The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #2341 - Bernie Sanders

00:00:03.000 The Joe Rogan Experience.

00:00:05.000 Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.

00:00:09.000 We'll be right back.

00:00:12.000 Mr. Sam, it's great to see you.

00:00:13.000 Good to be with you, Joe.

00:00:15.000 Great to be with you.

00:00:16.000 You've got a bunch of notes.

00:00:17.000 Not all that much.

00:00:19.000 Have you prepared for this?

00:00:20.000 I am all prepared.

00:00:21.000 Well, it's a good time for you to be in here because the world's gone haywire.

00:00:25.000 Yeah.

00:00:25.000 Yes.

00:00:26.000 What are your thoughts on this?

00:00:28.000 I think I start off with, Joe, trying to take a deep breath and doing what is not often done.

00:00:35.000 Where are we as a country today?

00:00:37.000 What's not going well?

00:00:37.000 What's going well?

00:00:38.000 And I don't think we don't have that kind of basic discussion.

00:00:41.000 And to my mind, I think in America today we are facing more serious crises than we have in the modern history of our country.

00:00:52.000 This is a pivotal moment in American history, and what happens now will depend, determine the lives of our kids and future generations.

00:01:01.000 What specifically concerns you?

00:01:03.000 I'll tell you what concerns me, the issue of wealth and power.

00:01:06.000 All right.

00:01:07.000 I'm kind of old-fashioned, and I believe in democracy.

00:01:11.000 And I believe that everybody should have a good shot at living a decent life.

00:01:15.000 And what I worry about right now, and this is an issue, Joe, and it's part of the problem that it just ain't talked about very much.

00:01:22.000 And I applaud, by the way, you and the other podcasters who give people the time to really seriously discuss things rather than seven-second soundbites, you know.

00:01:31.000 But if you take a look at where we are as a nation today, this system is not working.

00:01:35.000 It's broken.

00:01:36.000 It ain't working for ordinary human beings.

00:01:39.000 So you have an America today where we have more income and wealth inequality than we've ever had in the history of this country.

00:01:47.000 That's just a fact.

00:01:49.000 You have one man, Mr. Musk, owning more wealth than the bottom 52% of American families.

00:02:00.000 One man, 52% of the American families.

00:02:03.000 You got the top 1% owning more wealth than the bottom 93%.

00:02:07.000 You got CEOs of large corporations making 350 times what their workers make.

00:02:13.000 And meanwhile, in this richest country in the history of the world, working class people are getting decimated today. 0.99

00:02:21.000 And again, we don't talk about it in Congress for reasons that I hope I can get into.

00:02:26.000 We don't talk about it in the corporate media.

00:02:29.000 60%, 60% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.

00:02:34.000 Now, I grew up in a family.

00:02:36.000 I don't know your background, but I grew up in a family, lived paycheck to paycheck.

00:02:39.000 Man, anyone who lives paycheck to paycheck understands that every single day is a struggle.

00:02:45.000 You know, you've got to figure out how you feed the kids, rents, cost of housing in America off the charts, healthcare off the charts.

00:02:54.000 So right now, as we talk, there are people worrying.

00:02:56.000 My landlord, you know, is going to raise my rent by 20%.

00:02:59.000 What the hell do I do?

00:03:00.000 Where do I go?

00:03:01.000 What schools do my kid go to?

00:03:03.000 How do I buy decent food for my kids?

00:03:06.000 My mother is ill.

00:03:07.000 How do I afford prescription drugs for my mother? 0.97

00:03:10.000 My car breaks down.

00:03:13.000 If you have money, no one thinks of it.

00:03:14.000 Your car breaks down.

00:03:15.000 Go to the mechanic, you got to fix.

00:03:16.000 You know what?

00:03:17.000 A lot of people don't have $1,000 in the bank right now.

00:03:20.000 You don't have $1,000, your car breaks down.

00:03:23.000 How do you get to work?

00:03:23.000 If you don't get to work, you get fired.

00:03:25.000 If you get fired, your whole life is disrupted.

00:03:27.000 60% of American...

00:03:32.000 We've always had rich and poor, no question about it.

00:03:35.000 It's worse now, Joe.

00:03:38.000 What do you attribute that to?

00:03:41.000 I attribute it to decades-old attacks on the working class of this country.

00:03:49.000 I attribute it to horrific trade agreements, which have allowed corporate America to throw millions of workers out on the street and move to China, Mexico, and other low-wage countries.

00:04:01.000 I attribute it to a corrupt political system in which billionaires have significant control over both political parties.

00:04:09.000 So that, for example, right now in Washington, the national minimum wage is $7.25 an hour.

00:04:15.000 So you've got millions of workers today making $10, $12, $13 an hour.

00:04:20.000 You tell me, how do people survive on $13 an hour?

00:04:24.000 When we were kids, or at least when I was a kid, you worked for a large company.

00:04:28.000 You had something called a defined benefit pension plan.

00:04:31.000 That means you worked with me for 30 years.

00:04:33.000 When you retire, you're going to get X hundreds of dollars a week.

00:04:36.000 That's long gone.

00:04:37.000 Corporations have gotten rid of that.

00:04:39.000 So you got something like half of older workers in America have nothing in the bank when they face retirement.

00:04:44.000 So I think, to answer your question, I think you've got a rigged system controlled economically and politically by very, very wealthy and powerful people who could care less for working families.

00:04:58.000 Now, I don't want to romanticize the old days because that would not be true.

00:05:02.000 But there used to be a kind of a culture.

00:05:03.000 If I was a boss and I ran a factory, I had a little bit of concern for you, right?

00:05:07.000 You know, in general, I would say, I know your wife, how's the casual mom doing and all that stuff? 0.99

00:05:12.000 That's gone.

00:05:13.000 You got these companies that are owned by other companies, they're owned by SuperNash.

00:05:16.000 You know, we got involved in my office.

00:05:19.000 We used to be the chairman of the labor committee, health, education, labor.

00:05:21.000 So I got involved in a lot of stuff.

00:05:23.000 And when workers weren't on strike, we would call up and see what was going on, see how we can help.

00:05:28.000 So we'd call up to the company and we'd say, you know, why are you cutting back on health care for your workers?

00:05:33.000 Well, we don't make that decision.

00:05:35.000 It's owned by somebody else.

00:05:36.000 Call up somebody else.

00:05:37.000 Well, we're owned by somebody else.

00:05:38.000 You know how it is.

00:05:39.000 These huge conglomerates own the bloody world.

00:05:39.000 It's just huge.

00:05:42.000 And these guys don't give a damn about the needs of working people.

00:05:45.000 So I would say that the economy becomes less and less personal.

00:05:49.000 I have no reason.

00:05:50.000 You're my worker.

00:05:51.000 I have no care about you because right now I'm owned by an international who doesn't know that you exist. 1.00

00:05:56.000 And there's also a diffusion of responsibility because it's not even in your hands.

00:06:00.000 Exactly.

00:06:00.000 So the local boss might say, hey, listen, I'm really sorry, but I didn't have any decision in here.

00:06:04.000 Right, right, right.

00:06:05.000 There's nothing I can do.

00:06:06.000 Nothing I can do.

00:06:09.000 So I add all of that up and you have, and then just look at other things.

00:06:14.000 I mean, you tell me, tell me about the health care system.

00:06:16.000 Does anybody in America think this health care system is working?

00:06:19.000 Well, you could tell by the assassination, when the assassination of the United Healthcare guy, when that happened, there was people celebrating.

00:06:28.000 When is there ever Someone gets assassinated on the streets of New York City and people celebrate.

00:06:34.000 Right.

00:06:35.000 That's terrible.

00:06:36.000 It's terrible, but it does speak to how people feel about insurance companies.

00:06:39.000 Right.

00:06:40.000 Well, and I think rightly so, because it's not what you're paying for.

00:06:44.000 What you're paying for is you're hoping that you never get sick, but if you pay your insurance, you will be covered.

00:06:52.000 What they're trying to do is make it as difficult as possible for you to get money from them.

00:06:56.000 You got it.

00:06:57.000 The more money, the more I can deny you, the more money I make.

00:07:00.000 Right.

00:07:00.000 And that's the bottom line.

00:07:02.000 And when you're dealing with these enormous corporations, like we're talking about, this diffusion of responsibility, the people that are doing it, it's like, this is what I have to do.

00:07:08.000 This is my job.

00:07:10.000 They don't even think about it.

00:07:11.000 Right, exactly.

00:07:12.000 And this all started when?

00:07:14.000 Like, when, so Michael Moore had that brilliant documentary, Roger and me.

00:07:19.000 Yeah, I know.

00:07:20.000 Michael's a good friend.

00:07:22.000 He's a great guy.

00:07:23.000 That documentary is fantastic.

00:07:25.000 And it shows the impact of a corporation taking all their factories, moving them away like that with no warning, no recourse, nothing anybody can do, decimates basically all of Detroit.

00:07:41.000 That's right.

00:07:42.000 People don't know this.

00:07:44.000 Yeah.

00:07:44.000 But if my memory is correct, Detroit used to be in the 50s.

00:07:48.000 Third richest city in the world.

00:07:50.000 You got it?

00:07:50.000 Yes.

00:07:51.000 Yeah.

00:07:51.000 We've talked about it multiple times.

00:07:53.000 It's disgusting.

00:07:54.000 And especially me as someone who loves American automobiles, I'm a big fan of what Detroit made during that time.

00:08:02.000 And to see what happened to Detroit now, the last time I was in Detroit, it actually seems to be picking up.

00:08:08.000 There's a lot of small businesses and a lot of artists and a lot of people that are proud to, like Shinola, companies like that.

00:08:16.000 Proud to be in Detroit.

00:08:18.000 But there's just so many abandoned buildings.

00:08:21.000 It's insane.

00:08:21.000 You could buy a house there for 500 bucks.

00:08:24.000 It's really crazy.

00:08:25.000 Like giant factories where every window is smashed, all the pipes have been torn out, and it's just this hulking.

00:08:32.000 And it's not just Detroit.

00:08:34.000 Right.

00:08:34.000 I mean, there are other communities, corporations say, hey.

00:08:39.000 That path is unsustainable, right?

00:08:41.000 I think so.

00:08:42.000 Yeah.

00:08:42.000 I mean, look, if we are, and again, gets back to what we wanted as a nation, but you had corporations saying, hey, back then, not now, I could pay workers in China 25 cents an hour.

00:08:53.000 Why the hell do I want to hire you for what it was, that $5 an hour, whatever.

00:08:57.000 And I'll never forget, Joe, early on when I was elected to Congress, this was when we had the NAFTA agreement, I went to the Maquiladora area.

00:09:08.000 You know what that is?

00:09:10.000 It's a special zone in northern Mexico, near the border, where the government there, this is back decades ago, allowed American and other European corporations to settle and got tax breaks there.

00:09:24.000 So it attracted all these corporations.

00:09:27.000 So I went there with a congressional delegation, and this is what I saw.

00:09:31.000 You saw these beautiful new factories.

00:09:33.000 Now, this is 25, 30 years ago.

00:09:36.000 And then we said, all right, I want to see where the workers live.

00:09:38.000 And I'll never forget this, as long as I live.

00:09:41.000 Do you know those large cardboard boxes that refrigerators come into and stove so big?

00:09:47.000 That's where people were living.

00:09:48.000 They were living literally in cardboard boxes, making, I think at that point, now this is a long time ago, 25 cents an hour.

00:09:55.000 So workers in America were thrown out on the street, and people in Mexico exploited in a horrible way in these big, shiny new factories at the time. 0.66

00:10:04.000 So what you got, and I believe this strongly, you asked me, you know, how does it happen?

00:10:09.000 Why does it happen?

00:10:10.000 I think especially right now, and for many decades, you have the prevailing religion of the oligarchs and the corporate world is greed.

00:10:22.000 That's all. 0.99

00:10:22.000 I want it all, and I don't give a shit if I have to step wall over you, throw you out on the street, take away your Social Security. 0.99

00:10:28.000 I want it. 1.00

00:10:30.000 And to hell with you. 0.97

00:10:31.000 And that's why you end up with a situation in America where, you know, the top 1% now owns more wealth than the bottom 93%, and millions of people struggle.

00:10:40.000 It's also a corporate culture of competitiveness, right?

00:10:43.000 So they're competing with all the other corporations, and you have to keep up, and there's no way other than to increase your profits every quarter.

00:10:52.000 That's right.

00:10:53.000 That is exactly.

00:10:54.000 You do the right thing by your workers.

00:10:56.000 All right.

00:10:56.000 That's a perfect example.

00:10:58.000 So, you know, you got Wall Street.

00:11:00.000 Here's a fact.

00:11:01.000 When we talk about, it's not only income and wealth inequality that bothers me.

00:11:06.000 It's concentration of ownership.

00:11:09.000 So right now in America, in virtually every sector of our economy, whether it's agriculture, transportation, financial services, whatever, you've got a handful of giant multinationals controlling that sector.

00:11:21.000 But here's another amazing fact.

00:11:24.000 Who do you think owns these corporations?

00:11:27.000 You know, you remember there was a day where somebody actually owned General Motors or Jones Ford.

00:11:32.000 They're now owned by Wall Street firms.

00:11:33.000 You've got three Wall Street investment firms, BlackRock, you're familiar with BlackRock.

00:11:38.000 They're Charlie.

00:11:39.000 They're 18th Street.

00:11:40.000 Exactly.

00:11:41.000 Check it out on Google.

00:11:42.000 They are combined, the three of them combined, are the major stockholders of 95% of American corporations.

00:11:49.000 How's that?

00:11:49.000 That's not good.

00:11:50.000 That's power.

00:11:51.000 Right.

00:11:52.000 How did that start and what could have been done to stop that from happening?

00:11:56.000 Well, I think it's, again, it's greed.

00:11:59.000 These guys are smart.

00:12:00.000 They're hardworking.

00:12:01.000 They're motivated.

00:12:02.000 They want more and more.

00:12:03.000 So if I can buy this, I can buy this, I can sell this.

00:12:06.000 Right, but they're all doing it within the law, right?

00:12:08.000 Yeah.

00:12:09.000 Right.

00:12:10.000 Is that the problem?

00:12:11.000 But who makes that law?

00:12:11.000 Yeah.

00:12:13.000 They do.

00:12:14.000 Now, I want to go to another issue, which is very rarely discussed.

00:12:18.000 All right?

00:12:18.000 You ready for it?

00:12:19.000 I'm ready.

00:12:20.000 All right, hang on.

00:12:21.000 There we go.

00:12:22.000 And the problem I think that we face as a country is not just economic disparities and all the stuff that we're talking about, the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

00:12:32.000 It is political power.

00:12:35.000 Right now, and I doubt that there are many Americans, whether you're a progressive as I am or a right-wing Republican, I don't think people can disagree that we have a corrupt campaign finance system.

00:12:46.000 Argue with me?

00:12:48.000 No, I agree with you.

00:12:49.000 All right, so let me talk about what it means.

00:12:49.000 Yeah.

00:12:51.000 Okay.

00:12:53.000 As a result of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, I think it's 15, 16 years old, what it says is You're a billionaire.

00:13:02.000 You have now the constitutional right because your money is your freedom of expression, right?

00:13:08.000 So you don't like Bernie Sanders.

00:13:11.000 You can put millions or hundreds of millions of dollars into a campaign and express your view about how terrible Bernie Sanders is.

00:13:18.000 Right.

00:13:19.000 And you can buy that election, right?

00:13:20.000 That's your constitutional right.

00:13:21.000 I think that's probably the worst decision that the Supreme Court has ever made.

00:13:25.000 So what is the result of that decision?

00:13:28.000 The result of that decision, let's take us to where we are today, is that Elon Musk, and I know Elon was on your show, and he's here at Austin, huh?

00:13:38.000 Yeah.

00:13:38.000 Okay.

00:13:39.000 And we could talk about Elon, but he spent $270 million to elect Trump as president.

00:13:45.000 Okay.

00:13:45.000 I think that's absurd that any one person...

00:13:53.000 They spent a lot of money on Harris's campaign.

00:13:55.000 They spent $1.5 billion just over the course of a couple of months.

00:13:59.000 You got it.

