Advertisements

During an interview on ABC’s This Week, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) refused to play the media’s smear Hillary Clinton game, but he unloaded on the Koch brothers and other right-wing billionaires who are trying to buy the government.

Video:

Advertisements



ABC Breaking US News | US News Videos

Transcript via ABC’s This Week:

STEPHANOPOULOS: And let me ask you also, you sold — you told my colleague, Jon Karl, this week you have some concerns about the money raised by The Clinton Foundation.

What are those concerns exactly?

SANDERS: Well, it’s not just The Clinton Foundation. Here are my concerns, George, and it should be the concern of every American.

And this is, in a sense, what my campaign is about — can somebody who is not a billionaire who stands for working families actually win an election in which billionaires are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the election?

It’s not just Hillary. It is the Koch Brothers. It is Sheldon Adelson.

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: — with them.

SANDERS: What I am saying is that I get very frightened about the future of American democracy when this become a battle between billionaires.

I believe in one person, one vote; I believe we need a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United. And let me say this: on our first day, first day that we were out, we asked people to get involved in our campaign, 100,000 people signed up; 35,000 people made donations to berniesanders.com and we raised on that first day $1.5 million — and you know what the average contribution was?

STEPHANOPOULOS: What was it?

SANDERS: $43.

George Stephanopoulos asked the obvious question to Sen. Sanders about The Clinton Foundation and the senator from Vermont turned it around and focused on the bigger issue of the attempt by billionaires to rig the electoral process in order to buy the government. Any media types who intend to use Bernie Sanders to attack Hillary Clinton are going to be very disappointed.

Sanders has made it clear that he is not going to run negative ads against Clinton, and he despises personal attack politics. In his first 24 hours as a candidate, Bernie Sanders raised more money than Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Rand Paul. Unlike the Republicans, Sen. Sanders doesn’t have a billionaire sugar daddy writing big checks for a shadowy super PAC. Bernie Sanders is being powered by the people.

Instead of being the tip of the political spear against former Sec. of State Clinton, Sanders is the voice of the people’s movement against the Koch organized and funded attempt to buy the United States government.

The movement is growing against the Citizens United enabled Koch brothers. The American people will not yield to a hostile billionaire takeover.