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Democratic presidential candidate and Senator from Vermont Bernie Sanders spoke with Rachel Maddow, the host of a popular show on the centrist-MSNBC network, after hosting a large town-hall event at the Orpheum Theater in Madison, Wisconsin.

Newsweek published the transcript interview ahead of MSNBC’s official airing of the interview on Wednesday, 30 March. Sanders spoke with Maddow about his ascension in the polls against the hawkish Democratic establishment candidate Hillary Clinton, about GOP frontrunner Donald Trump’s highly controversial comments on abortion and the media’s fascination with the billionaire Republican from New York. The interview was proof of Sanders’ national viability as the mainstream media (both MSNBC and Newsweek) have essentially committed to a black-out of the Democratic socialist candidate’s campaign.

Just days before the interview, Sanders had swept three Democratic caucuses in Washington, Alaska and Hawaii. The latest polls show he is beating Hillary Clinton in the upcoming Wisconsin primary by at least 5 percentage points.

Maddow questioned Sanders on his chances in Wisconsin after characteristically downplaying the importance of the caucus sweep.

Sanders responded: “I think that if there is a large voter turnout, if working-class people who have given up on the political process come out the vote, if young people who have never participated come out to vote, if there's a good turnout, we will win. If there's a low turnout, we'll probably lose. So we're doing everything that we can to create a high voter turnout.”

Reflecting on the establishment media’s (including MSNBC of course) complete obsession with the generally abhorrent Donald Trump, Sanders remarks that while Trump is extremely dangerous, the Republican establishment purports policies just as regressive as Trump’s racist pandering.

Further, if the establishment media actually served to criticize and hold accountable the Republicans, the party’s fringe policies would be revealed as they truly are.

“I think if we had a media in this country that was really prepared to look at what the Republicans actually stood for rather than quoting every absurd remark of Donald Trump,” Sanders says, “talking about Republican Party, talking about hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks for the top two tenths of 1 percent, cuts to Social Security and Medicare, Medicaid, a party which with few exceptions, doesn't even acknowledge the reality of climate change, let alone do anything about it, a party which is not prepared to stand with women in the fight for pay equity, a party that is not prepared to do anything about a broken criminal justice system or a corrupt campaign finance system, I think, to be honest with you -- and I just don't, you know, say this rhetorically, this is a fringe party. It is a fringe party. Maybe they get 5, 10 percent of the vote.”

“But the Republican Party today now is a joke, maintained by a media which really does not force them to discuss their issues,” adds Sanders.

As for the inevitability argument proffered in support of Clinton by mainstream media outlets, Sanders remarks on the consistent polling that shows him beating Trump in a general election by a wider margin than Clinton.

“... in national poll after national poll, what you find is that, uh, I am leading, you know, people like Trump -- a poll came out a few days ago, CNN, by 20 points and a significantly larger number than Hillary Clinton is,” says Sanders.

In fact, an aggregated polling matchup of 52 polls by the Huffington Post shows Sanders beating Trump by a full 12% in a general election. The chart purports a 99% probability that Sanders leads Trump.

In the same comparison, Clinton leads Trump by a smaller margin of 10%.

Bernie Sanders rallies have been attracting exponentially larger crowds compared to Clinton, despite his refusal of big money donations and reliance on small, individual contributions. Clinton’s top donors according to Open Secrets include financial giants Citigroup Inc, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase & Co and Morgan Stanley.

Surreptitiously, another of Clinton’s major donors is Comcast Co., the owner of MSNBC. Comcast has contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Democratic establishment’s primary governing body the DNC, as well as various DNC funded Senatorial and Congressional campaigns.