And we're live. Hello Bernie. How are you? Wonderful.
Pleasure to meet you. Thanks for making it. It's exciting to have you here, man And it's obviously an exciting time for you You know presidential campaign is up in full swing. Do you do you get frustrated by the the time constraints of the debates?
Absolutely, it's you shouldn't even call them a debate what they are is a You know reality TV show in which you have to come up with a sound bite No, that's not it is the meaning it's the meaning to the candidates and it's the meaning to the American people You can't explain the complexity of healthcare in America in 45 seconds. Nobody can but why has it still done that way? You to try to do what's pull this thing? You know, I think the DNC is in a difficult position.
They have 20 plus candidates and I want to get everybody a fair shot Which is the right thing to do and then if you have 10 candidates up on the stage What do you do? It's but there are other ways that we've got to do it because the issues facing this country are so enormous and in some cases so complicated Nobody in the world can honestly explain them in 45 seconds And then that what encourages people to do is to come up with sound bites to do absurd things up I yelled in scream on the show. I took my clothes off. We get a lot of publicity, right?
But you give a thoughtful answer to a complicated question. It's not so sexy for the media We don't even have a chance to have a thoughtful answer like Tulsi Gabbard went after Kamala Harris and then Kamala Harris said about 12 seconds To reply to it was so ridiculous to to have something that's such an important issue Did you or did you not put all those people in jail for marijuana? Did you laugh about it? Did this happen?
Did that happen all these different things with was evidence withheld? That's up. These are long conversations But it takes us to another issue and that as a nation we do a pretty bad job in Analyzing and discussing the serious issues facing our country and I hold media to some degree responsible for that You know other countries what they do is that he Joe you want to represent? I'll tell you what your party in the general election We're gonna give you a certain amount of time hours on television and you use those hours anyway one of 15 minute This was you remember Ross Pro Yes And people used to laugh at Ross Pro because he used to get up there with the chart and all this stuff and media made fun of him But in fact he tried in his own way to explain his point of view to the American people and we need serious discussion on serious issues Well, he had the obvious because he was so rich he had the ability to buy airtime on network television Which is pretty unprecedented.
He just bought a chunk of airtime and then pled his case But you know what goes on in other countries you don't have to buy that time what the obligation is if you are a network You're gonna make that time free and available this episode is brought to you by Squarespace once you've got a great name for your business You need a great domain and Squarespace makes it easy to lock in a domain You just search the name you want buy it and then you're ready to build no hidden fees No weird upsells go to squarespace.com slash Rogan for a free trial and when you are ready to launch use the code Rogan to get 10% off Your first purchase of a website or domain to candidates Do you think that that's something that could be viable in a merit? I mean could you convince CBS and NBC and ABC to go along with something like that? No, you couldn't convince them. You'd have to pass legislation to make that happen But everyone's online today I mean the entire country is essentially getting email and Facebook and all that jazz like why bother doing it in this particular medium That has an inherent time constraint.
Well, you're right I mean the internet has revolutionized Politics and in many ways good ways we use our social media our email list Which is very large we every day with something else stuff and other candidates are doing it the same way But television still has a very important role to be playing I'm sure it does but I mean the ability to discuss things in in long form like you can do online like you can do right here right now You can't get that on television. Well, you could I mean if you had to stay without interrupt you every 15 minutes No, no, no, I'm saying about is it's in what goes on in other countries if I'm not mistaken I don't hold me to this I think in the UK you remember the label party or candidate Here's 30 minutes of time and you do with it. You want to speak 30 minutes on healthcare Whatever it may be you can do that really yeah, and they don't interrupt with commercials No, no, no, that's the law that they have given this is the candidates opportunity to speak at length to the people of the country What what are the misconceptions of you because here's here's the if you go to the knee jerk conservative reaction you talk to people who are not Interested in anyone that wants to be a democratic socialist they hear the name Bernie Sanders the negative implications are that you are somehow Or another going to take their money right? Do that annoying to you?
Yes, it is of course it is and also that I miss the Maduro I'm a dictator. I love dictatorship some of that stuff and The truth is Joe that if you look at the issues that I can't paint on what I believe on they are really not terribly radical They exist in many countries all over the world for example. Just we can start on healthcare If you like is the idea that healthcare is a human right not a privilege a radical idea I don't think it is it's not and the truth is we are the only major country on earth many people don't know this We're the only major country on earth not the guarantee health care to all people as a human right and yet We end up spending almost twice as much per capita on health care The function and you can argue with me if you want but the function of the current health care system is not to provide quality care All it is to make tens of billions of dollars in profit for the drug companies and the insurance companies That's the function If you go to Canada and I live 50 miles away from the Canadian water you have major hot surgery you're in the hospital for a month You know what the bill is when you go down zero you got it. You got any doctor you want You don't have to take out your wallet and yet they guarantee health care all of their people and they spend one half of what we spend That's kind of what I want to do and I don't think that that's terribly radical We have a program now which everybody knows it's called Medicare was started by Lyndon Johnson back in 1965 It is a popular program all that I want to do over a four-year period is to expand the today eligibility ages 65 I want to take another 55 45 35 everybody over for your period That's about it and I want to expand benefits to include dental care hearing aids and high glasses as well That's about it not theoretical that doesn't sound radical all know when you say that Canada spends less obviously they have less people You mean less per capita?
Yes half per capita exactly and the quality of care is as good or better Do they have problems? Yeah, they have problems everybody has problems, but overall the health care experts will tell you the quality of care There is as good or better than it is in our country. So what's the hurdle? Okay?
