Bernie Sanders EXPOSES Trump's MOST CORRUPT Rule In Fiery 'Fight Oligarchy' Speech | VIDEO

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]And let me begin by saying this is not about Bernie. It's not even about Troy or Graham. It is about every person in this room.

[00:00:15]>> Because I can't do what has to be done.

[00:00:18]Graham can't do it. Troy can't do it.

[00:00:21]The only way we're going to bring about the changes that this country needs is when all of us stand together and fight back.

[00:00:40]And before I begin, let me thank Chris Ross for the music.

[00:00:48]Brownie Carson for his service to our country and his wonderful words.

[00:00:56]Aaron Overerson with the nurses who do some of the most important work in this country.

[00:01:08]And let me thank Troy and Graham for their remarks. And again, thank all of you for coming out this evening to make sure that Graham Platner is the next United States Senator from Maine.

[00:01:28]And Troy Jackson is your next governor.

[00:01:37]Uh as it as it happens this is I think the 40th fight oligarchy event that we have done.

[00:01:49]>> We have held events from California to Maine, from Michigan down to Texas and a whole lot of states in between.

[00:02:03]And at these rallies we have had up to now many hundreds of thousands of people collectively coming out. They are progressives. They are Democrats. They are independents. They are Republicans.

[00:02:21]And I am I am happy to report to you having been all over this country that the American people are united. We are standing in opposition to oligarchy.

[00:02:46]>> We are going to defeat authoritarianism.

[00:02:57]We will not accept the unprecedented level of kleptocracy and corruption in the White House.

[00:03:13]We are rejecting the vicious attacks against the working class of this country.

[00:03:26]And we sure as hell do not want US support for endless and horrible wars in Gaza, Iran, Lebanon, and any place else.

[00:03:54]Whether you are a conservative, Republican or a progressive, you understand that it is absurd to spend billions of dollars killing people, innocent people abroad. Let's invest and rebuild America.

[00:04:20]Now, what I want to do this evening is kind of do what most members of Congress do not do, and that is tell you the truth.

[00:04:31]And there is when we talk about the truth, there is a lot of very bad and frightening news, but there's also some very good news. And I want to go over both. the bad news, and it's important that we understand it because you're not going to see this in corporate media.

[00:04:51]You're not going to see it when you turn on the TV tonight. You're not going to hear it in the halls of Congress. The bad news is that never before in American history, never have so few people held so much wealth and even more importantly, so much power.

[00:05:14]And it's important to know, you know, when we were in school, we uh learned about the guilded age. Remember that Rockefellers and Carnegies and the aers, the robber barons, you know, we learned about these guys were incredibly wealthy and incredibly powerful.

[00:05:31]Nothing compared to what exists today in America. And again, you don't see this on TV. Corporate media doesn't talk about it. Today in America, the top 1% now owns more wealth than the bottom 93%.

[00:05:53]Even more insane, the richest guy in the world, Mr. Musk now owns one man now owns more wealth than the bottom 53% of American households. Do you got that?

[00:06:15]I want you to it's important to understand the insanity and the the brokenness of this current economy when one person who's by the way going to get even richer I think in the next couple of weeks or months owns more wealth than the bottom 53% of American households and and we have now CEOs you know is always if you're a worker you always know the guy on top makes more money than the worker There's nothing new about that. But right now, in an unprecedented way, you have CEOs making 350 times what the average employer employee earns.

[00:07:01]>> And the gap between the very very rich and everybody else is growing wider.

[00:07:08]Last year alone, after receiving the largest tax break in history from Mr. Trump, 938 billionaires became $1.5 trillion richer.

[00:07:28]And it's important to understand that as bad as the situation is now, it has been going on for decades. According to the Rand uh corporation, not exactly a socialist operation, over the last 50 years, there has been a $79 trillion redistribution of wealth from the bottom 90% to the top 1%.

[00:08:03]But it's not just income and wealth inequality. I want to It's not just the fact that so few have so much wealth and so many people have so little. We have never had more concentration of ownership than exists today. Today, a handful of giant corporations dominate sector after sector of our economy, whether it's agriculture, transportation, energy, financial services, artificial intelligence, you name it. And as a result of that concentration of ownership and monopolistic practices, we pay far higher prices than we should.

[00:08:44]And importantly when we talk about concentration of ownership we have got to focus on the media.

