‘A Threat To Democracy’: Sanders Takes Aim At Trump In Blistering Speech | WORLD NEWS | US NEWS

[00:00:00]When you stand up to these billionaires, as you will, and when you defeat them, you will bring hope and inspiration to people all across our country and in fact all over the world. [screaming] [cheering] [applause] You know, as Peggy and Ilhan and Keith and Tina have said, they got the money.

[00:00:33]We have the people.

[00:00:36][cheering] [applause] And that is in a nutshell what this campaign is about. And it comes within a broader context. I know that in Minnesota and I know certainly in Vermont and I know all over this country, people are kind of scratching their heads and they're looking around and say, "What the hell is going on in America today?"

[00:01:01]People know, I don't care if you're a conservative, Republican, you're a socialist, progressive, no matter what you may be, people are say something is fundamentally wrong.

[00:01:11]We are moving in the wrong direction.

[00:01:15][applause] >> Yeah.

[00:01:18]And part of that certainly is a president who is an authoritarian, happens not to believe in democracy, happens not to believe in the rule of law, [cheering] happens to be somebody who thinks that it's appropriate for more and more power to come into his own hands. hands.

[00:01:50]>> We have a president today in the American people see it who is a narcissist. You don't have to be a psychiatrist to know that. [cheering] [applause] If this guy had his way, he would name half of the buildings in America after himself. [cheering] This is somebody who is a pathological liar.

[00:02:17]I don't I honestly don't think he knows the difference between a lie and the truth. This is somebody who in a totally unprecedented way is a kleptocrat >> who has increased his wealth and the wealth of his family by billions of dollars since he has been president.

[00:02:43]>> [cheering] >> This is a president who waged a massive attack against working families. He gave a trillion dollars in tax breaks to the top 1%.

[00:02:58]And then and then at the same time, unbelievably, he threw 15 million Americans off the health care that they have.

[00:03:11]>> [cheering] >> and and thousands of fellow Americans, low-income and workingclass people will die as a result of that decision.

[00:03:23]Unnecessarily die.

[00:03:26]We have a president today who when he campaigned, he told the American people how much he was opposed to endless wars >> and then started a war with Iran which has now led to the deaths of 17 Americans, the wounding of hundreds more, and the loss of life of many thousands of innocent men, women, and children in Iran and neighboring countries.

[00:03:53]And that war goes on and on.

[00:03:58]>> But as dangerous and dysfunctional as the Trump administration is, most working families understand that the crisis we face are deeper than Trump.

[00:04:14]They understand that for decades, establishment policies and establishment politics have worked for the 1% but not for working people.

[00:04:28][applause] [cheering] They understand all across this country that in the richest country in the history of the world, which is what we are today, 60% of our people are living paycheck to paycheck.

[00:04:51]You all know what living paycheck to paycheck is about.

[00:04:55]>> Peggy grew up in a family living paycheck to paycheck. So did I. And it means people are stressing out every day. How the hell am I going to pay for my rent when the landlord raises the rent by 20%.

[00:05:10]What happens if my car breaks down? I got a $1,000 repair bill and I can't afford to fix it. How do I get to work?

[00:05:17]And if I don't get to work, how do I feed my family? What happens if my kid gets sick and I don't have any health insurance?

[00:05:28]And what happens maybe if I have worked my entire life and I would like to retire with a shred of dignity and security but I got nothing in the bank.

[00:05:40]That is what's going on all over America.

[00:05:45]Workingclass families are struggling to put food on the table, to pay for the basic necessities of life. And the people on top have never ever had it so good.

[00:06:06]And the American people are understanding that not only is our establishment policies not working, they understand, and Peggy and others described it to you this evening, that we have a corrupt campaign finance system.

[00:06:29]>> It's corrupt. There's no other way to talk about it.

[00:06:33]>> [applause] [applause] >> And that is why Peggy understands and Tina understands there's nothing more important than overturning this disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision.

[00:06:57]>> [cheering] [applause] [applause and cheering] >> We've got to get super PACs out of the political process.

[00:07:11][applause and cheering] And you know what else we got to do? We got to move toward public funding of elections.

[00:07:19]>> [cheering] [applause] [cheering] >> Now, let me give you the reason why the oligarchs are spending so much money here in Minnesota.

[00:07:38]They have looked around the country over the last year and they are catching on that the American people from coast to coast are sick and tired of status quo politicians and status quo policies.

[00:07:55][cheering and applause] They know what you know and I know and that is that progressives have been defeating establishment candidates all over this country. [screaming] [cheering] The oligarchs threw everything they had against Iran Mandani in New York. He won that race. [cheering] [cheering] [applause] >> We have won mayor's races in Seattle and in Washington DC.

[00:08:46][screaming and cheering] We have won congressional elections in Democratic primaries in Arizona, Ohio, Pennsylvania, California, Montana, Colorado, New Jersey, and New York.

[00:09:07][applause] >> [cheering] [applause] >> And my friends, despite all of the money the oligarchs are throwing against Peggy right here, we're going to win right here in the state of Minnesota.

[00:09:22][cheering] [applause] [applause] >> So the very simple question that I think everybody in Minnesota has got to ask themselves is why? Why are these people Why are these super PACs controlled by billionaires spending so much money to defeat Peggy Flanigan?

[00:09:48]>> What has she done that is so terrible that they have to spend that much to defeat her? And you understand? You understand that what they know is that Peggy is going to stand up to the greed of the billionaire class and fight for working families. [cheering] [applause] [applause] And the agenda that Peggy is fighting for is the agenda of the American people.

[00:10:29]>> [cheering] >> Does anybody here, anybody in this room, large room, we got a thousand people here, anybody think that the American healthcare system is working? [cheering] >> Does anybody think it makes sense that we are the only major country on earth not to guarantee health care to all people as a human right?