00:13:59.000 All right, let me talk about it.

00:14:00.000 So I'm not here just to say it's a Republican.

00:14:02.000 That's my point here.

00:14:03.000 Right.

00:14:03.000 Okay.

00:14:04.000 So Musk spends that money, and what's his reward?

00:14:07.000 He becomes the most powerful person in government for three or four months.

00:14:10.000 Okay, fine.

00:14:13.000 But what you have right now, and I just saw this the other day, you are a Republican member of Congress, okay?

00:14:20.000 And you say, you know, there's a reconciliation bill, which we can talk about in a minute.

00:14:24.000 This is Trump's big, bad, big, beautiful bill that's coming up literally on the floor of the Senate very shortly.

00:14:31.000 So let's say you're a Republican representing a low-income district.

00:14:35.000 And you say, you know, I got a lot of people on Medicaid in my district, and kids can't get to college, and I worry about food programs.

00:14:43.000 I don't think it's a good idea to give tax breaks to billionaires and cut back on Medicaid.

00:14:47.000 You make that announcement today.

00:14:49.000 What happens to you?

00:14:51.000 It's over.

00:14:52.000 You're back.

00:14:53.000 You're finished.

00:14:54.000 The swarm comes for you.

00:14:55.000 You got it.

00:14:56.000 It's not a swarm.

00:14:56.000 Yeah.

00:14:57.000 The problem is it's already been established, right?

00:14:59.000 That these laws have been established.

00:15:01.000 The power has been given to these people.

00:15:03.000 The money has started flowing, and it's been flowing for a long time now.

00:15:07.000 And this is the issue with starting something that you can't stop.

00:15:12.000 You can stop it.

00:15:12.000 Well, you can stop it.

00:15:13.000 And you've got to stop it.

00:15:14.000 Okay, but if you do stop it, all these people are going to throw all their money at stopping you from stopping it, correct?

00:15:21.000 Right?

00:15:22.000 Exactly.

00:15:23.000 They're going to come up with the best commercials with American flags.

00:15:26.000 This country's all about competition and freedom.

00:15:30.000 You got it.

00:15:30.000 The freedom to donate to the party of your choice.

00:15:33.000 You got it.

00:15:34.000 Stop these companies.

00:15:35.000 You're writing their ads for them.

00:15:37.000 They're going to pick it up with the American. 0.98

00:15:41.000 We can write them.

00:15:42.000 We could all write them.

00:15:44.000 But then we've got to take a deep breath and figure out where do we go from here.

00:15:47.000 Now, I want her to, in my part, as you know, I am the longest-serving independent in American history.

00:15:52.000 I caucus with the Democrats, I always have, but you can't hear me defending the Democratic Party on this issue because you're right.

00:15:59.000 During the election, it wasn't just Musk and Republicans putting a lot of money into Trump.

00:16:03.000 It was Democratic billionaires putting a lot of money into Complete and into other candidates as well.

00:16:10.000 And let me, I mentioned there's a guy named, I don't even know his first name, Mr. Massey.

00:16:14.000 Is that name ring a bell?

00:16:15.000 Thomas Massey.

00:16:15.000 Thomas from Kentucky.

00:16:17.000 And this guy, as I am, is opposed to this war in Iran.

00:16:22.000 Just yesterday, Trump gave a long post about how they're going to primary this guy.

00:16:27.000 And what bothers me is you would hope that there would be respect enough for members of Congress that you can vote your own conscience, you could represent your constituency.

00:16:38.000 Every district is different than America.

00:16:40.000 But right now, anybody stands up and says, well, you know, I disagree with President Trump, bam, you are finished.

00:16:46.000 We're going to primary you.

00:16:47.000 We got all kinds of money.

00:16:48.000 You're out of there.

00:16:49.000 That happened to Massey yesterday. 1.00

00:16:50.000 But let me go back to the Democrats and tell you where the problem is.

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00:17:39.000 Can I point something out?

00:17:41.000 Don't you think that there's a Streisand effect to that?

00:17:44.000 Don't you think that there's a blowback for that kind of thing when people recognize that this guy should be allowed to have his own opinions and make some reasonable points and that people are going to reject this idea?

00:17:57.000 Maybe.

00:17:58.000 And that it's not as simple as – I think the whole MAGA thing right now is very divided, particularly because one of the things that they voted for was no war.

00:18:12.000 And it's quick.

00:18:13.000 We're six months in, and that's already popped off.

00:18:16.000 And then people are very concerned with now what happens to our troops overseas that are in these bases, that are in vulnerable positions, and what happens with, I mean, there's supposedly documented terror cells that got in through the open border over the last four years.

00:18:35.000 So what happens now in America?

00:18:37.000 What happens on American soil?

00:18:39.000 No, I mean, I agree with those.

00:18:41.000 When a guy like Thomas Massey steps up and says something, he's going to have a lot more support as well.

00:18:48.000 The answer is yes.

00:18:50.000 And my only point is he has a right.

00:18:52.000 Yes.

00:18:52.000 You know, somebody else says, hey, I think the war is a great idea.

00:18:55.000 That's your view.

00:18:56.000 You've got to go back.

00:18:57.000 But what bothers me is that if anybody stands up the next day, we're going to prime marriage.

00:19:01.000 You're out of here, man.

00:19:03.000 And that's the Republicans.

00:19:04.000 Let me talk about the Democrats for a moment, okay?

00:19:06.000 And I don't even know your views on this, so you may disagree with me.

00:19:11.000 You know, Israel was attacked by Hamas. 0.81

00:19:13.000 Hamas is a terrible terrorist organization.

00:19:15.000 They killed 1,200 people, which in a small country like Israel is a lot of people. 0.98

00:19:19.000 Terrible, terrible attack.

00:19:21.000 It's a war crime. 0.92

00:19:22.000 Israel had a right, in my view, to defend itself.

00:19:25.000 But the Netanyahu government did not have a right to kill 52,000 people in Gaza, wound well over 100,000.

00:19:37.000 And right now, as we speak, Joe, children are starving to death because of Israel's blockades. 0.76

00:19:45.000 Starving to death.

00:19:46.000 And I brought forth two resolutions, which basically were very simple.

00:19:51.000 And they said no more U.S. military aid to Israel under these conditions.

00:19:59.000 One vote got 15 votes in the Senate, the other one got 16. Do you think that members of the Senate do not know what's going on in Gaza?

00:20:09.000 The kids are starving to death.

00:20:10.000 The innocent people are being shot down right and left?

00:20:13.000 They know it.

00:20:14.000 Why do you think I couldn't get more votes?

00:20:16.000 They wouldn't vote against Israel.

00:20:18.000 Right.

00:20:19.000 It's political suicide.

00:20:20.000 Now you're talking.

00:20:21.000 All right.

00:20:21.000 Right.

00:20:22.000 So in the Republican side, you have money and insurance saying you speak up against Trump, you're out of here.

00:20:28.000 In the Democratic side, you speak up against the Netanyahu government, you're out of here as well.

00:20:33.000 And they have been successful.

00:20:34.000 You have super PACs like AIPAC spending a fortune.

00:20:39.000 And they have already knocked off a number of members of Congress, good members of Congress, and they will do it again.

00:20:43.000 So all I'm saying is you've got a corrupt campaign finance system on both sides, which is rejecting the will of the American people and end up supporting powerful special interests.

00:20:57.000 And if we do not get a handle on that issue, I worry very much about the future of American democracy.

00:21:03.000 Are you going to run for president again?

00:21:05.000 I am 83 years of age.

00:21:07.000 That's what I'm saying.

00:21:08.000 Yeah.

00:21:09.000 I'm not sure the American people will be enthusiastic on somebody's 100%.

00:21:12.000 You're still very with it.

00:21:14.000 Thank you.

00:21:16.000 You are.

00:21:17.000 I'll get them.

00:21:17.000 I mean, you're a couple years older than Biden.

00:21:19.000 Yeah.

00:21:20.000 Right?

00:21:20.000 Think of that.

00:21:21.000 Yeah.

00:21:22.000 You could be off a lot worse.

00:21:23.000 Yes, yes.

00:21:24.000 Yeah.

00:21:24.000 All right.

00:21:28.000 So we have been running around the country doing what we call the fighting oligarchy tour, which is why I'm here in Texas.

00:21:38.000 We were in Fort Worth last night.

00:21:39.000 Had a good turnout.

00:21:42.000 And I think, interestingly enough, Joe, it's not most of the people.

00:21:45.000 We know the people who come out to our rallies.

00:21:47.000 You know, we have a big list of millions of people.

00:21:50.000 But a lot of people are coming to our rallies that we don't know.

00:21:52.000 And I think we know that some of them are Republicans and some of them are Independents and many of them are Independents.

00:21:58.000 Because I think across the board, there is growing dissatisfaction with the current politics in America, both bodies.

00:22:07.000 And people want a new vision for America, which is also something we don't talk a whole lot about.

00:22:14.000 So, you know, the issues that we talk about is in the richest country on earth, why don't we have the best health care system in the world?

00:22:23.000 Why do we have 85 million people who are uninsured or uninsured?

00:22:26.000 And as you were mentioning a moment ago, I mean, he deals with the insurance companies and the drug companies.

00:22:32.000 And the function of the current health care system is to make these guys very rich.

00:22:36.000 And it works.

00:22:37.000 They make zillions of dollars.

00:22:40.000 And every place you go, in my state, the cost of health care has gone up this year like 10, 15 percent.

00:22:44.000 People can't afford it.

00:22:48.000 And we lose thousands of people every year.

00:22:50.000 People get sick.

00:22:51.000 They can't afford to go to the doctor.

00:22:53.000 They die.

00:22:55.000 So, you know, one of the fights that I hope we can win is to have the United States join every other major country on earth and guarantee health care to all people as a human right.

00:23:07.000 Well, we've talked about that a lot on this show: that if you view this country as a community, the most important thing is to protect the most vulnerable members of your community, period, right?

00:23:18.000 I agree.

00:23:19.000 And if we spend insane amounts of money on all sorts of things that people don't agree with, and I think generally most people would agree on some sort of a national health care system.

00:23:30.000 Most people.

00:23:30.000 They do.

00:23:31.000 Like, there's concepts of socialism that everyone agrees with.

00:23:36.000 One of them is the fire department.

00:23:37.000 Right.

00:23:38.000 Everyone thinks that everyone, every citizen, should have access, the same equal access to the fire department.

00:23:38.000 Right?

00:23:45.000 And we all pay into that.

00:23:46.000 That's right.

00:23:47.000 And we all believe in education.

00:23:50.000 We all believe that there should be free public education.

00:23:54.000 And most people believe that the university system should also be funded.

00:23:58.000 It would benefit everyone.

00:24:00.000 It would benefit everyone to have more educated people that are doing better in the world.

00:24:00.000 You got it.

00:24:03.000 You'd have better GDP.

00:24:05.000 You'd have more successful people.

00:24:07.000 That's absolutely right.

00:24:08.000 If you want to make America great again, less losers. 0.74

00:24:10.000 How do you make less losers?

00:24:12.000 Don't stack the deck against them.

00:24:15.000 One of the first things that you'd have to do is figure out why these communities and these cities have been the exact same way for decade after decade.

00:24:22.000 Back to Jim Crow and the red line laws and all these different. 0.53

00:24:25.000 Why is nothing being done to fix that or to correct that problem?

00:24:30.000 And it becomes this political beach ball that they just bounce around the air at a concert.

00:24:35.000 And everybody, it's like there's certain things that just keep coming up that make you just go, well, how are we still talking about gay marriage?

00:24:43.000 How is that still coming up?

00:24:44.000 And it's like, poof, throw it up in the air.

00:24:46.000 All right, let me get back to that.

00:24:47.000 But I want to say.

00:24:48.000 There's a bunch of these things, right?

00:24:49.000 All right.

00:24:50.000 The first point you made, you want to make America great?

00:24:52.000 Right. 1.00

00:24:53.000 Best losers. 0.78

00:24:54.000 Have the best educated workforce in the world. 0.82

00:24:56.000 How's that radical idea?

00:24:57.000 I don't think so.

00:24:58.000 Right.

00:24:58.000 And you're absolutely right.

00:24:59.000 Better education.

00:25:00.000 You live longer when you have better education, et cetera, et cetera.

00:25:03.000 Right.

00:25:04.000 All right.

00:25:04.000 So what does that mean?

00:25:07.000 It means right now, you know, I talk to psychologists all the time.

00:25:12.000 You do?

00:25:12.000 Yeah, I do, because I was the chairman on now, what's called the ranking member of the Health Education Labor Committee.

00:25:18.000 So, you know, we deal with medical people all the time.

00:25:20.000 Wasn't me personally.

00:25:22.000 No.

00:25:24.000 That I may need also, but no, I was talking in a more general sense.

00:25:28.000 Look, what are the most important years of human development?

00:25:32.000 You're a human being.

00:25:33.000 What are the most important years?

00:25:34.000 That's right.

00:25:34.000 You're a child.

00:25:35.000 Zero to four.

00:25:36.000 How is our child care system doing?

00:25:37.000 Yeah, not so good.

00:25:38.000 It's a disaster.

00:25:40.000 So you've got a rational society says, okay, the kids are the future of America, right?

00:25:47.000 You talked about the sense of being a community.

00:25:50.000 So if I love this country and I want this country to do well into the future, I have to worry about the children, correct?

00:25:55.000 Right, absolutely.

00:25:57.000 Right now, for economic reasons, when I was a kid, by the way, and this is not to shock some of your younger listeners here, there was one worker in a family could actually bring home the bacon and pay the bills.

00:26:11.000 Yeah, back in the old days.

00:26:12.000 Back in the old days, yeah, man.

00:26:14.000 So I grew up in a working-class family.

00:26:16.000 We didn't have any money.

00:26:17.000 My dad went out to work, mom stayed home, and that was it.

00:26:19.000 Yeah.

00:26:21.000 Made healthier people, too, that way.

00:26:23.000 It did.

00:26:24.000 It did.

00:26:25.000 I think in many respects it did.

00:26:27.000 Well, something happened where they sort of devalued the woman's role as a mother by convincing them that they have to be a part of the workforce.

00:26:37.000 I think that's part of it.

00:26:38.000 I think the other half is women legitimately wanted careers as well. 1.00

00:26:42.000 And the other thing that happened, maybe most significantly, is you needed two breadwinners to stay alive.

00:26:48.000 Yeah, that's the problem.

00:26:49.000 The real problem was financially, it just seemed so difficult for one person to pay for everything in the business.

00:26:55.000 Exactly.

00:26:56.000 The only way to do it was to have both parents working. 0.50

00:26:58.000 You know, I was thinking, I grew up in Brooklyn before I moved to Vermont, and we lived in a rent-controlled apartment.

00:27:05.000 And I was doing the arithmetic.

00:27:07.000 My dad didn't make much money, but we didn't pay much in rent.

00:27:11.000 And I couldn't quite remember what his salary was and all that.

00:27:14.000 But my guess is we paid, is I recall, talk to my brother about this, about 18% of my dad's salary for rent.

00:27:23.000 18%.

00:27:24.000 Ain't nobody in America today who's paid 18%.

00:27:27.000 You know what I mean?

00:27:28.000 That's why you need two red ones, because you're paying 40%, 50%.

00:27:28.000 Right.

00:27:32.000 Right.

00:27:34.000 But getting back to this issue of education, which I think is key, if you were rationally thinking about the future of America, if you loved America, as we all do, you're going to have the best childcare system in the world so the kids will do well in school.

00:27:48.000 Right now, in childcare, you have workers out there making $15 an hour.

00:27:53.000 And you have families that cannot afford childcare.

00:27:56.000 In my state, I don't know, it's about $20,000 a year to send your kid to childcare.

00:28:00.000 So you're making $50,000 a year?

00:28:02.000 How do you pay that?

00:28:03.000 $60,000?

00:28:04.000 You can do that.

00:28:05.000 And then education.

00:28:06.000 You've got kids who want an education.

00:28:07.000 They want to go to college.

00:28:08.000 They want to go to trade school.

00:28:10.000 We desperately need, here's something that really drives me a little bit nuts.

