Joe Rogan Experience #1330 - Bernie Sanders

and we're live hello bernie how are you joe wonderful pleasure to meet you nice to meet you it's exciting to have you here man and it's uh obviously an exciting time for you um you know presidential campaign is up in full swing do you do you get frustrated by the the time constraints of the debates ah absolutely it's you shouldn't even call them a debate what they are is a um you know reality tv show in which you have to come up with a sound bite and all that stuff and it's the meaning it's the meaning to the candidates and it's the meaning to the american people you can't explain the complexity of health care in america in 45 seconds nobody can but why is it still done that way if you try to let's pull this thing um you know i think the dnc is in a difficult position they have 20 plus candidates and they want to give everybody a fair shot which is is the right thing to do uh and then if you're gonna have 10 candidates up on the stage what do you do but there are other ways that we've got to do it because the issues facing this country are so enormous and in some cases so complicated nobody in the world can honestly explain them in 45 seconds and then that what encourages people to do is to come up with sound bites and do absurd things if i yelled and scream on the show i took my clothes off uh you get a lot of publicity right if you give a thoughtful answer to a complicated question it's not so sexy for the media well you don't even have a chance to give a thoughtful answer like uh tulsi gabbard went after kamala harris and then kamala harris had about 12 seconds to reply to it it was so ridiculous to to to have something that's such an important issue like did you or did you not put all those people in jail for marijuana did you laugh about it did this happen did that happen all these different things was evidence withheld right that's how these are long conversations but it takes us to another issue and that as a nation we do a pretty bad job in analyzing and discussing the serious issues facing our country and i i hold the media to some degree responsible for that you know other countries what they do is that joe you want to run for president i'll tell you what whether your party in the general election we're going to give you a certain amount of time hours on television and you use those hours any way you want you want a 15-minute discourse you remember ross pro yes and people used to laugh at ross perot because he used to get up there with the chart and all this stuff and and the media made fun of him but in fact he tried in his own way to explain his point of view to the american people and we need serious discussion on serious issues well he had the op because he was so rich he had the ability to buy air time on network television which is pretty unprecedented he just bought a chunk of air time and then pled his case but you know what goes on in other countries you don't have to buy that time what the obligation is if you are a network you're going to make that time free and available to candidates do you think that that's something that could be viable in america could could you convince cbs and nbc and abc to go along with something like that no you couldn't convince them you'd have to pass legislation to make that happen but everyone's online today i mean the entire country is essentially getting email and facebook and all that jazz like why bother doing it in this particular medium that has an inherent time constraint well you're right i mean the internet has revolutionized politics and in many ways good ways we use our social media our email list which is very large we every day we're sending out stuff and other candidates are doing it the same way but television still has a very important role to be playing i'm sure it does but i mean the ability to discuss things in in long form like you can do online like you can do right here right now right you can't get that on television well you could i mean if you had sure they would have just they would have to interrupt you every 15 minutes no no no no what i'm saying about is it's in what goes on in other countries if i'm not mistaken like don't hold me to this i think in the uk you remember the labor party you're a candidate here's 30 minutes of time and you do with it as you want you want to speak 30 minutes on health care whatever it may be you can do that really yeah and they don't interrupt with commercials no no no that's the law that they have given this is the candidate's opportunity to speak at length to the people of the country what are the misconceptions of you because here's here's the if you go to the knee-jerk conservative reaction you talk to people who are not interested in anyone that wants to be a democratic socialist they hear the name bernie sanders the negative implications are that you are somehow or another going to take their money right is that annoying to you yes it is of course it is and also that i miss the maduro i'm a dictator i love dictatorships and all that stuff and the truth is joe that if you look at the issues that i campaign on and what i believe on they are really not terribly radical they exist in many countries all over the world for example just we can start on healthcare if you'd like is the idea that healthcare is a human right not a privilege a radical idea i don't think it is it's not and the truth is we are the only major country on earth many people don't know this we're the only major country on earth not to guarantee healthcare to all people as a human right and yet we end up spending almost twice as much per capita on healthcare the function and you can argue with me if you want but the function of the current healthcare system is not to provide quality care at all it is to make tens of billions of dollars in profit for the drug companies and the insurance companies that's the function if you go to canada and i live 50 miles away from the canadian border you have major heart surgery you're in the hospital for a month do you know what the bill is when you get out zero you got it you go to any doctor you want you don't have to take out your wallet and yet they guarantee health care to all of their people and they spend one half of what we spend that's kind of what i want to do and i don't think that that's terribly radical we have a program now which everybody knows it's called medicare was started by lyndon johnson back in 1965. it is a popular program uh all that i want to do over a four year period is to expand the today eligibility age of 65 want to take another 55 45 35 everybody over four year period that's about it and i want to expand benefits to include uh dental care hearing aids and eyeglasses uh as well that's about it not too radical that doesn't sound radical at all now when you say that they that canada spends less obviously they have less people you mean less per capita yes half per capita exactly per capita and and the quality of care is as good or better do they have problems yeah they have problems everybody has problems but overall the healthcare experts will tell you the quality of care there is is good or better than it is in our country so what's the hurdle okay i'll tell you exactly what the hurdle is the hurdle is exactly the same thing as in every other aspect of our lives it's the power of money all right listen to this over the last 20 years the drug companies alone have spent four and a half billion dollars in 20 years on lobbying and campaign contributions that's what we're up against the knowledge and i mark my words within a short period of time you will see tv ads california all over this country demonizing bernie sanders he wants to do this terrible thing to you he wants to do that they have unbelievable amounts of money uh and politicians are frightened of that power give you one example uh back in 2016 i got involved here in a little way with an effort on the part of the nurses to control the cost of prescription drugs in california you may recall that effort i do it was a ballot item in one state here in california do you know how much the drug companies alone spent to defeat that effort they spent 131 million dollars on one ballot item in one state all right last year the top 10 drug companies made 69 billion dollars a week ago i went to canada with a number of americans who are dealing with diabetes we bought insulin in windsor ontario for one tenth the price 10 of the price same exact product being charged in america so you got drug companies that are engaged in collusion and in price fixing who are incredibly greedy and the result is many elderly people many working people simply cannot afford the medicine they need this is it's unbelievable and the reason for all of that stuff is we are the only country in the world that does not negotiate with the drug companies they can charge you any price they want and that has to do with the fact that we don't have a national health care program medicare is not negotiating etc is this something that can really be implemented inside of four years yeah it's an enormous endeavor well i want you to think back think back joe in 1965 uh you had lyndon johnson as president and by the way this idea of national healthcare this has been talked about literally since teddy roosevelt is not a newer concept healthcare is human right that's what teddy roosevelt was talking about that's what fdr was talking about harry truman was talking about it kennedy was talking about it kennedy got killed lyndon johnson picked up the mantle and