she helped create the Green New Deal concept,

00:54:43.860 | the need to create jobs as we transform

00:54:45.940 | our energy system away from fossil fuel,

00:54:48.260 | strong advocate for Medicare for all workers' rights.

00:54:50.700 | So I'm a big fan of Alexandria.

00:54:53.060 | - What do you think is the most powerful,

00:54:54.780 | enduring impact you've had on American politics?

00:54:57.700 | Looking back, you've been in it for quite a bit.

00:55:00.900 | - Well, you know, I don't know that I can give you

00:55:02.620 | a singular answer, you know, I was mayor of this city,

00:55:05.300 | and proud of what we accomplished here.

00:55:07.500 | Proud of my accomplishments as a U.S. Senator, you know.

00:55:10.700 | When COVID was devastating this country,

00:55:12.740 | and we had a massive economic downturn,

00:55:14.460 | as chairman of the Budget Committee,

00:55:15.620 | I helped write the American Rescue Plan,

00:55:17.980 | which put a lot of money into people's pockets.

00:55:20.700 | We cut childhood poverty by 40%,

00:55:23.900 | by providing a child tax credit.

00:55:26.580 | We kept hospitals going, we kept colleges going,

00:55:29.460 | kept people from getting evicted,

00:55:31.420 | helped get public health out there,

00:55:32.940 | people getting the vaccines, you know, I'm proud of that.

00:55:35.540 | But at the end of the day, I think what I have shown

00:55:39.660 | is that the ideas, this gets back to the early part

00:55:42.340 | of this conversation, the ideas that I am talking about

00:55:46.420 | are ideas that are widely supported, you know.

00:55:51.020 | So when, you know, Donald Trump says,

00:55:52.300 | "Oh, Bernie Sanders is a far left!"

00:55:54.660 | You know, it's like I'm some kind of extremist

00:55:56.300 | coming up with ideas that nobody supports.

00:55:58.900 | Everything that I talk about,

00:55:59.980 | raising the minimum wage, healthcare for all,

00:56:02.340 | a tax system which demands the billionaires

00:56:04.340 | pay their fair share, those are all popular ideas,

00:56:07.180 | but people didn't know.

00:56:08.460 | You gotta run for president and have 20,000 people

00:56:11.220 | come out to your rallies and win 23 states,

00:56:13.780 | and they say, "Hmm, well, maybe those ideas

00:56:17.300 | "are not so crazy after all."

00:56:19.020 | And we gotta entertain 'em.

00:56:20.580 | The establishment doesn't like that.

00:56:22.580 | They really don't.

00:56:23.420 | They wanna tell you, and this is their main,

00:56:25.620 | this is how they succeed.

00:56:27.140 | What they say, Lex, is the world is the way it is.

00:56:30.460 | It always will be this way.

00:56:32.220 | We got the wealth, we got the power,

00:56:34.340 | and don't think of anything else.

00:56:35.660 | This is the way it is.

00:56:37.660 | You have no power, give up.

00:56:39.420 | They don't say it quite that way,

00:56:40.660 | but that's really what the intent is.

00:56:42.720 | And what we showed is, guess what?

00:56:44.420 | You know, running an outsider campaign,

00:56:50.220 | we took on the Democratic establishment,

00:56:51.820 | we came close to winning it, and we did win 23 states,

00:56:55.720 | and the ideas that we're talking about

00:56:57.000 | are the ideas that working-class people,

00:56:59.360 | young people, believe in.

00:57:00.720 | - Yeah, you showed that it's possible to win,

00:57:03.620 | and that's an idea that will resonate for decades to come.

00:57:06.100 | - And out of that came dozens of candidates

00:57:08.820 | now in the House of Representatives,

00:57:10.480 | people on city council, people on state legislature,

00:57:12.760 | who did win.

00:57:14.080 | - So we mentioned about the worry of getting sick,

00:57:17.500 | the worry of life that many people

00:57:20.800 | in the working class are suffering from,

00:57:22.680 | but there's also the worry that we all experience

00:57:26.920 | of the finiteness of life.

00:57:28.760 | Do you ponder your own mortality?

00:57:30.560 | Are you afraid of it?

00:57:31.400 | - Well, when you're 83, it does come across.

00:57:33.840 | - All right.

00:57:35.240 | - Yeah, of course I do.

00:57:36.920 | - Are you afraid of it?

00:57:37.800 | - No, I'm not afraid of death.

00:57:39.820 | What I am afraid of, I think, is infirmity.

00:57:43.520 | I have been, knock on wood, this is wood, I think,

00:57:46.480 | reasonably healthy, with an exception.

00:57:49.160 | I had a heart attack five years ago.

00:57:50.840 | And what blew me away was that my body failed me

00:57:53.080 | for the very first time in my life.

00:57:55.300 | That was stunning to me,

00:57:57.160 | that suddenly I was in a hospital bed.

00:58:00.380 | I have a great deal of compassion for people,

00:58:05.280 | as we speak, who are in nursing homes,

00:58:07.500 | having a hard time walking,

00:58:10.920 | maybe your mental agility is slipping a little bit.

00:58:14.280 | That's tough, that's what worries me.

00:58:18.200 | We're all gonna die, and that's that.

00:58:21.080 | So I'm not afraid of that.

00:58:22.000 | But that aspect of getting older,

00:58:24.560 | and that does concern me.

00:58:27.800 | - That said, your mind is as sharp

00:58:30.800 | as any politician that I've ever heard.

