In this episode, I sit down with Bernie Sanders to discuss his thoughts on the Democratic primary debates, the media's obsession with time constraints, and the lack of serious discussion on the issues facing the country. We talk about the importance of a debate debate and why they should not be limited to 15 minutes. I also discuss why the media should be doing a better job of covering the serious issues facing our country, and why we should have a debate that's longer than 15 minutes long. I hope you enjoy this episode and tweet me if you have any thoughts or suggestions on how we can improve the debates. Timestamps: 1:00 - What is a debate? 4:30 - Why debates should be longer 6:10 - Why the media is obsessed with time 8:15 - How much time should a debate should be devoted to a serious topic 9:20 - Should a debate be more focused on serious issues 11:00 12:15 What are the best ways to debate serious issues? 13:30 15:00 Is a debate better than a 15-minute debate 16:00 Should debates be longer? 17:10 18:00 What is the best way to debate a serious issue? 19:00 Do you have enough time to debate something 22:00 Can you explain something in 45 seconds? 21:40 - Is there a debate on the complexity of a complicated enough? 26:40 27:00 Does a debate have more time? 29:00 How much more time in a debate like that could be better? 30: What are you going to do? 31:30 What do you need? 32:30? 35:40? 36:00? 33:00 Would you like to be a debate with a debate in 15 minutes? 37:00 Could you have a long conversation? 34:00 Why do you want a debate to be better than that? 39:00 Are you want to get more time to talk about something more? 40:00 More? 45:00 Who do you have an answer to a problem? 44:00 You don t have a point of view on a question? 41:30, do you think you can do it better than I don t want to speak about it? 42:40, can you give me a better answer?
00:01:55.000But it takes us to another issue, and that as a nation, we do a pretty bad job in analyzing and discussing the serious issues facing our country.
00:02:05.000And I hold the media to some degree responsible for that.
00:02:09.000You know, other countries, what they do...
00:02:10.000He says, hey, Joe, you want to run for president?
00:02:12.000I'll tell you about your party in the general election.
00:02:15.000We're going to give you a certain amount of time, hours, on television.
00:02:19.000And you use those hours any way you want.
00:03:25.000I mean, the Internet has revolutionized politics, and in many ways, good ways.
00:03:31.000We use our social media, our email list, which is very large.
00:03:35.000Every day we're sending out stuff, and other candidates are doing it the same way.
00:03:38.000But television still has a very important role to be playing.
00:03:41.000I'm sure it does, but I mean, the ability to discuss things in long form, like you can do online, like you can do right here, right now, you can't get that on television.
00:03:57.000What I'm saying about is, and what goes on in other countries, if I'm not mistaken, don't hold me to this, I think in the UK, you're a member of the Labour Party, you're a candidate.
00:04:06.000He has 30 minutes of time, and you do with it as you want.
00:04:09.000You want to speak 30 minutes on healthcare, whatever it may be, you can do then.
00:04:25.000Because here's the – if you go to the knee-jerk conservative reaction, you talk to people who are not interested in anyone that wants to be a democratic socialist – They hear the name Bernie Sanders.
00:04:37.000The negative implications are that you are somehow or another going to take their money, right?
00:05:19.000We're the only major country on Earth not to guarantee health care to all people as a human right, and yet we end up spending almost twice as much per capita on health care.
00:05:28.000The function, and you can argue with me if you want, but the function of the current health care system is not to provide quality care to all.
00:05:35.000It is to make tens of billions of dollars in profit for the drug companies and the insurance companies.
00:07:03.000Over the last 20 years, the drug companies alone have spent four and a half billion dollars in 20 years on lobbying and campaign contributions.
00:07:18.000The knowledge, and I mark my words, within a short period of time, you will see TV ads in California all over this country demonizing Bernie Sanders.
00:07:26.000He wants to do this terrible thing to you.
00:07:38.000Back in 2016, I got involved here in a little way with an effort on the part of the nurses to control the cost of prescription drugs in California.
00:07:49.000It was a ballot item in one state here in California.
00:07:52.000Do you know how much the drug companies alone spent to defeat that effort?
00:07:55.000They spent $131 million on one ballot item in one state.
00:08:01.000Last year, the top 10 drug companies made $69 billion A week ago, I went to Canada with a number of Americans who are dealing with diabetes.
00:08:11.000We bought insulin in Windsor, Ontario for one-tenth the price, 10% of the price, same exact product, being charged in America.
