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BREAKING NEWS - Bernie Sanders Accuses Trump And Elon Musk Of Breaking The Law With DOGE · Elon Musk Podcast

0:05
Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Elon Musk Podcast.
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I'm your host, Will Walden, and if you're new here, this is a
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It takes just a second for you, but it makes a huge difference
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for the show Elon Musk News. President, do you recognize the
1:05
Senator from Vermont? Thank you.
1:09
We live in difficult times, in times where people throughout
1:17
our country are experiencing a great deal of anxiety for a
1:23
number of reasons. And in the midst of all of that,
1:29
it is important that we not forget what is taking place not
1:34
only in Ukraine, but back home here in the United States and
1:40
back home right now, 10s of millions of Americans are
1:47
struggling economically to keep their heads above water. 60% of
1:52
our people a living paycheck to paycheck, 85 millionaire,
1:58
uninsured or underinsured. And we have the highest rate of
2:04
childhood poverty of almost any major nation on earth.
2:11
And as someone who has visited senior centers throughout the
2:17
state of Vermont and has spoken to seniors throughout our
2:22
country, I can tell you that there is a significant level of
2:27
fear and anxiety among the older people in this country with
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regard to what's happening right here in DC.
2:36
When we have a president of the United States and Republicans
2:41
who are talking about massive cuts to Medicaid.
2:47
Let's understand, and seniors do understand that we are not just
2:51
talking about throwing millions of kids off the health care that
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they have at a time when we are the only major country enough
2:59
not to provide health care to all people, not just kids off of
3:03
health care. We're talking about massive cuts
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to community health centers, which receive over 40% of their
3:13
funding from Medicaid, and where millions of seniors go to get
3:19
the primary care they need. And at a time when we already
3:24
have a major crisis in nursing home availability, let us
3:31
understand that Medicaid provides funding for two out of
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every three seniors who live in nursing homes.
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In other words, massive cuts to Medicaid would be a disaster for
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senior citizens throughout this country.
3:50
But it is not just Medicaid cuts that worry our seniors today.
3:57
Quite unbelievably, and we don't talk about this anywhere near
4:00
enough, 25% of people in our country who are 65 years of age
4:07
or older are trying to survive on incomes of $15,000 a year or
4:15
less. I myself do not know how
4:20
anybody, let alone a senior with healthcare needs, can survive on
4:25
$15,000 a year, but that is what 25% of our seniors are trying to
4:31
do. Mr. President, this issue of so
4:37
many seniors struggling to get by, struggling to heat their
4:42
homes, struggling to buy the food or the prescription drugs
4:46
they need, this is an issue we must address and it is a crisis
4:54
that is unacceptable in the richest country in the history
4:58
of the world. And that is why, Mr. President,
5:01
I am proud to tell you that within the next several weeks,
5:05
I, along with a number of Co sponsors, will be introducing
5:08
legislation that expands Social Security benefits and extends
5:15
the solvency of Social Security for decades.
5:20
You know, we're hearing a lot of talk about cutting Social
5:24
Security. We should not be talking about
5:26
cutting Social Security. We must be talking about
5:30
expanding Social Security benefits.
5:34
And the legislation that I will introduce would do just that.
5:37
It would expand Social Security benefits by $2400 a year, and it
5:43
would not raise taxes by 1 penny on the bottom 93% of Americans,
5:49
those who make less than $250,000 a year.
5:52
And how do we do that? By lifting the cap and applying
5:57
the Social Security payroll tax on all income above 250,000.
6:04
Unbelievably, on the current law, a billionaire pays the same
6:08
amount of money into Social Security as someone who makes
6:12
$176,000 a year. Elon Musk, worth 400 billion,
6:17
pays the same amount into Social Security as somebody who makes
6:20
176,000. That is because under Social
6:24
Security there is an absurd cap on taxable income.
6:29
If we lifted that cap and made sure that millionaires and
6:32
billionaires paid the same percentage of their income into
6:36
Social Security as the working class of this country, we could
6:40
extend the life of Social Security for generations to come
6:44
and lift millions of seniors out of poverty.
