 So, for the three of you in this country who don't know, Bernie Sanders went on Fox News for a town hall and he absolutely dominated. And let me tell you this, I've seen a lot of town halls as a political commentator who feels obligated to watch each and every single one of them and this is my favorite thus far. It's certainly my favorite in recent memory but it may literally be my favorite town hall of all time because not only did it contain the policy substance but it was also thoroughly enjoyable just from an entertainment standpoint because Bernie Sanders walked in with the flamethrower and he was not playing games because he's equipped with the knowledge that a lot of other candidates I think lack and he knew whenever a Fox News host was trying to frame a question to serve Donald Trump or the interests of the Republican Party and he swatted that down. No questions asked and to kind of give you just a little bit of a glimpse we'll get into some specifics but to give you a snapshot of how well this event played out for Bernie Sanders, enjoy this clip which is probably my favorite. I want to ask the audience a question if you could raise your hand here, a show of hands of how many people get their insurance from work, private insurance right now? How many get it from private insurance? Okay now of those how many are willing to transition to what the senator says a government-run system? That was glorious. It's amazing to see a Fox News audience be so receptive to Bernie Sanders' message. It shows that he really is the most viable candidate. He can beat Donald Trump. Nobody's a guarantee but if anybody is going to be able to pull off a victory in 2020 it's Bernie Sanders. It was evident that they were receptive to every single thing that Bernie Sanders was saying and they even didn't like some of the things that the Fox News hosts were saying because it was very clear that they were wording certain questions in a very biased way. Now to give you an example of that look at this question on abortion and how it was framed. With regard to abortion do you believe that a woman should be able to terminate a pregnancy up until the moment of birth? Look I think that that happens very very rarely and I think this is being made into a political issue. So that's the type of bias that we expected from Fox News and it's exactly what we got because think about the way that that Fox News host is trying to prime viewers to think about the way Democrats view the issue of abortion. She's literally trying to pretend as if Democrats are advocating for late term abortions willy nilly that if you are due to give birth you're nine months pregnant then tomorrow you should be free to just you know terminate that pregnancy. That's not what anyone is advocating for. The only reason why Democrats support the idea of late term abortions is if there is this circumstance where the mother and the baby's lives are at risk then they should be able to determine to have the baby or not have the baby if it jeopardizes the life of the mother. So for example if you have to choose between the mother or the baby these are very rare circumstances but in the event that comes up the government shouldn't be the one to decide that it should be the doctor who decides with their patient what's right for them but they try to portray this as some commonly occurring phenomenon that is happening all the time that people are just willfully choosing to get late term abortions and putting no thought into it. Of course that's not happening so that's just a taste of the bias however don't feel too bad for Bernie Sanders here because he also took some shots at them which I thoroughly enjoyed. Here's an example of that. How can you challenge the idea that socialism is bad in the minds of the public? Mother asked them not me. So Bernie Sanders was incredibly charming and he took shots not just at Fox News not just at the hosts to their face but he took shots at Donald Trump repeatedly and what's going to make the situation even that much more sweeter is the fact that Donald Trump watched it. So for example he called Donald Trump a pathological liar and then he said this about Donald Trump. Trump cannot even tell the truth even as to where his father was born. It's really that crazy his father was born in New York he claims he was born in Germany but if you can't even tell the truth about where your father was born it's hard to believe anything that he says. So keep in mind he's shitting on Donald Trump on the home of Donald Trump the network that is the propaganda arm of the Republican Party and Donald Trump saw it all and we know that he watched because he tweeted about it. He says so weird to watch crazy Bernie on Fox News not surprisingly Brett Bayer and the quote audience was so smiley and nice. Very strange and now we have Donna Brazil. That is the sound of someone who is absolutely terrified and Donald Trump should be scared because if you see that your potential opponent in 2020 has a message that resonates with your people with your own crowd then of course that's cause for concern. So Donald Trump is right to be afraid and I hope that he's shaken in his boots because Bernie Sanders if anybody is going to be able to defeat Donald Trump nobody's a guarantee but if anybody can Bernie proved I think beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is the most viable candidate. Now I don't want to pretend as if Bernie Sanders performance