I'll tell you exactly what the hurdle is exactly the same thing is in every other aspect of life It's the power of money. All right, listen to this over the last 20 years The drug companies alone have spent four and a half billion dollars in 20 years on lobbying and campaign contributions That's what we're up against the knowledge and I mock my words within a short period of time You will see TV ads in California all over this country demonizing Bernie Sanders. He wants to do this terrible thing to you He wants to do that they have unbelievable amounts of money and politicians are frightened of that power Give you one example back in 2016 I got involved here a little way with an effort on the part of the nurses to control the course of the prescription drugs in California you may recall that effort I did it was a ballot item in one state here in California Do you know how much the drug companies alone spent at the peak that they spent a hundred and thirty one million dollars on one Ballon item in one state all right last year the top 10 drug companies made sixty nine billion dollars a week ago I went to Canada with a number of Americans who are dealing with diabetes We bought insulin in Windsor, Ontario for one tenth price 10% of the price same exact product being charged in America So you got drug companies that are engaged in collusion and in price fixing who are incredibly greedy and the result is many elderly people Many working people simply cannot afford the medicine They need this is it's unbelievable and the reason for all of that stuff is we are the only country in the world that does not negotiate with the Drug companies they can charge you any price they want and that has to do with the fact that we don't have a national health care program Medicare It's not negotiating etc. Is this something that can really be implemented inside of four years?
It's an enormous endeavor. Well, I want you to think back think back Joe in 1965 You had Lyndon Johnson is president and by the way this idea of national health care This has been talked about literally since Teddy Roosevelt is a new concept health care is even right this was Teddy Roosevelt was talking about Harry Truman was talking about it Kennedy was talking about it Kennedy got killed Lyndon Johnson picked up the mantle and their idea was According to people in their administration will start with the elderly who are most impacted by health care costs and sickness We'll start and they did in 1965 without the technology we have today. They implemented Medicare 19 million people elderly people signed up in the first year So if you could start a brand new program and have 19 million people signed up with a technology that is way way behind where we are today Why can't we offer a four-year period simply expand that program? I don't think it's a difficult operation So when you talk about the drug companies and the lobbyists and the enormous amount of money that they spend is this this Exists anywhere else other than the United States lobbyists on that level no And the reason you know in Canada what you have is you have a national health care program and so forth and they sit down and They negotiate with the drug companies.
They have their own approach But every other major country on earth says to the drug companies of course you can't charge us any price you want This is a reason why tell me what your profits are what your expenditures are this is a price for us You can walk in you know if you have an illness you can walk into the pharmacy tomorrow and the prices been double You say to the phone, but it's just raises their prices They could do it any day they want any price they want no lobbyists are in general when people talk about lobbyists It's an unattractive term. We think about it in terms of a negative. We don't we don't think of all thank God There's lobbyists we think wow there's someone with enormous amounts of money using that money to gain influence on politicians And it shapes regular people that shapes our lives mostly in a negative way. This is the way most people look at them I'm not saying it's correct Why why do we have that system in place like why do we have lobbyists?
Why is it legal for someone to spend exorbitants amount of money Exorbitant amounts of money to affect our civilization to affect the way our culture was you're taking us into a whole new area Yeah, let's look at my detour and I'll come back Today in America You've got three people only more wealth in the bottom half of the American society. You don't see that on television too much Yeah, no, you don't three people got the top 1% only more wealth than the bottom 92% listen to this This is a statistic We recently saw came from the Federal Reserve over the last 30 years the top 1% has seen a $21 trillion increase in their wealth The bottom half of America has seen a $900 billion decline in their wealth So what you have in America today is a relatively small number of incredibly wealthy people and I deal with these guys every day People always talk about rich. You don't know what rich is what? Multi-billion dollar operations are incredible power over our society and if you were the pharmaceutical industry and last year 10 companies made $69 billion in profit You're sitting around right now saying all right.
That's great. How do we do better next year? What strategy do we have a lot of ads on we're gonna work with other during the CNN debate that I participated in recently in the debate right in The middle of the bait the drug companies and insurance companies had an ad telling how bad so-called how bad better care for all would be So they they're smart guys and they use their power over politicians. They use their power over the media They spend billions of dollars on advertising on media to make sure that they make as much as they can profit But it's not any different with Wall Street It's not any different with the fossil fuel industry or the prison industrial complex These guys have wealth they have power and it could care less about the needs of working people in this country And that's the dynamic of American politics right now and in our campaign look we're taking them all on I know it makes a lot of people uncomfortable But we are taking on all of these entities and all of their wealth and all of their power And that's what a political revolution is about So the real problems seems to be that they have this strategy of unlimited growth not that they're not providing medication that people need to save their lives I mean it's obviously important to have Of course of course right so there's good that they provide but the business aspect of it is where the problem lies right look They have great researchers, but if you check how they even spend their money You know they will tell you this all of their money on research and about where to where tackling cancer We're tackling diabetes Alzheimer's the truth is of course they are but the bulk of their money is going off into what we call Me too drugs they make modest changes in a drug which really doesn't improve people's well-being in order to make profits So the answer is yes, we need obviously vigorous research and development and by the way you are tax dollars All of our tax dollars all up in goes to that research and we don't get the benefit of it in terms of lower prices So it's just it's a business model issue It's a greed issue you've got it and how would one stop that when you're dealing with this the kind of influence you're talking about with $69 billion in a year.
I mean the resources they have how would you stop that? Well, that is kind of what we call the 64 Another question. Yeah, and I'll tell you what I think this is what I believe if you think back on American history And you think about the real changes that have taken place in society You think about the label movement and working class people standing up and saying to their employers We're not gonna be treated like animals anymore. You can't hire and fire as you can't work us You know 15 hours a day We deserve dignity and you think about the growth of the label movement millions of people beginning to stand together and fight You think about the civil rights movement, you know, and it wasn't just Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr It was again millions of African Americans in the white allies say we're gonna end segregation and racism in this country About the women's movement a hundred years ago women in America didn't even have the right to vote think about the gay rights movement The only way the change takes place is when ordinary people come together and stand up and fight and say that the status quo is not working And that's what I believe and that's what we're trying to do So the message of our campaign is it's us not me because I can't do it alone Let me be very honest with you I elected president tomorrow I can't do the things that I would like to do that I'm campaigning on unless millions of people were working with me to tell the corporate elite That they cannot get it all so how would that be implemented? Let's say you become president You got a president? What do we gotta try to do that shot? All right president Bernie, what you do you get in there?
