Bernie Destroys Trump at Packed Rally in Charleston

0:00Ben Meiselas:Senator Bernie Sanders just visited Charleston, West Virginia, and brought the House down, shredding Trump in front of a huge audience as part of his fight, the oligarchy tour. Senator Sanders says that I don't care, blue state, red state. We need to support workers. I'm not buying into these political divisions and cultural divisions. We are fighting for the working class and that's how we are going to win back our country. Watch how he is greeted in Charleston, West Virginia. Play this clip.

0:46Thank you, Charleston.

0:53In case you haven't noticed, there are a lot of people here.

1:05Let me thank you. Love you too.

1:11Ben Meiselas:And here he addresses the fact that he is in a red state, but he says it doesn't matter. We need to fight for workers and that's how we're going to rebuild our country. Play this clip. Some of you may be wondering what is the senator from the great state of Vermont doing in the great state of West Virginia.

1:35And I will give you the answer. I happen not to believe in blue state, red state nonsense.

1:49In my state, Mr. Trump got, I think, 33 % of the vote. In your state, he got 70 % of the vote.

2:03But you know what? What I have learned and what I believe from the bottom of my heart is whether you're a working class person in Vermont or a working class person here in West Virginia, the issues and the struggles you face are exactly the same.

2:25In Vermont, we are struggling with inadequate wages. That's what you are facing here. In Vermont, we're paying some of the highest health care costs in the country. You got a health care crisis here. In Vermont, we can't afford to send our kids to college. Neither can you. We've got environmental problems. You've got environmental problems. So let us not allow the establishment people to divide us up. Not blue state, not red state. Not whether we're black or white, whether we're Latino, whether we're gay or whether we are straight, whether we're Muslim, we are one people.

3:21And if we stand together, if we stand together, we can do enormous things because at the end of the day, and I'll talk about this in a moment, the 1 % and the oligarchs have enormous wealth and enormous power, and that is true. But while I am not a PhD in mathematics, I do know that 99 % is a hell of a lot larger number than 1%.

3:58And our job, our job is not to allow them to divide us up.

4:05Ben Meiselas:Another powerful moment from Senator Bernie Sanders speech right here. Let's play it. So let me tell you a little bit, but you're not going to see on corporate media and you're not going to hear on the floor of the Senate or the House. and that is right now in America, we have more income and wealth inequality than we have ever had in the history of America.

4:33Today in America, if you can believe it, and it really is quite unbelievable, and I think a lot of folks don't believe it, but the truth is that you got one man, Mr. Musk, who owns more wealth than the bottom 52 % of American households.

4:55You got the top 1 % owning more wealth than the bottom 93%. you got CEOs of major corporations making 350 times what their workers make there was just a piece of the paper I think was the Washington Post the other day there's a big competition going on in Palm Beach Florida where these zillionaires are buying you know this waterfront property and building homes for tens and tens of millions of dollars. So the bottom line is that the people on top today are making money hand over fist. They don't know what to do with their money. Jeff Bezos, the second wealthiest guy in the world, had a nice little wedding in Venice.

6:00and he wanted to give his little wife a nice little gift. He gave her a$5 million ring. Guy owns 14 homes. These guys are incredibly wealthy, but what is driving them and what is going to destroy this country unless we turn it around is their incredible greed. They are very religious people. And greed is their religion. They worship on the altar of money.

6:40And I got to tell you, they are not nice guys. They could care less about what they are doing to ordinary Americans.

6:50Ben Meiselas:Powerful stuff. Here he is again. Let me show you this portion of his speech. Let's play it. I want people, working people, low-income people, to be able to run for office, not having to beg billionaires for money. I want an election. I want to see elections where what matters is a clash of ideas. You disagree with me? Great. Come on up. Run against me. Let's argue your ideas versus my ideas. That is called democracy.

7:27Let us not have what we have now. The super PACs putting zillions of dollars over these ugly 30-second TV ads. That is not democracy. But our job now, brothers and sisters, is not just to take on Trump's ugly and dangerous agenda. His agenda is not only tax breaks for the rich in cuts and programs for working people. As I'm sure everybody here knows, in a very frightening way, he is moving us toward an authoritarian society.

8:08He is usurping the powers of Congress. He is challenging the responsibilities of the courts. He is suing the media. He is trying to undermine universities and law firms throughout this country. And what I say to Mr. Trump is too many people in Vermont and West Virginia have put their lives on the line and sometimes died to defend our democracy. We're not going to let them take that away from us.

8:56Now, Trump is, his style of politics is new to America, but it is not new to the world. He is playing the same old playbook that demagogues have always used. And what is the essence of what demagogues do? What they do is they pick on minorities, often powerless minorities, and they blame those minorities for all the problems that people are experiencing. In our country, it used to be blacks, it used to be gays. In Europe, it was Jews, it was gypsies. You pick your minority group, they're powerless, and then you blame them for all of the problems society is facing. Today, the targets are primarily undocumented people and the trans community.

9:53So what Trump does, and I was there, it was a remarkable thing. I don't know if any of you recall it. I do, because I was there at a State of the Union speech. This guy went on one of the longest State of the Union speech ever, that was 100 minutes. He forgot to talk about the healthcare crisis, forgot to talk about the education crisis, forgot to talk about the climate crisis. Forgot to talk about virtually every major issue facing the American people. But what did he talk about? He talked about undocumented people, and he lied, and he lied, and they lied. So this is what I want to say. This is what demagogues always do.