and their idea was according to people in their administration will start with the elderly who are most impacted by by healthcare costs and sickness will start and they did in 1965 without the technology we have today they implemented medicare 19 million people elderly people signed up in the first year so if you could start a brand new program and have 19 million people sign up with a technology that is way way behind where we are today why can't we over a four-year period simply expand that program i don't think it's such a a difficult uh operation so when you talk about the drug companies and the lobbyists and the enormous amount of money that they spend is this does this exist anywhere else other than the united states lobbyists on that level no no of course not uh and the reason you know in canada what you have is you have a national health care program and so forth and they sit down and hey they negotiate with the drug companies they have their own approach but every other major country on earth says to the drunk companies of course you can't charge us any price you want this is a reasonable price tell me what your profits are what your expenditures are this is the price for us you can walk in you know if you have an illness you could walk into the pharmacy tomorrow and the price has been doubled and you say to the pharmacist what happened he said they just raised their prices they could do it any day they want to any price they want now lobbyists are in in general when people talk about lobbyists it's an unattractive term we think a bit in terms of a negative we don't we don't think of oh thank god there's lobbyists we think wow there's someone with enormous amounts of money using that money to gain influence on politicians and it shapes regular people it shapes our lives mostly in a negative way this is the way most people look i'm not saying it's correct why why do we have that system in place like why do we have lobbies why is it legal for someone to spend exorbitant amount of money exorbitant amounts of money to affect our civilization to affect the way our culture works right now you're taking us into a whole new area yeah all right let's look let me detour and i'll come back today in america you've got three people owning more wealth than the bottom half of the american society you don't see that on television too much no you don't three people you got the top one percent owning more wealth on the bottom 92 listen to this this is a statistic we recently saw came from the federal reserve over the last 30 years the top 1 percent has seen a 21 trillion dollar increase in their wealth the bottom half of america has seen a 900 billion dollar decline in their wealth so what you have in america today is a relatively small number of incredibly wealthy people and i deal with these guys every day people are always talking about rich you don't know what rich is what multi-billion dollar operations are incredible power over our society and if you were the pharmaceutical industry and last year 10 companies made 69 billion dollars in profit you're sitting around right now saying all right that's great how do we do better next year what strategy do we have we'll put a lot of ads on we're going to work with other during the cnn debate that i've participated in recently in the debate right in the middle of the debate the drug companies and the insurance companies had an ad telling how bad so-called how bad medicare for all would be so they they're smart guys and they use their power over politicians they use their power over the media they spend billions of dollars on advertising on media to make sure that they make as much as they can in profit but it's not any different with wall street it's not any different with the fossil fuel industry or the prison industrial complex these guys have wealth they have power and they could care less about the needs of working people in this country and that's the dynamic of american politics right now and in our campaign look we're taking them all on and i know it makes a lot of people uncomfortable but we are taking on all of these entities and all of their wealth and all of their power and that's what a political revolution is about so the real problem seems to be that they have this strategy of unlimited growth not that they're not providing medication that people need to save their lives i mean it's obviously important to have a pharmaceutical company of course of course right so there's good that they provide but the business aspect of it is where the problem lies right right look they have great researches but if you check how they even spend their money you know they will tell you this all of their money on research and develop we're trying we're tackling cancer with tackling diabetes alzheimer's the truth is of course they are but the bulk of their money is going off into what we call me too drugs they make modest changes in a drug which really doesn't improve people's well-being in order to make profits so the answer is yes we need obviously vigorous research and development and by the way your tax dollars all of our tax dollars often goes to that research and we don't get the benefit of in terms of lower prices so it's just it's a business model issue exactly it's a greed issue you've got it and how would one stop that when you're dealing with this the kind of influence that you're talking about with 69 billion dollars in a year i mean the resources they have how would you stop that well that is kind of what we call the 64 dollar question yeah and i'll tell you what i think this is what i believe if you think back on american history and you think about the real changes that have taken place in society you think about the labor movement and working-class people standing up and saying to their employers we're not going to be treated like animals anymore you can't hire and virus you can't work us you know 15 hours a day we we deserve dignity and you think about the growth of the labor movement of millions of people beginning to stand together and fight you think about the civil rights movement you know and it wasn't just dr martin luther king jr it was again millions of african americans in that white allies saying we're going to end segregation and racism in this country think about the women's movement a hundred years ago women in america didn't even have the right to vote think about the gay rights movement think about the environment the only way the change takes place is when ordinary people come together and stand up and fight and say that the status quo is not working and that's what i believe and that's what we're trying to do so with the the message of our campaign is it's us not me because i can't do it alone let me be very honest with you if i were elected president tomorrow i can't do the things that i would like to do that i'm campaigning on unless millions of people were working with me to tell the corporate elite that they cannot get it all so how would that be implemented let's say you become president you're going to become president what do you think i think we got a shout out to you guys all right president bernie what do you do you get in there what do you do okay first of all you make a very clear you make it clear to the american people what your agenda is and i appreciate the opportunity to talk about an agenda in in more than 12 seconds what does that mean all right we're going to fight for medicare for all we're going to raise the minimum wage to a living wage we are going to deal with education in a profound well-being a profound way because i worry about what's going on in education today everybody knows that the ages of zero through four are the most important years for human intellectual and emotional development right every psychologist will tell you that and yet we have a totally dysfunctional early childhood system we pay we pay our child care workers starvation wages yet working-class families cannot find affordable quality child care you've got our public school systems all around this country in in many of them really being challenged right now teachers are underpaid teachers are working two or three jobs you got kids who can't afford to go to college and here's something that is just unbelievable kids who have gone to college leaving school with fifty thousand hundred thousand dollars in debt unbelievable these are issues that we have to deal with and i will deal with them and uh we are going to substantially improve in the quality of education in america we're going to cancel student debt by imposing a tax on wall street speculation all right so you got to deal with education you got to deal with climate change you know the truth is that donald trump is dead wrong uh climate change is not a hoax it is a very very dangerous reality for our country and the rest of the world scientists tell us we have less than 12 years to transform our energy system away from fossil fuel or there will be irreparable damage all right so those are in healthcare of course for all so those are some of the major issues criminal justice immigration reform you lay it on the table you see these are the issues that we are going to focus on and you rally the american people around those issues and you tell people like mitch mcconnell who represents a very poor state in kentucky that mitch if you are going to oppose raising that minimum wage to at least 15 bucks an hour i will be in kentucky as president of the united states and we're going to have a rally because you're going to have to stop representing