Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said that some people vote for Republican candidates “Because they pick out a victim…who we can pick on.” And further wondered, “how do we get those people to begin standing up for their own interests? on Tuesday’s “Rachel Maddow Show” on MSNBC.

Sanders stated that there is “an enormous amount of fear and uncertainty in this country.” He added, “then have you demagogues like Trump come along. He says I know what the cause of your problems is. Remember a few months ago the cause was the Mexicans who were coming into this country, were they criminals or rapists. Today, it is Muslims. You all remember how many years ago, when we were younger, it was uppity women who were trying to take our jobs as men. It was those gay people who wanted to make everybody homosexual in our school system. It was black who wanted to take white jobs. That’s what demagoguery is about. It is to obfuscate the real problems facing our society and find somebody you can blame and rally the American people.”

Sanders continued, “You see the people standing up there and applauding, how do we get to those people? How do we say why do you keep voting for people who are giving more tax breaks to billionaires going, who are going to send your jobs abroad, not going to let you form a union, not going to allow your kids to go to college? Why do you keep voting for these guys? Because they pick out a victim whether it’s blacks, whether it’s gays, whether it’s women, whether it’s immigrants, whether it’s Muslims, who we can pick on. And what our job is, and I think hard about these things, how do we get those people to begin standing up for their own interests?”

He further declared, “What we have got to do, immediately, is to say that racism and xenophobia is totally unacceptable, we will stand with the 1% of our population who are Muslims, for undocumented people in this country, absolutely, we will stand.”

Sanders concluded, “we have got to stand with those people who are being attacked today. But at the same time, it’s not good enough to say that racism and xenophobia is bad. We’ve got to reach those people today who are so angry, who are so hateful, and say, ‘Yes, you have a right to be angry, don’t take it out on the Muslims. Work with us to create an agenda and a political movement that will make your life better, not just other people’s life worse.'”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett