Carlo Baldino October 17, 2018
A friend of mine is amused at my contempt for Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, and he jokes that I’m irrational. He may be right.
With that in mind I was watching “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” Sunday morning and it was announced that Senator Sanders and Senator Jeff Flake from Arizona would be guests. How about that? A man named Flake paired with an actual flake (insert smiley face here).
Normally when Mr. Sanders shows up on television I change the channel, but this time, because of my friend’s charge of irrationality, I sat there and watched.
It was incredible. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing and hearing. I was “gobsmacked.” That’s a Scottish word meaning “utterly astounded or astonished.
While being questioned by Stephanopoulos Mr. Sanders referred to himself in the third person EIGHT times: Bernie would, Bernie would like, Bernie wants, Bernie wants, Bernie thinks, Bernie thinks, Bernie wants, and Bernie thinks.
Is there anything more egocentric than talking about yourself using your name instead of a pronoun? What can we expect next? The royal “we?”
The last politician to do this was Bob Dole. Remember how comedians made fun of him?
Included below is the transcript of the pertinent section of the interview. But Carlo suggests you google the video. Carlo says you won’t believe what you’re seeing. Carlo thinks that if Bernie got the Democratic nomination in 2020 all Republican operatives would need for a negative ad is this interview, played on a continuous loop. Carlo now knows that he’s not the least bit irrational about the Vermont Independent senator.
THIS WEEK—-10/14/18
STEPHANOPOULOS: President saying that if — if the Democrats get control, people like you — he calls you crazy Bernie — are going to take over and try to turn the United States into Venezuela.
SANDERS: Ha. Right. Well, you know, what can we say about a president who literally does not go a day without saying massive lies. So let’s talk about what Bernie would do. Yes, Bernie would like to end a situation in which we remain the only major country on earth not to guarantee healthcare to all people and Bernie wants to expand and improve the Medicare program so that seniors now have dental care and have hearing aids and now have vision care that they don’t have right now. Bernie wants to end the absurdity of hundreds of thousands of bright young kids not being able to afford to go to college and millions leaving school deeply in debt.
He thinks — Bernie thinks it’s more important to invest in the needs of our infrastructure and our working families rather than giving tax breaks to billionaires and large, profitable corporations. Bernie thinks that we should raise the minimum wage to $15 bucks an hour and are proud of the work that many of us did in helping to raise that wage at Amazon, 350,000 workers now are going to be making at least $15 bucks an hour. So what Bernie wants to do is to have a government that represents all of us, not just wealthy campaign contributors.
Now Trump may not like that, but I think most Americans want to see us move in that direction.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Does Bernie think that President Trump should be impeached if Democrats take control?
SANDERS: Bernie thinks that right now we got three weeks to go and we should not be deflected from our mission. And what our mission now is to rally the American people, make sure that people come out and vote so that we can recapture the House and hopefully the Senate as well.
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