[00:08:56]>> Now why is media so important? It's not what Trump calls fake news. A reporter writes a bad story about him and he gets all upset about it. It's more importantly, these are the folks who determine what the issues are that we are thinking about, what we consider to be important or unimportant, what we focus on or what we don't focus on. It is not an accident today that in America, six large media conglomerates control about 90% of what the American people see, hear, and read. As I think many of you know, I want you to think about this for a moment. Why is it richest guy on earth, Mr. Musk, owns Twitter, now called X. Why is that? Jeff Bezos, one of the wealthiest guys, owns the Washington Post and Twitch. Mark Zuckerberg, one of the handful of wealthiest people, owns Meta, which includes Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and threads. Rid Murdoch, a mil owns Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, Larry Ellison, owns CBS, Tik Tok, >> Paramount Pictures, Sky Dance, MTV, and is on his way to acquiring CNN and Warner Brothers.

[00:10:27]Point is their media helps us to determine what we are going to be discussing. What we talk about, what we don't talk about, what we focus on, what we don't focus on. But it when you look at the economy and the world we're living in today, it is not just massive income and wealth inequality. It's not just concentration of ownership and the media. It is also something even more important. And that is as a result of the disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision.

[00:11:02]Billionaires are now legally able to spend as much as they want through their so-called super PACs.

[00:11:14]And by the way, unless I am very mistaken, you're going to see a lot of super PAC money coming in to this state.

[00:11:22]>> Oh yeah.

[00:11:23]>> Against Graham.

[00:11:26]>> And what I want to tell I want people to know that when you see these ads on TV, you know, citizens for this or citizens for that, always ask yourself one simple question. Who is funding those ads? And what do they want? And why do they want to defeat people like Gramp?

[00:11:58]And as a result of all of this super PAC money, you know, people don't know this, Musk himself spent over $270 million to elect Donald Trump as president.

[00:12:17]And what we're seeing right now in this midterm election are super PACs from crypto, from crypto, the crypto industry, from AI, from Apac, and from other special interests, pouring hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars to make sure that their candidates get elected and those candidates that stand for the working class of this country get defeated. We are going to take them on.

[00:12:57]You know, I got to tell you, you know, I got to I've got to tell you that coming from a small rural state, your sister state, Vermont, that I really love democracy. I really do. And I'll tell you why. You know, I've been running in many races. I think it is fantastic that people get up and say, "I want to run for I don't give a damn what their views are." All right.

[00:13:28]You disagree with me, fine. Go to the people and tell you why I'm wrong. We'll have that debate. We'll have that discussion. People are going to be thinking about it. People are going to get involved in the process. Young people say, "I want to run for office."

[00:13:40]That is a fantastic system. But brothers and sisters, it's not only Trump that is trying to undermine American democracy.

[00:13:50]It is all of these billionaires and their super PACs who want to own and control the United States Congress. We cannot allow that to happen.

[00:14:11]So bad news is the bad news is that the very wealthiest people in this country are becoming much much wealthier.

[00:14:24]But there's another economic reality today as well. And that while the rich become richer, the vast majority of the American people, middle class, the workingclass, low-income people are going nowhere in a hurry. Despite I want you to hear this because it's not talked about very often. Despite an explosion in technology and a huge increase in worker productivity over the last many decades, the average American worker is making less today than he or she did over 53 years ago after adjusting for inflation.

[00:15:09]40 or 50 years ago, it was not uncommon that a workingclass family, and I grew up in a workingclass family.

[00:15:17]And during those days, and I say this to the young people, it was possible for a workingclass family to have one person in the family. In those days, usually the father working 40 hours a week and earning enough money to pay the bills.

[00:15:35]How old-fashioned and quaint that seems today.

[00:15:40]How many workingclass families do you know where one worker can pay the bills?

[00:15:46]Not many. Not many. So the question that we have got to ask ourselves is what the hell is going on?

[00:15:55]You got more technology, more automation, more worker productivity, and workingclass people are struggling today in a way that we have not seen for a very long time. Today, while the very rich get richer, over 60% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. Got it? All right. I grew up in a family, lived paycheck to paycheck.

[00:16:24]Many of you are living paycheck to paycheck.

[00:16:29]What does it mean? It means that every day people are living under the extraordinary stress of figuring out how they going to survive, how they going to feed their kids, how they going to pay the rent, car breaks down, how you going to fix the car, your mom gets sick, how you going to help get a prescription drug.