00:28:15.000 In America today, Joe, not only is our health care system failing us, it's based on greed, not on need, but we need more doctors.

00:28:26.000 All over the country, people have to wait, you know, sometimes months to get to a doctor's office.

00:28:32.000 We have a massive nursing shortage. 0.99

00:28:35.000 We need more dentists, big problem in dentistry.

00:28:38.000 We need more mental health counselors.

00:28:40.000 We need more pharmacists.

00:28:43.000 How come in the richest country in the world, we don't have enough doctors and nurses?

00:28:48.000 Because it's very difficult to do.

00:28:49.000 It's very difficult to become a doctor, and the bills that you have from education are overwhelming.

00:28:55.000 All right.

00:28:56.000 Let's just say tomorrow you announce to the world, you're giving up this podcast, you want to go to medical school, all right?

00:29:03.000 You got it?

00:29:04.000 Yeah.

00:29:06.000 You know much, if you don't have any money, how much you're going to graduate medical school in debt?

00:29:10.000 Probably a quarter million dollars, easy.

00:29:12.000 Double that.

00:29:13.000 Yeah, I'm not, you know, obviously it varies per person, but it is not unusual for guys, you know, people, working-class homes, go to medicals, come out $500,000 in debt.

00:29:13.000 Really?

00:29:24.000 Nurses, I don't know, $100,000, $150,000 in debt.

00:29:27.000 That is insane.

00:29:28.000 It's insane.

00:29:29.000 All right.

00:29:29.000 Yeah.

00:29:30.000 We need more doctors.

00:29:31.000 So I want to encourage you.

00:29:32.000 John, I want you to go to medical school.

00:29:34.000 Hey, good news.

00:29:35.000 We're paying your tuition, da-da-da, and we need you out there as soon as we can get you.

00:29:39.000 Why wouldn't that be subsidized?

00:29:40.000 Of course, you should subsidize it.

00:29:41.000 Right.

00:29:42.000 Of course.

00:29:42.000 Yeah.

00:29:43.000 But there's so many different.

00:29:47.000 What would you have done?

00:29:49.000 Like, imagine you hadn't gotten derailed and they hadn't conspired against you and you actually became the Democratic candidate for president and you won.

00:29:58.000 What would you have done differently?

00:30:02.000 Okay.

00:30:03.000 How many hours do we have?

00:30:05.000 It's all the time in the world, Bernie.

00:30:07.000 I know.

00:30:09.000 What would you have done first day in office?

00:30:11.000 Well, it's not just the first day in office.

00:30:13.000 I would have dealt with this campaign finance reform issue.

00:30:16.000 And there are ways that you can get around that Supreme Court decision.

00:30:19.000 How do you do that?

00:30:22.000 You move toward public funding of elections, which says that, Joe, you want to run against me?

00:30:30.000 That's great.

00:30:32.000 But you're not going to get super PAC money.

00:30:34.000 We're going to publicly fund you.

00:30:37.000 You get 1,500 signatures that says you're a serious candidate.

00:30:42.000 You'll get a certain amount of money to run for office.

00:30:45.000 Funded by the government.

00:30:46.000 Yes, absolutely.

00:30:47.000 So someone running for president funded by the current president.

00:30:53.000 Well, not the current president.

00:30:54.000 No, but the current government.

00:30:56.000 And people say, oh, taxpayer dollars are going there.

00:30:58.000 But that makes a lot more sense than having billionaires fund elections, which is what you got right now.

00:31:02.000 So that's some more sense.

00:31:03.000 You think this should be when you get a certain number, you just get a certain allotted amount of money that you could use for your campaign and everybody gets the same amount?

00:31:10.000 That exists in some places right now.

00:31:12.000 Does it where?

00:31:12.000 In New York City right now.

00:31:13.000 Oh, in New York City.

00:31:14.000 And other places as well.

00:31:16.000 So if you agree, you're going to raise – you're not going to raise private money.

00:31:22.000 you go the public route.

00:31:24.000 It exists in a number of communities.

00:31:25.000 And I think that is.

00:31:26.000 Did you watch the New York City debates, the mayor?

00:31:30.000 I got involved, and I'm supporting Mr. Mendani.

00:31:34.000 A lot of people are.

00:31:35.000 Well, especially after that debate.

00:31:37.000 It seems like everybody else was essentially saying, I've been to Israel more than you've been to Israel.

00:31:37.000 Right.

00:31:43.000 I'm going to go to Israel before you do.

00:31:45.000 Right.

00:31:45.000 They think they're campaigning to be foreign minister for Israel or something.

00:31:50.000 But talk about money and politics.

00:31:52.000 Just look at New York City.

00:31:52.000 Yes.

00:31:53.000 Right now, there's the election tomorrow, I think, right?

00:31:55.000 I think it's tomorrow, Tuesday.

00:31:57.000 Wednesday, Monday, tomorrow's Tuesday, right?

00:31:59.000 Yes.

00:31:59.000 That's the election.

00:32:01.000 They're spending a huge amount of money.

00:32:04.000 These are Democratic or some cases.

00:32:06.000 Who's in the lead right now?

00:32:09.000 The polls say Cuomo by a little bit, but I think Zoran has a lot of momentum.

00:32:14.000 We'll see.

00:32:15.000 Polls are weird.

00:32:16.000 In a race like that, yes. 0.97

00:32:17.000 Well, they're weird in every race.

00:32:19.000 They were wrong with Hillary in 2020, or in 2016, rather.

00:32:25.000 They were wrong in 2024 with Harris and Trump.

00:32:29.000 I don't understand polls.

00:32:33.000 I have a feeling that the majority of them are inaccurate.

00:32:37.000 Well, I think they are increasing.

00:32:39.000 I don't know the answer to either question.

00:32:41.000 The pollsters would argue that's not the case.

00:32:43.000 But I think you've got a lot of folks who are not all that enthusiastic about honestly, giving honest answers to a pollster.

00:32:51.000 Absolutely.

00:32:52.000 Yeah, and that's true, too.

00:32:54.000 That's part of the problem, right?

00:32:55.000 But you asked me on my first day as president, well, I'll have you drop in, say hello, have a cup of coffee.

00:32:55.000 All right.

00:33:00.000 All right.

00:33:01.000 Good.

00:33:02.000 And then I think we'd declare something like our health care system as an emergency and figure out ways that we can do what every other major country on earth does, and that is guarantee health care to all people.

00:33:16.000 So one of the things you do is say, okay, we need tens of thousands of more doctors and hundreds of thousands of more nurses and dentists and so forth and so on.

00:33:24.000 And we're going to move aggressively to make sure that in America, everybody in this country has health care as a human right.

00:33:32.000 So I think that's number one.

00:33:33.000 Number two, at a time of massive income and wealth inequality, you don't give tax breaks to billionaires.

00:33:42.000 You demand that they start paying their fair share of taxes.

00:33:45.000 And one of the problems that we have, it's not just an American issue, it's a global issue.

00:33:49.000 A lot of these zillionaires are hiding their money in tax havens in the Cayman Islands and elsewhere.

00:33:54.000 And that's an international issue.

00:33:56.000 But I think we have to have a fair tax system which says that individuals and corporations that are making a whole lot of money start paying their fair share of taxes.

00:34:05.000 What is their fair share?

00:34:07.000 I don't know.

00:34:07.000 I mean, you know, under Eisenhower, the very rich paid, at their upper levels, 90%, you know.

00:34:15.000 But let me be very honest with you, Joe, on this one.

00:34:17.000 90% is kind of crazy, though.

00:34:19.000 No, that's not, of course, that's just for your billionth dollar.

00:34:22.000 You know what I mean?

00:34:23.000 It's not your first dollar.

00:34:24.000 So if you make a billion, you pay $900 million?

00:34:27.000 No, no.

00:34:28.000 No, no, no, no.

00:34:29.000 That's not what it means.

00:34:30.000 It means on your $900 million, you're going to pay 90%.

00:34:34.000 All right.

00:34:34.000 Okay.

00:34:35.000 But the other thing that I would do, and look, you've got to deal with this climate change issue.

00:34:44.000 And I know that there are some people who think climate change is a hoax.

00:34:49.000 It ain't a hoax.

00:34:51.000 I think the last 10 years have been the warmest on record.

00:34:55.000 And we can create millions of good paying jobs, transforming our energy system away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency, to solar, to wind, and other sustainable energies.

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00:35:54.000 I think the climate change issue is very complicated.

00:35:57.000 And I think, did you see the Washington Post piece that they wrote where they did this long-term view?

00:36:05.000 First of all, the reality is that the Earth's temperature has never been static, right?

00:36:09.000 We could both agree on that.

00:36:10.000 It's always been up and down.

00:36:11.000 There's been ice ages and heat waves.

00:36:13.000 And then the Washington Post looked at it.

00:36:15.000 What was the time period that they looked at?

00:36:18.000 That essentially they found that we're in a cooling period, that the Earth over the past X amount of years, and this was like a very inconvenient discovery, but they had to report the data and kudos to them for doing that.

00:36:33.000 Scientists have captured the Earth climate change over the last 485 million years.

00:36:36.000 Here's a surprising place we stand now.

00:36:39.000 So look at the far end of that graph, and you see we're in a cooling period.

00:36:44.000 Well, I'm not sure.

00:36:46.000 I didn't read that article, but the scientists who are out there, I think.

00:36:51.000 I know, but there's a lot of money involved in that too, Bernie.

00:36:53.000 That's part of the problem.

00:36:54.000 There's a lot of money involved in this whole climate change emergency issue, and there's a lot of control.

00:37:00.000 And that's a big part of this problem.

00:37:02.000 Not only that, if we're just talking about primarily carbon and carbon footprint, what are we going to do about China? 0.67

00:37:08.000 Because China is like, what percentage of they are the major polluter right now in terms of carbon?

00:37:18.000 We used to be one.

00:37:18.000 We're number two.

00:37:19.000 They're number one right now.

00:37:21.000 I think they have an enormous percent of global.

00:37:24.000 I think it's very high.

00:37:28.000 It's not an American issue.

00:37:30.000 It is a global issue.

00:37:32.000 And all I can tell you is that we are, in my view, going to see more extreme weather disturbances in the coming years than we have ever.

00:37:41.000 And we are seeing them right now.

00:37:43.000 Right, but scientists don't agree.

00:37:45.000 Well, this is where it gets confusing.

00:37:47.000 Because scientists that are in agreement, there's all these entanglements.

00:37:53.000 Whenever someone's discussing something, whether it's economics or whether it's health issues or pharmaceutical drugs, there's financial entanglements.

00:38:01.000 I think we both agree with that, right?

00:38:03.000 And I think this is part of the issue with this whole climate change emergency as well, because it's not just that we could all agree pollution is a major factor.

00:38:14.000 It's a huge issue in the world today.

00:38:16.000 We could all agree with that, right?

00:38:18.000 I think one of the things that we have to recognize is that whenever there's an issue that everyone can agree on, you're going to have a bunch of people that capitalize on that issue and they look to gain more money.

00:38:33.000 They have financial issues that they push forward in order to capitalize on this issue.

00:38:39.000 But then also power and control.

00:38:42.000 These things like they're trying to institute in the UK where they have these 15-minute cities, this concept where you're not allowed to travel.

00:38:48.000 They'll be able to look at your carbon footprint.

00:38:50.000 It's, yeah, see, that's the problem.

00:38:53.000 The problem is giving people that are in power, these people that we've all discussed that have so much money and so much control over our societies, multinational corporations, giving them more control over citizens.

00:39:05.000 And this is a vehicle for that. 0.74

00:39:07.000 And this is what's dangerous about this whole climate change emergency, because it allows these fucking creeps that have been controlling people and controlling what you do and what you say and how you spend your money with people that already live in check-to-check. 0.96

00:39:21.000 And you put additional constraints on them and you make them even more scared. 0.96

00:39:24.000 And then you put additional measures where you can look at their carbon footprint.

00:39:30.000 You can look at the amount they travel.

00:39:33.000 Put a carbon tax on these people.

00:39:34.000 Let's figure out how to extract more money from them.

00:39:37.000 That's what bothers me about this climate change emergency.

00:39:40.000 Not that we can all agree pollution is a terrible thing.

00:39:44.000 Everyone should agree to that.

00:39:46.000 The beautiful earth that sustains us and all life on this planet is being poisoned as we speak.

00:39:52.000 We're killing all the fish in the ocean and sucking them out in giant numbers.

00:39:56.000 94% of all the big fish that are in the ocean are gone over the last, you know, whatever it is.

00:40:02.000 When you go to war against nature, you lose.

00:40:05.000 Yeah, because you're part of nature.

00:40:07.000 Exactly.

00:40:07.000 But we're worshiping the Almighty dollar above the money.

00:40:11.000 You know, you asked me when I ran for president, one of the interests, it's something else to run for president because you get around, you meet all kinds of people, and you learn all kinds of things.

00:40:20.000 And one of the things that I did, we went to a lot of, we met with a lot of Native Americans.

00:40:26.000 And one of the reasons is, you know, their tradition was going from way back, respect for nature.

00:40:34.000 That they understood back, way back when, that you kill off all of the buffalo, you ain't going to have nothing to eat, right?

00:40:40.000 Right.

00:40:40.000 They understood that.

00:40:41.000 And you understand that you live in harmony with nature, which is, I think, what you're talking about.

00:40:45.000 Absolutely.

00:40:46.000 And if you lose that harmony, I worry about the future of humanity.

00:40:52.000 Which is the problem with financial competitiveness.

00:40:54.000 When you put that almighty dollar above all else, then all you think about, and you're only alive for 100 years, so it's just hit the gas. 0.98

00:41:01.000 Hit the gas for 100 years, and who gives a shit what happens after I'm gone? 0.97

00:41:05.000 I'm going to die with the most toys. 0.99

00:41:07.000 Yay, I win in the dirt. 0.85

00:41:08.000 That's exactly right.

00:41:10.000 And that is...

00:41:12.000 Okay.

00:41:14.000 And that is artificial intelligence and robotics.

00:41:17.000 Automation.

00:41:18.000 Automation.

00:41:19.000 Okay.

00:41:19.000 Yeah.

00:41:20.000 Giant issue.

00:41:21.000 Huge issue.

00:41:22.000 All right.

00:41:22.000 So let's back it up.

00:41:27.000 Americans are angry. 0.99

00:41:30.000 And one of the reasons they are angry is that over the last, just give you one fact here, last 52 years, you and I understand, everybody in the world understands.

00:41:43.000 There's been a huge explosion in technology, correct?

00:41:46.000 What we're doing today never could have happened 50 years ago.

00:41:50.000 Factories far more automated, offices far more automated.

00:41:54.000 I became mayor of Burlington, Vermont in 1981.

00:41:57.000 There was not a computer in the building.

00:42:01.000 By the way, great town.

00:42:02.000 It is a great town.

00:42:04.000 In any case, an explosion of technology, significant increase in worker productivity, right?

00:42:11.000 We are talking to millions of people now.

00:42:13.000 Never could have happened before, right?

00:42:14.000 That's true.

00:42:15.000 Workers are producing a lot more.

00:42:18.000 Tell me, how are real inflation accounted for wages been over the last 52 years with all of that increase in worker productivity?

00:42:25.000 Workers doing a lot better?

00:42:26.000 Not so good.

00:42:27.000 Not so good.

00:42:28.000 No.

00:42:28.000 In fact, there are studies out there that suggest in real inflation accounted for dollars, wages are actually lower now than they were 52 years ago.

00:42:36.000 And during that same period, there's a massive transfer of wealth from the bottom 90% to the top 1%.

00:42:42.000 So that's what technology has done over the last 50 years.

00:42:47.000 I don't know if you saw this.

00:42:47.000 There was a study.

00:42:48.000 It blew me away.

00:42:49.000 I can't remember who did it.

00:42:50.000 Kaiser, some reputable guy, people did it.

00:42:54.000 This is what they said.

00:42:55.000 They do a poll to the American people and they say, Americans, do you think you are better off today than somebody in your situation, middle class, whatever you may be, was 40 years ago?

00:43:11.000 Okay?

00:43:12.000 Are you better off today than somebody in your circumstance would have been 40 years ago?

00:43:17.000 What was the answer?