and i hope by the way that mitch mcconnell is not the leader i hope the democrats can gain control over the senate but appears we'll put enormous pressure on him to do what the people want every idea joe here's the bottom line on this thing every idea that i've just talked to you about is supported by a majority of the american people these are not radical ideas let's let's take these one step at a time because you mentioned a lot of important things there let's go with the minimum wage thing now the argument that i've heard about the minimum wage being raised to 15 an hour is that there are entry level positions for high school kids for people that are just getting their feet wet in the marketplace they're learning how to work they're learning they're making some money after school that they that if you charge or if businesses have to pay fifteen dollars an hour to people like that to entry-level people that they won't be able to stay open well first of all they will be competing against you know if you're a business and i'm a business and both of us have to raise our wages at the same level we both have the same burden so it's it's spread across that is what my conservative uh colleagues will tell you the truth is i don't have the numbers right in front of me that while it certainly is true that young people do work at mcdonald's in the minimum wage jobs uh a significant and majority of the workers are not kids they are often and i've met them at mcdonald's they are workers uh who have children themselves when we we worked very hard to raise the minimum wage at amazon uh and at disney we put pressure on both of those companies and they did the right thing and when you talk to the people at amazon who got that raise these are not kids these are people in their 30s these are these are ordinary adults who cannot make it on 12 or 13 bucks an hour so i think the argument that all their old kids uh is not really quite accurate well not even that all their they're all kids but that if they are kids what would you think about making a minimum wage for someone who's under 18 that's different from a minimum wage with someone who's a legal adult i'm not i'm not for that uh i think we do it and and look many of these young people you know have their own needs i just talked to a young woman um last night who is working going to college working full-time trying to take care of her family as well so i think look the minimum wage has not been raised in 10 years it is now 7.25 cents an hour which is clearly unacceptable um the cost of housing california all over this country is rising fairly rapidly people can't afford health care can't afford college i don't think it's asking our employers too much to pay at least 15 an hour minimum wage now i'm glad you brought up amazon because one of one of the things that always freaks me out is when i find out that enormous corporations that make billions of dollars have tax loopholes where they literally pay no money how is that possible and how do you stop that well it's the same thing as the drug companies how is it possible that we pay 10 times more for insulin in this country and for other drugs than the one in canada or countries around the world and the answer is it's power so what is what is the goal of major corporations in america it's to be deregulated as much as possible so in some cases they can pollute our water our air our environment it's also not to pay any taxes trump campaign as you recall he said my tax plan is not going to benefit the wealthy it's going to benefit working people well turns out over 10 years 83 percent of the benefit at the end of 10 years goes to the top 1 that's what these guys though i remember i'm the call the ranking member on the budget committee in the senate and some guy came forward representing i don't know one of the big business organizations uh and this is their agenda their agenda was to cut social security medicare and medicaid and to do away with all corporate taxes so what you have right now that's that's what greed is about they want it all so as you indicated you have a company like amazon owned by jeff bezos who happens to be the wealthiest guy in america worth about 150 billion amazon paid zero in federal income taxes and it's not just them dozens of corporations paid nothing or very very little and on top of all of that you got these guys able to stash all over the world trillions of dollars trillions of dollars in the cayman islands in bermuda in luxembourg and other tax havens that is insane and that has got to end um yeah how is it legal to do that why is it legal joe it is legal because they make the laws right all right you know that is what he you're touching now on the heart and soul of the tragedy of american politics how does it happen that on issue after issue the american people the working class of this country want something nobody pays any attention to it but billionaires want something and it gets done and that has to do with a corrupt political system so right now if you are uh the koch brothers or some multi-billionaire you say to the leadership of the republican party in some cases to the democratic money hey guess what we're prepared to put hundreds of millions of dollars into your campaign hundreds of millions of dollars coming from one or two people and here is my agenda i want tax breaks i want a trade system which will enable me to shut down in this country and go to china or mexico and pay people there two bucks an hour i want to be able to do more pollution because i don't like all of this you know money i have to spend preventing uh pollution of the air or the water that's what i want you to do and by the way i'm worried about the deficit so you may as well cut social security medicare and medicaid how many americans actually believe that we should give tax breaks to billionaires and cut social security medicare and medicaid very few that is talk to mitch mcconnell get mitch on the show that is exactly what he believes well that's ridiculous right and it seems that if you just took away those tax breaks the enormous amount of money that would come from those corporations having to pay their fair share would take care of a lot of the expenses of all these things that you're proposing exactly how like okay let's talk about the education because the idea of free education is a wonderful thing for people um i mean the idea that you get out of college and you're in debt in in an insane amount that you might have 10 20 years where you have to pay it back and and i know many people that are interested there are people who are getting their social security checks garnished right now it's not 10 to 20 years in some cases it's literally a lifetime now a lot of that is i mean it's got to in some way be preventable by what we're talking about here absolutely all right and is that how you would pay for it i mean i'll tell you exactly how i would pay for okay and we pay for every idea that we have we pay for and we pay for it by understanding that today we have massive levels of income and wealth inequality and we have in many cases the wealthy and large corporations being nothing or very little in taxes here is the issue in terms of education 40 50 years ago you were an average american working class person you graduated high school especially if there was a union around you can go out and get a job and make it into the middle class you could own your own home you could send your kids to school you lived a pretty good life made it in the middle class 40 or 50 years later there's an explosion of technology there's a growth in unfettered free trade and it is clear now that most people to make it into the middle class are going to need a higher education that's college or maybe it's technical training in order to become a skilled worker it is insane to me to deny working-class people and lower-income people the opportunity to get that education because the cost of college has soared so all that i say is that a hundred plus years ago the american people said that we should have free public education i went to a public school my parents didn't pay a nickel went to kindergarten i went through the 12th grade pretty good education in brooklyn new york all that i'm saying is the world has changed and a high school degree is not good enough anymore so expand that concept through college now guess what 50 years ago do you know how much the university of california a very great university cost in terms of tuition how much virtually free what's it now i don't know but it's pretty high it is hard thousands and thousands of dollars so you had great universities like the university of california city university of new york state colleges all over this country where tuition was virtually free and then what happened for a variety of political reasons states and the federal government started cutting back on higher education and put more and more burden on the student with higher and higher tuition which is where we are today so all that i'm saying is in the year 2019 2020 if our working-class kids are going to go out and get the jobs that are out there they need a they need a higher education which should be tuition-free in terms of the cancellation of debt which is my view you got 45 million people um who are dealing with that i'll never forget this this is where it really hit me i was in burlington vermont and i had a meeting on an issue and a young woman comes up and she says she's a doctor she graduated medical so she's very happy she's practicing in a community