00:08:20.000So you've got drug companies that are engaged in collusion and in price-fixing who are incredibly greedy, and the result is many elderly people, many working people simply cannot afford the medicine they need.
00:09:19.000And their idea was, according to people in their administration, we'll start with the elderly who are most impacted by healthcare costs and sickness.
00:09:30.000In 1965, without the technology we have today, they implemented Medicare.
00:09:36.00019 million people, elderly people, signed up in the first year.
00:09:39.000So, if you could start a brand new program, And have 19 million people sign up with a technology that is way, way behind where we are today, why can't we over a four year period simply expand that program?
00:09:51.000I don't think it's such a difficult operation.
00:09:54.000So when you talk about the drug companies and the lobbyists and the enormous amount of money that they spend, does this exist anywhere else other than the United States, lobbyists on that level?
00:10:27.000For us, you can walk in, you know, if you have an illness, you can walk into the pharmacy tomorrow and the price has been doubled and you say to the pharmacist, what happened?
00:10:36.000They could do it any day they want, any price they want.
00:10:40.000Now, lobbyists are, in general, when people talk about lobbyists, it's an unattractive term.
00:10:46.000We think a bit in terms of a negative.
00:10:48.000We don't think of, oh, thank God there's lobbyists.
00:10:51.000We think, wow, there's someone with enormous amounts of money using that money to gain influence on politicians, and it shapes regular people, it shapes our lives, mostly in a negative way.
00:11:03.000This is the way most people look at it.
00:12:18.000And if you were the pharmaceutical industry, and last year 10 companies made $69 billion in profit, you're sitting around right now saying, all right, that's great.
00:12:31.000We're going to work with other companies.
00:12:32.000During the CNN debate that I participated in recently, in the debate, right in the middle of the debate, The drug companies and the insurance companies had an ad telling how bad so-called, how bad Medicare for all would be.
00:13:05.000And they could care less about the needs of working people in this country.
00:13:09.000And that's the dynamic of American politics right now.
00:13:12.000And in our campaign, look, we're taking them all on.
00:13:15.000And I know it makes a lot of people uncomfortable.
00:13:18.000But we are taking on all of these entities and all of their wealth and all of their power.
00:13:23.000And that's what a political revolution is about.
00:13:26.000So the real problem seems to be that they have this strategy of unlimited growth, not that they're not providing medication that people need to save their lives.
00:13:35.000I mean, it's obviously important to have pharmaceutical companies.
00:14:09.000We need obviously vigorous research and development.
00:14:12.000And by the way, your tax dollars, all of our tax dollars often goes to that research and we don't get the benefit of it in terms of lower prices.
00:14:21.000So it's just, it's a business model issue.
00:14:29.000When you're dealing with this, the kind of influence that you're talking about with $69 billion in a year, I mean, the resources they have, how would you stop that?
00:14:38.000Well, that is kind of what we call the $64 question.
00:14:46.000If you think back on American history and you think about the real changes that have taken place in society, You think about the labor movement and working class people standing up and saying to their employers,
00:15:02.000we're not going to be treated like animals anymore.
00:15:10.000And you think about the growth of the labor movement of millions of people beginning to stand together and fight.
00:15:15.000You think about the civil rights movement, you know.
00:15:18.000And it wasn't just Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It was, again, millions of African Americans and their white allies saying, we're going to end segregation and racism in this country.
00:15:34.000The only way that change takes place is when ordinary people come together and stand up and fight and say that the status quo is not working.
00:15:44.000And that's what I believe, and that's what we're trying to do.
00:15:46.000So the message of our campaign is it's us, not me, because I can't do it alone.
00:15:54.000If I were elected president tomorrow, I can't do the things that I would like to do, that I'm campaigning on, unless millions of people were working with me to tell the corporate elite that they cannot get it all.
00:18:13.000You see, these are the issues that we are going to focus on.
00:18:16.000And you rally the American people around those issues, and you tell people like Mitch McConnell, who represents a very poor state in Kentucky, that Mitch, if you are going to oppose raising that minimum wage to at least 15 bucks an hour, I will be in Kentucky as President of the United States,
00:19:02.000Now, the argument that I've heard about the minimum wage being raised to $15 an hour is that there are entry-level positions for high school kids, for people that are just getting their feet wet in the marketplace, they're learning how to work, they're making some money after school, that if you charge or if businesses have to pay $15 an hour to people like that,
00:19:23.000to entry-level people, that they won't be able to stay open.