00:43:18.000 No.

00:43:21.000 And what the answer was, and this is, and we got to deal with this one.

00:43:24.000 This is big.

00:43:24.000 The answer was, you know, there were a number of people who say, hey, look, I got a cell phone.

00:43:28.000 It's great.

00:43:28.000 I got a big screen TV.

00:43:30.000 It's great.

00:43:31.000 I can fly all over the world.

00:43:32.000 It's great.

00:43:33.000 I get sick.

00:43:34.000 I get treatment now that I never could have had 40 years ago, right?

00:43:37.000 Those are facts.

00:43:38.000 All really positive developments.

00:43:40.000 But on average, most people said, I think the situation is worse today than it was 40 years ago.

00:43:48.000 And that is what we've got to deal with.

00:43:49.000 So you've got all the technology in the world.

00:43:51.000 What the hell does it mean if your life is not improving?

00:43:54.000 In fact, in many ways, getting worse?

00:43:56.000 Yeah.

00:43:57.000 Well, again, we'll go back to polls again because I don't necessarily believe that polls are totally accurate.

00:44:04.000 But I do think that the issue with It being virtually impossible for one person to sustain the entire family these days, one worker, the father or the mother, whoever it is, to sustain the entire family.

00:44:18.000 That's a giant issue.

00:44:19.000 All these issues when it comes to labor, when it comes to minimum wage, I think you and I are in agreement on all these. 0.82

00:44:29.000 I think the minimum wage in this country is ridiculous.

00:44:31.000 I mean, $7. 0.95

00:44:33.000 What?

00:44:34.000 It's insane.

00:44:35.000 How do you live off $7?

00:44:36.000 You go to Jimmy John's, you get a sub.

00:44:38.000 How much is a sub?

00:44:40.000 How much is a sub like a big sub at Jimmy John's?

00:44:43.000 Some guy just did a TikTok video where he's like, they're trying to say that minimum wage, $15 is too much.

00:44:51.000 I think he had a sub that he bought for $25.

00:44:54.000 So imagine that's your lunch.

00:44:56.000 So imagine you have to work three and a half hours just to pay for a sandwich.

00:45:04.000 Imagine how insane that is.

00:45:05.000 It's insane.

00:45:05.000 That's insane.

00:45:06.000 Like, how do you eat?

00:45:08.000 How do you eat dinner?

00:45:09.000 How do you eat lunch?

00:45:10.000 How do you eat breakfast?

00:45:11.000 I have talked to people who make 10, 12 bucks an hour trying to raise a kid.

00:45:16.000 Jesus.

00:45:17.000 That's right.

00:45:18.000 Yeah.

00:45:18.000 Well, the argument against that is, hey, these are entry-level jobs that are supposed to be for kids.

00:45:23.000 No, and that's factually incorrect.

00:45:24.000 Yeah, of course that's true to some degree.

00:45:26.000 To some degree, but if you have grown adults that are working those jobs, now it becomes disgusting.

00:45:31.000 That's right.

00:45:32.000 That's exactly right.

00:45:33.000 Especially when you're dealing with an enormous corporation.

00:45:35.000 You got it.

00:45:36.000 Right.

00:45:36.000 So we put a lot of pressure.

00:45:38.000 We are trying to raise the minimum wage, federal minimum wage, to $17 an hour.

00:45:43.000 That's a reasonable amount of money.

00:45:47.000 It's going to be real difficult to live off of $17 an hour.

00:45:50.000 But at least that's right.

00:45:52.000 At least you can get a sandwich in under two hours' worth of work.

00:45:55.000 But I want to get back to this issue because it's one that we don't talk about, and it gets to AI.

00:46:04.000 Why do we have what some of these people call an epidemic of loneliness in America?

00:46:09.000 Yes.

00:46:11.000 Mental illness rates are pretty high.

00:46:13.000 Suicide rates are too high.

00:46:14.000 Too much.

00:46:15.000 God, drug addiction.

00:46:17.000 Horrible problem all over the country.

00:46:17.000 Right.

00:46:19.000 Why?

00:46:22.000 Well, there's a lot of factors.

00:46:25.000 First of all, there are a lot of people that are very unhealthy, physically unhealthy.

00:46:31.000 I think metabolic health is a gigantic issue in this country.

00:46:35.000 There's a lot of people in this country that feel completely disenfranchised, and so they turn inward.

00:46:41.000 And then technology invites them to do that.

00:46:43.000 You get online, and you spend your time staring at a screen, having communications with people, arguing on Twitter all day, changing the flag in your bio from Ukraine to Palestine, and now you've got an Iranian flag.

00:46:58.000 You're just like in a constant state of anxiety and chaos.

00:47:01.000 You're dealing with the entire problem, the problems of the entire world.

00:47:06.000 You're dealing with 8 billion people's worth of problems every day.

00:47:11.000 I think that's unsustainable.

00:47:12.000 And then that's also a function of technology because this interaction that we have is unprecedented.

00:47:19.000 The interaction with the news, with each other, all this stuff we're not designed to handle.

00:47:23.000 And it gives you massive anxiety, particularly for young people.

00:47:27.000 Particularly, Jonathan Haight's written about this with young girls who have the biggest problem with social media comparing themselves to other people, massive increase in self-harm, suicide, suicidal ideology, depression, anxiety, all this stuff accentuated by technology and our unchecked use of it.

00:47:47.000 I think you hit the nail on the head.

00:47:48.000 And so I think we've got to take a deep breath and understand that we've got to figure out how we make technology work to improve human life.

00:48:02.000 But they're hurting.

00:48:02.000 Right.

00:48:03.000 Don't you think this is the 11th hour?

00:48:05.000 I think it is.

00:48:06.000 Yeah.

00:48:07.000 The problem with it is it's already the genies out of the box.

00:48:10.000 The genie's out of the box.

00:48:11.000 There's no question about it.

00:48:12.000 But, you know, we can't sit around and just do nothing.

00:48:15.000 But this is the real issue.

00:48:17.000 When it becomes a problem where you have massive automation of almost all jobs, which is something that, especially when you deal with a corporation that is entirely based around making the most amount of money possible, well, what better way when you don't have to pay them anything?

00:48:32.000 You got it.

00:48:33.000 There were signs.

00:48:34.000 I don't know if you've seen them.

00:48:36.000 Signs, advertising from AI companies.

00:48:40.000 What was they saying?

00:48:41.000 Don't hire humans, something like that. 1.00

00:48:43.000 Did you see those posts?

00:48:44.000 That's adorable.

00:48:45.000 Don't hire humans. 1.00

00:48:48.000 That's demonic.

00:48:49.000 It is.

00:48:51.000 But also from the perspective of a corporation where you deal with human issues, problems, mistakes, people showing up late.

00:49:00.000 Why do I need you when I can get a robot?

00:49:02.000 Exactly.

00:49:03.000 You're not going to get sick.

00:49:04.000 I can fix you a lot easier than paying for your health care and so forth.

00:49:08.000 Right.

00:49:08.000 So what do you do?

00:49:09.000 What do you do about that?

00:49:11.000 So if you're the president and President Sanders, we have this issue, the whole country is going to go automation.

00:49:18.000 What do we do?

00:49:19.000 All right.

00:49:20.000 First of all, we make the determination that we are not going to let a handful of CEOs make these decisions, that they are going to be made by the American people.

00:49:30.000 What does that mean?

00:49:31.000 Bottom line, it means that technology is going to work to improve us, not just the people who own the technology and the CEOs of large corporations.

00:49:41.000 What does that mean?

00:49:42.000 All right, for a start.

00:49:45.000 You are a worker.

00:49:48.000 Your productivity is increasing because we give you AI, right?

00:49:52.000 Right.

00:49:52.000 All right.

00:49:54.000 Instead of throwing you out on the street, I'm going to reduce your work week to 32 hours.

00:49:59.000 So you're going to have a four-day work week.

00:49:59.000 All right?

00:50:01.000 Exactly.

00:50:02.000 And by the way, not a radical idea.

00:50:03.000 Not a radical idea at all.

00:50:04.000 There are companies around the world that are doing it with some success.

00:50:08.000 The UAW, the United Automobile Workers, they had a big strike a year ago.

00:50:13.000 You remember against the Big Three, you remember that?

00:50:15.000 And they won a very good contract, and I'm a big fan of the trade union movement.

00:50:20.000 I think workers need that.

00:50:22.000 And one of their demands, interestingly enough, and people thought that Sean Fane, who was the president of the union, was crazy.

00:50:28.000 But Sean said, you know what, we want a 32-hour workweek because our people are producing more.

00:50:32.000 People thought he was crazy, but the idea is catching on.

00:50:35.000 So first thing to say is let's use technology to benefit workers.

00:50:41.000 That means give you more time with your family, with your friends, you know, for education, whatever the hell you want to do.

00:50:46.000 You don't have to work 40 hours a week anymore.

00:50:51.000 second thing I think we have got to do is take a look, as you just said, you said it better than I said it, is what does it mean that we have so many young kids living on the internet?

00:51:02.000 Right.

00:51:02.000 All right.

00:51:04.000 There are schools all over the country now who are getting cell phones out of schools.

00:51:09.000 I talk to teachers in Vermont and they say, you know, kids' attention spans now have been greatly diminished.

00:51:16.000 You know.

00:51:16.000 Yes.

00:51:18.000 How do we deal with that?

00:51:21.000 In Vermont, again, somebody told me that there's a teacher now who does, he demands that his students write with a pen in blue books now because he doesn't trust what they're sending in, that it's not artificial intelligence.

00:51:36.000 So if I say to you, Joe, tell me what happened in the American Revolution, you go to the chat box, you give a wonderful essay that you know nothing about, right?

00:51:45.000 Right.

00:51:45.000 What does that mean for your intellectual development?

00:51:48.000 That all you can do is press the button and give me an answer.

00:51:51.000 Right.

00:51:51.000 Unless you've absorbed that information.

00:51:54.000 Unless you have.

00:51:55.000 Are not.

00:51:55.000 But many kids are not.

00:51:56.000 And we've got to worry about that as well.

00:51:58.000 So I think we have to take a deep breath.

00:52:00.000 And many of the things, what has been the impact of all this?

00:52:03.000 How do we stop the negative impacts?

00:52:05.000 How do we go forward with what is positive?

00:52:08.000 And it is not easy stuff, to be sure.

00:52:10.000 But I just don't, what I worry about right now is I think artificial intelligence is going to displace millions and millions of workers.

00:52:21.000 People are going to be thrown out on the streets.

00:52:23.000 I think the corporate guys who are running these companies could care less about these workers.

00:52:29.000 I think robotics is going to be running a lot of the factories in America.

00:52:33.000 And I think these are issues we just have got to address in a bold way.

00:52:39.000 Yes, but how do you do that?

00:52:41.000 And like you're balancing it out in one way if you are a corporation, like imagine you're an automobile manufacturing corporation, you're Ford.

00:52:53.000 Ford is struggling right now.

00:52:55.000 There's a giant issue with Ford, right?

00:52:58.000 So what does Ford do if all of a sudden something comes along that allows them to be more productive, they're more profitable, these machines can work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, they don't need time off, and you're going to make a better product, you're going to make more money for your shareholders, the corporation succeeds, but you don't need X amount of workers anymore.

00:53:22.000 How do you mitigate that?

00:53:23.000 I mean, that's the right question.

00:53:24.000 What do you do?

00:53:25.000 All right, nobody has a simple answer.

00:53:26.000 Let's just talk a little bit about it.

00:53:28.000 Does corporate America have the right to say to workers throughout this country, hey, sorry guys, we don't need you anymore.

00:53:36.000 You're out on the street.

00:53:36.000 Have a nice life.

00:53:37.000 Instead of thinking of them as workers, should we think of them as, look, there are people that make the decisions, there's the executives, there's the corporation itself, but without the people that worked on those assembly lines, you have nothing.

00:53:54.000 You have nothing.

00:53:54.000 That's right.

00:53:55.000 You couldn't have done any of the things you've done without those people.

00:53:59.000 But those people are replaceable because it's skilled labor that you could teach another person to do, and they're replaceable because there's plenty of people that want those jobs and there's a demand.

00:54:12.000 So you file them in, you file them out, which is why they developed unions, right?

00:54:16.000 So they developed unions to keep people from being exploited.

00:54:20.000 And then the problem becomes the unions get exploited.

00:54:23.000 And then the unions have a lot of money.

00:54:25.000 And then there's a lot of influence. 1.00

00:54:26.000 And then they decide, okay, fuck these unions. 1.00

00:54:29.000 Let's go to Mexico. 1.00

00:54:30.000 And these laws that Ross Perot famously talked about, the giant sucking sound headed south.

00:54:36.000 I remember that?

00:54:37.000 Oh, I remember them well.

00:54:38.000 Boy, was he right.

00:54:39.000 Boy, was he right.

00:54:41.000 All right, let's get back to this issue of which.

00:54:43.000 What do you do?

00:54:44.000 Like, if you're the president.

00:54:45.000 I ain't no easy answers.

00:54:47.000 Let me throw that out to you.

00:54:48.000 I don't have a magical solution.

00:54:49.000 I wish I did.

00:54:50.000 I don't.

00:54:52.000 I think the first thing, you say, all right, I'm Ford.

00:54:55.000 I'm General Motors.

00:54:56.000 I got all this technology.

00:54:57.000 I can produce my products much more efficiently.

00:55:00.000 I don't need workers anymore, right?

00:55:02.000 Right.

00:55:03.000 Well, I'm sorry, Mr. GM, and I'm sorry, Mr. Ford, because this country is more than just your profits.

00:55:10.000 We are human beings, and you're not going to throw people out on the street, many of whom will have a hard time getting health care, et cetera, et cetera.

00:55:17.000 So let me reframe the question again, of which admittedly it is complicated.

00:55:22.000 I don't have the magic answer.

00:55:24.000 How as a nation, forget Ford, forget General Motors, how as a nation do we deal with this exploding technology so that it benefits all of us and not just Mr. Ford and Mr. General Motors?

00:55:37.000 That's the question, I think.

00:55:39.000 And it's going to require radical solutions.

00:55:41.000 So for a start, it gets back to something we talked about a little while ago.

00:55:46.000 If you had health care as a human right, right?

00:55:51.000 All right?

00:55:52.000 As people in almost every other wealthy country have, and not attached to your job, that would be a major step forward, right?

00:56:00.000 Yes, absolutely.

00:56:01.000 All right, Joe, you lost your job, but you know what?

00:56:02.000 Your family still has health care.

00:56:04.000 Imagine if you were a diabetic and now you don't have access to insulin because now you no longer have health care.

00:56:10.000 So this is the way I frame it.

00:56:13.000 We are the wealthiest country in the history of the world right now.

00:56:15.000 With all of this artificial intelligence and robotics, we are going to be wealthier.

00:56:21.000 Correct?

00:56:22.000 Correct.

00:56:22.000 All right.

00:56:23.000 So we're not in the 1820s where people had to work 100 hours a week to grow food to eat, right?

00:56:29.000 You're not in the 1920s.

00:56:31.000 You're in 2025.

00:56:32.000 You have all of this productivity out there.

00:56:35.000 How do we utilize it to create a decent standard of living for all people?

00:56:40.000 Let me ask you this.

00:56:41.000 With all of this technology, can we wipe out poverty in America?

00:56:45.000 Well, we should be able to.

00:56:47.000 We should have been able to do that a long time ago if that was something that was politically motivated.

00:56:51.000 If you wanted to do it.

00:56:52.000 But it's easy enough.

00:56:54.000 It's not profitable.

00:56:55.000 If it was profitable to wipe out poverty, which it should be.

00:56:55.000 Pardon me?

00:56:59.000 Like overall, as a community, like I said, less losers, higher children.

00:57:03.000 If we love the country.

00:57:04.000 Yeah, if you really love America, you want more people to have a chance.

00:57:07.000 So what kind of that?

00:57:07.000 All right.

00:57:08.000 All right.

00:57:08.000 Good.

00:57:09.000 I mean, so the and again, please, these are complicated issues.

00:57:14.000 I surely don't have all the answers.

00:57:16.000 But I think we throw on the table, you've got all of this technology.

