-Our first guest tonight is a United States Senator from Vermont
and former Presidential candidate.
Please welcome back to the show Senator Bernie Sanders.
Welcome back to the show, Senator. How are you?
-I'm great. Good to be with you.
-You were our first quarantined guest on March 30th,
and I really hoped the next time we talked it would be in person.
But I do appreciate you making time for us again.
How are you --
I know you're a man who likes to be around your constituents.
You like to be around people.
How are you getting through this telephone/Zoom era?
-I would be being dishonest with you
if I didn't tell you that it's difficult.
You know, I thrive and I get my oxygen
from being around people.
I miss being in the kind of physical contact
I would like to be with my grandchildren.
So, it's hard, but, you know,
we're doing the best that we can do.
-You have been through many protest movements
in your long career as an activist.
What is your take on the protest movement
that we're going through right now?
Is it as Earth-changing as many are saying it is?
-It is a very big deal.
It is really unprecedented, and it's extraordinary
and especially taking place in the midst of the pandemic.
And what you are seeing
in large cities all over the country
and in small towns is people saying,
"Enough is enough,"
to police brutality and police murder,
that we have to rethink
the whole nature of policing in America,
that we have to deal with institutional racism.
And that is just an extraordinary moment
in our country's history.
-You have clarified that you are not for
abolishing the police,
which a lot of people assume "defunding the police" means.
Where are you on that sliding scale
between the idea of no police and --
-I don't think --
Seth, I don't think that, at the end of the day,
most people think we should not have any police departments in America.
But I think what most people think is
we have to reallocate resources
and rethink the function of policing.
Obviously, for a start, we have to do away with
police murders and police brutality.
That goes without saying.
But the other thing that I think we have to do
is to ask ourselves,
"Should police be forced to deal every day
with issues like mental illness, drug addiction,
alcohol addiction, homelessness?"
Police spend a whole lot of their time and energy
doing things that they are not necessarily trained to do
and that take a lot of resources.
So I think what people want
when we talk about defunding the police or reallocating resources
is also to put money into the causes of crime.
Why do we have more people in jail than any other country?
Should we be legalizing marijuana,
which, in my view, we should.
Should we be investing in jobs and education
rather than just locking up more and more people?
So I think this moment makes us rethink the function of policing
and the reallocation of resources,
something I very strongly believe in.
-President Trump today signed some executive orders
on police reform.
And even, you know, Democratic leadership over the years
has called for reforms like body cameras,
like anti-bias trainings.
Does the President's steps today make you optimistic?
Or do you feel like they are short of what we need?
-Oh, Seth, we're short of what we need.
And we are working in the Senate,
and I have introduced a set of proposals
which go a lot, a lot further.
I mean, the bottom line here is that
police officers need to be held accountable for their actions.
And that's something that has not taken place in the past.
We need to make sure that police departments around the country
receive the training to understand that lethal force,
shooting somebody, is a last response,
not a first response.
So there are a whole number of things that have got to be done.
I think Trump is responding from
the pressure of the American people.
Not just Democrats or independents.
Republicans, as well.
But we have to go a lot further than Trump is talking about.
-Another thing, I imagine,
you feel the government needs to go further on
is how we're taking care of people during this pandemic.
Obviously, Congress has passed some bills.
It's been a while since they passed another one.
What steps need to be taken moving forward?
Because, obviously, things like unemployment insurance
aren't gonna go on forever.
And we can see a real spike in what people need,
not just in the virus,
but insofar as what people need from the government.
-Well, Seth, I would hope that,
out of this terrible moment in American history,
which is really unprecedented --
I mean, you're looking at
110,000 people dead already from the virus.
You're looking at 30 million people having lost their jobs.
You're looking at people who have lost, by the millions,
their healthcare,
people unable to pay their rents,
worried about losing their homes,
kids not being in school.
It's an unprecedented moment in American history.
And I would hope that we take this opportunity
to say and ask ourselves,
"How did we get to where we are right now,
and where do we want to be in the next couple of months
and in the future?"
Now, in the next couple of months,
what we have got to do -- not in the next couple of months,
the next couple of weeks, immediately --
what we have got to do is pass what we call a "corona fall,"
piece of major legislation
which says that when 30 million people have lost their jobs
and millions have lost their healthcare,
we have got to stand up and protect them.
Various ways to do that.
But at the very least, working people
need to continue to get decent unemployment checks
when unemployment is so high.
In my view, during the midst of this crisis,
while we work toward Medicare for All,
clearly, right now,
everybody must be entitled to healthcare as a human right.
I think that a $1,200 one-time check
is not enough during the crisis.
We should make sure that every individual in this country
gets at least $2,000.
Because so many of our people are hurting.
$2,000 a month.
That's some of what we got to do.
Long-term, we have got to ask ourselves,
"How does it happen that when so many people lose their jobs,
they also lose their healthcare?"
Should healthcare in America just be a job benefit,
or should it be a human right?
Obviously, I think it should be a human right.
I hope more and more people understand that.
Second of all, before the pandemic,
we had Trump, as you all recall,
telling us what a great economy we had.
Well, how great is an economy when half of our people
are living paycheck to paycheck
and, when the paychecks stop, hunger and desperation set in?
So we have got to make sure
that we raise the minimum wage in this country
to at least 15 bucks an hour,
make it easier for workers to join unions.
You know, we have got to make sure that all of our kids
get the quality education that they need.
So what I'm saying, Seth, is that
in this terrible moment in American history,
when so many of our people are hurting,
it is time to rethink
some of the basic priorities of our nation,
some of the basic institutions in this country,
and, as the wealthiest country on Earth,
ask ourselves where we want to be in the future.
-We'll be right back with more of my conversation
with Senator Bernie Sanders.