[00:16:48]Every day people all over this country are dealing with that stress.

[00:16:55]And one of the reasons that in America, which in general has a lower life expectancy than other wealthy countries, we're about three years, four years lower for workingclass people, they are living six or seven years shorter lives than the wealthy. And you know why? What's the word? That's the word >> struggle for survival. Putting food on the table, worrying about how you survive eats you up physically. It eats you up mentally. And this is all taken place in the richest country in the history of the world.

[00:17:37]And let us take a look in the richest country on earth as to how we treat our children. You know, I hear politicians in Washington, they stand in front of the flag, "Oh, we love America." Well, if you love America, you love the children in America.

[00:18:05]Because the children of course are the future of our country. How do we treat the children? I don't mean to be facitious when I say this is the good news is that of the 36 countries that the United Nations examined in terms of childhood poverty, the United States was not last.

[00:18:27]We were 35th. We were ahead of Uruguay.

[00:18:33]Can you believe that? In the richest country in the world, where the people on top have never had it so good, we rank 35th out of 36 major countries in terms of childhood poverty. But it's not just childhood poverty. Every psychologist in the world will tell you that the years 0 for through four are the most important for intellectual and emotional growth for a human being.

[00:19:01]Right.

[00:19:03]Well then by definition if we are seeing workingclass families all over the country mom has to work dad has to work then obviously we have a great child care system. Right?

[00:19:16]>> Wrong child care system is broken. It's dysfunctional. It is unaffordable. And the workers who work with the kids are paid abysmal wages. Right now in America, our K through2 schools are struggling and higher education is unaffordable.

[00:19:37]It is not a radical idea to say that if a young person wants to go to college that that person and should not have to go bankrupt or deeply in debt in order to afford a higher education.

[00:20:12]But it's not just again as a wealthy nation.

[00:20:17]How do we treating our children abysmally? What about senior citizens in America? Well, in America today, roughly one in three older Americans are economically insecure with incomes below 200% of the federal poverty level.

[00:20:36]In America today, over 20% of seniors are trying to survive on $15,000 or less.

[00:20:51]And according to the National Council on Aging, older Americans living in poverty die nearly 9 years earlier than their wealthier peers.

[00:21:04]So what you have is a nation people on top never ever had it so good. I mean, Mr. Bezos owns 14 homes. He has a $50 million wedding. These guys have jewelry worth millions of dollars. And yet our elderly people are trying to survive from 15, $20,000 a year. We have the highest rate of childhood poverty. 60% of our people living paycheck to paycheck. That's where we are in the economy right now. And let me tell you something, and I want everybody to pay attention to this because we don't are not focusing on it enough.

[00:21:43]Artificial intelligence and robotics are going to be the most transformative re economic revolution in the history of this country in the history of the world. Far more significant and fastm moving than the industrial revolution which took people off the farms into factories and far more significant than the movement that took people off of factories into offices.

[00:22:11]We are looking at a revolution being led by the same people who have the wealth and the power now. Mr. Musk, Mr. Bezos, Mr. Zuckerberg, Mr. Ellison and others.

[00:22:27]They are investing many hundreds of billions of dollars into the development and implementation of AI and robotics.

[00:22:38]And in one sentence, what is the function of AI and robotics? It is to replace human labor.

[00:22:49]>> Jeff Bezos Jeff Bezos is now securing 100 billion dollars, a fund of 100 billion to automate factories. Do you know what that means? It means that all over our country, robots will be replacing human beings in the manufacturing sector.

[00:23:15]We're looking at a growth in driverless vehicles, which means that truck drivers and cab driver cab drivers, Uber drivers, lift drivers, etc. will be losing their jobs in the not too immediate future. So what we have got to do is in my view in terms of AI, we got to say wait a second. All right, let's slow it up a bit here and let us make sure it's not that AI is a bad thing unto itself. very positive things it can do. But what we have got to do is make sure that AI and robotics work for all of the people, not just the billionaires who are developing that technology.

[00:24:20]Yeah.

[00:24:26]If AI and robotics, for example, can significantly reduce the work week in America, >> and yet make sure that workers receive better income than they do today, that's a good thing.

[00:24:47]But if AI and robotics throws workers out on the street with no recourse, that is not acceptable.

[00:24:56]>> If AI undermines our democracy by putting stuff on screens in which you cannot tell truth from fiction, that's a bad thing.

