Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders went on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” early Friday to talk about the disastrously boring Republican National Convention.
“I’ll tell you what nobody else will tell you,” Sanders told the host. “Why not? It’s two in the morning, who’s listening anyhow?” While Sanders was indeed funny, he was also dead serious about how important the choice in November is for all working Americans.
When it came to Donald Trump’s tortuously long speech, Sanders said, “You know what stuns me about these things, Stephen, is how little the real problems of the country are discussed, and how few real solutions are given.”
“Basically, what the speech was ‘The country is in terrible shape. Vote for me. And I’m going to bring wonderful things to all of you. You don’t know how, why, I’m going to do it. Just trust me.”
Sanders went on to say that the GOP’s catastrophic climate change denialism alone should disqualify anyone voting for their candidates—one in particular.
“Nobody in America should be voting for Trump,” the two-time presidential candidate declared, noting that Trump and the Republican Party’s number one policy is cutting taxes for the wealthiest billionaires. Everyone else is screwed.
“90% of Republicans want to cut Social Security in one way or another,” Sanders pointed out. “So anyone who has any illusion that Republicans will do anything to benefit the working class of this country is sorely mistaken.”
Colbert asked Sanders his thoughts on the world’s most expensive mid-life crisis—Elon Musk promising to pour about $180 million into Republican campaign coffers.
“In a sense, we should thank Musk for making this issue so obvious,” Sanders said.
“What we have in America now is a corrupt political system. That’s all. We do not really live in a democracy. You live in a semi-democracy. You have the right to vote. But a billionaire out there has the right to contribute hundreds of millions of dollars to further his or her aims. And what Musk has done, and other billionaires are doing, is falling into line behind Trump because they know they’re going to get massive tax breaks.”
Sanders has shown his support for President Joe Biden during the chaos following the latter’s terrible debate showing on June 27. The senator also wrote an op-ed in The New York Times on Saturday, insisting that Biden was the best candidate to face Trump in November. He reiterated that support to Colbert.
“Let me be very clear as to why I support the president. Because I think of all of the candidates out there, I am more than aware of the disastrous debate that he had, and the problems that he has. But I am also aware that he has been the strongest, most progressive president in my lifetime. He is the first president in American history to stand with workers on a picket line. He has taken on pharma and lowered the cost of prescription drugs. We are now rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure. We’ve put more money into climate change than any time in the history of this country. Five million Americans have gotten student debt relief, and that’s for a start.”
True. True. True. True.
But maybe most importantly was Sanders’ final message—the reason why we must keep getting out the vote.
“Over the last many decades, Stephen, we should be proud as a nation. We have come a long way in erasing bigotry for our African American brothers and sisters. We’ve come a long way in fighting sexism and fighting homophobia. Now our job is the economic struggle and to tell the billionaire class, and their greed, they can no longer think they’re going to get it all. This country belongs to all of us.”
Regardless of whether Biden stays in the race, the message Sanders delivered applies: “Nobody in America should be voting for Trump.” And it’s one we should all amplify.
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