CNN "Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees" - Transcript: "Interview with Sen. Bernie Sanders"
Interview
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COOPER: Returning now to President Trump who has been speaking tonight in Manchester, New Hampshire. So far, he's not mentioned the two congresswomen he pushed Israel today to bar from visiting. We brought you sometime congressional reaction already.
Joining us is Vermont independent senator, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.
Senator, thanks for being with us.
How -- how much of this is just a distraction of the president to turn attention away from, you know, yesterday's disastrous stock market fall and fears about a recession?
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, I think it may be some of that. That's what the president does. But, on the other hand, what is taking place is totally outrageous.
You have two members of the United States Congress who are denied access to a country, Israel, which we spend many billions of dollars a year supporting. And if Mr. Netanyahu and other members in Israel don't want members of U.S. Congress to visit them, maybe they don't want American money as well. And I regard Trump's action in this whole regard as part of his racism, his Islamophobia, and it is a clearly an absolute outrage.
COOPER: I mean, one way to look at this as I mentioned earlier, essentially, he is enlisting the aid or pushing for the aid of a foreign government to help him harm his perceived political opponents.
SANDERS: Political opponents, right, right.
COOPER: Yes. I mean, it's asking for foreign help, not in an election this time, but just in -- just, you know, a political fight.
SANDERS: I mean, that's an important part of it. But the other part of it is, you know, I'm a member of Congress. I've traveled all over the world. And when you're a member of Congress, you expect to be welcomed into other countries to try to do your best in understanding what's going on there so you can tell your constituents that come up with good policy.
[20:20:02] The idea that two members of the Congress who have been critical of Israel are not allowed to go into that country to, firsthand, see what's going on, take a look at what's going on with the Palestinians and Gaza or the West Bank. I mean, that is just incomprehensible, and we cannot simply allow that to continue.
COOPER: This obviously is not the first time the president's focused attacks on these two congresswomen, labeled them, you know, the face of the Democratic Party. That's a tactic.
Would it be a problem if they were the face of the Democratic Party?
SANDERS: Well, I think when you -- I mean, he says that because that has to do with Islamophobia. And what Trump is trying to do obviously is to divide the American people up based on where we come from or our religion or the color of our skin or our sexual orientation. I mean, that's what his political strategy is.
But I think if you look at what these members of Congress are talking about, they support Medicare for All. They believe that everybody in this country is entitled to health care as a human right. They believe that we should cancel student debt in this country because you got 45 million people who are really getting crushed, many of them getting crushed by this oppressive debt. They believe colleges and universities should be tuition free, we should raise the minimum wage to 15 bucks an hour. So, if your point is in attacking them, what he is really attacking is
a progressive agenda that works for working people, I do believe that that's part of it.
COOPER: How much responsibility -- President Trump has made a lot of or put a lot of emphasis on the rise of the stock market over, you know, the last two years and there have been great returns for those who have money in the stock market. How much responsibility, then, does he have to take when it goes down? Or if it goes down more?
SANDERS: Well, that's a -- that's a very good question, and we'll see how he responds to that. I expect for him it's a one-way trip.
But, look, when you talk about the economy, the truth is that the stock market absolutely has, until recently, been going up. Unemployment is relatively low.
But, you know what, we sometimes forget, Anderson. We forget about it in Congress and we forget about it in the media. And that is half of the people in our country are living paycheck to paycheck. That's not a strong economy.
Tonight, 500,000 people sleeping out on the street, 87 million people are either uninsured or underinsured in the midst of massive income and wealth inequality. So, the truth is, today, this is not a good economy for working people. It is an incredibly good economy for the wealthy and the powerful.
COOPER: I want to ask you also about the probability of Congress actually taking legislative action on guns when it comes back from recess. I mean, I feel like we've talked about this issue, you know, a lot and nothing has been done obviously. The president spoke about it today.
I want to play a little of just what he said.
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TRMP: These people are mentally ill, and nobody talks about that. But these are mentally ill people, and people have to start thinking about it. I think we have to start building institutions again because, you know, if you look at the '60s and '70s, so many of these institutions were closed.