00:57:19.000 What is our goal?

00:57:20.000 So, all right.

00:57:21.000 Our goal is: if we're going to create all of this wealth, that we have a healthcare system that guarantees health care to all people.

00:57:29.000 And by the way, we have drug companies whose function is to come up with cures to diabetes and dementia and Alzheimer's and other terrible illnesses rather than just make huge profits for themselves.

00:57:43.000 All right?

00:57:44.000 You have a publicly funded health care system that guarantees health care to all people.

00:57:47.000 Just doing that would lower the stress rate in this country enormously.

00:57:52.000 Enormously.

00:57:53.000 Okay.

00:57:53.000 Sure.

00:57:54.000 We talked a moment ago about education.

00:57:54.000 Okay, you got that.

00:57:56.000 I think you and I agreed.

00:57:57.000 Yes.

00:57:58.000 We want the best educational system in the world.

00:58:00.000 What does it mean that all, you don't have to worry.

00:58:03.000 You're a working dad out there.

00:58:06.000 You're worried that your kid may have a lower standard of living, then your kid can't afford to go to college.

00:58:10.000 You don't want your kid leaving school $50,000 a day.

00:58:13.000 We say education is a human right.

00:58:15.000 God, you know, you mentioned public education a while ago.

00:58:18.000 That didn't happen by accident.

00:58:20.000 You know, back in the early 20th century, a lot of people, working class people, thought and said, you know what, we don't only want the rich kids to get a decent education.

00:58:30.000 We want our kids.

00:58:31.000 And that's how public education began, right?

00:58:34.000 So it said, okay, everybody in America, you know, state by state, started in Wisconsin actually, is going to have public education from first grade or kindergarten to 12th grade.

00:58:44.000 God didn't create 12th grade as the limit, right?

00:58:48.000 Right.

00:58:48.000 All right.

00:58:49.000 You go to Scandinavia.

00:58:50.000 You go to Germany right now. 0.98

00:58:51.000 You know how much it costs to get a higher education?

00:58:53.000 How much?

00:58:54.000 Zero.

00:58:54.000 That's great.

00:58:55.000 Of course it's great.

00:58:57.000 They make such good cars.

00:58:59.000 Well, it could be.

00:59:03.000 That's right.

00:59:04.000 But the bottom line is what you said.

00:59:06.000 If I want this country to be productive, I want the best educated workforce.

00:59:10.000 That's not a debate, right?

00:59:11.000 Unquestionably.

00:59:13.000 That's how you want your family, and if the country is a community, the country is your family.

00:59:17.000 Exactly.

00:59:18.000 Yes.

00:59:19.000 All right.

00:59:20.000 So that's what we've got to start thinking about.

00:59:21.000 It's not just what Mr. Ford and Mr. General Motors and Mr. Apple want.

00:59:26.000 You're right in saying they're motivated by making zillions.

00:59:30.000 Their motivation is throw the workers out on the street, bring in the technology, and screw the workers.

00:59:35.000 That is not what we should be doing as a nation.

00:59:37.000 You've got to tell them that.

00:59:38.000 All right.

00:59:39.000 So we've got to sit there and say, all right, all this technology.

00:59:42.000 All right, we talk about health care as a human right.

00:59:44.000 I think we're talking about education as a human right.

00:59:49.000 I think we should be saying with all of this technology, we've got to be thinking seriously about lowering the number of hours that people work.

00:59:57.000 You know how many people, zillions of people in this country don't work 40 hours a week.

01:00:00.000 They're working 50, 60 hours a week.

01:00:02.000 That's insane.

01:00:03.000 So we can say all of this increased worker productivity.

01:00:06.000 Guess what?

01:00:07.000 I don't know what the number is.

01:00:08.000 We've got to work on a 34-hour four-day workweek with no loss of pay.

01:00:14.000 I introduced a bill to do that.

01:00:16.000 I got to tell you, I go to airports, I go around, people came up to me.

01:00:19.000 People are stressed out by the amount of hours they have to work.

01:00:22.000 Absolutely.

01:00:23.000 So what I'm saying here is let's take a hard look about how we utilize this technology to improve life for all people.

01:00:23.000 All right.

01:00:33.000 Our goal should be, instead of bombing Iran, our goal should be right now, Joe, our life expectancy in America is lower than it is in other major countries. 0.78

01:00:44.000 You know that?

01:00:45.000 Yes.

01:00:46.000 Four years shorter lifespans than other wealthy countries.

01:00:50.000 If you're working class in America, you live seven years shorter life than the 1%, which is, to me, just outrageous. 1.00

01:00:58.000 All right.

01:00:59.000 So here's the thing.

01:01:00.000 Instead of bombing Iran, how do we increase life expectancy so that we're living the longest lives of many people on earth? 0.97

01:01:07.000 How's that for a goal?

01:01:08.000 Well, that's a great goal.

01:01:09.000 And how do you go about achieving that goal?

01:01:12.000 Health care is one.

01:01:13.000 Reducing the work week is another.

01:01:15.000 Education is.

01:01:16.000 All the things that we've talked about.

01:01:17.000 All the things we talked about will increase life expectancy.

01:01:21.000 But have a goal out there.

01:01:23.000 Also, taking toxic food.

01:01:25.000 Exactly.

01:01:26.000 You know, I don't, you know, I don't, I've known Bobby Kennedy for a long time.

01:01:33.000 And, you know, he and I have gone in different directions politically.

01:01:37.000 But the point about health, food, food.

01:01:41.000 We spend the most and we're the sickest.

01:01:43.000 Absolutely.

01:01:45.000 And food is one of the, when I was chairman of the committee, we worked very hard to get serious labeling.

01:01:50.000 You know, some kid drinks, mom buys a bottle of Coca-Cola for the kid.

01:01:55.000 There's like, what, 10 teaspoons of sugar in that product?

01:01:58.000 You know, I don't think people know that, and we try to get labeling.

01:01:58.000 Yeah.

01:02:01.000 Maybe that will happen now.

01:02:03.000 But people also weren't aware until like the last 20 years what the consequences of that sugar is.

01:02:09.000 Absolutely.

01:02:09.000 That's right.

01:02:10.000 Also because of money.

01:02:11.000 You got it.

01:02:12.000 I mean, don't get me going on that one.

01:02:14.000 Let's go.

01:02:15.000 I'll get you going.

01:02:16.000 Come on. 0.98

01:02:17.000 You know, you would think, how hard is it to say, if you have a bottle of soda or you have a food product, tell people in English what is in the damn product, right? 0.95

01:02:28.000 Do you think anyone, right now they have any grams? 0.95

01:02:28.000 Right. 0.95

01:02:31.000 Do you think anybody in America knows what the hell a gram is? 0.98

01:02:35.000 I mean, it just, that's how ridiculous it is.

01:02:37.000 So I want parents to know that if the food that they're serving their kid could lead to obesity, which is an epidemic in America, could lead to diabetes, which is an epidemic, a terrible illness, costing us hundreds of billions of dollars.

01:02:53.000 So you're absolutely right.

01:02:54.000 Right.

01:02:55.000 All right.

01:02:55.000 And then that ties into rebuilding family-based agriculture in America.

01:03:00.000 Yes.

01:03:00.000 Wouldn't it be nice?

01:03:01.000 In my state of Vermont, all over this country, family farmers are, you know, they're just being driven off of the land.

01:03:07.000 And that to me is a real tragedy because, and again, Vermont is one of the most rural states in America.

01:03:14.000 Growing up, if you talk to people who grew up on farms, they say, you know, Bernie, that was a pretty good way of life.

01:03:20.000 And we're losing that.

01:03:21.000 So how do you create an economy in which we, once again, put an emphasis on family-based agriculture, not corporate agriculture, family farmers who are growing good, in many cases, organic food for our kids, rather than corporate agriculture?

01:03:35.000 Regenerative agriculture.

01:03:35.000 Regenerative.

01:03:37.000 You got it.

01:03:37.000 Like true, like White Oaks pastures, the way they run it.

01:03:40.000 Absolutely.

01:03:41.000 And wouldn't that be great?

01:03:42.000 Yes.

01:03:43.000 All right.

01:03:43.000 Well, we'd be a lot healthier if we ate that food.

01:03:46.000 That's for sure.

01:03:46.000 But the problem is, people are already addicted to that other food.

01:03:49.000 And this is the problem with money.

01:03:50.000 These corporations have engineered these products.

01:03:52.000 These products.

01:03:53.000 And these are the same corporations, unfortunately, that were in charge of tobacco.

01:03:59.000 You know, this is where it gets really weird.

01:04:01.000 They bought out all the major processed food corporations, and they make this stuff that's unbelievably addictive because it's engineered by scientists.

01:04:10.000 We've got the brightest and the best who figured out what's the best way to get these people totally addicted to whatever, you know, fill in the blanket.

01:04:17.000 Hypothetic is it? 0.99

01:04:18.000 Pretty sick. 0.99

01:04:19.000 And they save money.

01:04:19.000 Yeah.

01:04:21.000 These people, they have choice.

01:04:23.000 They could eat whatever they want.

01:04:24.000 If they want to go to the grocery store and eat tomatoes and have a nice salad, they can.

01:04:29.000 But shouldn't they also be able to get Pop-Tarts?

01:04:32.000 Yeah, I know.

01:04:33.000 Look, and your point is interesting.

01:04:37.000 You remember there's a photograph, a very famous photograph.

01:04:40.000 I don't know when it was done.

01:04:41.000 50s, maybe 60s, 70s, I don't know.

01:04:44.000 Of the tobacco industry executives coming before Congress.

01:04:50.000 You remember that photograph?

01:04:51.000 Yes.

01:04:52.000 And the Congressman said to me, tell me, I maybe get this a little bit wrong.

01:04:57.000 Are you aware that cigarettes kill people?

01:05:01.000 No, Congressman.

01:05:02.000 We have no evidence to that effect, right?

01:05:04.000 They were lying through their teeth.

01:05:05.000 Of course.

01:05:06.000 And it's exactly, your analogy is exactly right.

01:05:10.000 These food manufacturers know exactly that they are causing obesity and God knows what else in kids, leading to diabetes.

01:05:19.000 They know exactly what they're doing.

01:05:21.000 Right.

01:05:21.000 And they're lying.

01:05:22.000 And they're opposing all of us who are trying to, among other things, make our food supply healthier.

01:05:28.000 Yeah, they are.

01:05:29.000 And this is also a function of corporate America, right?

01:05:33.000 This is a function of wanting to do better in each quarter, you know, having this endless endless growth cycle where they never say, hey, we make X amount of money every year.

01:05:45.000 This is perfect.

01:05:46.000 That's right.

01:05:47.000 Let's concentrate on doing better for our company.

01:05:49.000 And the companies don't even make that decision.

01:05:50.000 The Wall Street investors make that decision.

01:05:53.000 Exactly.

01:05:53.000 You've got to make more.

01:05:54.000 You've got to make more.

01:05:55.000 Right. 0.99

01:05:55.000 Because the shareholders will be like, there's no fucking way. 0.99

01:05:57.000 You need to make more money. 0.99

01:05:58.000 Exactly.

01:05:59.000 Otherwise, I'm dumping your stock.

01:06:00.000 Your company's going to go in the toilet.

01:06:02.000 Yeah.

01:06:02.000 Right.

01:06:03.000 So how, I mean, this is what we have got to deal with as a nation.

01:06:06.000 Is that acceptable?

01:06:07.000 All right.

01:06:08.000 Is it acceptable for food companies to poison our kids?

01:06:11.000 No.

01:06:11.000 All right.

01:06:12.000 But what are you going to do about it?

01:06:15.000 I'm the senator, not you, right?

01:06:16.000 It's a good question.

01:06:17.000 Yeah, it's a solid question.

01:06:18.000 And I think the things that Bobby Kennedy is proposing and implementing, I think, are very valuable.

01:06:24.000 First of all, getting all these poisonous dyes and all these things that have been kicked out of all these other major companies, including Canada.

01:06:31.000 There's the same factories that make these food products in America literally have to make a different version of it for Canada.

01:06:38.000 And then they're complaining that they can't do it because economically it won't be profitable for them anymore.

01:06:42.000 But you're already making them.

01:06:44.000 You're making them and you're shipping them to Canada.

01:06:46.000 My son brought me back from Canada.

01:06:48.000 Fruit Loops?

01:06:49.000 I think it was Fruit Loops, actually.

01:06:50.000 They look kind of plain.

01:06:52.000 They don't have that bright pop to them that cancer gives you.

01:06:56.000 I mean, so I think this is, you know, it almost gets back to the need to revitalize American democracy and say to large corporations, you know what, you can't poison our children.

01:07:08.000 I don't think that's a terribly radical concept.

01:07:10.000 You can make money, fine, make money, but don't poison our children.

01:07:14.000 Say to large corporations, technology is coming, that's good, but you're not going to use it just to throw workers out on the street.

01:07:21.000 Let's go to that too, because we kind of glossed over that.

01:07:23.000 We never got back to it.

01:07:25.000 So automation comes, and one of the things that Andrew Yang warned us about a long time ago, and back then I kind of saw it in the distance.

01:07:32.000 I was like, yeah, he's got a real good point about universal basic income.

01:07:36.000 But the speed in which it's happening, I didn't anticipate.

01:07:42.000 And we live in Austin, and when you go around Austin, you see these Waymos everywhere. 1.00

01:07:48.000 All right, I'm going to plead ignorance.

01:07:51.000 Tell me what a Waymo is.

01:07:52.000 Waymo is a driverless automobile.

01:07:55.000 So you use an app, you call a Waymo.

01:07:57.000 A lot of people like it because you don't get a shifty Uber driver who's trying to sell you fentanyl or whatever.

01:07:57.000 I know.

01:08:02.000 I'm not saying that they do that, Uber.

01:08:04.000 Don't sue me.

01:08:05.000 But then they're very good.

01:08:09.000 They don't get in accidents.

01:08:10.000 They follow the speed limit.

01:08:12.000 They're good about merging.

01:08:13.000 They're good about pedestrians.

01:08:14.000 They have cameras all around them spinning.

01:08:16.000 I've seen them.

01:08:17.000 They were very effective.

01:08:19.000 And what was really fascinating was during these ICE riots, they were lighting those things on fire.

01:08:25.000 And I was like, I disagree with that, but I also think it's directionally correct.

01:08:31.000 You know, I mean, that's your enemy.

01:08:34.000 Your enemy is automation, the enemy of the human being, a human that lives in this functional society and everybody has a task and get paid for the task.

01:08:46.000 Automation is going to take all that away.

01:08:48.000 So if you do say this, okay, we're going to lower your work week, what if there's no job left for the human being to do?

01:08:55.000 If the entire assembly line, we talked about this about China and some of their coal factories.

01:09:01.000 There was this video that I watched of this coal factory in China, which is entirely automated every step of the way.

01:09:07.000 The trucks.

01:09:07.000 No human beings at all.

01:09:08.000 No human beings at all.

01:09:09.000 I mean, there's probably a few overseers that make sure that all the systems are functioning correctly.

01:09:14.000 So you have software engineers and people that are the repair people.

01:09:19.000 But the trucks even park themselves next to the charging station and recharge.

01:09:25.000 And then they're moving 24 hours a day, unloading, documenting where everything is.

01:09:31.000 It's all in computer databases.

01:09:33.000 It's wild to watch because there's no people.

01:09:35.000 It's all just 24 hours a day.

01:09:38.000 Machines.

01:09:41.000 What do you do when there's no need for these people?

01:09:45.000 And what happens, even with universal basic income, what we're talking about, I support it.

01:09:51.000 I'm a big supporter of social safety nets.

01:09:54.000 Look, when I was a kid, my family was on welfare.

01:09:59.000 And we were on food stamps, too.

01:10:02.000 Like, if you don't have that, people go hungry.

01:10:05.000 Like, again, if we're going to support The community.

01:10:08.000 We want people to be able to survive and be able to work their way out of that.

01:10:13.000 My family did work their way out of that.

01:10:15.000 So it was cool for me as a child to see my parents struggling, but then succeed and get out of it.

01:10:23.000 What worries me is that if all the jobs are gone and everything gets automated, even if people have universal basic income, they don't have meaning.