[00:10:52]Does anybody think that the function of a health care system should be to make billions of dollars in profit for insurance companies and drug companies?

[00:11:03]>> Well, Peggy doesn't either. [cheering] And that is why together [applause] we're going to guarantee healthc care to every man, woman, and child through a Medicare for all singlepayer system.

[00:11:22]>> [cheering] [screaming] [applause and cheering] >> Does anybody here think that we have an economy that is vaguely equitable >> when we have the 1% owning more wealth than the bottom 93%?

[00:11:50]>> [cheering] >> Does anybody think that it is anything less than insane that you got one man, Mr. Elon Musk, [cheering] owning three times more wealth than the bottom half of American households.

[00:12:18]And in the midst of this massive income and wealth inequality, the United States has the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country on earth.

[00:12:31][cheering] And one out of three seniors is struggling economically.

[00:12:40]So what Peggy Flanigan understands and what you understand and what the vast majority of the American people understand is that when 977 billionaires in America after receiving the largest tax break in history from Donald Trump became 2.2 trillion dollar richer just for that one piece of legislation. What Peggy knows, what I know, these guys are going to finally start paying their fair share of taxes. [cheering] [screaming] [cheering] [applause] We're not going to let billionaires get richer and avoid taxes once people sleep out on the street and kids go hungry.

[00:13:33]That is going to change.

[00:13:35]>> [cheering and applause] [applause] >> Peggy knows that when seniors are struggling, we're going to raise social security benefits by lifting the cap on taxable income. [cheering] [applause] >> [applause] >> And what Peggy knows is that when we have 800,000 Americans homeless here in Minnesota, in Vermont, and all over this country, when we have 20 million households spending half or more of their limited incomes, instead of spending a trillion plus money on the military, we're going to build millions of low income and affordable housing units.

[00:14:29][cheering] [applause] And unlike the president of the United States, Peggy understands that climate change is not a hoax, [cheering] but an existential threat to our planet.

[00:14:53]And we can create millions of good union jobs as we transform our energy system away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency and sustainable energy.

[00:15:03][cheering] [applause] And Peggy understands that AI and robotics developed and pushed by the very wealthiest people on earth, Musk and Bezos and Ellison and Zuckerberg and the others that these technologies are the most transformational in the history of humanity.

[00:15:35]They will impact every man, woman and child. And if we do not get our act together, they can wipe out over the next decades tens of millions of goodaying jobs.

[00:15:50][applause] [cheering] They could eviscerate our privacy rights. They're going to know every damn thing that you do, where you are, what your medical records are, what your bank records are, every email, every telephone call that you make.

[00:16:08]They will negatively impact the mental health of our kids. We got millions of kids now having AI bots as their best friends while reading scores and writing scores go down.

[00:16:22]And if AI, as some scientists believe, ever becomes smarter than humans, which is a pretty low bar, it could function independently of human control, threatening the very existence of humanity.

[00:16:40]And what Peggy understands, we cannot allow the wealthiest people in on earth to push these technologies without strong guidelines. We're going to take them on and make sure that these technologies work for all of us, not just to make the rich richer.

[00:16:58][applause and cheering] [applause] [cheering] As Peggy mentioned in her remarks, there is another reason why super PACs are spending a fortune against her.

[00:17:21]In my view, Israel, like any country, had a right to respond to a terrorist attack, but it did not have the right to wage an allout war against the Palestinian people.

[00:17:37][cheering] [applause] It did not have did not have the right within a population of 2.2 million people. It did not have the right to kill more than 73,000 Palestinians, mostly women, children, and the elderly.

[00:18:05]did not have the right did not have the right to injure 173,000 people again children the elderly. It did not have the right to destroy virtually the entire infrastructure of Gaza. The schools, the health care facilities, the water systems, the wastewater plants, the electric grid. It did not have the right to damage or destroy 92% of the housing units in Gaza.

[00:18:46]In other words, Israel did not have the right to commit genocide against the people of Gaza. [cheering] [applause] >> [applause] >> And what Peggy believes strongly and what I believe and what the vast majority of the American people believe, the Netanyahu extremist government in Israel should not get one nickel more from US taxpayers.

[00:19:27][cheering] >> [applause] [cheering] [applause] [applause] >> So brothers and sisters, the eyes of the country quite literally watching Michigan, watching Minnesota, watching Maine, watching other states around the country. And the issue is not complicated.

[00:19:57]The issue is whether or not billionaires and their greed will be able to defeat candidates who are standing up for the working class of this country. That's what the campaign is about. Nothing more, nothing less.

[00:20:13]Now, what I can tell you, because I have worked with groups all over this country, these people on top have endless, endless amounts of money. I mean, when you're a billionaire, you can spend $20 million just like you going out for a cup of coffee. They don't even know it's gone. That's true. I really mean it. And with that money, they hire their consultants and they buy TV time and they figure out how they can use AI in ugly, dishonest ways and run lying TV ads. They are very good at doing that.

[00:20:45]But what they cannot do is mobilize people [cheering] because they have nothing to say to the working people of this country, to the young people of this country. [cheering] [screaming] >> [applause and cheering] >> They have nothing to say to young people as to why their generation will have a lower standard of living than their parents while the rich get richer. They can't talk about that.

[00:21:17]So what we have is we have the people.

[00:21:21]But that means that we have got to mobilize our people. That means we got to go out knocking on doors, making the phone calls, using social media, doing everything that we can to bring out the people to vote for a candidate like Peggy who's going to stand up for the working class of this country. And if you do it, and I know you will, all over America, people are going to say, "Thank you again. We thank you in the past for what you stood up to. We're going to thank you this time for standing up to the super PACs. Thank you all very much.