Bernie Sanders & Spike Lee Reunite For Post Election Chat
Bernie Sanders and Spike Lee recently sat down to talk this year's presidential election, and how to move forward in 2017 with Donald Trump as the president of the United States.
Both the senator and the film director were brought together through The Guardian for this particular interview (although the two have known each other before then, with Spike having campaigned for Sanders during his run for the Democratic presidential nomination).
The discussion really begins to kick off when Spike references Malcolm X's quote "Chickens come home to roost." He then adds how he feels Trump's win was a reaction to President Obama being in office for eight years.
"...all this stuff today was a reaction to day one, when Obama put his right hand on Lincoln's bible," Spike said. "I think things started on the day a black man became president of the United States."
Sanders agrees but says that it is only a part of why Trump won.
"Well, I think a number of people who voted for Obama once, or twice, voted for Trump," Sanders said. "And I think the issue is that there are millions of people in this country who voted for Trump but do not accept…I'm not going to deny for a second that there's a lot of racism and xenophobia and sexism out there; there certainly is. But there are a whole lot of other people who are just really, really hurting. They're working two or three jobs, they're worried about their kids, they can't afford to send them to childcare or to college. And Trump comes along and says, 'I'm a champion of the working class.' And he's a good showman and a good entertainer, and people believed him."
Another standout part from the discussion is how Sanders wants to move forward, which begins with restructuring the Democratic Party.
"...The Democratic party has got to very fundamentally rethink who it is and where it goes," Sanders said. "It has to shed the current situation where it's a party of the liberal elite, a party of wealthy people who give substantial sums – we can use that money, that's fine, but it must reidentify itself as a party of working people. Whether you're black, white, Latino, there are millions of people today who are working longer hours for lower wages, and they're seeing almost all new income and wealth going to the top 1%. The Democratic party has got to say we are on the side of the 99%."
Read the rest of the interview here.