01:10:34.000 Good.

01:10:35.000 All right, you're touching on really deep issues.

01:10:37.000 Right.

01:10:38.000 This is the big one because a lot of people, you know, work.

01:10:41.000 You want to get your car fixed.

01:10:42.000 You go to KC.

01:10:44.000 He's the best.

01:10:45.000 He knows how to fix your car.

01:10:46.000 KC fixes.

01:10:47.000 And work gives, as you've just said, this word purpose is an enormously I don't care if you sweep the streets.

01:10:54.000 People are purpose.

01:10:55.000 They want to do their job well.

01:10:57.000 Work is an important part of our lives.

01:10:59.000 Is it right?

01:11:00.000 Yes.

01:11:00.000 At the end of the day, our identity a lot of times.

01:11:03.000 And you want to be a productive member of society.

01:11:03.000 Right.

01:11:06.000 I'm contributing.

01:11:07.000 Right.

01:11:08.000 All right.

01:11:09.000 So you asked the right question.

01:11:13.000 And I think therefore, and I, you know, we can just bat around.

01:11:17.000 I don't have any quick answers here.

01:11:19.000 But I think the good news, you talk about this coal mining thing, and I'm not a great fan of coal, but that it's automation.

01:11:27.000 People do not have to do dirty work, dangerous work.

01:11:30.000 Is that good?

01:11:30.000 Yeah, I guess that's good.

01:11:32.000 But always we have to be thinking how it benefits not just the bottom line of a corporation, but the happiness and well-being of human beings.

01:11:43.000 So if what you're saying is that in years to come, a significant part of work is going to be done by machinery or by computers, whatever.

01:11:52.000 I think that's inevitable.

01:11:53.000 Okay.

01:11:55.000 Then we have to rethink our own purpose in life.

01:12:00.000 All right?

01:12:02.000 And it's not sitting around watching TV 24 hours a day.

01:12:06.000 So I think you raised the quite, I would say the simple answer, and then you've got to go a lot further than that, is to say that under those circumstances, of that kind of technology, everybody has at least a decent standard of living.

01:12:22.000 That people don't have to worry about survival.

01:12:25.000 They don't have to worry about food.

01:12:26.000 They don't have to worry about it.

01:12:27.000 Increase profitability of this corporation.

01:12:29.000 Provide a fund that's a universal basic income fund.

01:12:33.000 If you're going to replace all these people with robots and you're going to be even more profitable, share some of that profit, then you'll be more profitable than if these people just stayed working doing nothing, right?

01:12:44.000 Well, whether you will be or not be, I think.

01:12:46.000 Once the machines are running everything, they're going to be running 24 hours a day and you're not going to have to pay the machines.

01:12:51.000 It's going to be more profitable.

01:12:52.000 Right, of course it will be.

01:12:53.000 And we want to, you know, right now, where is it?

01:12:57.000 Jeez.

01:12:58.000 I think, don't quote me on this, maybe in Norway.

01:13:02.000 They have a huge wealth fund, which came from oil.

01:13:06.000 They had publicly owned oil companies.

01:13:08.000 They made a fortune.

01:13:10.000 And they have like a trillion dollars in their wealth fund for a small country.

01:13:14.000 And they have free health care, free college education, affordable housing, all that stuff.

01:13:18.000 Here it is.

01:13:19.000 Norway is growing $1.7 trillion oil empire.

01:13:23.000 Norges bank investment management market value growth since inception.

01:13:28.000 That's great.

01:13:29.000 Yeah.

01:13:29.000 And they use that.

01:13:30.000 Government Pension Fund of Norway.

01:13:32.000 There you go.

01:13:33.000 Yeah.

01:13:34.000 So they use that wealth fund to provide probably the highest standard of living in the world for people, free healthcare, education, all that stuff.

01:13:44.000 But that's what we've got to be talking about here.

01:13:46.000 Use the profits that come, the wealth that's created by this technology to improve life for all people.

01:13:52.000 But it doesn't answer the question that you raised.

01:13:54.000 Of meaning.

01:13:55.000 Yeah.

01:13:55.000 That's right.

01:13:56.000 So what do you do about that?

01:13:58.000 Well, if somebody was a workaholic, it would be hard for me.

01:14:02.000 Are you a workaholic?

01:14:03.000 Yeah.

01:14:04.000 Yeah.

01:14:05.000 Well, that's the nature of the job.

01:14:06.000 Do you have hobbies?

01:14:08.000 Yeah, I've got seven grandchildren.

01:14:10.000 That's a hobby.

01:14:13.000 I used to play ball as a kid.

01:14:14.000 You know, I was a good basketball player.

01:14:16.000 Well, I think people can find other things to do with their time.

01:14:20.000 Like, if I never worked again, I'd probably play pool eight hours a day because I really love playing pool.

01:14:25.000 Yeah.

01:14:26.000 I'd find a thing.

01:14:27.000 I'd do jiu-jitsu.

01:14:28.000 I'd find a thing that I find value in.

01:14:31.000 You know, I think somebody once wrote, you know, you think about what are the deepest things, what's the goal in life?

01:14:36.000 So somebody says, work.

01:14:38.000 And I believe that.

01:14:39.000 I think people, you know, one of the sad things that's happened, you know, we talked a little while ago about the decline of, we mentioned Detroit and other communities where people worked hard, they were proud of what they produced, right?

01:14:53.000 Yes.

01:14:53.000 They earned a decent living.

01:14:55.000 Maybe they had a union and so forth and so on.

01:14:56.000 And a lot of that is gone.

01:14:59.000 But, all right, so work, love, you know, there's a thing called love, right?

01:15:03.000 Yeah.

01:15:04.000 At the end of the day, probably.

01:15:05.000 Probably people are trying to find that on apps too now.

01:15:08.000 Let's get to that one in a minute.

01:15:09.000 But to be human, nobody wants to be alone, right?

01:15:15.000 You want to embrace other people, you know, physically, sexually, emotionally, just humanly, right?

01:15:21.000 That's community.

01:15:22.000 That's community.

01:15:23.000 That's right.

01:15:23.000 That's being human.

01:15:24.000 Yes.

01:15:25.000 So you want love and knowledge.

01:15:25.000 All right.

01:15:27.000 I think you forgot the knowledge part.

01:15:29.000 You like pool?

01:15:29.000 I'm sure.

01:15:30.000 That's good.

01:15:33.000 Sadly enough, I have to confess that when I was in college, I spent half my life in the library.

01:15:37.000 All right, you know?

01:15:38.000 Why's that bad?

01:15:39.000 No, I'm just kidding.

01:15:40.000 But knowledge.

01:15:42.000 Just trying to understand things.

01:15:46.000 Curiosity, fantastic.

01:15:46.000 Curiosity.

01:15:48.000 Travel, my God.

01:15:49.000 You know, just came back from Ireland.

01:15:49.000 Yeah.

01:15:52.000 You know, it's fantastic to see the world.

01:15:54.000 And, you know, when we talk about, you know, one of the things that I, you know, we didn't talk about Trump much, but it bothers me is trying to divide us up.

01:16:03.000 You know, we've got to bring, for so many reasons, whether it's all of these issues that we're talking about and everything else, pandemics, you know what?

01:16:11.000 We've got to bring the world together.

01:16:13.000 Yes.

01:16:13.000 Okay?

01:16:14.000 And not hate people because they're in Canada or they're in China or Iran. 0.99

01:16:18.000 Ridiculous. 0.99

01:16:19.000 All right. 0.95

01:16:20.000 And that ain't easy, but we have to...

01:16:26.000 It was when the Soviet Union still existed.

01:16:28.000 Don't forget this.

01:16:29.000 We brought kids from a city in Russia, Yaroslav, an old city in Russia.

01:16:35.000 And we brought them to Vermont.

01:16:36.000 And they were kids, the boys and girls from Russia kid around with boys and girls from America.

01:16:41.000 And You look at these kids, they had a great time.

01:16:44.000 You know, people do not have to hate each other. 1.00

01:16:46.000 It's stupid. 1.00

01:16:48.000 You don't even know them. 1.00

01:16:50.000 That's why you hate them.

01:16:50.000 Exactly.

01:16:51.000 It's the dumbest part about it. 0.99

01:16:53.000 You know why people, hate is based on ignorance, right? 0.99

01:16:57.000 Yeah, and fear. 1.00

01:16:58.000 And, you know, there's a lot of stupidity attached to it that people exploit. 1.00

01:17:04.000 They exploit that stupidity, you know, under the guise of nationalism. 1.00

01:17:09.000 Exactly. 1.00

01:17:09.000 Yeah. 1.00

01:17:10.000 And I hate that.

01:17:11.000 And by the way, I don't know that the planet survives if we continue in that way.

01:17:16.000 So the goal, you know, we talk about what...

01:17:19.000 The greatest fear is thermonuclear war.

01:17:21.000 Right.

01:17:22.000 Yeah.

01:17:22.000 Well, pandemics as well, let me tell you, COVID was not the last one.

01:17:26.000 Well, the pandemic, the problem with that is it's engineered. 0.97

01:17:29.000 Like people actually made that virus, and Obama tried to stop that gain of function shit back in 2014. 0.95

01:17:38.000 That's a long conversation, but should we be funding that kind of situation? 0.93

01:17:42.000 No, we should not.

01:17:43.000 No, no, no, no.

01:17:44.000 No, and yet we were.

01:17:45.000 But you're going to have to bring the entire world together.

01:17:48.000 You know, it is – but I think, you know, we have – That's right.

01:17:56.000 And by the way, and I've been kind of negative, but take a deep breath, and we have made some progress in this country in recent years.

01:18:05.000 If you think about racial relations, it wasn't that many decades ago that some black kid couldn't go to a movie theater in Mississippi, right?

01:18:15.000 By the way, I want to tell you that when people say, like, why were you a fan of Bernie Sanders?

01:18:20.000 I point to a photo of you getting arrested at a civil rights protest in, I think it was 63. Sounds right, in Chicago.

01:18:30.000 Yeah.

01:18:31.000 Yeah.

01:18:31.000 You've always been at the forefront.

01:18:34.000 You haven't changed.

01:18:36.000 You know, and people always try to accuse you of that, especially because you've made some money off your books.

01:18:41.000 But you haven't changed your positions through the entirety of your career.

01:18:46.000 I think that's very admirable because there's not a lot of people that serve in Congress for as long as you have and become a very prominent public figure that don't just cash in.

01:18:58.000 You know, when you have people that are public servants that are making $170,000 a year and yet they're worth hundreds of millions of dollars through some magical way that no one can explain, and you haven't done that.

01:19:11.000 And I think you should be applauded for that.

01:19:14.000 And I remember, I mean, it's just, you know, you talk about education and so forth.

01:19:14.000 Thank you very much.

01:19:20.000 I grew up in a, you know, in a white neighborhood in Brooklyn.

01:19:25.000 And, you know, you go to Chicago and you see things that you didn't understand.

01:19:30.000 Look at that.

01:19:30.000 There you are.

01:19:32.000 God, look, I had a hair in my head at that point, huh?

01:19:34.000 Look how handsome.

01:19:35.000 There you go.

01:19:36.000 I'll tell you that funny story about that one.

01:19:38.000 Please.

01:19:39.000 All right.

01:19:40.000 I recall.

01:19:40.000 Look at the guy with the cigarette.

01:19:41.000 Nah, fucking hippie. 1.00

01:19:45.000 Look at his hand in his pocket. 1.00

01:19:47.000 Here is the cigarette.

01:19:48.000 This is the truth.

01:19:50.000 Back then, the world has changed.

01:19:52.000 That was the Chicago Police Department.

01:19:55.000 And what they said is, if you go across this line, you're going to get arrested.

01:20:01.000 As I recall, that was what they're thinking.

01:20:02.000 So I went across the line.

01:20:03.000 And we were protesting segregated housing in Chicago.

01:20:07.000 Okay, so I get dragged in, and they're taking me to a paddy wagon, okay?

01:20:13.000 So they picked me up and other people in it, threw me into the paddy wagon.

01:20:17.000 My glasses went flying someplace.

01:20:20.000 All right.

01:20:21.000 And then just as this was happening, within a few minutes of this picture, some genius on the sideline throws a brick, hits a cop on the head.

01:20:29.000 Oh, Jesus.

01:20:30.000 So here's, I'm being thrown into the paddy wagon.

01:20:33.000 Some cop is lying down on the ground.

01:20:35.000 You know, it was a scary moment.

01:20:37.000 Okay.

01:20:38.000 So to continue the story, we're in the paddy wagon, and they're taking us someplace.

01:20:45.000 And suddenly, the paddy wagon stops.

01:20:48.000 You look out.

01:20:49.000 It's like in the middle of nowhere.

01:20:51.000 Right?

01:20:51.000 This was not like in the city go to a jail.

01:20:54.000 We thought we were going to be taken to jail, you know?

01:20:57.000 And I said, oh, my God.

01:21:00.000 They're going to kill us. 0.77

01:21:01.000 Yeah.

01:21:01.000 I mean, that was the thought.

01:21:02.000 We're in the middle.

01:21:03.000 Why the hell are they stopping here?

01:21:04.000 I don't know, but they stopped for whatever reason.

01:21:06.000 Anyway, so we spent, you know, my big thing was I spent the night in jail, which was a weird experience, too.

01:21:11.000 You get street cred for that.

01:21:13.000 What I remember about it is, other than not sleeping very well, this is, you get up at it in the middle of the night.

01:21:19.000 I go to the thing, I try to open the door.

01:21:21.000 It didn't open.

01:21:22.000 It was the weirdest thing of having a door that did not open because you were in a jail cell.

01:21:26.000 It was like a weird thing.

01:21:29.000 But anyway, you know, the idea, you know, that's all.

01:21:32.000 And we've made progress since that time.

01:21:35.000 And in racial relations, we have a long way to go.

01:21:38.000 We've made progress.

01:21:39.000 Women's rights, we've made progress. 1.00

01:21:41.000 Gay rights, we've made progress.

01:21:42.000 So there's a lot that as a nation, we should be proud of in progress that we've made.

01:21:47.000 You know, when I was a kid growing up, I am sure there were many kids who were gay.

01:21:53.000 No one ever talked about it.

01:21:54.000 Right.

01:21:55.000 And, you know, so there's a lot as a nation that we should be proud of in terms of the progress that we've made in terms of fighting bigotry.

01:21:55.000 Right.

01:22:01.000 Agreed.

01:22:02.000 But we've got so much more to do.

01:22:04.000 We don't need to be hating people in China.

01:22:06.000 You could disagree with people.

01:22:07.000 Christ, I mean, there's so many issues out there.

01:22:11.000 Hatred should not be evaluated.

01:22:13.000 It resolves the political exploitation division.

01:22:17.000 The fact that you can use the division that people already have to galvanize your side instead of unite instead of unite the country.

01:22:25.000 I'm older, and I can remember.

01:22:27.000 Remember, you had white politicians in the South saying, see, those black people, they want your job.

01:22:33.000 Vote for me, and that's why we're going to keep segregation or all this other stuff.

01:22:36.000 All right.

01:22:37.000 Yeah, I mean, that's true.

01:22:38.000 I mean, people ran for office.

01:22:40.000 It's no great secret.

01:22:41.000 That's what happened. 0.58

01:22:41.000 But we're making gays are taking over the school system, blah, blah, blah, blah. 0.58

01:22:45.000 So it's, you know, we've made progress.

01:22:48.000 But what we've been talking about is if you create a society where you have massive technology that can produce all of this wealth, how do we live, right?

01:23:00.000 That's the question you posed.

01:23:02.000 And I think one of the ways, one of the goals has got to be to bring this world together.

01:23:08.000 we should not be having wars right now.

01:23:10.000 Where countries have disagreements, there are bad news guys out there, no question about it.

01:23:15.000 But bring them to the table, arguing it out.

01:23:18.000 We don't have to go around killing people.

01:23:20.000 Right now, what's going on in Gaza breaks my heart.

01:23:22.000 Children are starving to death.

01:23:25.000 So we can do better as a planet.

01:23:27.000 Unquestionably.

01:23:28.000 Yeah, no, we all agree.

