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Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has said that Donald Trump’s electoral success lies in acknowledging “the system is broken” in America. The left-wing politician appeared on Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show last night to cheers and applause, while the audience chanted his name. Sanders has been a vocal critic of the president throughout Trump’s first and second administrations. But now the left-wing firebrand is urging his party to acknowledge the same truths that Trump has become adept at exploiting. “Donald Trump, he may be crazy, he may be a pathological liar, but he’s not stupid,” Sanders said. “The message that he gives off is: ‘The system is broken and only I can fix it.’ “The truth is: The system is broken. He is making it worse, but the Democrats have got to acknowledge that the system is broken.” The veteran senator went on to say that the Democratic Party needs to acknowledge the “bloody reality” of how powerful Trump is becoming and how he has been able to drag the country so far into line with his policies. “So when you see Donald Trump go to them and say, ‘You’re giving me ten percent of your company if we’re helping you out? Or, we’re going to do that, but here’s the thing: you’re not going to charge these people anymore? Does that change the calculus now for Democrats to govern with more balls?” Stewart asked. “I think it does. They’ve seen a boldness in Trump using his power in a way we’ve never seen before,” Sanders replied. He also claimed that the current campaign donation system, which allows wealthy donors to give unlimited amounts through Super PACs, is broken, too. Sanders alleged that this makes parties reliant on wealthy backers and not on voters. “Do you go with the money is, where the billionaires are, where the Super PACs are, and kind of do what these guys want?” he said. “Or do you go where the working class, where the middle class are, and those are people who are hurting?” Sanders has been touring the country alongside Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez under the banner “Fight Oligarchy,” where the pair have voiced support for progressive causes such as free healthcare and free higher education in the United States. During his appearance, Sanders repeated some of the main talking points of his tour by suggesting that higher taxes on the super-rich could fund better public services in America. The system he proposed is similar to those employed in Europe. “You’ve got to finally say to the oligarchs - who have never, ever had it so good, they’re making hand over fist - ‘Sorry guys, a billion dollars is enough,’” he said. “‘You ain’t gonna have 200 billion or 300 billion. Try to survive on a mere billion. You can start paying your fair share of taxes.’” Sanders’s comments were met with sweeping applause from the audience. Although the senator has ruled out a presidential run in 2028, he has become a de facto leader of the No Kings movement. The No Kings protests are a series of ongoing mass demonstrations against Trump’s attempts to unleash the National Guard on Democratic cities and his threats to run for an unprecedented third term in office. He spoke at the Washington D.C. march, which was attended by over 200,000 people, and told Stewart that it represented people saying “no to Trumpism” and “no to authoritarianism.” Meanwhile, Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders’s close political ally, is gearing up to run for either the presidency or for the Senate in 2028, according to various reports. Monica Crowley, a former public affairs official in the Treasury Department, told Fox News that Ocasio-Cortez had “real grassroots support.” “Just a word of warning to the Republicans, to my party: Do not underestimate AOC. She’s young, she’s vibrant, she’s attractive,” Crowley said.