6:49
Further, Mr. President, when we talk about the needs of senior
6:53
citizens in this country, I want to mention that I will also be
6:57
introducing legislation to expand Medicare to cover dental,
7:03
vision and hearing. It is unacceptable that millions
7:08
of seniors are unable to read a newspaper because they cannot
7:12
afford eyeglasses, can't have conversations with their
7:16
grandchildren because they can't afford hearing aids, and have
7:20
trouble eating because they cannot afford dentures.
7:24
That should not be happening in the United States of America in
7:28
the year 2025. Expanding Medicare to cover
7:34
dental, vision and hearing is an extremely popular concept.
7:39
Poll after poll shows that 80% of the American people,
7:43
Democrats, Republicans, independents support doing just
7:48
that. Mr. President, when we talk
7:53
about the anxieties that the American people are now
7:56
experiencing, it is not, just to say the least, senior citizens
8:02
all across this country. There is a growing fear that the
8:06
Trump administration is undermining the Constitution of
8:11
our country, a Constitution which has kept us a free nation
8:16
and an example, a model for the rest of the world for the last
8:19
250 years. During the last month alone,
8:25
President Trump has attempted to usurp the powers of Congress
8:29
illegally and unconstitutionally, refusing to
8:32
fund programs passed by Congress.
8:36
He has illegally destroyed agencies like USAID and the
8:40
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that were created by
8:45
Congress and under the leadership of Mr. Musk.
8:49
They have illegally and inappropriately gained access to
8:52
tax data and Social Security data of millions of Americans,
8:58
etcetera, etcetera. Every day they are acting in an
9:03
illegal and unconstitutional manner.
9:06
And I would say this, and I don't know if people take it
9:09
seriously or not I do. Just this week, President Trump
9:14
tweeted, quote, he who saves his country does not violate any
9:20
law. End of quote.
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Wow. In other words, Mr. Trump sees
9:29
himself, the president of the United States as above the law
9:34
and immune from the basic rules of the Constitution and the
9:38
separation of powers that have governed this country since the
9:43
founding. OK, anything I want to do, I'm
9:46
president. I can't do.
9:47
It doesn't matter what Congress says, doesn't matter what the
9:49
Constitution says. That doesn't matter with the
9:51
rule of law is about, hey, I'm the president.
9:53
I'm trying to save the country. I don't need to hear from
9:55
anybody else. That's not what Americans fought
9:59
and died to preserve. That's not what this country is
10:02
about. And with regard to the movement
10:05
toward authoritarianism, let me say a few words about an area
10:09
that I think has not gotten much attention at all, and that is
10:13
Trump's attack on the Free Press, which is protected by the
10:18
1st Amendment for the Constitution.
10:22
Founding fathers of this country considered freedom of speech and
10:26
Free Press to be enormously important.
10:29
That was the First Amendment. Mr. Trump has sued CBS and its
10:37
current company Paramount for $20 billion because he didn't
10:44
like how they edited an interview with Vice President
10:47
Kamala Harris. The company is now reportedly
10:52
considering settling the lawsuit.
10:54
And I certainly hope they do not do that out of fear of
10:58
retaliation from Trump's FCC. He did not like a television
11:05
program on CBS, while many of us don't like television programs
11:12
on CBS or NBC or Fox or ABC. But you don't sue somebody for
11:17
$20 billion because you didn't like the program.
11:23
And obviously, the intention of that lawsuit is clear, and that
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is that CBS and every other network and media outlook will
11:34
now have to look over their shoulder.
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Oh, my goodness, we're saying something critical of Donald
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Trump. Is he going to sue us for 5
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billion, for ten billion? Is he going to drive us out of
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business? Maybe we should not run that
11:47
program. Maybe we should not do that
11:50
investigative report. Not just CBS.
11:55
In recent times, he has sued ABC.
11:58
He has sued Mehta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.
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He has sued the Des Moines Register.