[00:25:17]If AI bots, if kids in America develop a an emotional relationship with AI bots, I want you to think what that means.

[00:25:31]It means that we are losing already in this country among the young people, we have a mental health crisis. Kids are lonier and lonier. I do not want the next generation to have as their friends AI bots. I want them to have other kids, other human beings as their friends.

[00:25:58]So this is a major major struggle. These guys are in it for the money. They want more wealth and more power and they do not care what happens to workers. Guy who runs Meta Zuckerberg laid off 10% of his own workforce last week. What the hell do you think it's going to do to other people's workforce? All right, so it's an issue we got to get our handles on. Now, I've given you some bad news, and it is. It is bad news. We're living in an unprecedentedly dangerous moment in American history run by a man who is a pathological liar, a narcissist, who is a kleptocrat, you know, who does not believe in our constitution or the rule of law. But the point is, anyone who goes to you and says, "Oh, the only problem is Trump," they're not telling you the truth. It is Trump, but it goes deeper than Trump. All right, we got to change the system.

[00:27:03]I've given you some bad news. Now, let me It is my joy to give you some good news.

[00:27:11]And at that is in the past number of years dozens of progressives, strong progressives, progressives standing up, fighting for the working class, fighting up, fighting against climate change, fighting against oligarchy. They have been winning elections. And right now we have over 100 members of the progressive caucus in the United States House of Representatives.

[00:27:41]I want to give you another piece of political very good news and I think it lays the groundwork for what we've got to do all over this country. Last year a young man uh his name was Zoron Mandani.

[00:28:04]Siron, Saron decided to run for mayor of New York City. And when he began the campaign, this is the big point that I want to make. And Zoron is a very intelligent guy. He's a great communicator, very good on policy and so forth and so on. But when he began his campaign, he was at 1% in the polls. Got it?

[00:28:30]>> And he was taking on People said, "Zoran, you're crazy. How are you going to run for mayor? You're taking on the Democratic establishment. You're taking on the Republican establishment. You're taking on the president of the United States. You're taking on the oligarchs in New York who are very, very wealthy.

[00:28:46]How the hell are you going to win? But you know what he did? He went out and he developed a grassroots movement of 100,000 volunteers in New York City who knocked on doors, did the political work, and Zeron defeated his opponents badly.

[00:29:17]So the lesson there and New York I understand that Maine is not New York City a little bit different >> but the lesson is the same. They have the money. We have the people.

[00:29:36]And if tens of thousands of people in the great state of Maine are out knocking on doors and working for Graham, working for Troy, working for other great candidates, you know what?

[00:29:47]All the money in the world or the lies in the world will not defeat them.

[00:30:04]Here's some more good news.

[00:30:06]out in the state of California, some of the trade unions decided that at a time when the billionaires in California are getting richer while millions of men, women, and children are losing their healthcare because of Trump's disastrous policies. They decided to bring forth a ballot item calling for a tax, a wealth tax on billionaires.

[00:30:44]>> And of course, the billionaires there are going crazy because according to the polling, the wealth tax has significant support.

[00:31:02]And for good reason. At a time when billionaires are paying an effective tax rate because of a rigged tax system lower than a truck driver or a nurse. We must demand that the 1% and large profitable corporations start paying their fair share of taxes.

[00:31:43]And I want to tell you and that is why I introduced recently legislation to establish a 5% annual ual wealth tax on the 938 billionaires in America who collectively are worth more than $8 trillion.

[00:32:09]And I want to just to give you an example of how insane the level of inequality is in America, I want to tell you what this legislation would accomplish. This is a 5% tax on fewer than 1,000 billionaires on their wealth. This is what it would do if this legislation were to pass in its first year. It would provide every man, woman, and child in a household less than 150,000. It's the vast majority of households, with a $3,000 direct payment. Got it. Family of four.

[00:32:50]family of four 12,000 bucks.

[00:32:54]This legislation and the money it would bring in would tackle the housing crisis by being able to have the resources to build 7 million units of low-income and affordable housing.

[00:33:18]This tax on billionaires would expand Medicare to cover dental, vision, and hearing.

[00:33:33]>> It would guarantee universal affordable child care.

[00:33:45]It would strengthen public education by ensuring that no teacher in America earns less than $60,000 a year.

