Name: Bernie Sanders | The Tim Dillon Show #467
Uploaded: 2025-10-22T13:00:06.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Bernie Sanders | The Tim Dillon Show #467' from The Tim Dillon Show on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-10-22. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Bernie Sanders | The Tim Dillon Show #467' from The Tim Dillon Show on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-10-22. Transcript available.

Bernie Sanders | The Tim Dillon Show #467

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Tim Dillon Show. The book is Fight Oligarchy,
Bernie Sanders. It is out everywhere. You can get it on Amazon.com. You can go
to a local
bookstore, which is always a good idea. Support a local bookstore. And I'm sure
the author of this
book will appreciate that. Bernie Sanders, Senator, thank you for coming.
My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
I really appreciate it. This book, when you walked in, we talked about, it is
not big,
but it is something that you've been talking about for many, many years.
What is the importance of writing this now? Because you just got off a tour
with the same name
about fighting oligarchy. I think, Tim, this is kind of an unprecedented moment
in American history.
And I think what the book touches on are issues that the media in general, my
colleagues in Congress,
are not very comfortable dealing with. And that is power and wealth. Who owns
the country?
How's that? Pretty simple question. Who really has the power? And what we are
looking at right now
is a moment in history where we have more income and wealth inequality than we've
ever had. And I think
what the American people have got to decide is whether they are comfortable
with the situation in which
one person, Mr. Musk, owns more wealth than the bottom 52% of American
households. Is that really
what America is supposed to be about? Top 1% owns more wealth than the bottom
93%.
And while the very richest people in America are becoming phenomenally richer,
60% of our people
are living paycheck to paycheck.
It's a huge problem. And I think that most Americans would hear those numbers
and think
that there's a big problem where you have one person controlling more wealth
than 52% of the country,
which is probably around 150 million people, maybe more. And that also is a
huge problem for democracy.
There's a huge problem for democracy. Trump, Kamala Harris, anybody in my
lifetime that has been,
outside of yourself, that has been a contender for the presidency from a major
political party,
is backed usually by the same groups of people. They're very wealthy lobbyists,
donors, the donor class is incredibly powerful.
You know, the landmark Supreme Court decision to regard political donations as
speech.
Right.
Right?
Citizens United.
Citizens United. Thank you. The name escaped me. I can donate as much money as
I want to a candidate,
and it's considered speech.
That's right.
Where did we go wrong? Was it always as bad as it is now?
Look, people with money always had power.
But Citizens United, Supreme Court decision, opened the door in creating a very
corrupt, corrupt campaign finance system.
And you said it all. Right now, in the Republican Party, Mr. Musk himself
contributed $270 million to help elect Trump.
And then he was given the opportunity to be the most powerful person in
government for many, many months.
Democratic billionaires play a very important role in selecting who the
Democratic candidates are.
And in a sense, through their money, kind of controlling what those candidates
will stand for and what they will fight for.
So the power of money right now, today, is extraordinary in both political
parties.
And if we're going to save American democracy, we've got to get rid of this.
In my view, we've got to get rid of this campaign, this Citizens United Supreme
Court decision.
And you've got to move to public funding of elections.
So, in other words, if you want to run against me, I shouldn't be able to out-raise
you 10 to 1 or 50 to 1.
I do that. I'm going to beat you every time. All right?
You show that you have support. You deserve a certain amount of public funding.
I will get the same amount of funding. Go for it.
Your idea is better than mine. Then you win the election.
Let's have campaigns based on ideas, not billionaires putting huge amounts of
money into ugly 30-second ads.
For the Supreme Court to reverse the Citizens United decision, in your
estimation, what would have to happen?
Well, this Supreme Court ain't going to do it.
Right.
We're going to have the congressional action. We could do it through Congress.
And how would you do it through Congress?
You could do it through legislation, basically, which says that you outlaw
super PACs, among other things.
That's the first thing.
Who are the main opponents of this in Congress?
If this were to come on the floor, I'm not asking you to call out names.
No, I'll call out names. Mitch McConnell was one of the leaders in the effort.
Right.
As a Republican. But the big money interests love this.
Right.
Why wouldn't they? If you're a billionaire, you want to pick your candidate for
president, hey, what's a few hundred million dollars to you?
It's a great—they love it. Money talks, and they like that process.
Is the Democratic Party, in your view, a bigger obstacle to your ideas becoming
mainstream than the Republican Party?
No.
Look, the Republican Party in the last 15 years under Trump has undergone a
major transformation.
It used to be kind of a conventional George W. Bush, a center-right party,
right?
That's what it was.
It represented the wealthy, corporate interests, banks, et cetera.
What Trump has done is really transformed that party.
He won more working-class votes than did Kamala Harris.
And he has created in the Republican Party a right-wing extremist party.
And also what worries me is not only their ideology, it's this cult of the
individual.
You know what I'm talking about right much, Tim?
Explain it, but I think I do.
Look, it's one thing. You're a Republican. I'm a Republican. You're a Democrat.
We argue amongst ourselves.
Your job is to represent your congressional district, your state, if you're in
the Senate.