00:19:27.000Well, first of all, they will be competing against, you know, if you're a business and I'm a business, and both of us have to raise our wages at the same level, we both have the same burden, so it's spread across.
00:19:40.000That is what my conservative colleagues will tell you.
00:19:43.000The truth is, I don't have the numbers right in front of me, that while it certainly is true that young people do work at McDonald's in the minimum wage jobs, a significant majority of the workers are not kids.
00:19:56.000They are often, and I've met them at McDonald's, They are workers who have children themselves.
00:20:04.000We work very hard to raise the minimum wage at Amazon and at Disney.
00:20:09.000We put pressure on both of those companies and they did the right thing.
00:20:12.000And when you talk to the people at Amazon who got that raise, These are not kids.
00:20:19.000These are ordinary adults who cannot make it on 12 or 13 bucks an hour.
00:20:24.000So I think the argument that, oh, they're old kids, is not really quite accurate.
00:20:30.000Well, not even that they're all kids, but that if they are kids, what would you think about making a minimum wage for someone who's under 18 that's different from a minimum wage for someone who's a legal adult?
00:21:21.000One of the things that always freaks me out is when I find out that enormous corporations that make billions of dollars have tax loopholes where they literally pay no money.
00:21:30.000How is that possible and how do you stop that?
00:21:33.000Well, it's the same thing as the drug companies.
00:21:34.000How is it possible that we pay ten times more for insulin in this country and for other drugs than in Canada or countries around the world?
00:22:42.000So as you indicated, you have a company like Amazon, owned by Jeff Bezos, who happens to be the wealthiest guy in America, worth about $150 billion.
00:22:51.000Amazon paid zero in federal income taxes.
00:22:55.000Dozens of corporations paid nothing or very, very little.
00:22:58.000And on top of all of that, you got these guys able to stash All over the world, trillions of dollars, trillions of dollars in the Cayman Islands, in Bermuda, in Luxembourg, and other tax havens.
00:23:13.000That is insane, and that has got to end.
00:23:24.000You know, that is what – you're touching now on the heart and soul of the tragedy of American politics.
00:23:32.000How does it happen that on issue after issue, the American people, the working class of this country, want something, nobody pays any attention to it, but billionaires want something, and it gets done.
00:23:48.000So right now, if you are the Koch brothers or some multi-billionaire, you say to the leadership of the Republican Party, and in some cases to the Democratic Party, hey, guess what?
00:23:59.000We're prepared to put hundreds of millions of dollars into your campaign.
00:24:02.000Hundreds of millions of dollars coming from one or two people.
00:24:12.000I want to be able to do more pollution, because I don't like all of this money I have to spend preventing pollution of the air or the water.
00:24:45.000And it seems that if you just took away those tax breaks, the enormous amount of money that would come from those corporations having to pay their fair share would take care of a lot of the expenses of all these things that you're proposing.
00:25:01.000Okay, let's talk about the education, because the idea of free education is a wonderful thing for people.
00:25:08.000I mean, the idea that you get out of college and you're in debt in an insane amount, that you might have 10, 20 years where you have to pay it back.
00:25:19.000And I know many people that are in that situation.
00:25:20.000Joe, there are people who are getting their Social Security checks garnished right now.
00:26:13.000You lived a pretty good life and made it into middle class.
00:26:17.000Forty or fifty years later, there's an explosion of technology.
00:26:20.000There's a growth in unfettered free trade.
00:26:23.000And it is clear now that most people, to make it into the middle class, are going to need a higher education.
00:26:30.000That's college or maybe it's technical training in order to become a skilled worker.
00:26:38.000It is insane to me to deny working class people and lower income people the opportunity to get that education because the cost of college has soared.
00:26:48.000So all that I say is that 100 plus years ago, the American people said that we should have free public education.
00:27:25.000It's thousands and thousands of dollars.
00:27:27.000So you had great universities like the University of California, City University of New York, state colleges all over this country, where tuition was virtually free.
00:27:36.000And then what happened, for a variety of political reasons, states and the federal government started cutting back on higher education and put more and more burden on the student with higher and higher tuition, which is where we are today.
00:27:49.000So all that I'm saying is in the year 2019, 2020, If our working class kids are going to go out and get the jobs that are out there, they need a higher education, which should be tuition-free.
00:28:03.000In terms of the cancellation of debt, which is my view, you've got 45 million people who are dealing with debt.
00:28:51.000Well, the answer is they have not been able to do that.
00:28:53.000So what we have proposed in one piece of legislation or two, actually, is Is to make public colleges and universities tuition-free, cancel all student debt in this country.
00:29:03.000That will cost $2.2 trillion, a lot of money, over a 10-year period.
00:29:07.000We do this through a tax on Wall Street speculation, which will bring in $2.4 trillion.
00:29:14.000We bailed out Wall Street 11 years ago.
00:29:17.000And by the way, these are crooks on Wall Street who engaged in legal behavior.
00:29:21.000Taxpayers, against my vote, bailed them out.
00:29:24.000If we can bail out Wall Street, you know what?
00:29:26.000We can cancel student debt and provide public colleges and universities tuition-free.
00:29:30.000When you say a tax on Wall Street speculation, what exactly do you mean by that?
00:29:34.000It will be a tax on every sale of a tax.
00:29:39.000People buy and sell stocks and bonds all of the time.
00:30:27.000I mean, if you have a serious medical issue, if you're held up, whatever happens to you that's awful, you go bankrupt, most of those things are resolved, but not student loans.
00:30:38.000I mean, again, this talks to the – and that has to do with bankruptcy law, which was passed against my vote.
00:30:47.000And while you're on bankruptcy, and I should have mentioned this before, when you talk about the healthcare system, a half a million Americans every single year go bankrupt because of medical bills that they can't pay.
00:31:02.000The guy says, Bernie, you know, The guy's in his 50s.
00:31:06.000And he said, you know, I've been paying off my student debt for years.
00:31:09.000I'm going nowhere because the interest rates are high.
00:31:12.000And I fear very much, which is the case, that they will start garnishing, taking away my Social Security checks, taking money away from me.
00:33:17.000Who can imagine some lunatic walking into a school or a mall or just on a nightclub area and taking out an assault weapon and shooting down people?
00:33:28.000And that we almost become to accept this as a normal part of American life is incredible, is just totally demoralizing.
00:33:46.000The reality is that today as we speak, there are approximately 400 million guns in America today.
00:33:52.000We have more guns than we have people.
00:33:56.000We have between 5 to 10 million assault weapons, and an assault weapon, as you know, is a military-style weapon designed to kill human beings kind of rapidly.
00:34:06.000And then on top of that, we have, again, nothing to be proud of, but we have a number of mentally unstable people.
00:34:14.000People, for whatever reason, are walking the streets, they're suicidal, they're homicidal.
00:34:21.000I think the answer is, and I'm not the guy to invent all these ideas, but here's some of what we have to do.
00:34:26.000First of all, if you want to own a gun in America, We have got to know that you are a stable person, and that means that we need to expand the background checks that currently exist.
00:34:46.000Okay, so we've got to know, did you beat up your wife?
00:34:52.000What is the state of your mental health?
00:34:54.000Number two, we've got to make that universal.
00:34:57.000Number two, right now, There is a background check if you walk into a gun shop, but you can buy guns in various states at a gun show, and you don't have to do any of that.
00:35:12.000You and I go to a gun show, you sell me a gun, I don't have to do that.
00:35:17.000Third of all, I can today legally walk into a gun show, pass the background check, and buy a dozen guns, walk out and sell them to criminal elements who will use them for bad things.
00:35:31.000So I think those are issues that most Americans believe we have got to deal with, and we can.
00:35:38.000Fourthly, I happen to believe, and I believe this for 30 years, that we should not be selling or distributing assault weapons in this country.
00:35:46.000They are weapons of mass destruction in a sense.
00:35:51.000And thank God, by the way, when we talk about both Dayton and El Paso, thank God, cops were there very, very quickly and did an incredible job.
00:35:58.000So if that guy had walked into the nightclub, there could have been dozens and dozens more people killed within a few minutes' time.
00:36:07.000I happen to believe, A, that we should not be selling or distributing assault weapons in this country.
00:36:17.000So I believe in a ban on assault weapons.
00:36:19.000And I think we have got to begin thinking about when we have 5 to 10 million assault weapons, which is more than the U.S. military has, we have to think about a strong licensing procedure in terms of who owns these assault weapons.
00:36:32.000So that's some of There are many other things, but those are some of the ideas that are out there.
00:36:38.000Now, the legal gun owners who are law-abiding citizens, who would never in a million years think about going around shooting people, but they love guns.
00:36:47.000They hear this kind of stuff about banning assault rifles, banning assault weapons.
00:36:52.000They don't even like the term assault weapons, right?
00:36:55.000They like to refer to them as their individual names for whatever they are.
