AMY GOODMAN: What was it you did that was so newsworthy?
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: And it wasn't much better on NBC or CBS, all right. And that's just the simple truth. And there are a couple of points. I think--Amy, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the guy who's head of CNN said, "Hey, Trump has been fantastic for us." I mean, literally said that. "We're making huge profits from Trump." And the point to be made is, we had the misfortune of actually trying to talk about the problems facing America and providing real solutions. Trump was tweeting out about how ugly or horrible or disgusting or terrible his opponents were, in really ugly terms. Perfect for the media. That is a great 12-second sound bite. But to talk about why the middle class is in decline or why we have massive levels of income and wealth inequality can't be done in 12 seconds. And second of all, it's not something that they are, frankly, terribly interested in.
AMY GOODMAN: It was Les Moonves, who is head of CBS, who said, "It may not be good for America, but it's good for us."
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: CBS?
AMY GOODMAN: CBS.
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: Yeah, I think a guy at CNN said something similar, because if you say outrageous things, this is what CNN lives for. That's what they live for. And then they got to have somebody else: "Did you hear what he said? Oh, my god, it's terrible." And they go on and on. And that's--that is coverage. Here is something. During the primary campaign, somebody--I think it was the Shorenstein school of media at Harvard, just over there. They studied the kind of coverage, and they said that something like 90 percent of media coverage during the primary--and I don't think they got any better during the general--was all on this kind of stuff, gossip; 10 percent on issues.
AMY GOODMAN: Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. He's now in the Democratic leadership of the Senate, though he's an independent socialist. We'll return to our conversation with him after a short break.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. In this Democracy Now! special, we're spending the hour with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. I interviewed him before a live audience at the Free Library of Philadelphia in late November. I asked him about the standoff at Standing Rock in North Dakota. I asked him about the Dakota Access pipeline and why he supports the Native water protectors, who have led the resistance against the $3.8 billion project.
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: Number one, we're dealing with sovereignty rights for Native American people, an invasion of their own property, in violation of treaty rights, which is an endemic problem in this country. Number two, you're talking about an area where, if the pipe bursts, water, clean water that goes to millions of people in that region, could be severely impacted, at a time when we're all concerned about the amount of clean water that we have. And thirdly, and most importantly perhaps, you're talking about whether or not we should be in any way supporting a pipeline which is piping in filthy oil at a time when we need to transform our energy system away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency and sustainable energy. So those are the three issues there.
I think what we have done is, number one, demanded that the president do what he did with Keystone. A lot of people put a lot of pressure on the president, and he finally did the right thing. And that is to kill the Keystone pipeline, which, by the way, under a Trump may be reopened again. But that is what he should be doing. And certainly, the demand must go to the North Dakota authorities that the kind of military presence that exists there is simply not what is acceptable. So, we have written to the president. We are going to continue to put pressure on the president to do everything he can to protect the Native Americans in the area and the protesters in the area.
AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you about that famous moment in one of the debates with Hillary Clinton where you said you didn't care about the damn emails. Do you feel the same way today?
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: What I said--and sometimes it got taken out of context--is that there was an investigation going on and that I wanted to spend--that history, 10 years from now, trust me, no one will remember these damn emails. What they will worry about is people not having healthcare. They'll worry about climate change. They'll worry about poverty. They'll worry about infrastructure. And my point was--and the media often doesn't play that whole statement--I said, you know, "I'm sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails, because that's what the whole campaign is about. Why don't we talk about, A, the collapse of the middle class, income and wealth inequality, healthcare, education, how we move the country forward?" And that was the thrust of my point. It is not my style--and sometimes, amazingly enough, I get criticized for it--for running, you know, ugly and negative ads. I prefer to stay on the important issues facing the American people. There are other areas we could have gone, as well, that Trump went into, that we chose not to do it, because I think, in my own state, I can tell you that people do want to hear a serious discussion on serious issues. That's what we tried to do.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, let me tell you the reason I ask this now. This issue that was hijacked by the right-wing media and Trump himself, but the issue of the secretary of state setting up this private email server, and she has her husband, who's the former president and running a multibillion-dollar foundation, meeting with heads of state, as well, and yet they don't have accountability here--what this means not only for them, but if this becomes a model, for example, for President Trump. He runs a vast business empire.
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: Absolutely.
AMY GOODMAN: He is the top government official. If he decides to set up his own private email server and decides that he can disappear tens of thousands of email, there won't be a government record of what is actually going on.
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