What do you do? Okay, first of all you make a very clear you make it clear to the American people what your agenda is And I appreciate the opportunity to talk about an agenda in more than 12 seconds All right, what does that mean? All right? We're gonna fight for Medicare for all we're gonna raise the minimum wage to a living wage We are gonna deal with education in profound.
Well, yes, I profound way because I worry about what's going on in education today Everybody knows that the ages of zero through four are the most important years for human intellectual and emotional development Right every psychologist will tell you that and yet we have a totally dysfunctional early childhood system We pay we pay our childcare workers starvation wages yet working class families cannot find affordable quality childcare You got our public school systems all around this country in many of them really being challenged right now Teachers are on the pay teachers are working two or three jobs You got kids that can't afford to go to college and here's something that is just unbelievable kids who have gone to college leaving school with $50,000-100,000 dead unbelievable these are issues that we have to deal with and I will deal with them and We are gonna substantially improve the quality of education America We're gonna cancel student debt by imposing attacks on Wall Street speculation. All right, so you got to deal with education You got to deal with climate change, you know, the truth is that Donald Trump is dead wrong Climate change is not a hoax It is a very very dangerous reality for our country and the rest of the world sign this does we have less than 12 years to transform our energy system away from fossil fuel Well, they will be irreparable damage. All right, so those are in health care of course for all So those are some of the major issues criminal justice immigration reform you lay it on the table You see these are the issues that we are gonna focus on and you rally the American people around those issues And you tell people like Mitch McConnell who represents a very poor state in Kentucky that Mitch if you are going to oppose raising that minimum wage To at least 15 bucks an hour I will be in Kentucky as president of the United States and we're gonna have a rally because you're gonna have to stop representing I hope by the way the Mitch McConnell is not the leader I hope the Democrats can gain control over the Senate But if he is will put enormous pressure on him to do what the people want every idea show Here's the bottom line in this every idea that I've just talked to you about you supported majority of the American people these are not radical ideas Let's let's take these one step at a time because you mentioned a lot of important things there Let's go with the minimum wage thing now the argument that I've heard about the minimum wage being raised at $15 an hour Is that there are entry-level positions for high school kids for people that are just getting their feet wet in the marketplace? They're learning how to work.
They're learning they're making some money after school that they that if you charge or if businesses have to pay $15 an hour to people like that to entry-level people that they won't be able to stay open Well, first of all they will be competing against you know If you're a business, I'm a business and both of us have to raise our wages at the same level We both have the same burden. So it's spread across that is what my conservative colleagues will tell you the truth is I don't have the numbers right in front of me that while they certainly is true that Young people do work at McDonald's and minimum wage jobs a significant and majority of the workers are not kids They are often and I met them at McDonald's they are workers who have children themselves When we we work very hard to raise the minimum wage at Amazon and at Disney we put pressure on both of those companies And they did the right thing and when you talk to the people at Amazon who got that raise these are not kids These are people in their 30s. These are these are ordinary adults who cannot make it on 12 or 13 bucks I think the argument all their old kids is not really quite accurate. Well, not even that all their all kids But that if they are kids, what would you think about making a minimum wage for someone who's under 18?
That's different from a minimum wage of someone who's a legal adult. I'm not I'm not for that I think we do it and look at many of these young people and have their own needs I just talked to a young woman Last night who's working going to college working full-time trying to take care of her family as well So I think look the minimum wage has not been raised in ten years. There's now $7.25. So now which is clearly unacceptable Of course the housing California all of this country is rising fairly rapidly people can't afford health care Can't afford college.
I don't think it's asking our employers too much to pay at least 15 dollars an hour minimum Which now I'm glad you brought up Amazon is one of the things that always freaks me out is when I find out that enormous corporations that make billions of Dollars have taxed in polls where they literally paid no money How is that possible and how do you stop that? It's the same thing as the drug companies How is it possible that we pay ten times more for insulin in this country and for other drugs than the one in Canada or countries around the world? And the answer is it's power. So what is what is the goal of major corporations in America?
It's to be deregulated as much as possible. So in some cases they can pollute our water our air environment It's also not the penny taxes Trump campaign as you'll recall He said my tax plan is not gonna benefit the wealthy. It's gonna benefit working people Well turns out over ten years 83 percent of the benefit at the end of ten years goes to the top 1% That's what these guys I remember I'm the call the ranking member on the budget committee in the Senate And some guy came forward representing one of the big business organizations And this is their agenda their agenda was to cut Social Security Medicare and Medicaid and to do away with all corporate taxes So what you have right now, that's that's what greed is about they wanted all so as you indicated You have a company like Amazon owned by Jeff Bezos who happens to be the wealthiest guy in America worth about 150 billion Amazon paid zero in federal income taxes and it's not just them dozens of corporations paid nothing or very very little and on top of all that You got these guys able to stash all over the world Trillions of dollars trillions of dollars in the Cayman Islands in Bermuda and Luxembourg and other tax havens that is insane and has got Yeah, how is it legal to do that? Why is it legal Joe?