[00:34:03]It would end the crisis we now experience in home health care so that seniors and people with disabilities could live with dignity in their own homes.

[00:34:18]And it would restore health care to the 15 million Americans who are losing it because of Trump's quote unquote big, beautiful bill.

[00:34:35]We could we can do all of that and more by a 5% annual tax on the wealth of billionaires.

[00:34:45]Now, my opponents, of which there are many, claim that this legislation is punitive and confiscated. Oh, we're just picking on these poor billionaires. I mean, my god, how cruel can you be?

[00:35:01]>> But I want you to hear this. This just shows you how crazy the economy is today. If that bill were in effect this year, Elon Musk would pay 39 billion more in taxes.

[00:35:14]By what? Here's the punchline.

[00:35:17]This confiscatory, terrible, drastic, radical piece of legislation would leave Musk with just 737 billion left to survive. Now, I know you're worried about him, but what do you think? Think he can make it on 737 billion?

[00:35:34]>> Yeah, maybe.

[00:35:36]You know, J Jeff Bezos would owe about 14 billion more in taxes, but he would still have 265 billion to put a roof over his home.

[00:35:53]All right. here. The point about that is just to show you that a 5% tax on wealth on less than a thousand Americans, the richest people in this country, could transform our country and improve life for hundreds of millions of Americans.

[00:36:22]And I think both Graham and Troy in their remarks made a very important point and that is the big money interests, the people who control this country want you to believe that you are powerless. They want you to think small.

[00:36:36]They want you to believe in austerity.

[00:36:38]Just we can't do anything. I just came back from Italy. I was in Italy last week. Italy is a lot poorer country than in America. And you know what? When you go to a hospital in Italy, you know what the bill is? Few miles north of us here in Maine or in Vermont is Canada. You spend two months in the hospital in Canada. You know what the bill is?

[00:37:04]>> Yeah. And all of these countries, virtually every major country on earth provides health care to every man, woman, and child as a human right.

[00:37:37]And here is the kicker. Here is what is so crazy.

[00:37:42]They provide health care to all of their people at 50% of the cost per capita. The function of the American health care system is not to provide quality care to all in a coste effective way. As you all know, the function of the American health care system is to make billions for the insurance companies and the drug companies.

[00:38:09]And that is why that is why when candidates come around and they oh we're so concerned about healthcare, you know, we want to do this, we want to do that.

[00:38:17]Ask them one simple question. Do they have the guts to take on the insurance companies and the drug companies and fight for a Medicare for all single payup system?

[00:38:34]Okay.

[00:38:50]In the richest country on earth, so many of our seniors should not be struggling to afford health care or prescription drugs or housing. We can expand Medicare. We can expand social security and bring back traditional pension plans so that every senior in this country can retire with dignity.

[00:39:23]In America, no worker should be working 40 hours a week and living in poverty.

[00:39:29]We can and should raise the minimum wage to a living wage and guarantee that every worker who wants to join a union will be able to do so without illegal action on the part of their employer.

[00:40:00]And instead of spending a trillion and a half dollars on the military for more and more endless wars, we can cut military spending, invest housing, and the needs of the American people.

[00:40:22]So our job is not just to take Trump on every single day, which we must. And progressives are leading that fight. Our job is to bring forth an agenda and a plan for implementation that speaks to the needs of the working class of this country.

[00:40:52]The time is long gone for establishment politics and nibbling around the edges of policy.

[00:41:01]We need bold action now which transforms this country so that all of our people can live with dignity and respect.

[00:41:18]What we're talking about is not radical.

[00:41:21]What is radical is when so few have so much.

[00:41:35]What is radical is when billionaires control our political system. It is not radical to say that we should not have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any nation and that so many of our seniors should live in economic despair. So brothers and sisters, this is a pivotal moment in the history of our country and the way America goes, so goes the world. And now is the time to think big, not small. Don't let them tell you that we cannot accomplish these goals. Nothing that I'm telling you tonight is radical. It's achievable. It can be done and it will be done when we stand together and not let Trump and his friends divide us up based on the color of our skin or where we were born or the language that we speak.

[00:42:52]That is the playbook of the demagogues.

[00:42:55]You all know that. Not just Trump, demagogues throughout history. Divide people up. Our job is to bring people together and to tell the billionaires of this country we're coming after them >> and we're going to create an economy and a government that works for all, not just the 1%. Thank you all very much.

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