10:38You've got a housing problem. You've got a health care problem. You're not making enough money. Your kids can't go to college. You know whose fault it is? It's all the undocumented. And we are going to come together to hate the undocumented and that we forget about the oligarchs and the people who have the wealth and the power.

11:00That's the oldest trick in the book. Trump didn't invent it. That's what they always do. And our job is to do exactly the opposite.

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12:18Ben Meiselas:Get 20 % off your Delete Me plan when you go to joindeliteme.com slash Midas and use promo code Midas at checkout. The only way to get 20 % off is to go to joindeliteme.com slash Midas and enter code Midas, M-E-I-D-A-S at checkout. That's joindeliteme.com slash Midas, code Midas. And I love when Senator Sanders speaks to the crowd and asks them, is the healthcare system working for you? No. Is the education system working for you? No. Are you living paycheck to paycheck right now? Yes. Is that fair? No. Is it fair that CEOs are making 350, 500, 1 ,000 times the amount of money as their workers and in some cases more?

13:03Ben Meiselas:Is that fair to you? No. Are you okay with this system where you're living paycheck to paycheck. No. I want you to watch this. Some powerful stuff right here. Let's play it. I get around the country a lot and I ask people a simple question. I'm going to ask it to you right now. Does the American health care system work? That is exactly the response I get to every audience I talk to.

13:32So here's what you got in health care. You got a situation where we spend as a nation almost double what every other nation on earth spends. You got that? We are spending the insane amount of$14 ,000 a year for every man, woman and child. When you spend that kind of money we should have the best healthcare system in the world by far!

14:05Well, we don't. According to all of the studies, despite all the money we spend, we have one of the worst systems. And the reason for that is the function of the American healthcare system today is not to provide quality for everybody. The function is to make a whole lot of money for the insurance companies and the drug companies. So when we go forward, and I don't care whether you're a conservative Republican or a progressive, the vast majority of the American people understand that health care is a human right, not a privilege.

14:56And what I want you to understand, and what I want you to understand, and I think a lot of people around the country don't understand, this is not a radical idea. This exists in virtually every other major country on earth. I live 50 miles away from the Canadian border. You end up in a hospital in Canada for a month. You know what the bill is when you come out? Zero. They spend far less per capita than we spend. So our job together is to take on the greed of the insurance companies and the greed of the drug companies, who, by the way, charge us by far the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs.

15:41We ought to take them on and move to a Medicare for all single-payer system.

15:57And I want you all just to think for a minute what it will mean working people all over this country to understand that when you get sick or your mom gets sick or your kids get sick, you don't have to worry about how you're going to pay the bill. You go to the doctor when you need to go to the doctor. And by the way, when we talk about healthcare workforce, we need to substantially increase the number of doctors we have, the number of nurses we have, the number of dentists that we have, the number of mental health counselors that we have. This is a system broken from top to bottom, only designed to make the drug companies, the insurance companies richer, and we have got to change that.

16:49And again, we can do that, A, in terms of healthcare, we don't have to spend any more money because this system is so bureaucratic and wasteful. Spending the same amount can cover all of our people. In terms of education, let's talk about education for a second. Education is the foundation of a vibrant democracy. And in a competitive global economy, we need the best educated workforce in the world.

17:21So what do we got today? Let's look at education in the richest country in the world where the billionaires are doing phenomenally well. Start off, anybody here have little kids in childcare? Okay, cost of childcare is off the roof in Vermont, maybe twenty twenty five thousand dollars a year and meanwhile the teachers, the instructors at childcare are paid starvation wages. So think about it if we understand what every psychologist will tell you that the ages of zero through four are the most important years of human development intellectually and emotionally, right? and if we believe you know all these people they love america well if you love america you love the future of america you love the children of america

18:22they are our future and we should love them and cherish them and that means among other things we should not have the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country on earth. We should not have kids going to bed hungry at night. And we should have a first-class child care system.

18:51And if you want, here's another story. We can talk about America. There was a time, decades ago, when America led the world, we were the best educated country on earth. No longer the case. We had a higher percentage of our people getting a college degree than in the other country. No longer the case. Right now, if you are the son or daughter of a working class person, you've got to think twice about whether you even want to go to college. Because you've got to come out$50 ,000,$100 ,000 in debt. You want to become a doctor in America? Guess what? You've got to come out$500 ,000 in debt. A nurse,$150 ,000 in debt.

19:34Meanwhile we need doctors, we need nurses, we need people in the construction industry to help us rebuild our broken infrastructure and to help us move to sustainable energy.

19:51So for the sake of the future of this country, we have got to make sure that every Every child in America gets the best education he or she can, regardless of their income.

20:08And once again, once again, it is not a radical idea to say that we should make public colleges and universities tuition free.

20:26And I'm happy to say that there are some states beginning to move in that direction. What our dream is, our vision is that every kid, no matter how poor, understands that if he or she does their schoolwork well, is disciplined, studies hard, they will be able to get a college degree or go to a good trade school or whatever.