Senator Bernie Sanders has launched a sharp criticism of Republicans in the House and Senate, accusing them of acting as “rubber stamps” for President Donald Trump’s agenda. His remarks spotlight growing political tensions over congressional oversight, Republican support for the administration, and the role of lawmakers in challenging presidential decisions.
#BernieSanders #DonaldTrump #RubberStampRepublicans #GOP #HouseRepublicans #SenateRepublicans #USCongress #TrumpAgenda #USPolitics
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#BernieSanders #DonaldTrump #RubberStampRepublicans #GOP #HouseRepublicans #SenateRepublicans #USCongress #TrumpAgenda #USPolitics
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00:00And why this campaign is so important is right now, under Republican control in the House and in the Senate,
00:07what you have are bodies that are rubber stamps for Trump's policies.
00:13And I wish I didn't have to say that. It did not used to be the case.
00:17It used to have Republicans who were independent.
00:19All right, let me thank Winded, the band.
00:24Amina Kamu, Devin Nobles, Jose Calantes, Jeremy Matlow.
00:28And let me give it a special thanks to one of the outstanding members of the United States Congress from
00:37Florida, Maxwell Frost.
00:44Let me take this opportunity to thank the people of Florida.
00:50Angie has kept me really busy.
00:53I can't keep up with this woman. She doesn't stop.
00:58We started in Tampa. Great turnout. We went to Melbourne.
01:05We went to the University of Gainesville. Tremendous turnout.
01:16All right, all right.
01:18What do I know about football in Florida?
01:23And here we are.
01:24And I want to thank the hundreds of people who could not get in here.
01:32Why am I in Florida?
01:36I thought I was coming for some sunshine.
01:38Didn't happen.
01:40Colder here than in Vermont.
01:43I am here because this is the most important midterm election in modern American history.
01:52Period.
01:53End of discussion.
01:58And the reason for that is, in my view,
02:01in my view, we have a president who is the most dangerous president in the history of the United States.
02:14This is a president who does not believe in democracy.
02:21Men and women in America throughout our history, Vermont, Florida, all over this country,
02:27put their lives on the line for democracy.
02:30One person, one vote, the freedom of dissent, freedom of the media.
02:35We have a president who is an authoritarian type.
02:41We have a president who is a narcissist, who believes that the entire world revolves around him,
02:53who, if he had his way, would probably name half of the buildings in America after himself.
03:01We have a president who is a pathological liar.
03:08And to my conservative friends out there, and I have some,
03:12you try to raise your kids to be honest, to tell the truth.
03:17You have a president who every single day does exactly the opposite.
03:24We can disagree with each other.
03:27That's called democracy.
03:28But we don't have to lie every day.
03:31We don't have to hurl horrible insults at people who look a little bit different than we do.
03:37Who may come from another country.
03:41That is not what a president is supposed to do.
03:50But it's not only Trump's personality and his behavior.
03:57It is his policies.
04:01Trump's best friends, and you see them every day in the papers,
04:05all of the oligarchs who have dinner with him,
04:07the wealthiest people in the world,
04:10he is working day and night for them.
04:13They are becoming unbelievably rich under Trump.
04:22And meanwhile, 60% of the people in our country live paycheck to paycheck.
04:31They wake up every morning.
04:33How am I going to feed my kids?
04:35What happens if my mom gets ill?
04:38How do I afford prescription drugs?
04:40My car breaks down.
04:42How do I come up with a thousand bucks to get it fixed so I can go to work?
04:46How do I pay for child care?
04:48How do I pay for rent?
04:51What happens when my landlord raises rent?
04:54Where do I go?
04:55What do I do?
04:56All over this country, people working, people are living under extraordinary stress.
05:02Angie came from a family that is working class.
05:05I came from a family that's working class.
05:08Many of you came from working class families.
05:10And I'll tell you something, there is a reason, there is a reason why working class Americans die six years
05:22younger than the wealthy.
05:24And you know what it is?
05:26That's the word.
05:27Who said that?
05:28You're exactly right.
05:31All right.
05:32That is exactly the word.
05:34Stress.
05:35Stress, if you are trying and figuring out how the hell you're going to survive every single day, it takes,
05:42not me talking, this is what doctors are talking about.
05:45It takes an enormous toll on your body, on your heart, on your cardiovascular system.
05:51It takes an enormous toll on your mental health.
05:55And that is why all over this country, people are living under extraordinary stress, and they're dying years earlier than
06:04they should.
06:06Trump is spending day and night worrying about his billionaire families and billionaire friends.
06:14We have a candidate here in Angie who is going to stand up to the oligarchs, stand up to Trump,
06:23and fight for the working class of this country.