It is legal because they make the laws, right? You know That is what you're touching now on the heart and soul of the tragedy of American politics How does it happen that on the issue? We have to issue the American people working class of this country want something nobody pays Any attention to it but billionaires want something and it gets done and that has to do with a corrupt Political system so right now if you are the culprit of some multi billionaire You say to the leadership of the Republican Party in some cases the Democratic Party Hey, just what we're prepared to put hundreds of millions of dollars in the economy hundreds of millions of dollars coming from one or two people And here is my agenda I want tax breaks I want a trade system which will enable me to shut down in this country and go to China or Mexico pay people there two bucks an Hour I want to be able to do more pollution because I don't like all of this you know money I have to spend preventing pollution of the air or the water That's what I want you to do and by the way, I'm worried about the deficit So you make what cut social security Medicare and Medicaid how many Americans actually believe that we should give tax breaks the billionaires and Social Security Medicare and Medicaid very few that is Prince talk to Mitch McConnell get Mitch on the show that is exactly what he believes Well, that's ridiculous Right and it seems that if you just took away those tax breaks the enormous amount of money that would come from those corporations Having to pay their fair share would take care of a lot of the expenses of all these things that you're proposing Exactly. How like okay, let's talk about the education because the idea of free education is a wonderful thing for people I mean the idea that you get out of college and you're in debt in in the same amount that you might have 10 20 years We have to pay back and I know many people that are in the people who are getting their social security checks garnish right now It's not out of 20 years.
It's some cases. It's literally a lifetime now a lot of that is Mean it's got it in some way be preventable by what we're talking about here. Absolutely All right, and is that how you would pay for it? I mean how I'll tell you exactly how would pay for it?
And we pay for every idea that we have we pay for and we pay for it by understanding that today We have massive levels of income and wealth inequality and we have many cases the wealthy and large corporations being nothing very little in taxes Here is the issue in terms of education 4050 years ago. You're an average American working-class person you graduated high school Especially if there was a union around you can go out get a job and make it into middle class You could own your own home to send you kids to school a little bit pretty good like made in the middle class 40 or 50 years later. There's an explosion of technology. There's a growth in unfettered free trade and It is clear now that most people to make it into the middle class are gonna need a higher education That's college or maybe it's technical training in order to become a skilled worker It is insane to me to deny working-class people and lower-income people the opportunity to get that education because the cost of the college has So all that I say is that a hundred plus years ago The American people said that we should have free public education I went to a public school my parents didn't pay a nickel went to kindergarten I went through the 12th grade pretty good education in Brooklyn, New York All that I'm saying is the world has changed and high school degree is not good enough anymore So expand that concept through college now guess what?
50 years ago the University of California very great university cost in terms of tuition how much virtually free? What's it now? I don't know. It was pretty high.
It is thousands and thousands of those So you had great universities like University of California City University of New York State College is all over this country We had tuition was virtually free and then what happened for a variety of political reasons States and the federal government started cutting back on higher education and put more and more burden on the student with higher and higher tuition Which is where we are today So all I'm saying is in the year 2019 2020 You have our working class kids are gonna go out and get the jobs that are out there They need a they need a higher education Which should be tuition free in terms of the cancellation of debt, which is my view you got 45 million people Who are dealing with that? I'll never forget this. This is where I really hit me I was in Burlington, Vermont. I had a meeting on an issue and a young woman comes up and she says she's a doctor She graduated medical so she's very happy.
She's practicing in the community health center loves what she's doing So I gotta tell you though. I am three hundred thousand dollars in debt having gone to medical school I couldn't believe it. I was an Iowa a young woman four hundred thousand dollars in debt This is not unusual for medical schools and dental schools and you know ordinary people fifty thousand hundred thousand dollars We're going to college you are getting a master's degree We promise these young people he said go to college go out and get an education to get these some paying jobs Well, the answer is they have not been able to do that So what we have proposed in one piece of legislation or two actually is to make public colleges and universities tuition free cancel All student debt in this country that will cost two point two trillion dollars a lot of money over a ten year period We do this through a tax on Wall Street speculation, which will bring in two point four trillion dollars We bailed out Wall Street eleven years ago and by the way, these are crooks on Wall Street who engaged in legal behavior taxpayers against my vote bailed Them out we can bail out Wall Street. You know what we can cancel student debt and provide public colleges and universities tuition free when you say a tax on Wall Street Speculation what exactly it will be a tax on all of the every sale of a taxi you people buy and sell Sucks and bonds all of them very modest tax on it And by the way, it will have an impact on speculation by cutting back on the high-frequency trading which we are saying So you would just there's no current tax on correct So you would put a small amount and that would do the job that would raise more than enough money It's a very small tax it exists.
It's a small how much it depends on the nature of the transaction But it's less than one half of one percent really yeah, because yeah because the amount of stocks being sold like this And this is not again a new idea. It's it's been done in countries all over the world What about here? Here's one of the darkest things about student loans is that if you go bankrupt It doesn't matter you still owe that and that's kind of crazy I mean if you have like a serious medical issue if you're held up well Whatever whatever happens to you that's awful you go bankrupt most of those things are resolved but not student loans right? I mean again this looks to the to the and that has to do with bankruptcy law which was passed against my vote And while you're on bankruptcy, and I should have mentioned this before when you talk about the health care system I have a million Americans every single year go bankrupt because of medical bills of the campaign But right with student I talked to this guy in Nevada.
I'm never forgetting guys at Bernie, you know I'm over my eyes in his 50s and he said you know I've been paying off my student debt for years I'm going nowhere because the interest rates are high and I feel very much Which is the case that they will start garnishing taking away my social security checks taking money away from me So people are carrying this burden the result is That they can't in many cases get married and have kids They certainly can't buy a home. They can't buy a car They are really crushed by this debt and what was their crime? What did they do? They've tried to get a higher education That's pretty crazy and a lot of them when they do this higher education They're 18 years old imagine making a decision when your brain isn't even fully formed It's gonna affect you for the rest of your life exactly right and you talk to these kids Oh, how much that do you oh what kind of interest rate you're paying?
Gee I really don't know the little mean assign. Oh, yeah, sorry Now right now we are a week Not even a week out just a few days away from two mass shootings In a row and whenever these things happen, there's all these people that want action But nobody knows exactly what to do there's calls for gun control There's calls for mental health reform. There's calls for me What if anything can be done to stop these things from happening and how have you sat down and tried to come up with some sort of a solution? And is there a solution look I would be lying to you if I told you I had a magical answer I don't and this is such a horrific situation.
You know, we were in you know, we had a town meeting We were in a battle actually in Las Vegas when El Paso happened and we did a town meeting I said let's take a moment of silence to remember the victims and pray for the survivors Literally the next day another part of Las Vegas. I do it again And I said I can't believe that just yesterday. We did this and I have to do it again This is I don't know what the words. You know my friend.
They were wrong with say it's you don't know what words What can you say it happens again again? Who can imagine some lunatic walking into a school or a mall? Or just on a nightclub area taking on an assault weapon and shooting that people and And that we almost become to accept this as a normal part of American life is incredible is just totally demoralizing All right, so here's what I think there's no magical answer and but let me tell you what I think first of all This is the reality the reality is that today as we speak there are approximately 400 million guns in America today We have more guns than we have people we have between five to ten million assault weapons And the salt weapon as you know is a military style weapon designed to kill human beings kind of rapidly So that's and then on top of that we have again nothing to be proud of but you know We have a number of mentally unstable people people whatever reason I walk in the streets. They suicidal the homicidal That's the mix that we have.
I think the answer is and I'm not the guy to invent all these ideas But here's some of what we have to do first of all if you want on a gun in America You have got to we have got to know that you are a stable person and that means that we need to expand The background checks the currently exist. Okay, so we got to know did you beat up your wife have you committed crimes? Etc, etc. What is the state of your mental health?
Number two we're gonna make that universal number two right now That's there is a background check if you walk into a gun show into into a gun shop But you can buy guns in various states at a gun show and you don't have to do any of that You're not gonna go to a country or something a gun I don't have to do it, and you know, I don't have to do that third of all I can today legally walk into a gun show a past the background check and buy a dozen guns walk out and sell them to criminal elements Who will use them for bad things? So I think those are issues That most Americans believe we have got to deal with and we can Fortunately, I happen to believe and I believe this for 30 years that we should not be selling with distributing the sole weapons in this country They are weapons of mass destruction in a sense They kill people rapidly as we saw in and thank God by the way when we talk about both Dayton and El Paso Thank God cops with their very very quickly and did an incredible job So that guy had walked into the nightclub that could have been dozens and dozens of more people killed in within a few minutes I I happen to believe a that we should not be Selling with distributing the sole weapons in this country. That's my view period So I believe in a ban on a soul weapons and I think we have got to begin thinking about when we have five to ten million So weapons which is more than the US military has we have to think about a strong licensing Procedure in terms of who owns these so that's some of what I think there are many other things But those are some of the ideas around them now the legal gun owners who are law-abiding citizens who would never in a million years think About going around shooting people, but they love guns They hear this kind of stuff about like banning assault rifles banning assault weapons They don't even like the term assault weapons right they like to refer to them as their individual names or whatever they are These people feel like this is an inexorable part of being an American that you should be able to own a gun It's written into our bill of rights is written into our the way we the way this country was founded It's the second amendment what do you say to those people that don't that don't want to give up their guns? But they wouldn't do and they want to protect themselves They feel like these guns are viable options to protect themselves from criminals I understand it and Joe you may know I'm a senator from the state of Vermont and the state of Vermont is one of the most world States in America every form there are thousands and thousands of people around the woods hunting and it's something about a Tradition I believe in it.
I believe in the second amendment But all that I ask of the gun owners and you're absolutely right 99.9% of gun owners would never in a million billion years think of doing these horrible things But in the moment that we are living in I think that we're all gonna have to make you know some concessions to the reality of what is going on and that is that there is a small number of Call them what you want to pray for people who are prepared to do that. You know in Australia you'll remember that terrible New Zealand I'm sorry the terrible shooting at the mosque and they move pretty quickly in an aggressive way, so You know I wish I can say in the best of all possible worlds Yeah, you know you got any weapon you want and stuff with a son We're not living in the best of all possible worlds. We're living in a world where we shock every day by heart So I agree we are living in a terrible situation There's hundreds of mass shootings a year now, which is insane and if you look at the number in comparison to the rest of the world It's crazy like a big one in another country like three mass shootings in a year. We had more than 270 It's crazy, but how would you implement something like this?
Well the idea of banning assault weapons has been done in 1994 we banned assault weapons. I believe I believe it was for ten years that ban was undone by Republican majority And it didn't you know I'm not suggesting by the way that anything here that the band assault weapons tomorrow that would radically change everything But we have got to do the best that we can do and again. I prefaced my remarks by telling I don't have a magical solution you got hundreds of millions of guns out there You have people who should not be owning these guns who get set off by god knows what and and do terrible things All we can do is the best that we can do but to say we can't do anything I think it's a real disservice to the American I'll take us something else That bothers me, you know in addition to the horror of seeing people lying on the street dead is what this is doing to the children of this Country and I think we underestimate that I have seven grandchildren and and for them and for kids all of this country You're gonna see the falls coming kids coming back to school. You're gonna see in schools all of America drills All right, this is what you do if somebody walks into the school.
All right, you're gonna hide under here you go over there Kids a couple months ago. I was an I want this guy's about six split two big guy probably a football player And he says send a sandus I gotta tell you that the young people in my school are increasingly frightened terrified about what could happen in the school Think about what this the trauma the trauma of what this gun violence is doing So I think we're all is Americans they know easy answers here But they're all gonna have to come together and figure this one out and do the best we can now would that mean forcibly? Removing these guns from people's homes. I don't think you're gonna have the FBI knocking on somebody's laws and taking it That's not what we do in America You have 400 million guns already out there building more every year right now as we speak gun manufacturers are making Manufacturers are making more guns because it's happening right now So if those guns already exist just more than enough.
Oh, yeah, how would you stop? Well again, I think look, you know, I do think there should be a ban on a soul weapon So that means that manufacturers would not be able to produce or sell those weapons to two American citizens Yes, not the military obviously obviously So you know and your point is well taken if you have 400 million guns out there, you know I think there are approaches no one has any magical solution But I've given you I'll take something else that I didn't mention and that is the role of gun manufacturers is that if you are a gun Manufacturer and you are selling a hell of a lot of guns to a gun store in an area Which normally you would not think I mean these guys know, you know, what cities buy what towns buy comedy guns And if suddenly there is a tremendous demand you got to be thinking and be why is this gun store buying so many guns? It doesn't reflect the population in the area. You got to deal with that issue with the gun owners I have to take some responsibility Besides the guns the gun manufacturers the other gigantic issue is mental health Yeah, the only way any of this ever happens is someone has to be insanely mentally depraved It's the only way and many of them are medicated and many of them are on pharmaceutical drugs And they have been since they were children including amphetamines like Adderall and Prozac and all this different stuff that has varied effects on the human brain What could be done?
What would you done to analyze this to find out what the cause and effect are and to try to figure out what what role and how much these drugs are Responsible okay, well two things let me response respond first by saying it goes without saying that we have a mental health crisis in America Before we even talk about jokes and for whatever reason You know, there are a whole lot of people in the nature of our health care system getting back to healthcare is I just talked to a woman literally last night And we had a town meeting and she said this is unbelievable. She said Bernie I was in Las Vegas when the terrible shooting took place, okay? And now I am and I can understand this perfectly I'm seeing Dayton and I'm seeing watching television on Paso and I'm getting a PTSD reaction All right, that's totally if you weren't a place where people shut down and she I'm trying to get counseling I can't find it. I remember a guy called up a woman called up my office in Burlington, Vermont and she said I'm worried about my husband what he my brother was his brother what he might do to himself with somebody else We're looking for mental health counseling.
We can't find something that we can afford So we need above and beyond gun violence. We need and that's why I believe in Medicare for all mental health is health care You break your arm. That's a health issue. That's a medical issue mental health is a medical issue And we have got to make mental health counseling available to all people in this country when they need it Not six months from now at a price they can't afford it on the Medicare for all would be free So that's number one number two your point about Studying the impact of drugs on people's behavior and possibly resulting in violence absolutely deserves to be studied We should be studying the impact of drugs in my view.
This is a layman's view You know not a psychiatrist. I worry very much that we are over medicating kids in schools, you know, we have this Deficit the efficient issue with your kids are running around and they're active, you know when I was a kid people used to run around They were active, you know, they weren't they weren't they weren't drugged up So I worry about that whole business But your point is well taken I think we need to study this issue and make sure that these drugs in fact are not causing kinds of reactions that we will regret later Now on the subject of drugs marijuana is obviously a big issue in this country and we've seen these states make it Recreational including this one what do you think could be done and what should be done to have this across it? Especially federally, you know, there's a guy that I have on the podcast coming up soon His name is John Norris and he wrote a book on the cartels growing marijuana illegally all over this country and selling it especially particularly in California now because it's a misdemeanor because it's Legal recreationally and selling it with all sorts of horrible pesticides on it all sorts of like very in fact deadly chemicals All of this because it's not federally legal because we can't have sanctioned licensed companies doing an ethical job of growing something That any responsible law abiding person should be able to consume Okay Let me say this when I ran for presidents for the Democratic nomination in 2016. I Talked about a broken criminal justice system Which ends up having in the United States more people in jail than any other country we have more people in China doesn't just a communist authoritarian country and What I call for then and I call for now is Is the legalization of marijuana in America right now you have a federal law called the controlled substance act He has heroin here is marijuana there at the same level that is insane heroin is a killer drug You can argue the pluses and minuses of marijuana, but marijuana ain't heroin So we have to end that that's what I will do this president of the United States I believe we can do that through executive order and I will do that second of all what we have now is Number of states I'm very proud I talked about during 2016 But seemed kind of radical the need to legalize the decriminalized marijuana very radical idea four years ago It is spreading all over the country and by the way, it blows my mind the drive through Nevada I think you're even in California you see science corporations by our marijuana Yeah, four years ago people getting arrested doing that right the lives being destroyed Well particularly Nevada there was life sentences given out in the 70s and you believe that and now you have corporations selling the damn product that people Went to jail for So I think ultimately, you know, we've got to legalize marijuana What's good news in a sense is some communities some cities are expunging the records So if you were arrested have a criminal record for selling marijuana that is being expungent that is the right thing to do You know, we can argue about the pluses and minuses I'm not a great fan of drugs other people, you know I smoke marijuana a couple of times didn't do much for many other people.
I guess have different just a couple times That's real true. They didn't do much for you. Yeah, maybe cool getting it That's the problem. Maybe yeah Do something for you well, maybe coffee.
All right, but I got other people have had different experiences. Sure. Yeah, I certainly have The other problem is of course with illegal drugs comes you get this horrible cycle particularly in inner cities where you have people that are incarcerated for illegal drugs Illegal drugs seem to be the only way out the hard drugs when we're talking about cocaine and all these other drugs How how does one stop that and would you ever consider legalizing all drugs or decriminalizing now all drugs? Not at this point.
No, I wouldn't but you're touching on a real tragedy. Yeah, and When we talk about criminal justice in America, we have over two million people in jail They are disproportionately African American Latino and Native American And here's what I think I think in the wealthiest country in history of the world What we have got to do instead of building more jails and lockin up more people We really do have to invest in our young people especially young people in distress communities If we can and we can do this with the proper amount of resources Make sure the kids are not dropping out of school if you drop out of school today You know say drop out in your second or third year of high school You don't have an education you don't have any job skills. What are you gonna do with you like and the answer is you may well do drugs You know what you'll get in trouble self destructive activity or destructive activity in an OpenGL It makes so much more sense from a humane perspective Protecting our people as well as a financial situation was spent at eighty billion dollars yet to invest in these kids What does it mean? It means making sure the education that they need paying attention having good schools Making sure that they get the jobs that are out there doing job training There was a principal in a school in southern Vermont I don't forget what she said was a working-class school and she said burning I love these kids.
I am not gonna let them drop out and she had a mentoring program Just watching the kids who are mostly at risk so that they would not end up Going through the cracks and getting into trouble That's what we should be doing as a nation and when we do that we invest in the kids we get jobs We get a medication the likelihood is the likelihood of them falling in the bad ways is significantly reduced All those things sound great the uncomfortable reality about drugs though is that when drugs are illegal criminal sell them And there's obviously a need for drugs in terms of not necessarily a need but a demand for drugs There's a demand for drugs in this country. That's absolutely fueling Mexican cartels and illegal drug runners inside this country I mean, there's there's a lot of that. How do you how do you curb that if drugs are illegal? Well?
You're raising a deep question. Yes. All right. So the question essentially that you're asking is what is the cause of the opioid epidemic?
Yes, that's one that's one but the opioid epidemic is interesting because there's so much of it. That's coming legally Right. That's not the drug cartels. That's the pharmaceutical industry, right?
But heroin is illegal. Yes. All right now you're asking This is a very very deep question which we don't talk about terribly much Why is it that so many of our people are turning to drugs to alcohol by the way? And I don't mean to drink good night, but I mean serious alcohol problems and Tragically to suicide we now have for the last three years something that is a historical never happened before in modern history And that is our life expectancy is actually going down and this is hitting all over the country But it's especially hitting rural areas and what the doctors are saying is that these are diseases of despair despair So you're in West Virginia here in rural, Ohio or anyplace for modern place And the job you used to have earning a decent living is now in China Your kid can't afford to go to college.
Maybe you can't afford health care You've got nothing to look forward to under that scenario drugs become alcohol becomes a way out and worst case suicide So I think what we're talking about is why is this happening often in rural areas in urban as well? And how can we how can we reestablish hope and optimism in the American people and that gets back to a whole lot of other issues It means if people have health care is a right that will certainly play a role in this thing I walk into the document they need but it also means that people need decent jobs to pay them a living wage That means we have to rebuild rural America We have to rebuild the depressed communities in urban America. It means that we have to have a great educational system and People say well, that's great Bernie. That's utopian.
It is not utopian This is something that in the wealthiest country in the history the world we can afford and we should be doing rather than giving a Creating a situation where Amazon plays zero in federal income taxes, so to answer your question It's a deep question and again, I'm not here to tell you I have all the answers but there are a lot of people out there who have basically given up hope and for those people I guess drugs is the alternative so what you're saying essentially is that if we can do something to mitigate despair Then we'll do something to at least stop some of the demand for these easy leave I believe that is the case look if I am optimistic I'm excited about going to work tomorrow And I'm seeing my kid doing great in school and you know when I get sick I can go to the doctors office and have a sense of community my downtown is not all boarded up because businesses have left But we have a community Yeah, but like the shawing likelihood is there will be less diseases of despair and drugs than we currently see now when we're talking about impoverished communities and chronically when you're talking about cities like Baltimore or Parts of Chicago and Detroit that have just been in a terrible state of despair for long periods of time It doesn't seem like there's a way out the people that are born there the people that live there They live in this state of of despair What what can be done to resolve all these terribly impoverished communities and bring them up to a standard where these kids that grow up They're they feel like there is an out that they do have an opportunity And how why is this not addressed when we talk about making America great Wouldn't like fixing the worst parts of the country be the primary concern the less people that grow up in a terribly Disadvantages position from birth would not be an important thing and what can you do to resolve that? Well, I think you you know you said it better than I can I think you're right You know when we talk about what it means to live in a great society a great nation a nation that we're proud of I'm afraid there are some people who have incredible wealth and power so you know what's great is that we're seeing a growth in the number of A billion as an America isn't that terrific? We got one guy who's worth a hundred and fifty five billion dollars How great oh by the way we're building more nuclear weapons and we're spending 750 billion dollars a year on the military isn't that extraordinary and by the way to see the yacht that that billionaire has you know Three miles long isn't that great your point is that we have to I think is I understand what you're saying We have to redefine what being a great nation is about we are not a great nation when we have 40 million people living in poverty and in despair We're not a great nation when we have massive levels of income and wealth inequality when 87 million people can afford to go to Without the today so they answer your question. I think that as a nation We have got to focus a great deal of attention on those distressed communities often they're African American often they are rural white communities And that means making sure that the kids they get the quality education that they deserve making sure that we're creating good paying jobs in those communities I voted against Napster permanent normal trade relations with China and other trade agreements because I knew that those agreements were written by corporate America With the goal of shutting down plants in this country and moving abroad and the result of that has been the loss of millions of good paying jobs And the complete destruction of communities all across this country in the south and all across this country So we have got to rebuild those communities.
We have got to bring high-tech jobs not just the Silicon Valley But to rural America again, I don't have magic lenses But the goal is we will not understand this administration turn our backs on distressed communities We will build those communities We will build the millions of units of affordable housing that we need now think about what it means to a community now Where people are living in terrible housing or housing that you cannot afford when we put young people to work Rebuilding their own communities. Will that become an indication of hope and optimism? I think it will we're talking about so many deeply important issues and all of them that will be under the control Or at least of the direction of the one person who winds up becoming the president of the United States Is it an impossible job? I mean it seems like being the president you are managing so many different aspects of our economy our culture our safety our Environment international communication and it's so it's so in-depth.
How does one person do a job like that? Well one person doesn't do it and you certainly don't do it by tweeting every other day major policy issues I think you tweets a lot more than any other thing Yeah, what you do and this is the way any sane president operates is you need to be working with the smartest men and women From all walks of life who understand these issues every issue we have touched on Joe is enormously complicated And I can send out a you know 20 word tweet on it, but that doesn't solve it. So unlike Trump, you know, we will bring together The best and most knowledgeable people in this country to address the housing crisis to address the issue of these diseases of despair We didn't even touch on climate change, you know in the future of the planet How do we lead the world and transform our energy system and creating the kind of jobs that we need? How do we revitalize American democracy so that instead of suppressing the vote we're getting more young people involved in the political Process so answer your question It is not a one-person job and anyone who thinks it is is is that wrong you need to help a very strong Administration that knows the issues that comes from the ranks of the working class and this is the problem I will make my administration unlike Trump's is not gonna be filled with billionaires who's you know, basically very often greedy type people who It is gonna be filled with the best people often from the working class itself from the trade union movement people who can help us create policy That work for workers and not just the billion-act class now We're getting to the end of your hour here So climate change is obviously an enormous issue for our country and for the world What what could be done and what do you think you can do as president that can somehow another slow down this this process?
Well, first of all, we have to have a president who unlike Trump believes in science and I do and What the scientists are telling us so much earlier is that we have fewer than 12 years the transformer energy system or else They will be irreparable damage done not only our country, but to the world now climate change is not just an American issue So we could do tomorrow do all the right things But China and Russia and India and rest of the Brazil and Africa does not do the right thing You know, we're not gonna make the progress we need so here is what we have to do in my view number one We have to tell the fossil fuel industry that their short-term profits and they make a whole lot of money Their short-term profits are not more important than the future of this planet I don't think that's a hard sell to make you cannot keep producing a product Which is destroying the planet in the United States and around the world so by saying that you're saying you would have to move We would have to move consciously away absolute fossil fuels. No, if so, let's say maybe and if we do that How do you tell the fossil fuel companies do you tell them you can't sell fossil fuels anymore? There are a variety of ways to do that But that is the bottom line and by the way in the midst of that we do what we call is a Adjust transition the guy out on the oil rig today simply wants to feed his family the coal miners today want to feed their families And we're not gonna leave them. I'm a pro worker I'm probably the strongest pro worker record of any member of the Congress So it is not my intention to throw these guys out on the and women out on the street and ignore the pain that they will go through We are proposing billions of dollars to rebuild those communities and make sure that those guys and women get new jobs So not just discarding people in the fossil fuel industry But ultimately the product that they are producing which is now carbon emissions is destroying the planet So we have to move away from fossil fuel in a very bold way into energy efficiency Right now in my own state of Vermont all over this country there are buildings which are Incredibly wasteful.
We don't have the windows We don't have the insulation We don't have the roofing the doors that we need to keep the buildings warm in the winter and cool in the summer And we can create just an incredible number of jobs just retrofitting our buildings second of all We need to move very aggressively to sustainable energies like wind and so in California You're doing a good job with when I was doing a good job, Texas doing a good job We got to do much more solar there is incredible potential out there prices solar has dropped in recent years And we have got to not only transform the energy system in our own country We got to lead the world in working with Russia and China because in this issue We are in it together and here's my dream and maybe this may be a utopian dream The world right now is spending a trillion and a half dollars on weapons of destruction designed to kill each other And maybe just maybe if we had a kind of leader I hope to be that leader who says to the world instead of spending a trillion and a half dollars killing each other Maybe we use those resources to transform the global energy system and save the planet for our kids and our grandchildren That's the goal that I have well these these ideas sound great But in the competitive environment of global politics, how would you convince Russia or China or any of these countries to do something that would put them in some sort of a Competitive disadvantage well and the answer is Joe if we do not do that in 50 a hundred years everybody's gonna be terrible Listen, and look I'm not you know, I'm not telling you that tomorrow What's gonna happen, but you gotta make the case these people you know Putin is a dictator I dislike them intensely, you know, she and China very well thought our tan so but they're not crazy people and presumably they have concern about their kids and their Grandchildren this is a planet on the sea You know I don't want to become a science fiction. You've all seen the movies of the media racing toward earth We're gonna blow up the earth. What do we do? Well, we gotta get together.
This is in a sense What that is about? You know I think about in 1941 After Pearl Harbor, all right we were faced with a war in the East with China a war in the West in Europe with Hitler within two years The United States had transformed its economy to address and win the war basically into a three years by reindosh realizing We can do it we can lead the world. That's what we have to do So in your eyes we have to look at the economy almost as if the same kind of threat or excuse me the environment It's the same kind of threat is not see German act together Look if you asked the defense upon you ask the CIA you ask the defense people all over the world tell us what the great national security threat Is it is climate change? There's a lot of people that are skeptical of this.
How would you convince them? I mean this is a big part of the problem right? There's a narrative that you hear from a lot of people that oh, you know climate change is not a proven science and climate change is a hoax And this is something that's repeated over and I'm sure some of it has to do with lobbyists and some of it has to do with merchants of doubt They go out there and see the world with disinformation to try to increase the profits and continue the practices that they're currently enjoying You know Joe when I'm thinking back and I don't know if all you listen is It remembers his mother the most but I can remember tobacco and cigarettes until we remember yes doctor guy dressed in a white Fuck smoking away This is a great cigarette it'll improve your health They lied the tobacco in the shoe knew exactly what's going on and the fossil fuel industry is lying right now And the president of the United States is either too stupid to understand what the scientists are telling us or he is lying as well Climb it you look I am not the scientists. There's not my idea I listen to the scientists the debate is long over climate change is real my god look at what's happening around the world The great worst you know July was I think the warmest July or warmest month in the modern history of the world The odd ice is melting heat waves in Europe.
All right. Just look out the window at what's going on So this is not burning sandals looking this is the scientific community climate change is real It will only get worse if we do not act boldly to cut carbon emissions But we just did an hour sir, so I'm gonna let you go because I know you got very important things to do one last question If you got into the office and you found out something about aliens You found out something about UFOs would you let us know well tell you my wife would demand that I let you know Is your wife a UFO nut actually that UFO though, which is pretty what is going on you have any access the record if you don't have any Access, okay, you'll let us know though. All right. I'll be on the show.
We'll announce it on the show I'll say it's all right. Thank you sir. I appreciate your time. Thank you very much