00:36:59.000These people feel like this is an inexorable part of being an American, that you should be able to own a gun.
00:37:45.000But all that I ask of the gun owners, and you're absolutely right, 99.9% of gun owners would never in a million billion years think of doing these horrible things.
00:37:54.000But in the moment that we are living in, I think that we're all going to have to make some concessions to the reality.
00:38:23.000You know, I wish I can say in the best of all possible worlds, yeah, you know, you can own any weapon you want and so forth and so on.
00:38:32.000We're not living in the best of all possible worlds.
00:38:34.000We're living in a world where we're shocked every day by horror.
00:38:38.000I agree we are living in a terrible situation.
00:38:41.000I mean, there's hundreds of mass shootings a year now, which is insane.
00:38:45.000And if you look at the number in comparison to the rest of the world, it's crazy.
00:38:49.000Like a big one in other countries, like three mass shootings in a year, we had more than 270. It's crazy.
00:38:56.000But how would you implement something like this?
00:38:59.000Well, the idea of banning assault weapons has been done.
00:39:03.000In 1994, we banned assault weapons, I believe it was for 10 years.
00:39:10.000That ban was undone by a Republican majority.
00:39:15.000And it didn't, you know, I'm not suggesting, by the way, anything here that if you banned assault weapons tomorrow that it would radically change everything.
00:39:22.000But we have got to do the best that we can do.
00:39:26.000And again, I preface my remarks by telling you, I don't have a magical solution.
00:39:29.000You've got hundreds of millions of guns out there.
00:39:32.000You have people who should not be owning these guns, who get set off by God knows what, and do terrible things.
00:39:38.000All we can do is the best that we can do.
00:39:41.000But to say we can't do anything, I think is a real disservice to the American.
00:39:46.000Now, I'll tell you something else that bothers me, you know, in addition to the horror of seeing people lying on the street dead, is what this is doing to the children of this country, and I think we underestimate that.
00:39:59.000I have seven grandchildren, and for them and for kids all over this country, you're going to see the falls coming, kids coming back to school, you're going to see in schools all over America drills All right, this is what you do if somebody walks into the school.
00:40:13.000All right, you're going to hide under here.
00:40:17.000A couple of months ago, I was in Iowa.
00:40:20.000This guy is about six foot two, big guy, probably a football player.
00:40:23.000And he says, Senator Sanders, I got to tell you that the young people in my school are increasingly frightened, terrified about what could happen in the school.
00:40:33.000Think about what this – the trauma, the trauma of what this gun violence is doing.
00:40:39.000So I think we're all – as Americans, there ain't no easy answers here, but I think we're all going to have to come together and figure this one out and do the best that we can.
00:40:48.000Now, would that mean forcibly – And removing these guns from people's homes?
00:40:54.000I don't think you're going to have the FBI knocking on somebody's doors and taking them.
00:40:59.000But if we have 400 million guns already out there, and they're building more every year, right now as we speak, gun manufacturers are making more guns.
00:41:37.000No one has any magical solution, but I've given you – I'll tell you something else that I didn't mention, and that is the role of gun manufacturers, is that if you are a gun manufacturer and you are selling a hell of a lot of guns to a gun store in an area which normally you would not think – I mean,
00:41:56.000these guys know what cities buy, what towns buy, how many guns – And if suddenly there is a tremendous demand, you've got to be thinking, why is this gun store buying so many guns?
00:42:09.000It doesn't reflect the population in the area.
00:42:11.000You've got to deal with that issue where the gun owners have to take some responsibility.
00:42:34.000And many of them are on pharmaceutical drugs, and they have been since they were children, including amphetamines like Adderall and Prozac and all this different stuff that has varied effects on the human brain.
00:42:48.000What could be done and what would you done to analyze this, to find out what the cause and effect are, and to try to figure out what role and how much these drugs are responsible?
00:43:01.000Let me respond first by saying it goes without saying that we have a mental health crisis in America, before we even talk about drugs.
00:43:09.000And for whatever reason, you know, there are a whole lot of people, and the nature of our healthcare system, getting back to healthcare, is...
00:43:17.000I just talked to a woman, literally last night, and we had a town meeting, and she said, this is unbelievable, she said...
00:43:30.000Bernie, I was in Las Vegas when the terrible shooting took place, okay?
00:43:36.000And now I am, and I can understand this perfectly, I'm seeing Dayton and I'm watching television in El Paso, and I'm getting a PTSD reaction, all right?
00:43:47.000And that's totally, if you were in a place where people were shot down, and she said, I'm trying to get counseling.