06:30And why this campaign is so important is right now, under Republican control in the House and in the Senate,
06:38what you have are bodies that are rubber stamps for Trump's policies.
06:44And I wish I didn't have to say that.
06:46It did not used to be the case.
06:48It used to have Republicans who were independent.
06:50But right now, Trump says, jump, and they say, how high do I jump, Mr. President?
06:56You're the boss.
06:56I'll do anything you want.
06:59But the reason that Elon Musk is spending $350 million on this campaign to try to defeat Angie and other
07:11great candidates around the country is he and his billionaire friends are scared to death that we're going to elect
07:19candidates like Angie.
07:29They are flooding the airwaves all over this country with lying ads in order to defeat candidates like Angie.
07:38Because their nightmare is that in the Senate, in the House, we're going to have candidates who are going to
07:44call them out and make it clear that we're going to have a government and an economy that work for
07:50all of us, not just Donald Trump and Elon Musk and other billionaires.
08:00Now, if that's not a good enough reason to defeat Ashley Moody and elect Angie, let me give you a
08:07few more.
08:08Number one, the worst piece of legislation passed in the modern history in this country is the so-called Big
08:18Beautiful Bill.
08:23And among other things, it's a long bill, a lot of bad stuff in it, but among other provisions in
08:31that terrible bill was one that throws 15 million Americans, including 440,000 here in Florida, off the health care
08:44that they have.
08:48All right, what happens if you are low-income or working class and you're sick and you have no health
08:56care?
08:58All right, you die.
09:00And I don't want to be overly dramatic, and this is not me talking.
09:03This is based on studies that people have done.
09:07And that is that when you throw 15 million people off the health care that they have, tens of thousands
09:15of those people will die unnecessarily and others will suffer.
09:23And why did they pass this bill to throw 15 million people off the health care in order to give
09:30a trillion dollars in tax breaks to the top 1%?
09:40Ashley Moody voted for that legislation.
09:46Angie Nixon and I are going to vote to rescind that terrible provision.
10:01Donald Trump campaigned, ran for president here in Florida, all over this country.
10:07And he said, if I'm elected, we're going to end endless wars.
10:13He lied.
10:16In a way that was unconstitutional and illegal.
10:22Trump started an unnecessary and horrible war with Iran.
10:28And the result of that war is 19 U.S. service members are dead.
10:35Many hundreds are injured, some seriously.
10:40Thousands of innocent men, women, and children in Iran and neighboring countries are dead.
10:48And this war has had a devastating impact on our economy and the world's economy, driving up the cost of
10:57gas and home heating oil, food, and other basic commodities.
11:04Ashley Moody supports that war.
11:11Angie Nixon and I are going to end that war.
11:16Angie Nixon and I are going to end that war.
11:38One of the most transformative technologies in the history of humanity, pure and simple.
11:43Nobody denies that.
11:45And the development of AI being pushed by the world's wealthiest people is moving very, very rapidly.
11:53And what the heads, the CEOs of these major AI companies will tell you, and they say it publicly is,
12:01We don't even know where this technology is going.
12:06We don't know what its impact will be.
12:09We don't know if human beings will be able to control this technology.
12:14Now, I speak to some of the leading experts in the world on AI,
12:19and I've talked many times to a Nobel Prize winner in physics,
12:24one of the godfathers of AI, Jeffrey Hinton.
12:29And what he and others say is there is no question of that AI will become smarter than humans.
12:39It's only a question of when, and that might happen very, very soon.
12:44And if that happens, there is a real question as to whether or not human beings
12:50will be able to control AI or whether AI acts independently.
12:55And if AI acts independently, God only knows what could happen.
13:03All right?
13:04What Angie believes, what I believe, what the overwhelming majority of the American people believe,
13:10is we have got to put controls on AI.
13:23The function of AI cannot simply be to make Musk and Zuckerberg and Ellison and the other multi-billionaires even
13:31richer.
13:32AI has got to serve the needs of humanity, not just a handful of big tech oligogues.
13:43As some of you may know, the people of Vermont have sent me to Washington as the longest-serving independent
13:51in the history of the United States.
13:59And I caucus with the Democrats, but I'm not a member of the Democratic Party, certainly not a member of
14:05the Republican Party.
14:06And in that capacity as an independent, I have the ability to do something that many other elected officials can't
14:15do.
14:15I can tell you the truth.
14:23That's true.
14:25So what is the truth?
14:26And I think it's a truth that everybody knows, but it's not a truth that is talked about in Congress,
14:33for reasons I will get to in a moment, and not a truth you see on TV or in the
14:39corporate media.
14:40So what are the basic truths?