health center loves what she's doing he said bernie i gotta tell you though i am three hundred thousand dollars in debt having gone to medical school i couldn't believe it i was in iowa a young woman four hundred thousand dollars in debt this is not unusual for medical schools and dental schools and you know ordinary people fifty thousand hundred thousand dollars for going to college or getting a master's degree we promised these young people he said go to college go out and get an education you'll get decent paying jobs well the answer is they have not been able to do that so what we have proposed in one piece of legislation or two actually is to make public colleges and universities tuition-free cancel all student debt in this country that will cost 2.2 trillion dollars a lot of money over a 10-year period we do this through attacks on wall street speculation which will bring in 2.4 trillion dollars we bailed out wall street 11 years ago and by the way these are crooks on wall street who engaged in legal behavior taxpayers against my vote bail them out if we can bail out wall street you know what we can cancel student debt and provide public colleges and universities tuition free when you say a tax on wall street speculation what exactly do you mean it will be a tax on uh all of the tr every sale of attacks people buy and sell stocks and bonds all of them we have a very modest tax on that and by the way it will have an impact on speculation by cutting back on the high frequency trading which we now see so you would just there is there's no current tax on correct so you would put a small amount and that would do the job that would that would raise more than enough money it's a very small tax it exists say small how much it depends on on the nature of the transaction but it's less than one half of one percent really yeah and that's because yeah because the amount of stocks being sold and so and this is not again a new idea it's it's being uh done in countries all over the world what about here here's one of the darkest things about student loans is that if if you go bankrupt it doesn't matter you still owe that and that that's kind of crazy i mean if you have a serious medical issue if you're you're held up whatever whatever happens to you that's awful you go bankrupt most of those things are resolved but not student loans right i mean again this talks to the and that has to do with bankruptcy law which was passed against my vote uh and while you're on bankruptcy and i should have mentioned this before when you talk about the health care system a half a million americans every single year go bankrupt because of medical bills that they can't pay but you're right with students i talked to this guy in nevada never forget it guy says bernie you know i'm over my guys in his 50s and he said you know i i've been paying off my student debt for years i'm going nowhere because the interest rates are high and i fear very much which is the case that they will start garnishing taking away my social security checks taking money away from me so people are carrying this burden the result is that they can't in many cases get married and have kids they certainly can't buy a home they can't buy a car they are really crushed by this debt and what was their crime what did they do they tried to get a higher education i think that's pretty crazy and a lot of them when they do this higher education they're 18 years old imagine making a decision when your brain isn't even fully formed it's gonna affect you for the rest of your life you've got it exactly right and you talk to these kids so how much debt do you oh um what kind of interest rates you're paying gee i really don't know they just told me to sign over here that's all right now right now we are a week not even a week out just a few days away from two mass shootings in a row and whenever these things happen there's all these people that want action but nobody knows exactly what to do there's calls for gun control there's calls for mental health reform there's calls for i mean what if anything can be done to stop these things from happening and how have you sat down and tried to come up with some sort of a solution and is there a solution look i would be lying to you if i told you i had a magical answer i don't and this is such a horrific situation i you know we were in um you know we we had a town meeting uh we were in nevada actually in las vegas when el paso happened and uh we did tell me and i said okay let's take a moment of silence to remember the victims and pray for the survivors literally the next day in another part of las vegas i have to do it again and i said i can't believe that just yesterday we did this and i have to do it again this is i i don't know what the words you know my friend beta or rock would say it's you don't know what words what what can you say it happens again and again who can imagine some lunatic walking into a school or a mall or just on a nightclub area and taking out an assault weapon and shooting down people and that we almost become to accept this as a normal part of american life is is incredible is is is is just totally demoralizing all right so here's what i think there's no magical answer and but let me tell you what i think first of all this is the reality the reality is that today as we speak there are approximately 400 million guns in america today we have more guns than we have people we have between 5 to 10 million assault weapons and an assault weapon as you know is a military style weapon designed to kill human beings kind of rapidly so that's and then on top of that we have again nothing to be proud of but you know we have a number of mentally unstable people people for whatever reason i walk in the streets they're suicidal they're homicidal that's the mix that we have i think the answer is and i'm not the guy to invent all these ideas but here's some of what we have to do first of all if you want to own a gun in america you have got to we have got to know that you are a stable person and that means that we need to expand um the background checks that currently exist okay so we got to know did you beat up your wife have you committed crimes uh et cetera et cetera what is the state of your mental health uh number two we gotta make that universal number two right now that there is a background check if you walk into a gun show into a gun shop but you can buy guns in various states at a gun show and you don't have to do any of that so you and i go to a gun show you sell me a gun i don't have to and you know i don't have to do that third of all i can today legally walk into a gun show uh pass the background check and buy a dozen guns walk out and sell them to criminal elements who will use them for bad things so i think those are issues um that most americans believe we have got to deal with and we can fourthly i happen to believe and i believe this for 30 years that we should not be selling or distributing assault weapons in this country uh they are weapons of mass destruction in a sense they kill people rapidly as we saw and thank god by the way when we talk about both dayton and el paso thank god cops were there very very quickly and did an incredible job because that guy had walked into the nightclub there could have been dozens and dozens more people killed in in within a few minutes time um i happen to believe a that we should not be selling or distributing assault weapons in this country that's my view period uh so i believe in a ban on assault weapons and i think we have got to begin thinking about when we have five to 10 million assault weapons which is more than the us military has we have to think about a strong licensing procedure in terms of who owns these assault weapons so that's some of what i think there are many other things but those are some of the ideas that are out there now the legal gun owners who are law abiding citizens who would never in a million years think about going around shooting people but they love guns they hear this kind of stuff about like banning assault rifles banning assault weapons they don't even like the term assault weapons right they like to refer to them as their individual names or whatever they are these people feel like this is an inexorable part of being an american that you should be able to own a gun it's written into our bill of rights it's written into our the the way we the way this country was founded it's the second amendment what do you say to those people that don't that don't want to give up their guns but they wouldn't do and they want to protect themselves they feel like these guns are viable options to protect themselves from criminals i understand that and joe as you may know him a senator from the state of vermont and the state of vermont is one of the most rural states in america every form we've got a whole thousands and thousands of people around the woods hunting and it's something that's part of our tradition i believe in it i believe in the second amendment but all that i ask of the gun owners and you're absolutely right 99.9 percent of gun owners would never in a million billion years think of doing these horrible things but in the moment that we are living in uh i think that we're all going to have to make you know some concessions to the reality of what is going on and that is that there is a small number of call them what you want to brave people who are prepared to do that you know in australia you'll remember that terrible uh new zealand i'm sorry the terrible shooting at the mosque and they