00:43:54.000I remember a guy called up, a woman called up my office in Burlington, Vermont, and she said, I'm worried about my husband, my brother, what he might do to himself or somebody else.
00:44:08.000We're looking for mental health counseling.
00:44:10.000We can't find something that we can afford.
00:44:12.000So we need above and beyond gun violence.
00:44:16.000We need, and this is why I believe in Medicare for All, mental health is healthcare.
00:44:21.000You break your arm, that's a health issue.
00:44:27.000And we have got to make mental health counseling available to all people in this country when they need it, not six months from now, at a price they can afford.
00:44:36.000And under Medicare for All, it would be free.
00:44:40.000Number two, your point about studying the impact of drugs on people's behavior and possibly resulting in violence absolutely deserves to be studied.
00:44:51.000We should be studying the impact of drugs.
00:44:53.000In my view, this is a layman's view, you know, I'm not a psychiatrist.
00:44:58.000I worry very much that we are over-medicating kids in schools.
00:45:04.000You know, we have this deficit-deficient issue.
00:45:08.000You know, kids are running around and they're active.
00:45:09.000You know, when I was a kid, people used to run around and they were active.
00:45:17.000I think we need to study this issue and make sure that these drugs, in fact, are not causing kinds of reactions that we will regret later.
00:45:26.000Now, on the subject of drugs, marijuana is obviously a big issue in this country, and we've seen many states make it recreational, including this one.
00:45:35.000What do you think could be done, and what should be done to have this across the board, especially federally?
00:45:41.000You know, there's a guy that I have on the podcast coming up soon, his name's John Norris, and he wrote a book on the cartels growing marijuana illegally all over this country and selling it, especially, particularly in California now, because it's a misdemeanor, because it's legal recreationally and selling it with all sorts of horrible pesticides on it all sorts of like very in fact deadly chemicals all of this because it's not federally legal because we can't have sanctioned licensed companies doing
00:46:11.000an ethical job of growing something that any responsible law-abiding person should be able to consume Okay.
00:46:22.000When I ran for president for the Democratic nomination in 2016, I talked about a broken criminal justice system which ends up having, in the United States, more people in jail than any other country.
00:46:36.000We have more people in jail than China does, which is a communist authoritarian country.
00:46:41.000And what I called for then and I call for now is the legalization of marijuana in America.
00:48:31.000The other problem is, of course, with illegal drugs comes, you get this horrible cycle, particularly in inner cities, where you have people that are incarcerated for illegal drugs.
00:48:45.000Illegal drugs seem to be the only way out.
00:48:47.000The hard drugs, when we're talking about cocaine and all these other drugs, how does one stop that?
00:48:53.000And would you ever consider legalizing all drugs or decriminalizing all drugs?
00:49:17.000I think in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, what we have got to do, instead of building more jails and locking up more people, we really do have to invest in our young people, especially young people in distressed communities.
00:49:34.000If we can, and we can do this with the proper amount of resources, make sure the kids are not dropping out of school.
00:49:40.000If you drop out of school today, you know, say you drop out in your second or third year of high school, you don't have an education, you don't have any job skills, What are you going to do with your life?
00:49:49.000And the answer is you may well do drugs, you know, or you'll get in trouble, self-destructive activity or destructive activity and you're going to end up in jail.
00:49:57.000It makes so much more sense from a humane perspective, protecting our people, as well as a financial situation.
00:50:04.000We're spending $80 billion a year to invest in these kids.
00:50:26.000And she had a mentoring program, just watching the kids who are mostly at risk.
00:50:32.000So that they would not end up going through the cracks and getting into trouble.
00:50:36.000That's what we should be doing as a nation.
00:50:38.000And when we do that, we invest in the kids, we get them jobs, we get them education, the likelihood of them falling into bad ways is significantly reduced.
00:51:37.000Now you're asking, this is a very, very deep question, which we don't talk about terribly much.
00:51:44.000Why is it that so many of our people are turning to drugs, to alcohol, by the way, and I don't mean to drink at night, but I mean serious alcohol problems, and tragically to suicide?
00:51:59.000We now have, for the last three years, something that is ahistorical, never happened before in modern history, and that is our life expectancy is actually going down.
00:52:11.000And this is hitting all over the country, but it's especially hitting rural areas.
00:52:15.000And what the doctors are saying is that these are diseases of despair.
00:53:37.000This is something that in the wealthiest country in the history of the world we can afford and we should be doing rather than creating a situation where Amazon pays zero in federal income taxes.