12:04
What crime did a little newspaper in Iowa make?
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What was their crime? They ran a poll which turned out
12:15
in retrospect to be inaccurate. So posters all over America, be
12:20
careful. There was a poll coming out
12:22
yesterday. I saw it that Trump's
12:24
unfavorables are going up. Hey, you may be sued.
12:28
Pull that pole. I mean, how absurd is that?
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And what kind of threat is it to freedom of speech and expression
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in this country? And Mr. President, when we talk
12:45
about the Trump administration's movement toward
12:49
authoritarianism, we should take note of another remarkable and
12:53
troubling set of events that happened just this weekend.
12:57
My colleague from Colorado spoke at length on that.
13:02
We saw the president of the United States openly aligning
13:06
himself with the dictator of Russia, dictator of Russia,
13:10
Vladimir Putin, to undermine the independence of Ukraine and
13:15
abandoned our closest democratic allies in Europe.
13:21
Trump made it clear that he sees one of the world's most brutal
13:26
dictators as his pal and our long time democratic allies as
13:33
his enemies. It appears that Mister Trump
13:38
wants a world that is safe for authoritarians and oligarchs,
13:44
but dangerous and unstable for democracies.
13:47
And when we talk about authoritarianism, we have got to
13:54
mention the growing phenomenon in this country of the Big Lie,
14:00
the Big Lie. Say something that is blatantly
14:05
untrue, repeat it over and over again, and then blast that lie
14:13
out on social media until people actually believe it.
14:18
And let me mention one are the very big lies that Trump said
14:27
recently regarding the war in Ukraine.
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Earlier this week, President said that Ukraine started the
14:36
war. Trump said that Ukraine started
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the war. Really.
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That is, as I hope every member of the Senate knows, an absolute
14:52
lie. Russia invaded Ukraine twice,
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first in 2014 and then again on February 24th, 2022.
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And on that date, February 24th, 2022, Putin's tanks and troops
15:12
rolled into Ukraine. And on that day, Russian
15:16
aircraft began bombing targets all over Ukraine.
15:21
Russia started the war, period. End of discussion.
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Trump is lying. Since Putin's invasion, over
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1,000,000 people have been killed or injured every single
15:35
day. Russia continues to rain down
15:38
hundreds of missiles and drones in Ukrainian cities.
15:42
Putin's forces have massacred civilians and kidnapped
15:45
thousands of Ukrainian children, bringing them back to Russian RE
15:49
education camps. These atrocities led the
15:53
International Criminal Court to issue an arrest warrant for
15:57
Vladimir Putin in 2023 as a war criminal.
16:04
Further, Trump called Ukrainian President Zelensky not Putin,
16:10
but Zelensky a a dictator. And that obviously is not true
16:15
either. Zelensky won 75% of the vote in
16:19
free elections and in the midst of a brutal war, Ukraine's
16:25
parliament continues to function and open.
16:27
An unfettered political debate takes place.
16:32
Trump recently claimed that our European allies have done little
16:35
to support Ukraine in its fight against Putin's invasion.
16:39
He said the US has contributed three times more than Europe,
16:44
but that is another lie. In fact, Europe has provided
16:46
more aid to Ukraine than the United States.
16:54
But it's not just that Trump is lying.
16:57
Again, that is not new. It's what this all reveals about
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where we want to take our country and where we want the
17:06
world to be moving. What direction Trump is cozying
17:10
up to Vladimir Putin. So who is Putin?
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And what kind of world does Putin want to build?
17:19
Putin is a dictator who crushed Russia's movement toward
17:24
democracy after the end of the Cold War Russia now holds sham
17:30
elections where Putin wins 90% of the vote, and authorities
17:37
there do not even try to hide their ballot stuffing.
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There is no freedom of speech or free media in Putin's Russia.
