This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to here's the thing. In his first political race for US Senate in nineteen seventy two, a horn rimmed, disheveled young socialist named Bernie Sanders lost badly, getting only two percent of the vote. In one he had his first electoral victory by just barely becoming mayor of Burlington, Vermont, by ten votes. By two thousand six, he was a popular congressman and easily won the national Senate seat he had chased decades before.
And while he lost the Democratic Party nomination last year, Bernie Sanders has become someone with real influence in the party. His new book, Bernie Sanders Guide to Political Revolution, gives others the tools to make change as well. In her new book, Hillary Clinton wrote that Sanders quote didn't get into the race to make sure a Democrat won the White House. He got in to disrupt the Democratic Party.
It's an assessment Bernie Sanders agrees with. I thought that it was absolutely imperative that the country needed to hear from somebody who was more progressive than Hillary Clinton. Uh. There are ideas that absolutely needed to get out there. Uh, and that would not have gotten out there if a progressive was not in the race. But I guess on a more personal level, do you stare down at this black diamond ski run and say, I'm do I have the emergy? Well? What fears did you have? You see,
we started in a different position. We started I think the first polls had us at three or four or five. So it wasn't like we were in this race and you know, we're forty percent and we were close to winning it. So for us, what the campaign was about was the first of all, formulate the positions that we
believed in strongly. And many of those positions, by the way, today are more or less mainstream, but they weren't when we began a campaign for fifteen dollar and now, in minimum age, a trillion dollars to rebuild a crumbling infrastructure. I'm just a few years ago I proposed a trillion. People said, oh my god, that's much too much. Four hundred billion is about all that we could afoid. Now even Trump talks about a trillion dollars to rebuild our infrastructure,
and you do, no fears, no doubts. I mean, I'm sure you must have had I believe what I believe and I believe the country has got to move in a much more progressive agenda. I think we have to deal with the horrific levels of income and wealth inequality. We have to deal with the corrupt political system in which billionaires are able to buy elections. We have to address the issue of climate change and transformer energy system. These are issues that I've been talking about for a
very very long time. These are issues that I think the majority of the American people believe in. And what motivated me was simply to go out and say, look, this is the reality facing America. We can't continue to have a situation with so few have so much and so many have so little. We can't continue a political system where the Cooch brothers alone are able to spend hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars to by elections.
That's not what this country it's supposed to be about. Well, those were my ideas, but what was interesting is how quickly it became apparent that millions and millions of people shared those ideas, that people wanted to think outside of the box, that they were prepared to look at more progressive solutions than what Democrats and Republicans have been bringing food and um, do you ever ask yourself if Hillary is likely the winner, do you think she's probably gonna win? So?
How do I influence her to express the opinions I want? I don't need to run if I can get her to do some But the only way, the only way you can do that is when people themselves respond to specific ideas. All right, What we found during the campaign, for example, just one example, is that the idea that the United States of America remains the only major country on Earth not to guarantee healthcare to all people. Okay, I livety miles away from Canada, they do it. As
you know, throughout Europe, healthcare is a right. And on top of that, in this country we end up spending almost twice as much per capital. It's not like we're saving money. We're spending a fortune on healthcare per person. We pay by far the highest prices of the world for prescription drugs. Question, why aren't we doing what every other major country on Earth is noting? What do you think we're not? Well, Obviously it has to do with the power of the insurance companies and the drug companies
and the whole medical industrial complex. They are enormously powerful. Then the doctors themselves. Doctors are powerful too, but the insurance companies and the drug companies have far more powerful. And what you find is that the drug companies have spent hundreds of billions of dollars in lobbying in can paying contributions to make certain that there is no law on the books to prevent the drug company for doubling or tripling the price that you pay for medicine today.
And the result of that is we pay far more than the people of any other country. So when you raise these issues during your campaign, you know what people saw nodding their heads and they say, yeah, that's ridiculous, that's absurd. We should not be paying the highest prices of the world. Drug companies have got to be regulated in one form or another. So the drug companies are saying, no government regulation of the pricing of our of our products.
