You talk about the fact that we have in south Carolina and all over this country,
tens of millions of workers working for starvation wages.
Did he talk about a corrupt political system in which billionaires today
can start a super pac.
And I guess you have some familiarity with super pacs,
they helped fund your campaign.
Who can spend unlimited amounts of money to elect candidates.
You have the absurd situation where super PACs and
frequently spend more money than the candidates.
>> Well, I'll be glad to speak to my campaign.
I raised a $112 million.
The average donation was about $40.
>> That was Bernie Sanders calling out the corruption of Senator lindsey
Graham who lied in that video and made it seem as though most of his
campaign donations came from small dollar donors.
Reality indicates that what he says couldn't be further from the truth.
And I have the receipts to provide evidence for
the point that I'm trying to make here.
In fact, let's go to this quick headline from axios.
This is from october of 2020 when lindsey Graham was running for re election.
GOP super pac will spend $10 million to help lindsey Graham in south Carolina.
But we should get to the nitty-gritty, let's get to the actual numbers here and
also just want to give a round of applause to Bernie Sanders for
doing what he should do on a regular basis,
which is play hardball with his political opponents and call out their corruption.
Now to get to some specifics here.
Idaho's frank Vandersloot worth an estimated $3.5 billion
contributed $300,000 to a program super PAC named security and
strength florida's Laura Perlmutter, the wife of marvel comics
king Ike Perlmutter donated a quarter million dollars sandwich.
Tycoon jimmy john leo todd also of florida gave 100 $50,000.
These don't really seem like small dollar donors to me, jake.
I don't know. I could be wrong.
You also have massachusetts shoe baron.
Sounds like a fun guy.
Jim Davis of new balance who contributed $100,000.
But the list goes on and on one more graphic for you just to really drive home
the point that someone like Lindsey Graham is not supported by grassroots
efforts of fundraising All in all, eight billionaires and
their spouses gave about $1.1 million October of 2020 alone,
at least four million more came from so called dark money groups,
which can funnel money into the political system without disclosing their donors.
>> Yeah.
So I did the math on it.
Like the 10 million.
It's just a little bit higher than $40, a little bit higher.
And then I did the more math.
300,000 also higher than $40.
He says on average.
No, no, he's doing two different tricks here.
I guarantee you that he's quoting only from the bucket of his small donors and
completely leaving out the large donors.
And he knows, this is mainly airing on Fox and by the way, credit of Fox for airing.
And it's an interesting debate.
But it's mainly airing on Fox.
They'll believe me, I'll just lie.
It's no big deal and he's not counting the super PACs.
But Bernie was mainly addressing the super pacs.
So you have your own campaign that's already corrupt enough.
You collect tons of cash from big donors and then the super pacs coming on top and
layer in this extra layer of corruption and look at our system.
I mean, our oligarchs cert, I mean our system is hilarious.
Look at the, the shoe oligarch and the sandwich oligarch and the, and
who's the guy?
The one thing that I like, I was so bummed, Marvel comics and
then he comes in and then he chips in.
I mean, look, it's just an open auction.
So I want to give Bernie a ton of credit here because we've asked him to be
more aggressive with his colleagues and, and here he is.
>> That was a really aggressive, wonderful, honest right and
to call it what it is corruption And he's doing both here now, of course,
I want him to do it with fellow democrats too.
And that's a bridge too far for him.
But hey, I'll take it because nobody even does it with republicans.
So it's a good start.
It is a good start now he deserves credit in how he handled the issue of
corruption because there's no question that lindsey Graham and
other politicians like him are certainly corrupt.
But one thing that was really noticeable during this debate was how much
lindsey Graham Focused on two issues.
Okay, inflation and crime.
So I want to talk about inflation because he kept talking about what a lot of
Americans are suffering with right now, which is high gas prices.
You go to the pump.
The national average is around $5 Now in California, we always pay a dollar and
50 cents more because of the gas tax that we've implemented here,
which I think should be suspended during this difficult time because working
families are struggling to be honest.
Now with that said though, I don't think that Bernie Sanders did a good enough job
in dismantling the talking points coming from lindsey Graham because
the fact of the matter is the United States is the top oil and
gas producing country in the world where number one in our production of oil and
gas, lindsey Graham doesn't want you to know that though.
Republicans don't want you to know that though because the point that they try to
make is it's joe biden's fault.
It's the democrats fault.
They're withholding oil and gas production, which just is not true.
And so let's go to this next video because this is where Bernie tries to set
the record straight on the issue.
You tell me what you think about how he handled it.
>> Well, let's talk about gas prices because you're right, they
are outrageously high in Vermont, they're now filled up the other day, $5.05 gown.
Meanwhile, the major oil companies
Made $35 billion dollars in profit
in the first quarter of this year.
And at the end of the year, it is estimated they're going to give $88
billion dollars in stock buybacks to their wealthy share holders.
So I do think we have to do something about the outrageously high price of gas.
I think the president should bring the major oil companies in and
tell them we're gonna have a windfall profits tax on what they're doing
in order to stop them from ripping off the American people.
>> The United States is the top oil and gas producing country in the world.
There's no evidence to back the claim that democrats are stopping the production of
oil and gas and also these are multinational corporations.
These are not nationalized, this is not a nationalized industry biden doesn't
have control over oil and gas prices.
I just feel like the message needs to be simpler.
So people understand there is no evidence indicating that we're not producing
enough oil and gas.
>> That's that's all I have to say no sir, and your answer is great, but
I didn't think his answer was terrible.
>> It was good in that yes.
Oil into oil and gas industry.
Greed is definitely part of the answer, but you have to first start by
mentioning that we produce more oil and gas than any other country in the world.
Yeah, and so that's definitely not the issue and it goes to the whole world
market design to explain, but I want to touch on a couple other things.
So first of all, here in California, we think Vermont's lucky,
it's like seven bucks in the gas station across the street.
Yeah, very literally.
And so now, but t Y.
T. Investigates did a story about this,
that is actually amazing and tells you there actually
is something that people can do and in fact Ro Khanna has started to work on it.
Ro Khanna often works with Bernie Sanders in Congress about these issues and we did
a follow up story on that and you can find it on T Y T .com both of those stories.
And so what does it say?
It says that there's actually a loophole that was put into the Dodd frank bill
that allows the bankers to speculate on oil and gas prices and
that's a huge part of the reason why the prices are actually have been driven up.
It's not so much the market forces as much as it is the extra swaps and
derivatives gambling that the bankers are doing on top.
So now trump,
refused to close Obama tried to close the loophole at the end of his term.
He found it very late conveniently they acted on it very late.
So I think he deserves blame for that to be honest, trump of course,
instantly said no regulations.
No, make sure you let the bankers gamble on anything they like even if it
drives up prices.
So it's mainly on trump for not doing that for four years.
But here we are in the biden administration,
they still haven't closed the loophole.
You know why?
Because corporate politicians love bankers, they love taking money from them,
They love taking money from oil and gas industry etcetera.
So here we are with giant gas prices.
So the one thing that's true that biden could do,
lindsey Graham would never want them to do which is regulate the bankers.
If you close that loophole and they couldn't gamble it on anymore,
prices would definitely drop.
But lindsey Graham doesn't want any part of that because they're his donors.