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Protests are violently suppressed. 10s of thousands of
17:49
people are in prison for protesting Putin's invasion of
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Ukraine. Political dissidents are
17:57
harassed or thrown into jail. The bravest people like Alexei
18:01
Navalny are killed outright. Hundreds of thousands of
18:06
Russians have fled Putin's Russia since his invasion of
18:11
Ukraine. That, Mr. President, is the
18:16
Russian leader that Donald Trump admires.
18:23
But Mr. President, my Republican colleagues know all of this.
18:31
And what is particularly disturbing to me, and I believe
18:36
the American people, is my colleagues.
18:38
My Republican colleagues understand and know that Trump
18:42
is lying. They know that Russia started
18:46
the war, not Ukraine. They know that Putin is a
18:50
dictator, not Zelensky, Zelensky.
18:55
But their silence has been overwhelming on this issue.
19:04
I cannot tell you how many times I have sat here on the floor and
19:10
I have listened to my Republican colleagues come to the Senate to
19:14
condemn Vladimir Putin and his brutal invasion of Ukraine.
19:19
And many of their remarks were right on the money.
19:22
They were perceptive, and they were right.
19:27
And my simple question to my Republican colleagues right now
19:33
is, where are you now? Last I heard, Mr. President,
19:42
this is still a democracy. Last I heard, we are still
19:49
allowed to disagree with the President of the United States,
19:55
even if he is a member of your own party.
19:59
Last I heard, we are allowed to call out the President when he
20:05
lies, blatantly lies, even if he is a member of our own party.
20:12
And what really bothers me is I know that many of my Republican
20:15
colleagues understand all of this, and I just want to give
20:21
you an example of what is going on right now.
20:26
Let me just quote a few of my Republican colleagues in
20:31
statements they have made since Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
20:37
These are Republican members of the United States Senate.
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And I'm not going to mention names right now.
20:42
Don't want to embarrass anybody, put anybody on the spot.
20:46
But these are quotes. One leading Republican said,
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quote, we must remember that the instigator of this war was
20:56
Russia. It was President Putin who
20:59
launched an unprovoked attack on Ukraine, end of quote.
21:03
And that Republican colleague was obviously right, another
21:08
Republican said, I quote, I think Vladimir Putin started the
21:12
war. I also believe through bitter
21:15
experience that Vladimir Putin is a gangster.
21:20
That's a Republican colleague. A third Republican colleague
21:24
said, quote, there is no equivalency between Vladimir
21:28
Putin and President Zelensky. President Putin is evil and he
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has to be stopped. End Quote.
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Fourth Republican, and this is just a few of the quotes.
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I could probably come up with dozens of quotes.
21:43
Fourth Republican said when the war began, quote, today's
21:49
invasion of Ukraine by Russia is a premeditated and flagrant act
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of law. Putin has violated the border of
21:58
a sovereign country. And that senator later said
22:03
anyone who is surprised by Putin's deadly attack on a
22:06
sovereign nation has not been paying attention.
22:09
These are the actions of a madman, end of quote.
22:14
And just recently, that very same senator said, quote, Putin
22:17
is not going to stop with Ukraine.
22:19
If we abandoned Ukraine and throw in the towel as some would
22:22
like us to do, that is going to drastically change how people
22:26
view the United States and how people rely on the United
22:30
States. And there will be major
22:31
consequences. End of 4th.
22:34
And a fifth Republican, fifth Republican colleague here in the
22:38
Senate called Putin a, quote, UN quote, thug and compared him to
22:42
Hitler. He said, quote, Vladimir Putin
22:45
is not a legitimate leader. He is a war criminal that needs
22:49
to be dealt with, end of quote. That is what my Republican
22:55
colleagues have said time and time again.
22:59
And the question is now, do you have the courage to continue
23:04
telling the truth when the president of the United States
23:08
is lying? This is an extraordinarily
23:12
pivotal moment in American history, and all of us must have
23:17
the courage to stand up for truth, to stand up for
23:22
democracy, to oppose authoritarianism.
23:26
This is the moment. Thank you, Mr. President.
23:29
I yield the floor. Hey, thank you so much for
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listening today. I really do appreciate your
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