We were we were afraid that that would be and likely would be a component of a universal healthcare Canadian style health care. Here. What about the insurance companies they want? If what is the function of an insurance company, it's not to provide quality care across the effect the ways to make as much money, as course they possibly can. And UM, you know what I think makes sense to me is we have right now a fairly popular, successful
program called Medicare. It works pretty well for people sixty five years of age rol why not expand it to everybody? To Medicare will become a universal health exactly now, UM, aside from the cries of the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, what are things that that actually happened that transpired as a result of universal healthcare and Canada that the medical profession warned about here, meaning, what's something you see happening
they that that didn't go well. No system on earth is a perfect and the Canadians will be the first to tell you their system is not perfect. But pole after poll shows that there is enormous pride in Canada with their system. Of course, very few of those people and Canadians want to come to the American system. They have problems for non emergency type services for certain types of surgeries, knee replacements and so forth. They're waiting time
so longer than they are comfortable with. On the other hand, if you need to see a doctor, you can get to a doctor pretty quickly. And sometimes when we talk about the Nadian system. We forget, you know, let me tell you something. If you think that most Americans haven call the doctor's office today and walk in in a few hours, you are mistaken. There are waiting lines in this country as well. So the good news is we
can learn a lot from the Canadians. We can learn a lot from other countries around the world, all of them who have been doing universal healthcare for many decades. I want to ask you about growing up. You grew up in Brooklyn and your father what did he do for a living? He was a pain salesman, he was. Do you have any siblings. Ye? I got an older brother who lives in Oxford, England. And what did he do? It's fair living. He was a social worker in England.
He was a social work in England and he left to move to England many years ago. He's been over there for many, many years ago. And just the two of you, Yes, And what did your mom do? She was she was housewife. Right. Who do you think had a greater influence on you or do they have an equivalent to influence on you in terms of your politics? Of your parents or your grandparents for that matter. Well, Mike Paul politics. I think developed from the fact that
we lived in a rent control department in Brooklyn. It's a small, three and a half room apartment. My father worked very hard, and he had a steady job his entire life. He worked for one company, Keystone Paint and Varnish Company. But you haven't made a lot of money. And so the fact that we did not have the money to do the things that my mother wanted us to do, rather modest things, impacted my life. It's a
modest thing your mother wanted you to do. While she always wanted to own her own home, small home never happened. So her dream was someday she would own her own home, and she didn't. So we lived in a rent control department for our entire lives. Is growing up and when she died young, and she never ended up owning her own home. Uh, you know, vacations we didn't do much of. You know, it's not that we were poor, we were lower middle class. But money was always an obstacle in
a problem. And what I learned at that age was that that problem, that reality exists for people all across this country. And the idea of trying to figure out how we can improve lives working people is something that I expect settled into my brain when I was a very young kid. So is it safe to say you don't want people to be given certain things in this world? But what you want people to not have to spend too much money on other necessities so they can have
some money liberated to do other things. And I wouldn't tell me how you would phrase it. I would say, that's progressive ism to you? Is that? You know Franklin Dillon or Roosevelt, in a not widely remembered speech I think it was nineteen forty four, in his State of the Union speech a year before he died, he said, you know, in so many words on paraphrasing, you know, we have a constitution, which is great. We have a bill of rights, guarantees you the right freedom of speech,
freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, etcetera. At such all those enormously important rights. Doesn't guarante you the right to help care, doesn't guarantee you the right to at least have a job that pays you a living wage. And what he was talking about was the need to broaden our understanding of what human rights are from beyond political rights. A freedom of speech, freedom of religion, to economic rights.
So when I talk about the right of all people that have healthcare, I believe that is a human right. The right of people not to live in abysmal poverty, I think that's a human right when we live in the richest country in the history of the world. So the goal then is to create an economy that works for all of our people, not the kind of economy we have today that works very very successfully for the one percent and creates enormous levels of income and wealth disparity.
My father, who was a political science teacher were the end of the taught American government economics in the public high school on Long Island. He would say to me that that essentially his distillation of the Reagan years was Reagan would say, you know, your taxes are so high you might not be able to have a swimming pool at your house. And if you there's things you want to buy, and it's your business what you want to buy, it's your business what you want to do with them.
