Bernie Sanders: GOP is ‘a joke maintained by the media.’
Bernie Sanders did not pull any punches with Rachel Maddow as he excoriated both the Republican Party for their intransigence and the media as enablers. Sanders gave Maddow an extensive interview in which he reiterated that he believes he has a path to victory.
Much of the interview was an amalgamation of the Bernie Sanders message most are familiar with from the consistency of his narrative. Sanders’ admonishment of the Republican Party and the media was decidedly more poignant than usual. Within the statement, he does acknowledge the need for a truly conservative party in our multi-party system. Opposing parties serve as a real check on issues and policy implementations that any one side are blinded from because of their ideological rigidity.
Here is the text / transcript of the snippet.
Bernie Sanders: Well, uh, first of all, I don’t necessarily take at value — face value what they say. I think at the end of the day, they probably will come together.
But the other point, I think the more — the deeper point, Rachel, is the Republican Party today has moved very, very far to the right. Uh, they are way out of touch with where the American people are.
And I think if we had a media in this country that was really prepared to look at what the Republicans actually stood for rather than quoting every absurd remark of Donald Trump, talking about Republican Party, talking about hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks for the top two-tenths of 1 percent, cuts to Social Security and Medicare, Medicaid, a party which with few exceptions, doesn’t even acknowledge the reality of climate change, let alone do anything about it, a party which is not prepared to stand with women in the fight for pay equity, a party that is not prepared to do anything about a broken criminal justice system or a corrupt campaign finance system, I think, to be honest with you — and I just don’t, you know, say this rhetorically, this is a fringe party. It is a fringe party. Maybe they get 5, 10 percent of the vote.
What you really need in this country is a progressive party standing with the working class and the middle class of this country. And yes, a conservative party that, you know, has, you know, is more fiscally conservative. That is where we should be as a country.
But the Republican Party today now is a joke, maintained by a media which really does not force them to discuss their issues.
So that — that’s my two cents on that.
Lawrence O’Donnell recently scolded an MSNBC reporter who pretty much gave the reason why the coddling is done. It was not unlike the reason that Chuck Todd gave several months ago. Paraphrased, if we do not coddle them or if we confront them they will not talk to us. That is the state of our media.