was flawless but overall I think it's safe to say that he dominated. Now there's a couple of moments that I think there's room for improvement for example somebody had posed the question to him about his progressive movement and whether or not this is the left-wing equivalent of the Tea Party movement. No I think that Bernie Sanders he answered the question adequately he said look we're listening to people and that's what separates us from the Tea Party but I think that what he should have done is explain how our movement is actually a populist movement whereas the Tea Party movement even if it started off as a grassroots right-wing movement it was quickly co-opted by right-wing millionaires. So that isn't actually a real movement we are an authentically populist movement that is trying to implement the will of the American people what they want socially economically and racially we're trying to do their bidding that's why we're not like the Tea Party. So I think that he could have answered that better but I still don't think he answered poorly there was another instance where he kind of scoffed at a question about taxes which we're gonna get into where he was asked if he'd pay the 52% rate that he's proposing now and we'll talk about why that's a silly idea but he kind of just scoffed at it and I think that he opened himself up to criticism and in a different segment we're gonna talk about how he was in fact criticized because of his response so it wasn't perfect but by and large Bernie Sanders did overwhelmingly phenomenal his performance here was so good that I think that this may have single-handedly been enough to contribute to a potential bump in the polls hopefully in early primary states so I absolutely love the town hall but now that we've got the more general stuff out of the way we're gonna get into a couple of specific clips here now let me just say this I'm going to be playing a lot of clips so if you haven't seen the town hall I would highly encourage you to watch it in its entirety I'll link to it down below but overall it was thoroughly entertaining and trying to clip out portions that I wanted to share was incredibly difficult because by the time I finished watching it I kid you not I had 25 minutes worth of clips so obviously I had to cut that because at that point this segment becomes useless because you might as well just watch the entire town hall so if I come up with an analysis that's longer than the town hall then I've failed to do my job but with that being said let's get into taxes because Fox News paid a lot of time to him releasing his tax returns that showed that he's a millionaire and I think Bernie Sanders did a sufficient job at explaining why it's not hypocritical to be a millionaire and simultaneously advocate for the rich to pay their fair share in taxes now you raise the issue I am a millionaire well actually this year we had five hundred and sixty thousand dollars in income that's a lot of money and that money in my case my wife's case that came from a book that I wrote pretty good book you might want to read it it was a bestseller sold all over the world and we made money so if anyone thinks that I should apologize for writing a bestselling book I'm sorry I'm not going to do it and in my view people whether it's me you probably make a lot more money than I do but whether it's me or you or anybody else I think wealthy people and large corporations that are making billions of profits should start paying their fair share of taxes so I think that that was a good answer he explained himself well and basically he got a lot of money by writing a bestselling book nobody's going to be surprised by that the good thing about the way that Bernie Sanders acquired his wealth is that he didn't exploit workers he didn't do it by dodging taxes he did it honestly he earned his money honestly and what's most important is that he's not changing his position he's not suddenly saying you know what maybe we need to lay off millionaires no he's saying we need to tax millionaires make them pay their fair share and that's that my position hasn't changed because I am now part of the one percent I've been saying the same thing throughout the entirety of my life and that's not going to change because I'm now a millionaire so with that being said Brett Bayer posed the question well if you're a millionaire and you support a 52 percent marginal tax rate then why don't you pay that now why don't you volunteer the money and donate what you've earned to the IRS your taxes do show that you're a millionaire you did make a million in 2016 2017 you're right the 561 in 2018 but your marginal tax rate tax rate was 26 percent because of President Trump's tax cuts so why not say you know I'm leading this revolution I'm not going to take those come on we're doing the I am I paid the taxes that I owe and by the way why don't you got Donald Trump up here and ask him how much he pays in taxes you're doing that well we'd love to have you we would love to have a question we absolutely love and the president I guess the president watches your network a little bit right hey President Trump my wife and I just released 10 years please do the same let the American people but just just to wrap that up you do spend a lot of time vilifying millionaires I don't vilify the fact that I think people who are doing phenomenally well right now as you know for 40 years we have seen a shrinking middle class