Bernie Sanders Offers Dire Warning On Trump, Defends His Trip to New Hampshire to Endorse Biden In These ‘Very Difficult Times’

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) made the rounds on the Sunday political talk shows, a day after he spoke at Saint Anselm College’s New Hampshire Institute of Politics and heartily endorsed President Joe Biden’s reelection bid.

“It is no secret that I want Joe Biden to be reelected president. He and I shared the goal of beating back right-wing extremism,” Sanders said during the speech, in which he also urged both parties to better address the needs of working-class Americans.

Sanders’s trip to New Hampshire also raised some eyebrows, despite the independent senator’s strong message of backing Biden. The Drudge Report ran a headline over the weekend declaring, “Dem Drama: Bernie to NH.”

A day after the speech Sanders joined CNN’s Dana Bash to discuss his message and confronted the 2016 Democratic presidential primary runner-up with recent criticism he has received from the hard left. “Senator Sanders, Cornel West, who is a close ally of yours, he is running a third-party campaign for president. He recently criticized you for endorsing President Biden’s reelection. Listen to what he said,” Bash said as she introduced a clip.

“I love the brother. And, you know, even in love, people have deep disagreements about these things. But I think, again, he’s he’s fearful of the neofascism of Trump. People look at Biden, they don’t really want to tell the full truth. He’s created the best economy that we can get. Is this the best that we can get? You’re going to tell that lie to the people? Just for Biden to win,” West said in the clip from earlier in the month.

“What’s your reaction to that?” Bash asked.

“Well, my reaction is that it certainly is not the best economy that we can create. That was my speech was about yesterday. We’ve got to join the rest of the industrialized world, guarantee health care as a right. To cut the cost of prescription drugs in half. We’ve got to raise the minimum wage to at least 17 bucks an hour. We’ve got to build the affordable housing we desperately need,” Sanders replied.

“But where I disagree with my good friend Cornel West is, I think, in these really very difficult times where there is a real question whether democracy is going to remain in the United States of America,” Sanders continued, adding:

You know, Donald Trump is not somebody who believes in democracy. Whether women are going to be able to continue to control their own bodies or whether we have social justice in America, we end bigotry. Around that I think we have got to bring the entire progressive community out to defeat Trump or whoever the Republican nominee will be support Biden. But at the same time, which is what I did yesterday, is demand that the Democratic Party, not just Biden, have the guts to take on corporate greed and the massive levels of income and wealth inequality that we see today.

Sanders offered a similar message on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday, telling Chuck Todd, “We’re taking on the … former president, who, in fact, does not believe in democracy – he is an authoritarian, and a very, very dangerous person.”

Watch the full clip above via CNN.

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