Right now in the Republican Party, with very few exceptions, and there are some,
they follow what Trump says, and they are afraid to move in any different
direction.
I'll give you one example, a very clear example.
A guy named Tom Tillis. Does that name mean anything to you?
Yeah.
Tom is a conservative, you know, senator from North Carolina.
So the guy read, made the mistake of actually reading this big, beautiful bill
that Trump brought forth.
He concluded, he said, this is going to be a disaster for North Carolina.
Hundreds of thousands of people are going to lose their health care.
Health care premiums are going to soar.
I can't vote for this.
The next day, Trump was all over social media attacking this guy, and the
billionaires were saying,
we are going to spend unlimited amounts of money to defeat you in your primary.
A day later, Mr. Tillis said, bye-bye, I'm out of here, I don't need this crap.
And he retired.
He retired.
Yeah.
Because he was going to face a very, very difficult primary.
And that's what it is right now.
You are a congressman, you kind of disagree with Trump on this, are you really
going to open your mouth
and have Elon Musk saying, okay, we're going to primary you, my guy's going to
get $50 million.
My wonder is, because I look at, and I agree with you, in everything you just
said, 100%,
the Republican Party has become a cult of personality when somebody goes, we're
going to release the Epstein files,
and then they don't.
And then everybody moves on, and then they go, what about Jimmy Kimmel?
Yeah, 100%.
My question, though, is the climate in which, because there's no doubt, the
Republican Party's undergone a transformation.
But also, the Democratic Party seems to have undergone a similar transformation
away from working people
and towards college-educated, credentialed, managerial types that have four-year
degrees,
have graduate degrees, live in urban centers, are more concerned with social
politics than they are economic politics.
And the Democratic Party seems to have diverted a lot of energy from the
economic message that you championed
into kind of the social justice sphere, which has proven pretty unpopular with
a lot of those working-class voters that went to Trump.
All right, let me answer you by saying yes and no.
Okay.
How's that?
It's a great answer.
Yeah, after all, I am a United States senator.
What do you expect from me?
Yes and no is a good answer.
All right, let's start it off.
Fifty years ago, when Harry Truman was president, certainly when FDR was
president,
you walk out on the street, you say to somebody,
which political party in America represents the American working class?
Answer, Democratic Party, right?
Everybody knew that.
Yes.
That was the answer.
In the 1970s, some Democratic leaders became very, very sad.
And they said, hey, Republicans are getting all of this money from corporations
and the rich.
What are we knocking our brains out?
Why don't we do the same?
Right?
Right.
Let's start hustling some money from big money interest.
And that began the process of moving the Democratic Party away from the working
class of this country.
Now, when we talk about social issues, I think the Democrats deserve credit for
fighting for women's rights,
which I happen to believe is extremely important, the right of women to be able
to control their own bodies.
And for a lot of reasons, grassroots, grassroots activism, the women's movement,
and the Democratic Party, we have made some real progress.
You know, like 40 or 50 years ago, you looked at Congress, there were almost no
women there at all.
Yeah.
No women governors, et cetera.
Right now, you've got women who are cops.
They're sheet metal workers.
Yeah.
They're United States.
We have made progress.
Democrats deserve credit for helping to do that.
In terms of ending bigotry, look, I'm a little bit older than you, but I can
remember when I was a kid.
No great secret.
If you're black in the South, massive amounts of segregation.
You couldn't drink at a bloody water fountain.
Your kids couldn't go to an integrated school.
You know, the civil rights movement, Dr. King and others, along with Democrats,
Lyndon Johnson, et cetera,
helped end bigotry in this country.
It at least took us a long way to ending bigotry.
I think that's important.
Gay rights.
Hey, how many years ago?
30 years ago, would you ever believe that we have gay marriage in America?
No, I mean, and those things are all 100% very good things that happened.
But I do look at the last election, and I think there seems to be, and you may
agree,
an outsized focus on cultural and social issues that to many people are a
luxury.
And not to everyone, but to a lot of people, there are a luxury.
Fair point.
Fair point.
Yeah.
Okay.
So the point is not that fighting for women's rights or ending racism in this
country or homophobia,
those are good things.
But if your point is that in that whole process, the Democrats more or less
turn their backs on the working class of this country and the enormous crises
facing working people,
I would agree with you, if that's your point.
Chris Hedges, who's a writer, has described it as you have the Republican Party,
which is a party about oligarchy, where you have very powerful individuals.
Some of them own companies, some of them run hedge funds or private equity or
whatever it is, and they have tons of power.
And the Republican Party seems to have embraced that.
You see all of the tech people lining up with President Trump.
But Chris Hedges has described the Democratic Party as more of a corporation,
where you have a lot of wealthy interests that have gotten together.
And while it's not as unpredictable and chaotic as a bunch of different oligarchs,
it also immiserates the lives of people because the core economic concerns of
the population on issues like health care, housing, aren't being addressed.
Absolutely.
So my question to you is, you know, for example, there are a lot of ideas that
a lot of people can get behind.
One of the things I think that hurts the Democratic Party is the perception of
that party as not being fully competent when it comes to public safety.
There's a lot of cities in America that are primarily run by Democrats that are
cities that you would, large swaths of those cities you woul