moved pretty quickly uh in an aggressive way so you know i wish i can say in in the best of all possible worlds yeah you know you can own any weapon you want and so forth and so on we're not living in the best level possible worlds we're living in a world where we're shocked every day by hara so i i agree we are living in a terrible situation i mean there's hundreds of mass shootings a year now which is insane and if you look at the number in comparison to the rest of the world it's crazy like a big one in another country like three mass shootings in a year we had more than 270. that's right it's it's crazy but how would you implement something like this well the idea of banning assault weapons has been done in 1994 we'd banned assault weapons uh i believe i believe it was for ten years uh that ban was undone by republican majority uh and it didn't you know i'm not suggesting by the way that anything here that if you banned assault weapons tomorrow that would radically change everything but we have got to do the best that we can do and again i preface my remarks by telling i don't have a magical solution you got hundreds of millions of guns out there you have people who should not be owning these guns who get set off by god knows what and and do terrible things all we can do is the best that we can do but to say we can't do anything i think is a real disservice to the american i'll tell you something else that bothers me you know in addition to the horror of seeing people lying on the street dead is what this is doing to the children of this country and i think we underestimate that i have seven grandchildren and and for them and for kids all over this country you're gonna see the falls coming kids going back to school you're gonna see in schools all over america drills all right this is what you do if somebody walks into the school all right you're gonna hide under here you go over there kids i i a couple of months ago i was in iowa this guy is about six foot two big guy probably a football player and he says senator sanders i got to tell you that the young people in my school are increasingly frightened terrified about what could happen in the school think about what this the trauma the trauma of what this gun violence is doing so i think we're all as americans there ain't no easy answers here but they're all going to have to come together and and figure this one out and and do the best that we can now would that mean forcibly removing these guns from people's homes i don't think you're going to have the fbi knocking on somebody's doors and taking that that's not what we do in america you know we have 400 million guns already out there and they're building more every year right now as we speak gun manufacturers or make manufacturers are making more guns this is happening right now so if those guns already exist it's more than enough oh yeah how would you stop well again i think look you know i do think there should be a ban on assault weapons so that means that manufacturers would not be able to produce or sell those weapons to american citizens but not to the military obviously obviously yeah okay so you know and your point is well taken if you got 400 million guns out there you know so i i think there are approaches no one has any magical solution but i've given you i'll tell you something else that i didn't mention and that is the role of gun manufacturers is that if you are a gun manufacturer and you are selling a hell of a lot of guns to a gun store in an area which normally you would not think i mean these guys know you know what cities buy what towns buy how many guns and if suddenly there is a tremendous demand you got to be thinking and be why is why is this gun store buying so many guns doesn't reflect the population in the area you got to deal with that issue with the gun owners have to take some responsibility besides the guns the gun manufacturers i'm sorry right besides the guns the gun manufacturers the other gigantic issue is mental health the only way any of this ever happens is someone has to be insanely mentally depraved that's the only way and many of them are medicated and many of them are on pharmaceutical drugs and they have been since they were children including amphetamines like adderall and prozac and all this different stuff that has varied effects on the human brain what could be done and what would you done to analyze this to find out what the cause and effect are and to try to figure out what what role and how much these drugs are responsible okay well two things let me response respond first by saying it goes without saying that we have a mental health crisis in america before we even talk about drugs and for whatever reason um you know there are a whole lot of people and the nature of our healthcare system getting back to healthcare is i just talked to a woman literally last night um and we had a a town meeting and she said this is unbelievable she said bernie i was in las vegas when the terrible shooting took place okay and now i am and i can understand this perfectly i'm seeing dayton and i'm seeing watching television el paso and i'm getting a pt ps ptsd reaction all right and that's totally on if you were in a place where people were shut down and [ __ ] i'm trying to get counseling i can't find it i remember a guy called up a woman called at my office in burlington vermont and she said i'm worried about my husband what he my brother was his brother what he might do to himself or somebody else we're looking for mental health counseling we can't find something that we can afford so we need above and beyond gun violence we need and that's why i believe in medicare for all mental health is health care you break your arm that's a health issue that's a medical issue mental health is a medical issue and we have got to make mental health counseling available to all people in this country when they need it not six months from now at a price they can afford and under medicare for all it would be free so that's number one number two your point about uh studying the impact of drugs uh on people's behavior and possibly resulting in violence absolutely deserves to be studied we should be studying the impact of drugs in my view this is a layman's view you know i'm not a psychiatrist i worry very much that we are over medicating kids in schools you know we have this uh deficit the deficient issue you know kids are running around and they're active you know when i was a kid people used to run around they were active you know what they wasn't they weren't drugged up so i worry about that whole business but your point is well taken i think we need to study this issue and make sure that these drugs in fact are not causing kinds of reactions that we will regret later now on the subject of drugs marijuana is obviously a big issue in this country and we've seen many states make it recreational including this one what do you think could be done and what should be done to have this across the board especially federally you know there's a guy that i have on the podcast coming up soon his name is john norris and he wrote a book on the cartels growing marijuana illegally all over this country and selling it especially particularly in california now because it's a misdemeanor because it's legal recreationally and selling it with all sorts of horrible pesticides on it all sorts of like very in fact deadly chemicals all of this because it's not federally legal because we can't have sanctioned licensed companies doing an ethical job of growing something that any responsible law-abiding person should be able to consume okay um let me say this when i ran for president for the democratic nomination in 2016 i talked about a broken criminal justice system which ends up having in the united states more people in jail than any other country we have more people in jail than china does which is a communist authoritarian country and what i called for then and i call for now is the legalization of marijuana in america right now you have a federal law it's called the controlled substance act he has heroin here is marijuana they are at the same level that is insane heroin is a killer drug you can argue the pluses and minuses of marijuana but marijuana ain't heroin so we have to end and that's what i will do as president of the united states i believe we can do that through executive order and i will do that second of all what we have now is a number of states and i'm very proud i talked about during 2016 what seemed kind of radical the need to legalize and decriminalize marijuana a very radical idea four years ago it is spreading all over the country and by the way it blows my mind to drive through nevada i think here even in california now you see signs corporations buy our marijuana yeah and four years ago people getting arrested they're doing that right their lives being destroyed well particularly nevada there was life sentences given out in the 70s can you believe that and now you have corporations selling the damn product that people went to jail for um so i i think ultimately you know we've got to legalize uh marijuana and what's good news in a sense is some communities some cities are expunging the records so if you were arrested uh have a criminal record for selling marijuana that is being expunged and that is the right thing to do you know we can argue about the pluses and minuses i'm not a great fan of of drugs other people you know i smoked marijuana a couple of times didn't do much for me other people i guess have different impacts just a