Bernie Sanders Explains Why Trump’s Campaign Finance Comments Are Nonsense
Before he headed off into the sunset last week, Jon Stewart attempted to make amends with his longtime foe Donald Trump by finding one issue on which they could apparently agree: campaign finance. After reading a Trump tweet that called out his fellow GOP candidates for traveling to California to “beg” for the Koch brothers’ money, Stewart wondered aloud, “Who is this Trump fella? I like the cut of his jib.”
But Bernie Sanders, who has made Citizens United and campaign finance reform a cornerstone of his campaign, is not convinced that Trump has it right on this particular issue.
On CBS’ Face the Nation Sunday, host John Dickerson played a clip from Trump with which he predicted Sanders might agree. In the video, Trump stressed that unlike Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton, he is not beholden to million-dollar donors.
After once again denouncing the Citizens United decision, which allows billionaires to donate unlimited money to candidates, Sanders asked, “Do I think that the people who make these contributions — huge contributions — do it out of the goodness of their heart, or do they want something? Of course they want something.”
But on the other hand, he added, “It’s easy for Trump to say, ‘I don’t need their money.’ Yeah, because he’s a billionaire.” The “logical consequence” of that is that “the only people who can run for office in America who don’t have to curry favors are billionaires themselves.”
Sanders said he is trying to do things “another way,” with over 300,000 individual contributors to his campaign at an average of $31 each. “Can we actually prevail over a billionaire or the billionaire class?” he asked. “Time will tell. I think we can.”
Watch video below, via CBS:
[Photo via screengrab]
— —