And I can tell you in New York, they closed a lot of them. And the people went out, they went out onto the streets and it's a terrible thing. But a lot of our conversation has to do with the fact that we have to open up institutions.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: I'm not even sure where to begin because there's a lot to unpack there. I mean, the idea that, A, nobody one wants to talk about mental illness, I don't know that's true. The idea this is about mental illness is an arguable point. The idea that you're characterizing mentally ill people as violent,
that's obviously something that's just factually incorrect. And a lot of these institutions were closed down because there were terrible abuses that were taking place for generations.
So, with that, do you -- what do you make of what he is saying here? And do you believe at all --
SANDERS: Anderson, you are asking me -- you're asking me what I make of what the president of the United States says. Is that what you're asking me?
COOPER: Sort of, yes.
SANDERS: I don't know. Who knows?
(LAUGHTER)
SANDERS: But let me just say this. You know, let me just say this. What the president conveniently forgot are a couple of important points, and that is there are between 300 million to 400 million guns out on the streets of America today. There are, we think, over 10 million assault weapons out on the streets today.
And the reason -- you ask why nothing happens in Congress, and I will give you the reason. Not complicated. I think everybody knows it. It's the power of the NRA over Trump, over Mitch McConnell, and the Republican leadership.
Poll after poll after poll shows that the American people want to move forward as strongly as we can with gun safety legislation.
[20:25:06] And you know what the provisions are, expanding background checks, doing away with the gun show loophole, doing away with the so- called straw man provision. And, by the way, more and more people now, I believe a majority of the American people, want to do what I've been calling for for 30 years, and that is to ban the sale and distribution of assault weapons.
That's what the American people want. That is not what the NRA wants. And Trump and Mitch McConnell unfortunately are listening to the NRA.
But I think if the American people stand up and demand change on this issue, I think we can finally do something and we have to do it, all of us are sick to our stomachs about the horrors that we have seen in the last weeks and over the last years.
COOPER: Just lastly, I want to ask you about your recent criticism of the "Washington Post," implying that your criticism of Amazon has driven "The Post" to cover you unfairly. Today, your campaign newsletter said: Reporters don't have to receive a call from Jeff Bezos to know that their paychecks are signed by a billionaire with a well-known personal and corporate agenda and knowing that agenda exists can shape overall frameworks and angles of coverage.
You are, then, alleging in some shape or form, it sounds like from that, that you are being punished by "The Post" for your position on Amazon. Is that --
SANDERS: Look, I don't -- Anderson, no. I don't take it personally. I don't think people stay up nights at "The Post" or "The New York Times" or whatever to say, how do we get Bernie Sanders?
This is what I do worry about. There are six major media conglomerates, including Time Warner which owns CNN, which control about 90 percent of the media in this country in terms of what we see, hear and read. Between you and me, that is a very dangerous situation.
If we want to have diversity of opinion -- I'm not here to suggest -- Trump calls the media an enemy of the people, fake news, that's disgusting. That undermines democracy.
But I do worry when you have a handful of large corporations, to a large degree controlling what we see, hear and read. The CEOs make tens of millions of dollars a year in compensation. They have an agenda, and I worry about that, as I do worry about concentration of ownership in agribusiness, in Wall Streets and in many other areas.
COOPER: Do you believe --
SANDERS: And by the way --
COOPER: Yes?
SANDERS: You know, and those folks, you know, frankly, when I say the wealthy are going to have to start paying their fair share of taxes, they're not necessarily sympathetic to that. When I say we have to make it easier for workers to join unions and raise that minimum wage to a living wage, they're not necessarily sympathetic to that.
You know, I work with the workers at Amazon to raise that minimum wage to 15 bucks an hour. Work with the workers at Disneyland. Disneyland to raise their minimum wage to $15 an hour. Disney is the owner of ABC.
So, you know, I think it's probably fair to say that my agenda is not the agenda of the people who own much of the media in America.
COOPER: Senator Sanders, it's a longer discussion and I look forward to having it. But as always, thank you. Conversation (INAUDIBLE)
SANDERS: OK.
COOPER: Appreciate it.
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