couple times that's really true it didn't do much for you yeah it made me quick getting it know i was in vermont northern mindanao that's the problem maybe yeah it'll do something for you well made me cough a whole lot all right but i got other people have had different experiences correct sure yeah i certainly have um the other problem is of course with illegal drugs comes you get this horrible cycle particularly in uh inner cities where you have people that are incarcerated for illegal drugs illegal drugs seem to be the only way out the hard drugs when we're talking about cocaine and all these other drugs how how does one stop that and would you ever consider legalizing all drugs or decriminalizing no all drugs not at this point no i wouldn't but you're touching on a real tragedy yes and when we talk about criminal justice in america we have over two million people in jail they are disproportionately african american latino and native american and here's what i think i think in the wealthiest country in the history of the world what we have got to do instead of building more jails and locking up more people we really do have to invest in our young people especially young people in distressed communities what does that mean if we can and we can do this with the proper amount of resources make sure the kids are not dropping out of school if you drop out of school today you know so you drop out in your second or third year of high school you don't have an education you don't have any job skills what are you gonna do with your life and the answer is you may well do drugs you know or you'll get in trouble self-destructive activity or destructive activity you're gonna end up in jail it makes so much more sense from a humane perspective protecting our people as well as a financial situation we're spending 80 billion dollars a year to invest in these kids what does it mean it means making sure they get the education that they need paying attention having good schools making sure that they get the jobs that are out there doing job training there was a principal in a school in southern vermont i'll never forget what she said it was a working-class school and she said bernie i love these kids i am not going to let them drop out and she had a mentoring program just watching the kids who are mostly at risk so that they would not end up uh going through the cracks and getting into trouble that's what we should be doing as a nation and when we do that we invest in the kids we get them jobs we get them education the likelihood is that the likelihood of them falling into bad ways is significantly reduced all those things sound great the uncomfortable reality about drugs though is that when drugs are illegal criminals sell them and there's obviously a need for drugs in terms of not necessarily a need but a demand for drugs there's a demand for drugs in this country that's absolutely fueling mexican cartels and illegal drug runners inside this country i mean there's there's a lot of that how do you how do you curb that if drugs are illegal but you're raising a deep question yes all right so the question essentially that you're asking is what is the cause of the opioid epidemic yes that's one that's one of it but but the opioid epidemic is is interesting because there's so much of it that's coming legally right that's not the drug cartels that's the pharmaceutical industry you're right but you the heroine is illegal yes all right now you're asking this is a very very deep question which we don't talk about terribly much why is it that so many of our people are turning to drugs to alcohol by the way and i don't mean a drink at night but i mean serious alcohol problems and tragically to suicide we now have for the last three years something that is a historical never happened before in modern history and that is our life expectancy is actually going down and this is hitting all over the country but especially hitting rural areas and what the doctors are saying is that these are diseases of despair despair so you're in west virginia you're in rural ohio or any place for a month any place and the job you used to have earning a decent living is now in china your kid can't afford to go to college maybe you can't afford health care you've got nothing to look forward to under that scenario drugs become alcohol becomes a way out and the worst case suicide so i think what we're talking about is why is this happening as often in rural areas in herdman as well and how can we how can we re-establish hope and optimism in the american people and that gets back to a whole lot of other issues it means if people have health care as a right that will certainly play a role in this thing and walk into the doctor when they need but it also means that people need decent jobs to pay them a living wage that means we have to rebuild rural america we have to rebuild the depressed communities in urban america it means that we have to have a great educational system and people say oh that's great bernie that's utopian it is not utopian this is something that in the wealthiest country in the history of the world we can afford and we should be doing rather giving creating a situation where amazon pays zero in federal income taxes so to answer your question there's a deep question and again i'm not here to tell you i have all the answers but there are a lot of people out there who have basically given up hope and for those people i guess drugs is is the alternative so what you're saying essentially is that if we can do something to mitigate despair then we'll do something to at least stop some of the demand for these illegals i believe that is the case look if i am optimistic if i'm excited about going to work tomorrow and i'm seeing my kid doing great in school and you know when i get sick i can go to the doctor's office and have a sense of community my downtown is not all boarded up because businesses have left but we have we have a community yeah the like the strong likelihood is there will be less diseases of despair and drugs than we currently see now when we're talking about impoverished communities and chronically when you're talking about cities like baltimore or parts of chicago and detroit that have just been in a terrible state of despair for long periods of time and it doesn't seem like there's a way out the people that are born there the people that live there they live in this state of of despair what what can be done to resolve all these terribly impoverished communities and bring them up to a standard where these kids that grow up there they feel like there is an out that they do have an opportunity and why is this not addressed when we talk about making america great wouldn't like fixing the worst parts of the country be the primary concern the the less people that grow up in a terribly disadvantageous position from birth wouldn't that be an important thing and what can you do to resolve that well joe i think you you know you said it better than i can i think you're right you know when we talk about what it means to live in a great society a great nation a nation that we're proud of i'm afraid there are some people who have incredible wealth and power who say you know what's great is that we're seeing a growth in the number of billionaires in america isn't that terrific and we got one guy who's worth 155 billion dollars how great oh by the way we're building more nuclear weapons and we're spending 750 billion dollars a year on the military isn't that extraordinary and by the way you see the yacht that that billionaire has you know it's three miles long isn't that great your point is that we have to i think as i understand what you're saying we have to redefine what being a great nation is about we are not a great nation when we have 40 million people living in poverty and in despair we're not a great nation when we have massive levels of income and wealth and equality when 87 million people can't afford to go to a doctor today so to answer your question i think that as a nation we have got to focus a great deal of attention on those distressed communities often they're african-american often they're latino often they are rural white communities and that means making sure that the kids they get the quality education that they deserve making sure that we're creating good paying jobs in those communities i voted against nafta permanent normal trade relations with china and other trade agreements because i knew that those agreements were written by corporate america with the goal of shutting down plants in this country and moving abroad and the result of that has been the loss of millions of good-paying jobs and the complete destruction of communities all across this country in the south and all across this country so we have got to rebuild those communities we have got to bring high-tech jobs not just to silicon valley uh but to rural america again i don't have magical answers but the goal is we will not understand this administration turn our backs on distressed communities we will rebuild those communities we will build the millions of units of affordable housing that we need now think about what it means to a community now where people are living in terrible housing or housing they cannot afford when we put young people to work rebuilding their own communities without become a an indication of hope and optimism i think it will we're talking about so many deeply important issues and all of them that will be under the control or at least the direction of the one person who winds up becoming the president united states is it a impossible job i mean it seems like being the president you are managing so many different aspects of our economy our culture our safety our environment international communication and it's so it's so in-depth how does one person do a job like that well one person doesn't do it and you certainly don't do it by tweeting every other day major policy issues i think he tweets a lot more than every other day you know what you do and this is the way any sane president operates is you need to be working with the smartest men and women from all walks of life who understand these issues every issue we have touched on joe is enormously complicated and i can send out a you know 20 word tweet on it but that doesn't solve it so unlike trump you know we will bring together uh the best and most knowledgeable people in this country to address the housing crisis to address the issue of of these diseases of despair we didn't even touch on climate change you know and then the future of the planet how do we lead the world in transforming our energy system and creating the kind of jobs that we need how do we revitalize american democracy so that instead of suppressing the vote we're getting more young people involved in the political process so to answer your question it is not a one-person job and anyone who thinks it is is dead wrong you need the help of a very strong administration that knows the issues that comes from the ranks of the working class and this is the promise i will make all right my administration unlike trump's is not going to be filled with billionaires who's you know basically very often greedy type people who it is going to be filled with the best people often from the working class itself from the trade union movement people who are going to help us create policies that work for workers and not just the billionaire class now we're getting to the end of your hour here so climate change is obviously an enormous issue for our country and for the world what what could be done and what do you think you can do as president that can somehow or another slow down this this process well first of all we have to have a president who unlike trump believes in science and i do and what the scientists are telling us as i mentioned earlier is that we have fewer than 12 years to transform our energy system or else there will be irreparable damage done not only to our country but to the world now climate change is not just an american issue so we could do tomorrow do all the right things but of china and russia and india and the rest of the brazil and africa does not do the right thing you know we're not going to make the progress we need so here is what we have to do in my view number one we have to tell the fossil fuel industry that they are short-term profits and they make a whole lot of money their short-term profits are not more important than the future of this planet i don't think that's a hard cell to make you cannot keep producing a product which is destroying the planet in the united states and around the world so by saying that you're saying you would have to move we would have to move consciously away from fossil fuels no if so maybe and if we do that how do you tell the fossil fuel companies do you tell them you can't sell fossil fuels anymore there are a variety of ways to do that but that is the bottom line and and by the way in the midst of that we do what we call is a um a just transition the guy out on the oil rig today simply wants to feed his family and the coal miners today want to feed their families and we're not going to leave them i'm a pro-worker i have probably the strongest bro worker record of any member of the congress so it is not my intention to throw these guys out on the and women out on the street and ignore the pain that they will go through we are proposing billions of dollars to rebuild those communities and make sure that those guys and women get new jobs so we're not just discarding people in the fossil fuel industry but ultimately the product that they are producing which is now carbon emissions is destroying the planet so we have to move away from fossil fuel in a very bold way into energy efficiency right now in my own state of vermont and all over this country there are buildings which are incredibly wasteful we don't have the windows we don't have the insulation we don't have the roofing the doors that we need to keep the buildings warm in the winter and cool uh in uh the summer and we can create just an incredible number of jobs just retrofitting our buildings second of all uh we need to move very aggressively uh to sustainable energies like wind and solar in california you're doing a good job with wind iowa's doing a good job texas doing a good job we got to do much more solar there is incredible potential out there price of solar has dropped in recent years and we have got to not only transform the energy system in our own country we got to lead the world in working with russia and china because in this issue we are in it together and here's my dream and maybe this may be a utopian dream the world right now is spending a trillion and a half dollars on weapons of destruction designed to kill each other and maybe just maybe if we had a kind of leader and i hope to be that leader who says to the world instead of spending a trillion and a half dollars killing each other maybe we use those resources to transform the global energy system and save the planet for our kids and our grandchildren that's the goal that i have well these these ideas sound great but in the competitive environment of global politics how would you convince russia or china or any of these countries to do something that would put them in some sort of a competitive disadvantage well and the answer is joe if we do not do that in 50 100 years everybody's going to be a terrible disadvantage and look i'm not you know i'm saying i'm not telling you that tomorrow it's going to happen but you got to make the case these people you know putin is a dictator i dislike them intensely you know chi in china very authoritarian stuff and so but they're not crazy people and presumably they have concern about their kids and their grandchildren this is a planet under siege you know i don't want to become a science fiction you've all seen the movies the media racing toward earth we're going to blow up the earth what do we do well we got to get together this is in a sense what that is about you know what i think about in 1941 uh after pearl harbor all right we were faced with a war in the east with china a war in the west in europe with hitler within two years the united states had transformed its economy to address and win the war basically in two or three years by reindustrializing tomorrow we can do it we can lead the world that's what we have to do so in urines we have to look at the economy almost as if the same kind of threat or excuse me the environment as if it's the same kind of threat as nazi german and act together look if you asked the defense department you asked the cia you asked the defense people all over the world tell us what the great national security threat is you know what it is it is climate change there's a lot of people though that are skeptical of this how would you convince them i mean this is a big part of the problem right there's a there's a narrative that you hear from a lot of people that oh you know climate change is not a proven science and climate change is a hoax and i mean this is something that's repeated over and over again and i'm sure some of it has to do with lobbyists and some of it has to do with merchants of doubt that go out there and seed the world with disinformation to try to increase their profits and continue the practices that they're currently enjoying you know joe when i'm thinking back and i don't know if all you listen can remember this because molded the most but i can remember tobacco adds cigarette ads on television remember yes doctor guy dressed in a white frock smoking away this is a great cigarette it'll improve your health they lied the tobacco industry knew exactly what was going on and the fossil fuel industry is lying right now and the president of the united states is either too stupid to understand what the scientists are telling us or he is lying as well climate look i am not the scientist this is not my idea i listen to the scientists the debate is long over climate change is real my god look at what's happening around the world today the great worst you know july was i think the warmest july or warmest month in in the modern history of the world uh the arctic ice is is melting uh heat waves in europe all right just look out the window at what's going on uh so this is not bernie sanders talking this is the scientific community climate change is real it will only get worse if we do not act boldly to cut carbon emissions well we just did an hour sir so i'm going to let you go because i know you got very important things to do one last question if you got into the office and you found out something about aliens if you found out something about ufos would you let us know well i'll tell you my wife would demand that i let you know does your wife at ufo not no she's not a ufo no it's just bernie what is going on do you have any access to the records you don't have any access i don't know i don't know okay you let us know though all right i'll be on the show we'll announce it on the show please all right thank you sir appreciate your time joe thank you very very much

Channel: PowerfulJRE

Views: 13,993,957

Rating: 4.6068411 out of 5

Keywords: Joe Rogan Experience, JRE, Joe, Rogan, podcast, MMA, comedy, stand, up, funny, Freak, Party, JRE #1330, 1330, Bernie Sanders, Presidential Election 2020, Joe Rogan

Id: 2O-iLk1G_ng

Length: 67min 41sec (4061 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 06 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/wc382954]

Holy shit he actually got him on

[u/ayotacos]

I can't stop laughing that the last question is about aliens and ufos. Love it. Great podcast.

[u/SirJoeffer]

One last question. If you got into the office and found out something about aliens, if you found out something about UFO's, would you let us know?

The absolute madlad

[u/JnnyRuthless]

Holy smokes Joe did it. He's absolutely bringing the candidates to the people lately. The beauty of long-form conversations really is highlighted in how awful the DNC debates are vs. this format.

[u/crispin2015]

More Americans will listen to this than watched the 2 debates so far.

[u/sv979]

Lol no fucking way he got Bernie on. Damn Joe is really holding his own democrat debate's lol

[u/AznTri4d]

1 hour is shorter than I hoped, but this is pretty big. Never thought this would happen.

[u/baldit]

Imagine if Redban was still around 😂😂

"Hey Bernie, do you like Olive Garden?" "Bernie, do you fart alot?"

[u/iOwnAtheists]

I'm new to Joe Rogan but I really really think this is fantastic. As Sanders says in the beginning, 45 seconds is a joke. It's interviews like these that let candidates say what they want and take their time doing it.