And so we need to cut making sure of the kids in the Inn city have clean needles and condoms. He's saying, well, this euphemistically, I mean there's things that the government is paying for that we shouldn't be paying for because that's preventing you from buying things you want to buy. And what Reagan wanted to say to people was don't feel bad about that. You want to deliberate them on on an emotional level, these people aren't gonna get taken care of and that's okay. We weren't meant
to pay for that. Well that that ideology. I mean, you thought Reagan was conservative. Where the Republican Party is now the spot at the right of where Reagan was
incredibly enough. And as I said before, this is what the Koch brothers believe, and this is the ideology that people like Coaul Ryan and many others now Except what they say is, look, every person is an island unto them selves, all right, And if you can go out and make a whole lot of money, you're gonna have great health care, your kid's gonna have a great opportunity to go to college. You know, live in an ice house. But if you are eighty years of age and you
don't have much money, I'm sorry. It is not the obligation of the government to have a program like Medicare to take care of you if you're a worker. And this is true, this is what some of these guys actually believe. And unemployment is high in the region. And I can hire you for three bucks an hour or four bucks an hour. We don't want the government mandating a minimum wage. You're gonna work for me. That's your choice. And if you the choices between going hungary, you're working
for three or four bucks. Now I offer you as a wage of what I think is profitable for my company to you take it or leave it. But you should not be guaranteed. We should the government should not be in the business of retirement security, i e. Social security. So if you look at the if you look at the Koch Brothers agenda, their go long term not tomorrow, is to abolish social security, man a cam Medicaid, federal laity to education, and you're seeing Trump moving in those directions.
So you got Betsy Divoce who is now a Secretary of Education does not believe in public education. In the House right now, there is legislation that came out of the relevant Committee which would make move a social security toward a private type system. So all of that ideology is now what pervades the Republican Ombudian. That's where they
want to go. Now, when you say that Divocet doesn't believe in public education, you mean she doesn't believe in it in the way you believe in it, or she literally doesn't believe in public Generally speaking, I think it's fair to say that her belief is that we should move towards abolishing public education, privatizing schooling, privatizing the school, that's the whole thing, Privatizing infrastructure, privatizing social security, privatizing
the via, privatizing the prisons, privatizing the postal service. Every one of these issues is being addressed and went forward by the Republicans. Um in your progress of vision, at what point do we decide how much money people can make? Many We're going to tax people to take their money from them, to build housing for everybody, to provide medical care for everybody, to provide free education for everybody, all of which I'm in favor of. I mean, I would
like to see the poor taken care of. I think we at what point do we do we worry about its impact on the overall America. First of all, I wouldn't use the word quote unquote taking care of the poor. I think what you want to do is create opportunities for low income people. It means provide excellent childcare, public education, the opportunity to go to college, job training, so that
people are not poor. Now, there are some people who are not going to work, people with severe disabilities, and we have a moral responsibility to take care of them, to take care of senior citizens. But I would hope that the goal is to move towards the ending of poverty and getting lower income people into the economy so they can earn their own way. UH. I happen to believe that what we have right now UH is an
obscenity in terms of distribution of wealth and income. We now have the top one tenth of one percent owning almost as much wealth as the bottom. In the last forty years, we have seen a massive transfer of wealth. I'm talking about trillions of dollars going from the pockets of the middle class into the top one percent and
in the top one tenth of one percent. And I think what we have got to say is, of course they're going to be richer people, and of course they're going to be poorer people, but that level of wealth inequality, and in terms of scare us, we should scare us, should scare us. In terms of income, you know, you go around the country, You've got mom work and dad working, the kids are working. But fifty two percent of all new income in recent years is going to the top
one percent. So you've got a great economy for the people on top, But the middle class for decades has been shrinking. People are working long rous for low wages. Yeah, we got to deal with that. And yes, I believe in progressive taxation. Yeah, I believe that if you're making millions of dollars a year, you're gonna have to pay a higher percentage of your income in taxes than somebody in the middle class. You know, that's what a nation is about. And one of the things that I worry
about very much is the level of greed. You know that we now see you see people making billions and billions and billions of dollars, and they say that's not enough. I need more tax breaks, and I want you to cut education, and I want you to cut Medicaid, and I want you to cut programs for lower income people because I need more tax breaks. Because you know, five billion that I have is not enough. We've got to deal with that whole issue of greed. What we do
want is an entrepreneurial society. We want people to be able to invest in new products, new businesses. And that's great, but at the end of the day, we cannot be a nation in which a tiny percentage of people has unbelievable wealth while so many other people are start gaining. Let me tell you this, this is not just an American issue. Right now. In this planet on Earth, the six wealthiest people on this planet have more wealth in the bottom half of the world's population two point seven.