14:41And you all know it.
14:42The basic truth of today is that the overwhelming majority of American people in the richest country on Earth are
14:51struggling to survive economically.
14:54Right? Everybody knows that.
14:56Meanwhile, the very richest people in America have never, ever had it so good.
15:05Never before in American history, never before in our long history, have so few people held so much wealth and
15:16so much power.
15:18Today, we have more income and wealth inequality than we have ever had in the history of our country.
15:28Do you all remember?
15:30When we were in school, we studied the Gilded Age.
15:33Remember that?
15:34Yes.
15:35That was Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan and Carnegie and those guys?
15:39Yes.
15:40The situation today is far more extreme.
15:44You don't see this much on TV, but today the top 1% owns more wealth than the bottom 93%.
15:55Today, one man, Mr. Musk, the wealthiest guy on Earth himself, one man owns more wealth than the bottom 53
16:06% of American households.
16:12And the function, the reason why Musk is spending $350 million in this campaign, putting all kinds of ugly ads
16:22against Angie and other candidates around the country,
16:26is Musk has never had it so good and he wants to maintain his wealth and his power.
16:32And it's not just Musk, it is other billionaires.
16:35Because these guys now on top are more irresponsible and more greedy, more greedy.
16:45They are religious people.
16:47Their religion is greed.
16:50They have hundreds of billions of dollars and yet they want more and more and more and they do not
16:58care how many people suffer as a result.
17:02In what religion, under what standard of morality do you take health care away from sick kids in order to
17:12give tax breaks to billionaires?
17:16And that is what they are doing.
17:21So you have an economy that's working phenomenally well for the people on top, but it's not just economics.
17:28Increasingly, they own the media, which means that they will shape what you see, hear and read.
17:37They will determine what the important issues are.
17:41And those issues are not the issues that working class people are dealing with every day.
17:47And then on top of all of that, it's not just the economy that they own.
17:52It's not just the media that they own.
17:54Now they are going full steam ahead trying to buy the United States government and our political system.
18:07Now from where I come from in Vermont, and I'm sure it's similar here in Florida, we believe that democracy
18:14means one person, one vote.
18:20Not billionaires buying elections.
18:29So what Angie understands, and what I understand, is that we have to end this corrupt campaign finance system.
18:40We've got to get rid of citizens united.
18:46We've got to get rid of super PACs in elections.
18:54And we have got to move to public funding of elections.
19:01What elections should be are people debating the real issues facing the country.
19:08Not 30-second dishonest ads funded by billionaires.
19:17This election here in Florida is of extraordinary importance.
19:23Not only because what happens here could determine whether or not Republicans retain control over the Senate,
19:30but even more because of Angie's extraordinary candidacy.
19:36Angie started her campaign running in the Democratic primary.
19:41And as you may remember, the entire establishment was against her.
19:45She got outspent 15 to 1.
19:49And I can tell you, I work in Washington, D.C.
19:52Nobody, nobody in Washington thought she could win that election.
19:57She won big time.
20:06And she won big time not because she flooded the airwaves with 30-second ads.
20:13I don't think she did one air.
20:15She won because she put together an extraordinary grassroots movement of blacks and whites and Latinos,
20:26young people, old people, people from all walks of life.
20:31And at the end of the day, when you do that, when you put together that coalition, that is how
20:37you win.
20:46So the reason that Elon Musk and the other billionaires and Trump are defaming her and lying about her is
20:55they are scared to death
20:59that this young woman who comes from the working class, who has fought for the working class her entire life.
21:07They are scared to death that she is going to go to Washington and take them on and fight for
21:14the working families of this country.
21:21And let me tell you something, and I speak as the senator from the great state of Vermont.
21:29This election is not only important for the people of Florida in getting a senator who's going to fight for
21:36you.
21:37Trust me on this.
21:39Prime rights.
21:40born assault.
21:40After Angie wins, this is going to be a spark that is going to ignite the entire country.
21:57And from Maine to California, in between people are going to look up and say wait a minute,
22:02In Florida, they elected a working class candidate?
22:13Well if the great people in Florida could do it, we could do it in North Dakota, Oklahoma,
22:19Mississippi, Alabama, New Hampshire, all over this country.
22:28Angie's victory is going to give hope and inspiration to tens of millions of people,
22:35not only in the United States, but in fact all over the world.
22:46And I find it really quite interesting that her opponent, Senator Moody, doesn't even have the courage to debate Angie.
23:03I've been with Angie for the last couple of days, she doesn't stop by the way, and she's talking to
23:11all the media,
23:11she's answering questions today, this morning she was on a national TV show, answering tough questions.
23:17That's what you've got to do when you run for the United States Senate.