you got 40 million people living in poverty and today just so happens that the very wealthy are doing incredibly wealthy it's not vilifying to say that people have a whole lot of money in some cases billions of dollars of wealth they should pay their fair share so I like Bernie Sanders come back there because I do think it's fair to pose that question to Donald Trump but if you're just trying to think about the way that the media will portray that they're going to say oh well you know this is what aboutism this is Bernie Sanders dodging and deflecting and trying to um get people to pay attention to Donald Trump you know rather than pay attention to him and to be fair you know I call out Democrats for dodging so I think it's fair that they call out Bernie here but still I do think it's a fair point to be made however with that being said this is why the premise of that question is silly if Bernie Sanders is advocating for a 52 percent marginal tax rate why is it stupid to think that he should volunteer to donate his money to the IRS because where's that money gonna go it's going to go towards the war machine the military industrial complex it's going to corporate welfare it's going to go to oil and gas subsidies so there's a really important caveat that they're missing here the reason why we advocate for higher taxes is because it's a means to an end it's not about punishing the rich it's about taking that wealth and redistributing it making sure that we increase what's available in terms of our social safety net so it's a silly question to say well you know take my money now government even though I know you're going to use it to kill people abroad of course he shouldn't volunteer that money now you can say well maybe he should donate more to charity and that's fine that's a fair point to make he donated three percent of charity but for the most part to assume it's reasonable for him to give up the money he earned when we don't really have an adequate social safety net when you know that Donald Trump will use that revenue for evil I just don't think that that's reasonable so I think that overall he did an adequate job explaining that but if you thought that he put that issue to rest they brought up his taxes again and asked him once again well why not volunteer to pay more 52 percent so would you be willing to pay 52 percent on the money that you made you can volunteer you can send a check you can volunteer too we have a we get the point he's a millionaire we get it can we move on he thoroughly explained already why he's not against wealth in and of itself he's against greed he's against wealthy individuals who hoard their wealth so you think they put this issue to rest but nonetheless they ask him about his taxes again back on the the taxes briefly you know when you wrote wrote the book and you made the money yeah isn't that the definition of capitalism the american dream no i mean you know what we want is a country where everybody has opportunity you know i have a college degree look i'm a united state senator but a lot of people don't have a college degree a lot of people are not united state senators i want everybody in this country to be able to have health care to have education to when they turn on the water have drinkable water not toxic water so what we are fighting for but it is a society not we're just a few people can make a whole lot of money but a society where everybody in this country has the opportunity to live in security and dignity so we spent a good 10 or so minutes on his taxes and that's fine because even if it's clear that the hosts were obviously out to get him i do think that these were questions that were going to come up given that he just released his tax returns on that very same day so i'm glad that he addressed all of this i think that he probably put their criticisms and concerns to rest you know by the second question by the second time they asked the question about his taxes but nonetheless let's move on so overall it's very clear that bernie sanders knew how to navigate through this field of biased questions because they were out to get him but what he did was push back and he still promoted a progressive message in spite of the right wing agenda and what i like is that even if he knew the way that they were framing things was disingenuous he actually exposed flaws in the right and how they actually have a lot of the issues that you accuse us of having so for example he was asked the question about the debt and look at the way he flipped it on donald trump who just gave out a tax cut to millionaires and billionaires watched the way that he masterfully dodges that question but i think in a substantive and meaningful way we have a shot of the current national debt clock it stands at more than 22 trillion tonight and as we're talking here it is ticking up you've talked about ways to pay for your plans but there is a lot of doubt that your plans might actually speed up that clock dramatically so when you look at that do you not care about that anymore i think you're asking the wrong guy maybe it's the president so what he did there was important because he shot down this notion that it's only democrats who are fiscally irresponsible because the opposite is actually true the deficit has increased with republican administrations more so than democrats remember that brock obama actually cut the deficit and now it's being increased as a result of donald trump