It is crazy. It is crazy, and we got to deal with that. What would be a tax policy you would have sought. You want to raise the highest rate to what during Eisenhower's period, I think the higher syncome taxes something like that for the very, very very wealthy. And these are marginal rates. I mean that means at the very top, that's what you're gonna be paying. Uh. But also you have a situation where there are a
lot of very profitable, large corporations. A general electric being one who in a giving year could make billions of dollars is making billions of dollars not paying a nickel and federal income tax. How is that possible? Because you stash your profits in the Cayman Islands and other tax savings. Whither, you're either you're an American company that benefits from being an American company or not. You want all that, you want all the benefits and other responsibilities. Yeah, well you
out of quoting from my speeches here. Yeah, I mean that is I may do that from time to time. But you know, that is the issue. And it's certainly not just General Electric. Many of these companies. There's a funny thing that was responsible for that. One administration was responsible for that variety Republican and Democrat, but it is um there's a building in the Cayman Islands. This is really funny, and we got a picture of it. One building.
I think it's a fourth story building, the Nomity Corporate Corporations. It houses something like eighteen thousand. You know, it's sold just like postal address for a corporation, their headquarters. Yeah, it's up above Duncan Donuts there. Now, I'm not that interested in the race and the campaign and the and
the warfare analogies and so forth. But well, I'll just open with this illustration, which is I lived in an apartment building on Central Park West, and I was walking out of my building and I was walking then Senator Barack Obama, who was campaigning for the nomination, and Uh, I said high to him as I was passing him, and I walked out and thought, I think I met it under my breath, good luck to you, pal. You
know she's gonna kick your ass. Her and the husband, in their whole network, which I've met these people over him, I've always felt, you know what I mean, It's always like you always feel the weight and the heft of the Clinton machine when you're around them and their friends and associates. They're so networked. And then of course he makes history and he wins the nomination. Then he beats the Vietnam War hero in the race. Unbelievable. What were
the early vulnerabilities of Hillary Clinton's that you said? What wasn't even a vulnerability? We were. This is who we ended up taking on. We ended up taking on virtually all of the money class. Uh. We ended up taking on every Democratic governor in America. We took on all the United States senators Democratic senators except for one, Jeff Merkley of Oregon ends make almost little Democratic members of
the House, almost little Democratic mayors. So we took on the entire democratic establishment, all of virtually all of the super delegates. That's what we were up against. But one of the things that we understood from day one is that it was important for us not to develop a superpack that we were. We said to the people, look, um, we're not going out the billionaires. We don't have a superpack.
When people can contribute a hundred thousand bucks, no pack, right, no pack, and we end up is is now well known, getting millions of contributors uh contributions averaging twenty seven dollars a piece, and that was historical. See and what it showed. It showed a couple of things. It showed that if you stood up and were prepared to fight for working people,
working people would contribute to your campaigns. There was a study of the people who contributed to my campaign done by I think was the l A Times, and it kind of almost moved me. It was hard to read about the number of low income people, people who really did not have a lot of money, who flipped in ten bucks at went bucks. They gave what they can and during the cost of the campaign, with one vague exception, it really wasn't. In that case. I never did a
high dollar fundraise. I never went to a rich person's house. And we had all these folks there, you know, the degree that we did fundraises, they were, you know, fifty bucks and you're in a hundred bucks and you're in who was the man or a woman or even just give us one name of someone. They might have been part of a group who helped build out that financing
strategy for you, who was responsible? I'll tell you what happened. Uh, And we stumbled on this and and um, we raised the vast majority of our money online, and we used the group called Revolution Messaging and a guy named they have a lot of good folks there and wells one guy named Tim T. Garris who worked very closely with us. And uh, Tim, you know, did it extraordinarily good job. And it turned out what we learned and it blew our minds. I think in the first couple of days,
we're his six million dollars. You know, wow, who could have believed that, you know? And we ended up raising several hundred million dollars. Point is that people are disgusted with the status quo. They are disgusted with the establishment. They want real and profound change. And it turns out to everybody's surprised. Yeah, they're willing to put or fifty bucks into a campaign, uh that seeks to transform the
United States of America. The only reason I asked that question about an individual name of a man or woman is because in my mind, they obviously deserve to take a huge bow that that that energy exists on the other side of the aisle as well for people who sit there and say, God, how do we get here? You know, well, let me let me back it up a little bit to the democracy in America today is under siege and we should be very clear about that.