00:53:47.000So to answer your question, this is a deep question.
00:53:49.000And again, I'm not here to tell you I have all the answers.
00:53:52.000But there are a lot of people out there who have basically given up hope.
00:53:55.000And for those people, I guess drugs is the alternative.
00:53:59.000So what you're saying essentially is that if we can do something to mitigate despair, then we'll do something to at least stop some of the demand for these illegal drugs.
00:54:10.000Look, if I am optimistic, if I'm excited about going to work tomorrow and I'm seeing my kid doing great in school, and when I get sick, I can go to the doctor's office and have a sense of community.
00:54:20.000My downtown is not all boarded up because businesses have left.
00:54:25.000Yeah, the strong likelihood is there will be less diseases of despair and drugs than we currently see.
00:54:32.000Now, when we're talking about impoverished communities and chronically, when you're talking about cities like Baltimore or parts of Chicago and Detroit that have just been in a terrible state of despair for long periods of time and it doesn't seem like there's a way out,
00:54:49.000The people that are born there, the people that live there, they live in this state of despair.
00:54:55.000What can be done to resolve all these terribly impoverished communities and bring them up to a standard where these kids that grow up there, they feel like there is an out, that they do have an opportunity?
00:55:32.000When we talk about what it means to live in a great society, a great nation, a nation that we're proud of, I'm afraid there are some people who have incredible wealth and power who say, you know what's great?
00:55:44.000Is that we're seeing a growth in the number of billionaires in America.
00:56:07.000Your point is that we have to, I think as I understand what you're saying, we have to redefine what being a great nation is about.
00:56:14.000We are not a great nation when we have 40 million people living in poverty and in despair.
00:56:21.000We're not a great nation when we have massive levels of income and wealth inequality, when 87 million people can't afford to go to a doctor today.
00:56:29.000So, to answer your question, I think that as a nation, we have got to focus a great deal of attention on those distressed communities.
00:56:37.000Often they're African American, often they're Latino, often they are rural white communities.
00:56:43.000And that means making sure that the kids there get the quality education that they deserve, making sure that we're creating good paying jobs in those communities.
00:56:54.000I voted against NAFTA, permanent normal trade relations with China and other trade agreements because I knew that those agreements were written by corporate America with the goal of shutting down plants in this country and moving abroad.
00:57:08.000And the result of that has been the loss of millions of good-paying jobs and the complete destruction of communities all across this country, in the South and all across this country.
00:57:18.000So we have got to rebuild those communities.
00:57:22.000We have got to bring high-tech jobs, not just to Silicon Valley, but to rural America again.
00:57:29.000I don't have magical answers, but the goal is we will not, under a Sanders administration, turn our backs on distressed communities.
00:57:57.000We're talking about so many deeply important issues and all of them that will be under the control or at least the direction of the one person who winds up becoming the President of the United States.
00:58:13.000I mean, it seems like being the president, you are managing so many different aspects of our economy, our culture, our safety, our environment, international communication, and it's so in-depth.
00:58:30.000How does one person do a job like that?
00:58:33.000And you certainly don't do it by tweeting every other day, major policy issues.
00:58:37.000I think he tweets a lot more than every other day.
00:58:41.000You know, what you do, and this is the way any sane president operates, is you need to be working with the smartest men and women from all walks of life who understand these issues.
00:58:53.000Every issue we have touched on, Joe, is enormously complicated.
00:58:56.000I can send out a 20-word tweet on it, but that doesn't solve it.
00:59:00.000So, unlike Trump, we will bring together the best and most knowledgeable people in this country to address the housing crisis, to address the The issue of these diseases of despair.
00:59:14.000We didn't even touch on climate change, you know, and then the future of the planet.
00:59:18.000How do we lead the world in transforming our energy system and creating the kind of jobs that we need?
00:59:23.000How do we revitalize American democracy so that instead of suppressing the vote, we're getting more young people involved in the political process?
00:59:30.000So to answer your question, it is not a one-person job, and anyone who thinks it is is dead wrong.
00:59:34.000You need the help of a very strong administration that knows the issues, that comes from the ranks of the working class.
00:59:43.000My administration, unlike Trump's, is not going to be filled with billionaires who's basically very often greedy type people.
00:59:51.000It is going to be filled with the best people often from the working class itself, from the trade union movement, people who are going to help us create policies that work for workers and not just the billionaire class.
01:00:03.000Now, we're getting to the end of your hour here.