spending so it's not democrats who are fiscally irresponsible and if we want to talk seriously about fiscal responsibility if anyone cares about that we should be looking at republicans bernie sanders actually did a good job at bringing that up now another thing that he shot down was this notion that democrats are somehow weaker on national defense than republicans because if you'll recall brock obama literally ran out of bombs because he was dropping so many but your plan does call for significant constant defense would that would that send a message to the rest of the world that we are weaker no no no no which country is the biggest threat to the us i don't know that i um look i don't like using the word threat because i says oh my god we have to spend zillions more on the middle here i'll give you an example clearly you know we are concerned about china i'm concerned about russia but here's the irony here you got people who say we need to spend even more than seven hundred billion dollars a year more than the next ten nations combined on the military you know why because that china is a real potential enemy these are the same people who are investing billions of dollars building the chinese economy i find that somewhat ironic all right so i don't like to use the word enemy clearly we need a strong defense we need to bring the united states and the rest of the world together do everything we can to rid this world of nuclear weapons and i'll tell you what else in my view is a national security issue and that is we have got as a nation to reject trump's idea that climate change is a hoax that was basically a perfect answer and everything he said there was important and i think that the way he worded what he was talking about it's going to resonate with everyone including fox news is overwhelmingly conservative audience because first of all he demonstrated how the people who are fearmongering about china or china as he calls it he demonstrated that these are the same corrupt people who are investing in china but yet they're the ones who are simultaneously monopolizing political discourse when it comes to national security i'm glad he called that out he also managed to advocate for total denuclearization which every single progressive should be talking about if you're not talking about the existential threat that nuclear weapons poses to humanity then i think that your your platform is lacking with regard to foreign policy additionally he talked about climate change as a national security threat and he went on to explain why it actually is a literal national national security threat so it was a phenomenal answer and there was a lot more that i wanted to show you but just to kind of give you what i think is a great closing argument this isn't his actual closing argument but this is what he says he kind of makes the case and i think that this really will resonate with a lot of people with the wealthiest country in the history of the world that's where we are right now do you think we should be having the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major nation on earth we got some moms here who are spending 15 20 000 a year trying to find quality child care for their kids we probably have a child care system which is more dysfunctional than almost any other country on earth but we all know that zero through four are the most important years you got hundreds of thousands of bright young people in america today the wealthiest country in the world they can't afford to go to college and you got 40 million people struggling with student debt you really think that we cannot do better as a nation and on top of that you got a handful of people who own more wealth than the bottom half of the americans how do you know i understand that we're taking on corporate america we're taking on the republicans we're taking on the democratic establishment taking on the drug companies taking on the adjourns of companies taking on the military industrial complex you know what the american people i think are ready to deal with justice in america that's that's what we're fighting for and that's economic justice social justice environmental justice racial justice so in my view that was a really powerful case even better than his closing argument and i think that bernie sanders what he demonstrated here was that he is fully capable of conversing with people who generally disagree with him he knows what to look for in terms of bias he knows how to frame it in a way that would be appealing to a right wing audience and it shows that there really is tremendous value in penetrating that right wing echo chamber and talking to people who you overwhelmingly disagree with this box news audience regardless of how stacked it was was incredibly receptive to his message and i would have to assume that a lot of people at home were probably also convinced even if that percentage was incredibly small if he just convinced a small percentage of people overall that's still important so by and large him going on fox news was a really good decision and i know that we didn't talk about health care i've got a different video to talk about that but by and large i absolutely enjoyed every single second of this town hall and this really was bernie at his best he came prepared he came knowing how to respond for the most part to all of their biasly framed questions and he performed amazingly well my hat goes off to bernie this was great