As a result of this disastrous Supreme Court decision on citizens, you know, you're life to Foard decision. Billionaires, large corporations are now able to spend as much money as they want on a political limitless, limitless, and they're doing it. You know, they are spending a handful of billionaires of spending just unbelieva by the Cokes and the Mercer's exactly are exactly so to my mind, and what it is,
it's not only the thing are buying elections. Then the other side, the good guys, so to speak, have to spend an enormous amount of money. You have to play the same game raising money. You would not believe how much time. I'm well aware. Okay, you probably get hit up every day. This is my major issue campaign financial Okay, all right? And it should be because it's on the nin of everything exactly. It's the good lynchpin of everything. You're right. I worked for many many years up in Maine.
I was involved in the main theme campaign thing twenty years ago, got involved in the nine Sundays program, Marvin cal But the Shorenstein Center, and and then the thing that we all came to was was that we don't need ceilings on spending. We need floors. We need to say that if there's media saturation for a statewide campaign, is media saturation is let's say, thirty five million dollars.
If you've got thirty five million dollars, you can reach everybody with your message and people can spend more than you. We've gotta make sure that you have at least thirty five million. We have to floors, not ceilings. What do you think about that? I think there are a number of ways to skin the cut. The position that I feel comfortable with this is to say, you want to run against me, You go out, you show that there's a level of support for your candidacy. You've got you
raise five but ten dollar contributions from X number of people. Uh, and then for every dollar more you raise, uh, the government will put in five dollars. There was a matching matching um because I would The other thing I learned at that time we should took about the corporate media
and their role in this whole thing. Uh that you know, the number one or I shouldn't say the number one, but among the top enemies and among the top obstacles to this campaign, findistery from is the National Association of Broadcasters. They're shoving as much money in their pockets with these politic lands that they possibly can. During those cycles, Uh, Citizens United was a real boom from them. Horrible. Ye, you're right. We're not going to move towards medicare for all.
We're not going to deal with education, we're not gonna deal with infrastructure, and certainly not deal with climate change unless we've got to handle foreign for foreign pit So what you got on that issue. It is clear that Citizens United has to be overturned, and we need to move towards public funding of elections so that billionaires cannot dictate public policy. The Koch Brothers invite Republican candidates who
will line up. They just line up, Sheldon Addle system Nov They line up, what can I do for you? Mr Coke? And that's why the Republican Party is to a large degree where it is today. So campaign finance reform, moving to public funding of elections is to me enormously important. Some of the money spent on campaigns today is used for political sultan's like Ed Rollins. He's the person that gets the dirt on opponents as well as on the
candidate that hired him. The first thing I do is I sit down and I say pretend I'm your priest. You confess all your confess all your sens. I've heard it all. You know, I don't care. They always lie and when then it does come out, they go, you know, I never thought that was gonna happen. Take a listen to Ed Rollins Life in the Muck of Politics on Here's the thing dot Org. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to. Here's the thing. Bernie Sanders is a distant
cousin of comedian Larry David. Hello, I'm not the Hello. Let's let's do that. They both grew up in Brooklyn, and David said during the campaign he would watch Sanders and repeat everything he said. What David recognized the dialect, and he knew he could quote talk like that, so he did on Saturday Night Live. I'm the only candidate up here was not a billionaire. I don't have a super pack. I don't even have a backpack. I carry my stuff around loose in my arms like a you know,
between classes. This abrasive, rumpled outsider has become an unlikely leader for the left, especially after Hillary Clinton's defeat last November. You know it, um, the Democrats in Vermont have there. You know, they like every other state, people go to go to go to a hotel and I gather and they celebrate their victories and and for the first time in many years, I didn't go, which I think people noticed,
but I just was not inclined. You know, we had won some good victories and Vermont young Man one for Lieutenant governor was very progressive, but I was in no mood to celebrate. It was. It was quite a depressing night. What do you think you did wrong? I don't want you know, I'm asked that question a million times, and I don't campaign. But I think here's what the facts are, all right. The Democratic Party in general is in trouble
and has been in trouble for for a long time. Uh. In the last nine years or so, Democrats have lost not just the White House and the Senate, in the House in Washington's right. In fact, that like twenty five states in Americans with the Democratic Party is in some cases non existent. And I visited those states were extremely weak. UM, and these are some of the poorest states in the United States. When I see what she did wrong, what I'm trying to interject is that is it forget about
what she did wrong? Was she handed the bill for that where she handed the bill for a week enervated, unimaginative Democratic Party. I think that the problem is over the years, UM, money has played a you know, we talked about campaign funding, and money has had a very significant influence on the Democratic body. So I think, you know, if you look back to the years of FDR or even Harry Truman. And you go to a person on the street and you say, which is the party of
the working class in America? Everybody knew it, right, it was the Democratic Party. You go outside today and you say, what is the party of the of the working class of remic. Well, maybe, but no one believes that the Democrats. Maybe all right, but it's certainly you know, yeah, yeah so. Uh. And what had happened is I think the Democrats became a party of the upper middle class on the West coast,
on the East coast here in New York City. Uh, And they forgot and they forgot that while the economy under Obama actually did improve certainly from where he took over after the Wolf Street debacle, Um, the truth was and is that millions and millions of people are struggling today to put food on the table. That people have seen the jobs they work in, two jobs, they're working
three jobs. They're worried to death about their kids, who were, in all likelihood will have for the first time in modern history, a lowest stand up living than their parents. They can't afford healthcare where they can't afford college, they can't afford childcare, they can't afford housing, that is the reality that the Democrats kind of forgot about, kind of forgot about. And Trump comes there, who's a phony from day one? And Trump comes there, he says, I'm hearing you.