01:23:31.000 I think this is something the entire country could agree to.

01:23:37.000 The question of meaning, like giving meaning to people, like just and then my fear is also the same fear that I had when I'm talking about climate change, that it's going to be exploited.

01:23:47.000 Once people are entirely dependent upon the state for universal basic income, then it becomes the question of like now your entire life, like all the money that you get being from the government.

01:24:01.000 The problem is if you step outside the lines, if you do anything that the government doesn't like, if there's a new administration comes in and says, you know what, this is unprofitable.

01:24:15.000 These people have to figure it out for themselves.

01:24:17.000 The United States is really $37 trillion in debt.

01:24:21.000 We can't sustain this.

01:24:22.000 People have to do the, you know, you have to adjust, learn to code.

01:24:26.000 Remember that?

01:24:26.000 Right.

01:24:27.000 Right. 1.00

01:24:27.000 Yeah, that kind of shit. 1.00

01:24:29.000 How do you give these people meaning? 1.00

01:24:31.000 What do you do with all the drivers?

01:24:33.000 Like, think about how many truck drivers in this country.

01:24:36.000 This is going to be the first thing that goes away.

01:24:37.000 You're right.

01:24:38.000 Taxi cab drivers, Uber drivers, truck drivers, gone.

01:24:41.000 And the question about factory workers, a lot of people say, yeah, well, those people, those jobs are terrible anyway.

01:24:45.000 It'd be great if those jobs went away and people, you know, they're free to pursue their interests.

01:24:50.000 What interests?

01:24:51.000 You're a 60-year-old man.

01:24:51.000 You got it.

01:24:53.000 You've been working for this factory.

01:24:54.000 You're looking towards your retirement.

01:24:56.000 And now all of a sudden the plug is pulled.

01:24:58.000 All the money's gone.

01:24:59.000 Your 401k has been erased.

01:25:01.000 Your company's been bought out by another company.

01:25:03.000 Now everything's automated.

01:25:04.000 There's no jobs.

01:25:06.000 What do you do?

01:25:08.000 Well, I think that is the question.

01:25:10.000 Right.

01:25:11.000 So if you have what Andrew Yang was talking about, this giant epidemic of automation in this country, and the solution being universal basic income, but that's not the solution for meaning.

01:25:23.000 And how do we convince all of these people that they have to not just take this money from the government, but also take action to give themselves meaning in their lives?

01:25:37.000 What you're talking about here is a revolution in human existence.

01:25:43.000 So throughout history, people have worked so hard just to stay alive, right?

01:25:43.000 Yes.

01:25:50.000 I mean, not so many hundreds of years ago.

01:25:52.000 Today, in parts of the world, people are working.

01:25:55.000 In America, right. 0.78

01:25:55.000 In America. 0.78

01:25:57.000 And in the poorest countries in the world.

01:25:58.000 Just struggling every day to put a little bit of food on the table.

01:26:01.000 So what you're saying is, what happens when that plug gets pulled?

01:26:06.000 Well, what you're saying is, what happens when people no longer have to do that, right?

01:26:11.000 Yes.

01:26:12.000 Okay.

01:26:12.000 So if work, we work now, everybody works, get our earned money.

01:26:17.000 If you don't need to do work, right?

01:26:19.000 Right.

01:26:19.000 Because we're wealthy enough, how do you find meaning in your life?

01:26:23.000 Right.

01:26:23.000 Is that what you're talking about?

01:26:24.000 and this is absolutely...

01:26:29.000 That is, try the trillion-dollar question.

01:26:31.000 It's a, you know, it's one, but I'll tell you this.

01:26:36.000 I was seeing, I don't know him, Sam Waltman.

01:26:39.000 Do you know Sam?

01:26:40.000 I don't know.

01:26:41.000 But, I mean, and others, Zuckerberg, you know, are talking about, well, you know, if you're lonely, we got a machine for you, right?

01:26:49.000 Right?

01:26:50.000 I mean, true, yes.

01:26:52.000 This is what they're saying.

01:26:52.000 Yeah.

01:26:53.000 We got a friend for you on AI, and her name is Mary, and you can chat with her 20 hours a day, and she really loves you.

01:27:00.000 Man, I don't think that is.

01:27:02.000 That's so dystopian.

01:27:04.000 It is.

01:27:04.000 It's very.

01:27:05.000 Yeah.

01:27:06.000 And we covered the story recently about this guy who proposed to his AI, and she said yes, and he was crying.

01:27:13.000 I'm like, oh, we're done.

01:27:14.000 We're cooked.

01:27:18.000 Look, I mean, at the end of the day, all we got is us.

01:27:23.000 Yes.

01:27:23.000 Is that right?

01:27:24.000 Yeah.

01:27:24.000 We are human beings.

01:27:26.000 Yeah.

01:27:26.000 And we're going to have to cling to each other to get through this thing.

01:27:30.000 And you're raising, again, I'm trying to think here, and I wish I had better answers for you.

01:27:34.000 You're asking, correct me if I'm wrong.

01:27:37.000 I mean, the question that you're posing is if, in years to come, in the near future, technology is going to replace work, right?

01:27:43.000 Human labor, correct?

01:27:44.000 Yes.

01:27:45.000 What are human beings that replace it?

01:27:46.000 What does it do now?

01:27:47.000 Yeah.

01:27:50.000 And, you know, there are, it's a good, because work has been so essential to human existence forever, right?

01:27:58.000 Right.

01:27:59.000 And you're suddenly taking that away, what do people do?

01:28:03.000 How do they relate to each other?

01:28:04.000 All I would say at this moment is the answer is not to fall in love with your AI creature out there.

01:28:10.000 Yeah, don't do that.

01:28:12.000 But also, how do you find meaning?

01:28:14.000 If all you're doing is just getting a check and you can just stay at home and stare at the TV and the money keeps coming and then you eat processed food all day and it's all subsidized, what is life?

01:28:26.000 Like, how do you re-educate a giant percentage of our population to find meaning, external meaning?

01:28:35.000 Find something else.

01:28:36.000 Find a thing that you can do that not maybe even that's profitable that these computers can't do.

01:28:44.000 Look, the human brain evolves.

01:28:47.000 And I think we, again, I mean, it's a great question.

01:28:50.000 I don't have the easy answer to it.

01:28:54.000 It's the question.

01:28:55.000 It's not going to happen.

01:28:56.000 Well, what's going to happen tomorrow, you just talked about these automated cars and trucks.

01:29:02.000 That is going to happen in the very near future.

01:29:04.000 Yeah, that'll be step one.

01:29:06.000 And to me, I have some answers for that one, and that is that you ain't going to throw millions of truck drivers and taxicab drivers and Uber drivers just out on the street.

01:29:20.000 They need protection.

01:29:22.000 Right.

01:29:23.000 That's an easy one.

01:29:24.000 What you're talking about is years later.

01:29:26.000 But it's not even an easy one.

01:29:27.000 No, that's not the same thing.

01:29:28.000 Because they're just step one.

01:29:29.000 You know, the real wave is going to be white-collar workers.

01:29:32.000 Of course.

01:29:32.000 I know that.

01:29:33.000 There's an awful lot of people that do things that they think are very valuable that are going to be worthless to have a human being do it.

01:29:41.000 Right.

01:29:42.000 I mean, that's the immediate.

01:29:44.000 I think the deeper one that you're talking about is what is when virtually all workers replace them.

01:29:49.000 Yes.

01:29:49.000 All right.

01:29:50.000 But right now, I mean, for a start, I think getting back to the, I think you tell those workers you are going to have health care as a human right, you are going to have education as a human right, you are going to have a decent income as a human right, and we are going to lower, substantially lower, the work week.

01:30:06.000 So we'll have in this process, we're going to have everybody working.

01:30:11.000 If you're working 20 hours a week, you're working 20 hours a week.

01:30:14.000 What happens later when even more work is eliminated and what the purpose of human life becomes, that is a very profound question.

01:30:23.000 That's the question.

01:30:26.000 What do you think happens?

01:30:29.000 I think, I mean, it's hard to imagine, you know, because it's so far away from what we have ever lived.

01:30:37.000 Right.

01:30:38.000 I mean, for thousands of years, people have struggled to put food on the table.

01:30:41.000 And you're saying, what happens when they don't have to do that, right?

01:30:44.000 Yeah.

01:30:45.000 It's inevitable.

01:30:46.000 All right.

01:30:46.000 Then the answer will be that we are going to have to find different meaning in life.

01:30:51.000 We have to find it in ourselves in ways that you don't know and I don't know because we're not there yet.

01:30:56.000 We're not living 50 years from now.

01:30:58.000 I don't even think it's 50. No, I don't know.

01:31:02.000 I don't know.

01:31:03.000 Yeah, who knows?

01:31:06.000 But I think human beings are capable of finding, replacing work with other emotionally satisfying things.

01:31:15.000 Yeah, I think we can do it.

01:31:17.000 We can on an individual basis.

01:31:19.000 The problem is having mass groups, literally 100 million plus people, displaced.

01:31:27.000 What do you do to all those people to give them some sort of a sense of meaning?

01:31:31.000 You're essentially redefining life for them.

01:31:34.000 That's a good point.

01:31:35.000 Okay, I don't know the answer to that question.

01:31:37.000 That's the problem.

01:31:38.000 I don't think anybody does.

01:31:40.000 And I think we're foot on the gas, full steam ahead with AI, with no consideration of this.

01:31:47.000 And then there's the same thing that you're dealing with in terms of corporations constantly trying to achieve higher and higher and higher numbers.

01:31:54.000 They're just always trying to make more money.

01:31:58.000 You've got this exact same issue when applied to meaning for all these human beings.

01:32:04.000 Like if you have 100 million plus people that what do they do now?

01:32:10.000 They just sit at home and become depressed and they just make enough money to what?

01:32:14.000 To just be able to get by?

01:32:16.000 What about savings?

01:32:17.000 What about the ability to earn more money to get ahead?

01:32:20.000 What about the very ambitious people that are willing to put in extra hours and go to night school and do everything they have?

01:32:27.000 That's all gone, right?

01:32:28.000 So what do these hyper-ambitious people do?

01:32:31.000 What does everybody who's displaced by this very impersonal thing, this impersonal thing that you need because you can't compete with China?

01:32:41.000 I agree with everything you're saying except there is something else that's going on in this.

01:32:47.000 While all this is going on, while all this technology is throwing people out on the street, something else is happening.

01:32:52.000 The people who own that technology and the corporations who utilize that technology are becoming phenomenally richer.

01:32:57.000 Exactly.

01:32:58.000 And that is the issue.

01:32:59.000 Which gets back to things like tax reform, like making sure that in America we do not have the massive levels of income and wealth inequality that we currently have.

01:33:11.000 But the problem with that is the taxes go to what?

01:33:14.000 An incompetent, corrupt government?

01:33:17.000 This is the issue that people have.

01:33:19.000 It's willing to pay our fair.

01:33:21.000 Look, I would be more than willing to pay more taxes if we lived in a better country.

01:33:24.000 I would be like, this would be great.

01:33:26.000 If I felt like if I pay more taxes, everybody is surviving, everybody is doing well, that's great.

01:33:31.000 Then that is the issue of how you revitalize American democracy.

01:33:31.000 All right.

01:33:37.000 I'm not going to argue with you that the system today is pretty bad.

01:33:40.000 I live it.

01:33:41.000 I'm going there today.

01:33:43.000 And ironically, it's bad because there's no competition.

01:33:47.000 It's corrupt, but it's also not a free market.

01:33:51.000 The government itself has a monopoly on governing.

01:33:54.000 And when they are completely corrupt and when they are making insane amounts of money through taxes and they are not accountable.

01:34:01.000 No, I don't.

01:34:01.000 All right.

01:34:02.000 I don't.

01:34:02.000 No.

01:34:03.000 This is the way I see it.

01:34:06.000 By the way, I'm not advocating for making it privatized, making all of government privatized.

01:34:10.000 just talking about the realities of corruption in our current government system.

01:34:16.000 I do not believe, by the way, because I know these guys, some of them are corrupt. 0.97

01:34:20.000 Okay, let's say incompetent and waste. 0.99

01:34:23.000 Okay. 0.99

01:34:24.000 All right.

01:34:25.000 We can take fraud out of the equation and just talk about incompetency and waste.

01:34:30.000 Is there waste?

01:34:31.000 You got it.

01:34:32.000 All right.

01:34:32.000 But let me back it up again.

01:34:34.000 Okay.

01:34:34.000 Because I think it ties into everything else that we're talking about.

01:34:37.000 You know why I believe in democracy and why I believe among what we didn't talk about is we brought in some money to Vermont and elsewhere, I think, for helping workers own their own companies.

01:34:52.000 Right.

01:34:53.000 Are you familiar with that concept?

01:34:54.000 Yes.

01:34:55.000 Yes.

01:34:56.000 And I meet every year within Vermont.

01:34:59.000 We're doing pretty well.

01:35:02.000 When workers own their own companies, you talk about a sense of purpose.

01:35:07.000 They are more than just a cog in the machine.

01:35:10.000 Yes.

01:35:10.000 You know, they make decisions and they feel good about it.

01:35:12.000 Absenteeism is less.

01:35:13.000 Productivity is higher because they have a real stake in the thing.

01:35:17.000 Yes.

01:35:17.000 Okay.

01:35:18.000 So I think as a nation, we should be talking about moving toward allowing workers more power.

01:35:26.000 But getting back to government itself.

01:35:30.000 The corruption is, in my view, that government is very far removed from the needs of ordinary people because it is largely controlled by billionaires in both political parties who have their agenda.

01:35:46.000 Yes.

01:35:46.000 All right.

01:35:47.000 One of the things that I do, what my campaigns, Sir President, were about, what I'm doing right now, we're doing what we call the fighting oligarchy towards Swan and Texas, is to try to say to people out there who are mostly working class people, you've got to get involved.

01:36:02.000 I know it's hard, people work in long hours.

01:36:04.000 You got to get involved in the political process.

01:36:06.000 You've got to make demands on government that it serves you, not just the very wealthy.

01:36:13.000 So to answer your question, I think one of the goals, not only we've talked about how you deal with the exploding technology and how people gain purpose, the other thing is I want people to be able to take control over their own government.

01:36:29.000 We can argue What the government should or should not do.

01:36:32.000 But I don't think we can allow a handful of people, handful of people, with incredible wealth to control both parties.

01:36:39.000 Well, it's dangerous.

01:36:41.000 It is.

01:36:41.000 It's very dangerous.

01:36:42.000 And I mean, no one who the founding fathers of this country never saw that coming.

01:36:48.000 So they made this incredible system of checks and balances.

01:36:52.000 But who could have ever possibly saw that coming?

01:36:54.000 And what I worry about, Trump is you're right.

01:36:59.000 You know, I read, it is astounding back in the 1780s when these guys wrote the Constitution, how perceptive they were.

01:37:06.000 Yeah.

01:37:06.000 Amazing.

01:37:07.000 Their understanding of human desires and the power and all the corruption.

01:37:13.000 Exactly.

01:37:14.000 Pretty amazing.

01:37:15.000 And they wrote that having just fought a war and won a war against the most powerful despot on earth, the King of England, right?

01:37:23.000 And I think in the back of their minds were saying, all right, we just beat the King of England, absolute power.

01:37:29.000 How do you create a new country which has checks and balance so that nobody ever has that power?

01:37:37.000 And I got to say, I mean, one of the things, and there's a lot of arguments about Trump, that worries me very, very much is this movement toward authoritarianism and going after media, suing media, taking away the authority that Congress has.

01:37:55.000 When you say suing media, are you talking about the CBS laws?

01:37:59.000 Among other things.

01:38:00.000 But don't you think there's a real issue with what they did?

01:38:02.000 No.

01:38:03.000 You don't think that there's a real issue in editing conversations to give someone an answer that's different than what they really answered?

01:38:10.000 Joe, I've been on 8 zillion shows in my life.

01:38:14.000 Okay. 1.00

01:38:15.000 Now, should I sue you if you ask me some stupid question that I don't like, right? 1.00

01:38:21.000 Or that you do something. 1.00

01:38:23.000 Should I sue you?

01:38:24.000 Yeah, but that's not what he's getting.