23:21But her opponent barely talks to anybody, runs away from the media, refuses to debate.
23:32Her entire campaign is 30 second ads paid for by the wealthiest people in this country.
23:42So I say to Senator Moody, if you want to represent the people of Florida, how about getting out there
23:47and talking to the people of Florida?
23:58But this campaign is not only taking on Donald Trump and Senator Moody and the billionaire class.
24:05It's about having a vision for a new America, for a government that works for all, not the few.
24:15And Angie already touched on a lot of the issues, let me briefly go through them.
24:19Number one, we must end this corrupt campaign finance system, period.
24:28Number two, at a time of massive and unprecedented income and wealth inequality,
24:35yeah, the billionaires are going to start paying their fair share of taxes.
24:45So that we do not continue to have the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country.
24:51That we take care of the elderly.
24:53That we take care of working class families.
24:59And as Angie said, we are the only major country on earth not to guarantee healthcare to every man, woman
25:09and child as a human right.
25:15Or you tell me, what is the function of the American healthcare system now?
25:20It's to make huge profits for the insurance companies and the drug companies and that is exactly what is happening.
25:30Well, Angie and I and you and the vast majority of the American people think that the function of our
25:37healthcare system should not be to make billionaires even richer.
25:41The function should be to provide quality healthcare to every man, woman and child.
25:54And that is why we are going to pass a Medicare for all single payer program.
26:06And when we raise trillions of dollars by demanding that billionaires start paying their fair share of taxes,
26:15we are going to build 7 million units of low income and affordable housing so we solve the housing crisis.
26:23We are going to provide free and universal childcare.
26:30We are going to strengthen public education by making sure no teacher in America makes less than $60,000 a
26:40year.
26:45And because we understand that the future of America is with a best educated population,
26:53we are going to make public colleges and universities, medical schools, nursing schools, tuition free.
27:06Donald Trump thinks that climate change is a hoax.
27:13You and I and Angie and the American people know that in fact climate change is a real threat to
27:22the future of our planet.
27:23And that is why we are going to fight to create millions of good paying union jobs.
27:30As we transform our energy system away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency as a state of living.
27:42And we are going to raise the minimum wage to a living wage.
27:49It is insane that the federal minimum wage is seven and a quarter an hour.
27:54In my view it should be at least 20 bucks an hour.
28:01And we are going to make it easier for workers to join unions.
28:09And last but not least, both from a moral perspective as well as an economic perspective,
28:19with your help Angie and I are going to put an end to endless wars.
28:32Instead of spending $1.1 trillion on the Pentagon, which by the way cannot even undertake an independent audit,
28:43enormous waste and fraud there, we think that maybe we invest in our kids, in our seniors and in working
28:51families.
28:55And one more thing that Angie and I agree on, and that is not another nickel to the extremist Israeli
29:04government
29:05to continue their wars against the Palestinian people.
29:27Brothers and sisters, in 1933, a few years ago,
29:33Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said, and I quote,
29:40We can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few.
29:48But we cannot have both.
29:57What Brandeis said back then was true.
30:01It is even truer today.
30:05So what this campaign really comes down to is just what Brandeis was talking about.
30:10Do we continue to live in a nation in which a handful of billionaires have enormous political power,
30:18economic power and own the media?
30:23Or do we create a nation where we are proud of our vibrant democracy?
30:34And where we have an economy that in the richest country on earth provides a decent standard of living for
30:43all.
30:45Now, the people on top, people on top, they're nobody's fools.
30:50They're greedy.
30:51They're selfish.
30:52They're irresponsible.
30:53They're not stupid.
30:54And what they always try to do is tell you, hey, guys, you got no power at all.
30:59We are the billionaires.
31:01We own everything.
31:02You think he could stand up to us?
31:04Think Angie Nixon could take us on?
31:06Forget about it.
31:07What this campaign is about is looking Musk and his friends in the eye and saying,
31:15your day has come and it's over.
31:24This country belongs to all of us.
31:31And we're going to create an economy that works for all of us.
31:38So brothers and sisters, and I say this with absolute sincerity, what you do in the next 16 days can
31:49change the course,
31:50not only of American history, but of world history.
31:53Because what happens in America obviously impacts the whole world.
32:00If we can elect, Angie is the next senator from Florida.
32:06If we can end Republican control over the House and the Senate.
32:11If we can mobilize the American people to stand up and fight for their rights, there is nothing we cannot
32:21accomplish.
32:30We've got 16 days to get to work and to elect Angie Nixon as our next senator.
32:37Let's get out.
32:38Do it.
32:38Thank you all very much.
32:52Now,
32:52go to the