I understand that your job went to Mexico, your job went to China. I understand that Wall Street has enormous power. I understand that the drug companies are charging you very very high prices. And the champion of the powerless, I am the champion, I mean, one of the great you know, absurdities of all time. And of course he was lying
through his teeth. And we've seen that in the first seven months of his presidency that virtually all of his policies have geared toward the billionaire class, and he's turned his back big time on working families, etcetera, etcetera. But he understood something that many Democrats did not, and that is that the global economy has worked very well for some people, but a whole lot of people have been displaced and hurt and ignored. No one even knew that
they are alive. Turn onto damn television. No one is talking about that guy who's working two or three jobs, media and family income. The average mail worker today is earning less than real dollars than he did forty years. Do you think they're not talking about that in mainstream media or even cable. Well, that's a whole other story. I mean, you know, media, what media you think treated
you fairly? We did not do well with the corporate media, and I will say that in The New York Times was terrible, Washington Post was bad, Wall Street Journal, ABC almost that were in the last chapter of a book. Let me do an advertisement here. Okay, I wrote a book. You can do whatever you want. It's called Our Revolution. That's what the book is. Last chapter deals with media and the major critique. It's not me moaning and groaning. You know, I'm not Downdra. All of the media has
hates me and all that stuff. That's not the case. What media largely does, uh is ignore the most important issues facing this country. They're not. Increasingly. What they are into is what I would call political gossip. There are studies out there that will tell you that. On television, for example, an enormous amount of time talked about Donald Trump's personal life, Hillary Clinton and our emails, Hillary Clinton and the Clinton all of that crap. That doesn't mean
anything to anybody in America? Well, what about that family where they can't afford to send their kids to college? How much time do you think you're spending on television? What about healthcare? Have you I'm asking you a question. You watch DV? Have you seen one program on the major networks talking about the healthcare system that exists in countries around the world compared to the United States, only Canada.
They referenced Canada. But don't you think comprehensive. Don't you think it might be a good idea for the news media to get around Go to the UK, look at their system, Go to Denmark, look at their system, Go to Canada. You don't see that? What about income in wealth inequality? Do you see outrage in the media and say, what are we going to do about incoming wealth inequality?
I was amazed that there was a study done on media coverage of the campaign, and it turns out that on the Sunday news shows it ended up that I ended up talking about poverty, using the word poverty more I think almost than everybody else combined, and I didn't use it a whole lot. How often do we talk about poverty? Forty three million people are living in poverty in this country. You hear a much of discussion, why
is that? What are we gonna do about that? Only once the Bachelor goes off the air, you know, we have to watch the Bachelor. In fact, it's going all right. So the point is, you know, Medior is interested in a lot of personal stuff, a lot of political gossip in my view, and they are not talking about the real issues facing the emerkmen. So if you're out there and you're in Kansas or in your West Virginia and you're working two or three jobs and you're saying, who
the hell cares about me? Who really worries that my kid? I'll have a guy. I will race this man who's a billionaire, maybe not to the tune that he claims he is, but I'll embrace this guy that's this vulgar, you know, uncurious, all these many un qualified in every sense, I mean, unfit to serve on a mentally, I believe. But I'm going to embrace this guy because at least he's pretending he wants to understand me. He's gonna pretend.