01:00:05.000So climate change is obviously an enormous issue for our country and for the world.
01:00:11.000And what do you think you can do as president that can somehow or another slow down this process?
01:00:19.000Well, first of all, we have to have a president who, unlike Trump, believes in science, and I do.
01:00:28.000And what the scientists are telling us, as I mentioned earlier, is that we have fewer than 12 years to transform our energy system, or else there will be irreparable damage done, not only to our country, but to the world.
01:00:40.000Now, climate change is not just an American issue.
01:00:43.000So we could do tomorrow, do all the right things, but of China and Russia and India and the rest of Brazil.
01:00:48.000And Africa does not do the right thing.
01:00:50.000You know, we're not going to make the progress we need.
01:00:53.000So, here is what we have to do in my view.
01:00:56.000Number one, we have to tell the fossil fuel industry that their short-term profits, and they make a whole lot of money, their short-term profits are not more important than the future of this planet.
01:01:09.000I don't think that's a hard sell to make.
01:01:11.000You cannot keep producing a product which is destroying the planet in the United States and around the world.
01:01:17.000So by saying that, you're saying we would have to move consciously away from fossil fuels?
01:01:51.000I have probably the strongest pro-worker record of any member of the Congress.
01:01:55.000So it is not my intention to throw these guys out on the – and women – out on the street and ignore the pain that they will go through.
01:02:01.000We are proposing billions of dollars to rebuild those communities and make sure that those guys and women get new jobs.
01:02:09.000So we're not just discarding people in the fossil fuel industry.
01:02:12.000But ultimately, the product that they are producing, which is now carbon emissions, is destroying the planet.
01:02:17.000So we have to move away from fossil fuel in a very bold way into energy efficiency.
01:02:25.000Right now, in my own state of Vermont and all over this country, there are buildings which are incredibly wasteful.
01:02:32.000We don't have the windows, we don't have the insulation, we don't have the roofing, the doors that we need to keep the buildings warm in the winter and cool in the summer.
01:02:42.000And we can create just an incredible number of jobs just retrofitting our buildings.
01:02:48.000Second of all, we need to move very aggressively.
01:02:52.000To sustainable energies like wind and solar in California, you're doing a good job with wind.
01:03:01.000Solar, there is incredible potential out there.
01:03:04.000Prices of solar has dropped in recent years.
01:03:07.000And we have got to not only transform the energy system in our own country, we've got to lead the world in working with Russia and China.
01:03:14.000Because in this issue, we are in it together.
01:03:17.000And here's my dream, and this may be a utopian dream.
01:03:21.000The world right now is spending a trillion and a half dollars on weapons of destruction designed to kill each other.
01:03:26.000And maybe, just maybe, if we had a kind of leader, and I hope to be that leader, who says to the world, instead of spending a trillion and a half dollars killing each other, maybe we'll use those resources to transform the global energy system and save the planet for our kids and our grandchildren.
01:03:42.000Well, these ideas sound great, but in the competitive environment of global politics, how would you convince Russia or China or any of these countries to do something that would put them in some sort of a competitive disadvantage?
01:03:54.000Well, and the answer is, Joe, if we do not do that in 50, 100 years, everybody's going to be a terrible disadvantage.
01:04:02.000And look, I'm not telling you that tomorrow it's going to happen.
01:04:32.000In 1941, after Pearl Harbor, we were faced with a war in the East with China, a war in the West in Europe with Hitler.
01:04:45.000Within two years, the United States had transformed its economy to address and win the war, basically in two or three years, by re-industrializing America.
01:04:57.000So, in your eyes, we have to look at the economy almost as if the same kind of threat, or excuse me, the environment.
01:05:03.000It's the same kind of threat as Nazi Germany, an act together.
01:05:07.000Look, if you asked the Defense Department, you asked the CIA, you asked the defense people all over the world, tell us what the great national security threat is.
01:05:18.000I mean, this is a big part of the problem, right?
01:05:20.000There's a narrative that you hear from a lot of people that, oh, you know, climate change is not a proven science, and climate change is a hoax.
01:05:28.000I mean, this is something that's repeated over and over again, and I'm sure some of it has to do with lobbyists and some of it has to do with merchants of doubt that go out there and seed the world with disinformation to try to increase their profits and continue the practices that they're currently enjoying.
01:05:45.000You know, Joe, when I'm thinking back, and I don't know if all of you listeners can remember this because I'm older than most, but I can remember tobacco ads, cigarette ads on television.