00:58:35.720 | And also, just off-mic, I should say,

00:58:38.640 | just the warmth that you radiate,

00:58:40.440 | and I deeply, deeply appreciate that.

00:58:42.120 | - Well, thank you. - Just as a human being.

00:58:43.360 | So you still got it, after all that,

00:58:44.960 | after all those speeches,

00:58:46.720 | after all those houses,

00:58:50.880 | after all of it, there's still the humility

00:58:54.400 | and just the sharpness, the wit is all there.

00:58:57.900 | So Bernie, yeah, like I said,

00:59:00.000 | I wish you would've ran this year,

00:59:01.880 | but I also wish that there's future candidates.

00:59:05.180 | - Yeah, and there will be, Lex.

00:59:06.200 | I absolutely do, and I think,

00:59:08.560 | you know, you asked about my legacy,

00:59:10.440 | the idea that they're all wonderful,

00:59:12.240 | really, really wonderful people

00:59:15.080 | who are now got involved in the political process

00:59:17.800 | that are fighting for justice.

00:59:18.920 | That's a great legacy.

00:59:20.480 | - What gives you hope about the future of this country,

00:59:22.720 | about the future of the world?

00:59:24.480 | - You know, sometimes one can become very cynical.

00:59:28.120 | You look at the terrible wars that are going on right now.

00:59:31.020 | You look at the divisiveness in this country,

00:59:34.120 | the ugliness, the poverty.

00:59:36.480 | You look at climate change.

00:59:37.920 | You know, you can get depressed from all of that,

00:59:40.800 | but I am lucky in this sense,

00:59:43.440 | in that I've had the opportunity.

00:59:44.920 | People often ask, "What inspires you?

00:59:46.400 | "How do you keep going?"

00:59:47.960 | And I remember, it actually was in California

00:59:50.680 | where it really crystallized for me.

00:59:52.280 | I was at a rally in the agricultural area of California,

00:59:56.360 | and we did a rally, and it was sunset.

00:59:59.120 | Thousands of people were out,

01:00:00.600 | and you looked around the crowd,

01:00:02.680 | and there were young people, black and white and Latino

01:00:05.600 | and Asian American, huge cross-section.

01:00:08.820 | They're older people, and they all wanted

01:00:11.720 | to make America a very much better country.

01:00:15.880 | And it really moved, I mean, I see that time

01:00:18.280 | and time again, I've just been on the campaign trail,

01:00:20.480 | and you see great people, really beautiful people

01:00:23.840 | who are not interested in becoming billionaires.

01:00:26.480 | They want to improve life for other people in this country.

01:00:29.560 | So, you know, I am grateful that I, you know,

01:00:34.440 | it sounds like a platitude, you know,

01:00:35.640 | it's what every politician says, "Oh, blah, blah, blah, blah."

01:00:38.240 | But when you go out around the country, you know,

01:00:42.280 | you go to Native American reservations,

01:00:44.200 | and you go to factories and everything,

01:00:46.440 | and you see so many wonderful people.

01:00:48.400 | You know, I have been able to see things

01:00:50.160 | that many others have not,

01:00:51.000 | I've been to every state in the country.

01:00:53.040 | And that inspires me.

01:00:55.320 | - I share their optimism, I share your optimism.

01:00:58.080 | Bernie, I've been a fan for a long time.

01:01:00.340 | It's a great honor to speak to you today.

01:01:02.040 | Thank you so much.

01:01:02.880 | - Well, thank you very much for what you're doing.

01:01:04.200 | Let me just say a word about what you're doing.

01:01:06.200 | - Okay, let's go.

01:01:07.040 | - Apparently, the compliments here.

01:01:09.320 | You know, I think there is a growing dissatisfaction

01:01:13.320 | with corporate media.

01:01:15.160 | And not because it's fake news,

01:01:16.880 | or the reporters lie all the time, that's nonsense.

01:01:19.120 | They don't.

01:01:20.520 | But I think people want to hear folks really talk about,

01:01:23.840 | in a calm manner, about some of the very important issues

01:01:27.960 | which are not discussed in corporate media.

01:01:30.320 | And I think that's what you and some others are doing.

01:01:31.960 | So I thank you very much.

01:01:33.160 | It's a very important service to the country.

01:01:35.280 | - And thank you from a mayor perspective

01:01:37.560 | of creating a wonderful town.

01:01:39.400 | And I look forward to looking at the fall leaves

01:01:42.680 | walking around tonight.

01:01:43.520 | - Well, I didn't quite create the leaves.

01:01:44.720 | - Yeah. (laughing)

01:01:45.560 | - I did create some other things.

01:01:47.440 | - Okay, thank you so much, Bernie.

01:01:48.760 | - Thank you, Alex.

01:01:50.320 | - Thanks for listening to this conversation

01:01:51.880 | with Bernie Sanders.

01:01:53.200 | To support this podcast,

01:01:54.480 | please check out our sponsors in the description.

01:01:57.400 | And now, let me leave you with some words from Aristotle.

01:02:00.440 | "The real difference between democracy and oligarchy

01:02:04.480 | "is poverty and wealth.

01:02:06.240 | "Wherever men rule by reason of their wealth,

01:02:10.460 | "whether they be few or many, that is an oligarchy.

01:02:15.260 | "And where the poor rule, that is democracy."

01:02:19.160 | Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.

01:02:23.000 | (upbeat music)

01:02:25.580 | (upbeat music)

01:02:28.160 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Bernie Sanders Interview | Lex Fridman Podcast #450

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