01:38:27.000 He has sued ABC.

01:38:30.000 He has sued Meta.

01:38:31.000 He is suing the Des Moines Register because of a poll that came out during the campaign that he didn't like.

01:38:38.000 He is suing CBS for this Kamala Harris interview.

01:38:41.000 So do I think how many, I cannot tell you the number of stories done about me that were based, that were not good stories, that were dishonest stories.

01:38:51.000 That's what a free press is about.

01:38:53.000 You got to live with it.

01:38:53.000 You don't like it.

01:38:55.000 You do something, I'm not going to sue you, Joe.

01:38:57.000 Right, but it's not that simple, right?

01:38:59.000 Like, let's imagine, let's not talk about Trump, but let's talk about another candidate.

01:39:03.000 Let's just imagine there's someone on the right and someone on the left, and there's a concerted effort to promote this person that's on the right.

01:39:12.000 And so the polls are rigged, or these are funded polls, that make it look like this person on the right is winning by a substantial margin.

01:39:25.000 And what this does is decreases the motivation that people have to come out and vote against them.

01:39:30.000 So it's fake.

01:39:30.000 That's happening.

01:39:31.000 By the way, that happens right now.

01:39:33.000 It is happening right now.

01:39:34.000 And I think, is that part of what he's suing them about?

01:39:36.000 No, but doesn't.

01:39:37.000 Look.

01:39:38.000 But isn't that what he's suing them about?

01:39:39.000 Well, he's suing ABC for one thing.

01:39:41.000 But with the Des Moines Register about the poll.

01:39:44.000 Yeah, I know the pollster there.

01:39:46.000 Was the poll incorrect?

01:39:47.000 Yeah, the poll was wrong.

01:39:48.000 Guess what?

01:39:48.000 So what?

01:39:49.000 But did they know it was incorrect when they published it?

01:39:53.000 No, they published what they thought was an accurate poll.

01:39:56.000 But that pollster, by the way, what's the name I guess?

01:39:59.000 Seltzer polls.

01:40:00.000 I don't, I should just state for the record, I don't know this lawsuit.

01:40:05.000 But I am aware that in talking to people that understand polls, that some of these are politically.

01:40:12.000 The answer is yes or no.

01:40:13.000 There are polls right now doing exactly what you say.

01:40:17.000 I could doctor a poll.

01:40:18.000 I could talk to more conservative, more progressive people, get the results that I kind of want, right?

01:40:22.000 And they do it to motivate people or demotivate people to vote.

01:40:25.000 And it's effective.

01:40:27.000 It has an impact.

01:40:28.000 On the other hand, this particular poster, it's a Des Moines Register, not a huge newspaper.

01:40:28.000 All right.

01:40:33.000 I bumped into them because when you run in Democratic primaries, Iowa is a big deal.

01:40:37.000 They are a very, very respected poster, okay?

01:40:40.000 They don't talk to polls.

01:40:42.000 So they made a mistake on a poll.

01:40:43.000 It turns out they had Trump doing worse than he ended up doing.

01:40:47.000 Guess what?

01:40:48.000 Posters, honest pollsters, make mistakes too.

01:40:50.000 But what is the basis of his lawsuit?

01:40:52.000 Like, what is he saying?

01:40:53.000 I think he is saying that that gave energy to his opponents and that it was it.

01:40:59.000 He said.

01:41:00.000 Like you talked about.

01:41:01.000 But I don't believe that's the case.

01:41:03.000 There are honest pollsters who make mistakes.

01:41:06.000 But what about the other lawsuit with the conversation that they had with Kamala Harris, where they edited the answers that she had to make it look more precise?

01:41:17.000 60 Minutes, they were suing 60 Minutes is, to my mind, historically, even around for a very long time.

01:41:25.000 You know, they're not infallible.

01:41:26.000 But I think you look at most objective people will say 60 Minutes has a sterling reputation for investigative journalism.

01:41:35.000 Are they wrong?

01:41:36.000 But that's not investigative journalism if you change someone's answers.

01:41:40.000 If you ask her a question and she comes with a rambling answer that doesn't make sense and you edit that out and insert another answer to a different question that seems more coaching.

01:41:51.000 Joe, then you're walking down, it's a really, you're walking down a dangerous path.

01:41:58.000 Suing media has the impact of intimidating media.

01:42:02.000 All right, if somebody sues you, all right, let me finish.

01:42:05.000 All right.

01:42:05.000 Okay.

01:42:06.000 Somebody sues you, and you, you know, why not you?

01:42:08.000 You could be sued tomorrow, right?

01:42:10.000 Because you are doing this.

01:42:12.000 You're too sympathetic to this.

01:42:13.000 And Joe, you did that.

01:42:13.000 Right.

01:42:15.000 And they have a big law firm behind you, and you're going to have to spend zillions of dollars defending yourself.

01:42:19.000 You know what?

01:42:20.000 Next time you do an interview, you say, hmm, maybe I'm not going to go in that area.

01:42:23.000 Right, but it's not that.

01:42:24.000 It's editing things.

01:42:26.000 It is deceptive editing.

01:42:28.000 So in deceptive editing, I give people a different perception of who this candidate is than reality.

01:42:34.000 But that's not objective journalism.

01:42:37.000 That's campaigning for that person.

01:42:40.000 Would you agree with that?

01:42:42.000 I don't have those details.

01:42:43.000 I don't know that I agree with your analysis of it.

01:42:46.000 I don't know enough.

01:42:47.000 I think that's universally accepted, that that's what they did.

01:42:50.000 Then you've got to tell me why he is suing ABC.

01:42:52.000 Why he's suing.

01:42:54.000 Let's just talk about the 60 minutes.

01:42:55.000 But it's not just...

01:42:59.000 Well, George Stephanopoulos said something that he didn't like.

01:43:01.000 But the point is.

01:43:02.000 What did Stephanopoulos say?

01:43:04.000 I can't remember.

01:43:06.000 I honestly don't remember.

01:43:07.000 Well, I think what he was saying was factually incorrect about the results of one of Trump's trials.

01:43:14.000 All right.

01:43:15.000 Guess what?

01:43:17.000 If I were to sue everybody who said things that were factually incorrect about me, I'd be suing people zillions of times.

01:43:25.000 But Joe, what you're saying is, look, does media get it wrong sometimes?

01:43:30.000 Absolutely.

01:43:31.000 Should you have the most powerful person in America suing media?

01:43:36.000 What is the impact of that?

01:43:37.000 The impact is clearly intimidation.

01:43:40.000 He wants to defund public broadcasting, NPR.

01:43:45.000 Why is that?

01:43:46.000 Well, because they also would run critical stories of him.

01:43:49.000 This is part, in my view, without getting into any one case, it's part of a pattern that says, hey, I got the power.

01:43:56.000 Don't you criticize me.

01:43:58.000 You criticize me, I'm going to sue you.

01:44:00.000 So it's not whether this show was right or wrong.

01:44:02.000 There are shows every day they get it wrong.

01:44:04.000 It's whether you, you know, you respect you and other media people to do the best that you can.

01:44:11.000 And if I don't like what you're doing, I'll go someplace else.

01:44:13.000 But I don't like presidents suing media.

01:44:17.000 And then it's, you know, threatening to impeach judges who rule against you, really?

01:44:22.000 Is that a concern?

01:44:23.000 I think it's a concern.

01:44:24.000 I agree, that's a concern.

01:44:26.000 Well, my concern is when you have media organizations that are purported to be objective, and then they say things that are defamatory and factually incorrect, and they should know that before they say it, what other course does a person have other than a lawsuit?

01:44:45.000 And isn't it important that you shine the light on what is a political bias from an organization that you would hope would be objective?

01:44:56.000 Needless to say, I get attacked all the time by right-wing media, right?

01:44:59.000 Every day.

01:45:00.000 Needless to say.

01:45:01.000 Needless to say.

01:45:02.000 I don't sue them.

01:45:05.000 And he's the president of the United States.

01:45:07.000 They say things factually incorrect and defamatory and slanderous.

01:45:11.000 If there's anybody in the world who knows how to use a microphone, his name is Donald Trump.

01:45:15.000 And Donald Trump would get up.

01:45:16.000 You saw that program on CBS the other day? 1.00

01:45:18.000 It was crap. 1.00

01:45:18.000 It was wrong. 1.00

01:45:19.000 And let me tell you why it was wrong.

01:45:20.000 But then they do it again and again and again.

01:45:22.000 And you take them on.

01:45:23.000 The problem is, the more people do stuff like that, if you don't have any consequences to what you're doing, you're going to continue that path.

01:45:31.000 And most people only see that.

01:45:35.000 Like if you're a left-wing-leaning media organization and you print something that's factually incorrect or you say something on television that's factually incorrect, your viewers who are left-leaning are most likely not going to see Trump's rebuttal in some speech that he does in the middle of Pennsylvania.

01:45:53.000 But that's another problem, and that is our media is becoming very divided.

01:46:01.000 Exactly.

01:46:02.000 But all I would say is— I don't think that it is appropriate for the President of the United States to be, in my view, intimidating media.

01:46:18.000 Again, I get attacked, I'll be attacked tomorrow for probably things I said on the show get attacked.

01:46:24.000 Then if I want to respond, I respond.

01:46:26.000 I have a, you know, not a president's bulletin.

01:46:28.000 I have a bully.

01:46:29.000 I say, you see that thing on Fox?

01:46:30.000 They're wrong.

01:46:31.000 And I've done it.

01:46:32.000 But when you, Joe, you've got to take it another way.

01:46:35.000 I'll give you an example about CBS.

01:46:37.000 We talk about corporate power.

01:46:39.000 The owners of, CBS is owned by Paramount, big multimedia corporation, right, Shora?

01:46:47.000 Paramount wants to sell, wants to be sold to, what is it, Blue Sky?

01:46:56.000 Is that ring a bell?

01:46:57.000 Blue Sky is that social media app.

01:47:00.000 And it's another one.

01:47:01.000 I'm sorry.

01:47:02.000 I always forget the name of it.

01:47:04.000 Thanks.

01:47:04.000 Skydance.

01:47:05.000 Skydance is a large media corporation that Paramount wants to have by.

01:47:11.000 To get this merger, huge merger, they have to go, guess what?

01:47:15.000 To the federal government.

01:47:17.000 All right?

01:47:18.000 So you are the head of CBS.

01:47:22.000 You want to sell the company to Skydance for many, many billions.

01:47:26.000 Do you remember how much the sale?

01:47:28.000 I won't see it here.

01:47:29.000 It's billions of dollars, to be sure.

01:47:33.000 And you've got to go to the federal government, and the president sues you.

01:47:36.000 What do you think you're going to do?

01:47:38.000 You're going to settle the lawsuit, give him millions of dollars, and get your merger approved.

01:47:43.000 All right.

01:47:44.000 So look, I think.

01:47:45.000 I see a problem in that.

01:47:46.000 And I see where you're coming from.

01:47:46.000 All right.

01:47:48.000 We want honesty in media.

01:47:51.000 But all I can tell you is that the way to respond to the lies, which take place every day, is to take them on, not to intimidate media.

01:48:02.000 You know, we talked about the Constitution.

01:48:04.000 What's the First Amendment?

01:48:05.000 It's freedom of speech, right?

01:48:07.000 You're right.

01:48:08.000 You're sitting here.

01:48:09.000 You disagree with me.

01:48:10.000 God bless you.

01:48:10.000 Say what the hell you want to say.

01:48:12.000 All right.

01:48:12.000 I'll never take that away from you.

01:48:14.000 And I'm not going to threaten you with a lawsuit.

01:48:16.000 But if you start suing me, hey, Joe Rogan said this.

01:48:18.000 No, no, no, no.

01:48:19.000 Joe Rogan has this.

01:48:20.000 We found out about Joe Rogan.

01:48:21.000 I'm going to sue Joe Rogan for $100 million.

01:48:24.000 Joe may not talk about those issues in the future.

01:48:27.000 Okay?

01:48:27.000 That's what I'm saying, Joe.

01:48:29.000 No, I agree with you.

01:48:30.000 And listen, I'm not a fan of lawsuits either, which is why I never sued CNN.

01:48:35.000 I've never done one.

01:48:36.000 CNN lied about me over and over and over again.

01:48:39.000 They said I was taking horse dewormer, and they altered the color of my face on television to make me look green.

01:48:46.000 I can testify, yay, green.

01:48:49.000 I didn't sue them. 0.98

01:48:50.000 I'm not a fan of, and my response to them was just speak out and say how ridiculous. 0.99

01:48:54.000 That's what I'm ridiculous. 0.98

01:48:56.000 Look, anybody in the public eye, you're in the public eye, I'm in the public eye. 0.98

01:48:59.000 You're going to get attacked every day, right?

01:49:00.000 All right. 0.88

01:49:00.000 Yes. 0.88

01:49:01.000 That's what – you're in the public eye.

01:49:03.000 You don't want to be in the public eye.

01:49:05.000 Put down the microphone.

01:49:06.000 Agreed.

01:49:07.000 Whatever you want.

01:49:07.000 Play pool.

01:49:08.000 All right.

01:49:08.000 No, I agree with you.

01:49:09.000 So, I mean – so, I just worry – But I also agree that CBS shouldn't be altering – presidential candidate for an interview.

01:49:17.000 I agree too.

01:49:18.000 I mean, I don't know enough about it, so I'm not going to say what isn't.

01:49:20.000 All I know is that 60 Minutes is a well-respected program.

01:49:26.000 Do they make mistakes?

01:49:27.000 That's not a mistake.

01:49:28.000 I don't know enough about it, so I can't.

01:49:28.000 All right.

01:49:30.000 I understand.

01:49:31.000 All right.

01:49:32.000 What else you got for me?

01:49:33.000 I should get a plane and get out of here.

01:49:35.000 You probably should.

01:49:37.000 I mean, I appreciate your positions on all these different things.

01:49:41.000 And I appreciate, by the way, one of the, you know, we talked about media and the bifurcation of media, you know, right-wing people talk to right-wing people, left-wing people talk to left-wing people.

01:49:50.000 I happen to think that the development of podcasts is a really positive step.

01:49:55.000 Because I can tell you, I've been on a million TV shows.

01:49:58.000 All right, Bernie, literally you've got seven seconds to explain the issue.

01:50:02.000 Well, I can't explain.

01:50:03.000 It's impossible.

01:50:04.000 Nobody can.

01:50:05.000 And the fact that you give people a couple of hours to sit here and have a good discussion and be a good host and trade ideas, I think that improves life in America and helps people think about things.

01:50:15.000 So thank you for what you're doing.

01:50:16.000 My pleasure.

01:50:17.000 And I think that one of the things this conversation highlights is that there's a lot of issues that all Americans agree on.

01:50:25.000 And this ridiculous position that we find ourselves in, where you have to be ideologically opposed to one thing because your side supports the other thing, it's just terrible for all of us.

01:50:37.000 And if we looked at the issues that really face our country and our citizens and our human beings that live here as a community, we agree on almost all of them.

01:50:47.000 We agree that you should have a better life, that you should have healthier people, we should have health care and education, we should have safer streets, we should have a community that lets people do what they want to do as long as they're not harming other people.

01:51:02.000 And I think the divide that we have in this country accentuates the farthest ends of each end of the political spectrum, not recognize that most of us exist in the middle.

01:51:15.000 I think we share a common humanity.

01:51:17.000 And I think, look, why am I, I just went into this fighting oligarchy.

01:51:22.000 You know where I was?

01:51:23.000 I was to Oklahoma, one of the more conservative states in the country.

01:51:27.000 I was to Louisiana here in Texas.

01:51:30.000 Precisely because, I mean, I think we have so much more in common.

01:51:34.000 And let's focus on how we can create a better life for all of us.

01:51:38.000 Absolutely.

01:51:39.000 All right, Joe, you're doing a great job.

01:51:40.000 Thanks, sir.

01:51:41.000 Great to see you again.

01:51:41.000 Thanks very much.

01:51:42.000 You too.

01:51:42.000 Take care.

01:51:43.000 Bye-bye.

The Joe Rogan Experience - June 24, 2025

Joe Rogan Experience #2341 - Bernie Sanders

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