Give me somebody who pretend over somebody who isn't even here, because I think you made a good point at least. This is when I'm gleaning from what you said. Maybe you didn't make this point, which is that Hillary Clinton stood up there and she's the standard bear for a flabby, tired, unimaginative, out of touch Democratic Party. Well, I'll get in trouble if I say that, right A, right she Okay, she she gets shot down, or she runs out of gas
or whatever you went metaphor you want to use. Because she represents this group that the people just don't have the same feelings about that they did thirty and forty years ago. This is not complicated stuff. You got a dress. The people who are hurting right now, incredible pain in this country, incredible pain. You know, this opioid epidemic and the herowin epidemic that we're experienced is cold by the doctors and scientists who studied a disease of despair. You
know what that means, all right? It means you go to West Virginia. You go to communities that I have in West Virginia, unemployment, sky high wages, Pathetic people have given up on life, and they're turning to drugs, are turning to alcohol, are turning to suicide, soul sickness. Uh. Two last quick things. One is, uh, when you were in college, you went to you started out at Brooklyn College and definish of the University of Chicago. What'd you
get a degree in political science and political science? Did you go to law school? No law school for you. And when you were there you I read this quote where you said that, uh, you told the l A Times in Chicago, you began to understand the futility of liberalism. Liberalism as opposed we've been talking about today. I happen to believe in the politics which is based on the needs and the energy of working people and not just
a liberal elite. And um, I think the goal, and you know, just written a book which has this mission in mind, and we have some success already, is to involve more and more people in the political process. In the UK, as you know, they had an election a couple of months ago, seventy of the people voted. We had a presidential election, seven voted. Off election midterm elections thirties seven voted. That's terrible. Our job is to bring
working people, young people into the political process. If we can raise the voter turnout in the presidential election from six the entire world changes, and it changes for Congress as well Europe for re election next year, and then beyond that, do you see uh even a possibility that you would want to seek not even the same officering? And would you ever consider for vice president if you believe you could be in a team with you can be on a ticket with somebody that was very likely
to win. A taste for it? Now much too early? Do you think you've got the energy for it? I feel fine, Thank god, I'm not blessed with good health. Right. What did you think about Larry David's impersonation of you when I was with him on SNL. You did it better than me. That was probably the funniest line I heard in all the ESNL we did. I did the Trump thing and all the crazy stick that they've had me do, which has been not a lot of fun,
I must say, having the Channel Trump. But my favorite was with you and Larry said, my opponent has four pairs of underwear. I have only two pairs of underwear. I washed them out in my sink in my hotel room and put them on the radio at night. You know pretty well, I know him very well. Yeah, he's brilliant. Yeah, but you have you enjoyed all that or do you think this kind of mockery because I'm very interested. It's not helping, No, it's uh no, I thought Larry did
a great job. But are we were in terms of Trump? You think that we're kind of making him a little too cuddly and a little too funny, and we're taking people's mind off something with that. But we have to focus on on on Trump is what he is doing, you know, you know we every day he says something that it's absurd, But you know, think about this is a guy who told the American people he was going to provide good health care for quote unquote everybody. Remember
that he supported throwing thirty two million people off health insurance. Uh. You know this is a guy who you know, made all kinds of promises to working people. Uh, and he has turned his back completely on that. It's the old line that happened during Buckley Valleo when someone said they said cash is speech, and an opponent of that decision said, will have cash his speech? The guy with the most cash speaks loudest, taking that idea that speech is money.
What hapmes if you don't have any money? I mean, that's right. So I think what we you know, all of us believe in free speech. It's one of the important elements of our constitution. But I believe in democracy, and I believe in the right of all people that have the ability to influence the political process, not just a billionaires. Well, I really have not been much involved in the political process terms of fundraising these for the
last eight years. I did full victim to that thing where when Obama won his second term, like I said, like, we're good, this is my guy in there for a second term, and you can really get some things done. But I must say, I hope you're proud of what you did. What you have accomplished is an amazing thing. You know, accomplished an amazing thing. I mean, if it was so close, you really had a shot, it was
almost there. Well, what I am most proud of is that we have brought millions of people into the political process. When I said earlier, ideas that seemed far out and crazy, like medicare for all of making public colleges and universities tuition free, that kind of mainstream ideas now because people are talking about them, they're saying, why not Senator sanders new book, Bernie Sanders Guide to Political Revolution is just out. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing