Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., advised Democrat lawmakers on Friday to rethink their strategy for criticizing President Donald Trump, saying the president’s White House victory capitalized on a “system that is broken.”
Speaking to The New York Times in an extensive interview, the longtime independent senator from Vermont said his warning of an entrenched political establishment did not go ignored when he ran for president in 2020. “I’m not so sure that the country has not been heeding the message. You know, I ran for president taking on the corporate world, the Republican Party and the entire Democratic establishment, and we started with no name recognition and nothing, and we ended up winning 23 states. So I don’t think people were ignoring me,” Sanders said.
Sanders claimed that many lawmakers in both parties refuse to fight for “working families” and such complacency has allowed the ultra-rich like Elon Musk to yield immense power. Without citing billionaire Democrat donor George Soros by name, Sanders did lament “other multibillionaires in both political parties” as culpable for a broken political system.
“I think Democrats are trying. But what Trump has capitalized on is a simple reality that is true — and that is our system is broken. And I think that many of his repairs will only make it worse. But the system is broken,” Sanders said.
Noting that he is now 83-years-old, Sanders has no plans to run for president in 2028, and said his focus now in on appealing to “at least two Republicans” who share his views on tax cuts and health care programs. “There are about 15 House districts in America where Republicans won with very slim margins. One of them is in the Omaha area. One of them is in the Iowa City area. I and others will be traveling to those communities in order to make sure that the people in those districts understand what is at stake and do what they can to make sure that their congresspeople respond to the needs of the working class of this country,” Sanders said.
While many liberal politicians ultimately abandoned former President Joe Biden following his disastrous debate performance in June of 2024, Sanders remained loyal to the end due to his “extremely progressive agenda.”
“[Biden’s policies] did speak to the needs of working people in this country, an agenda which in many respects I supported. And I think that’s exactly what the Democratic Party has got to do right now,” Sanders concluded.
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