 So, Bernie Sanders sat down for an interview with Jake Tapper on CNN and he addressed various criticisms of his policies from the right. So we had Joe Biden call out Medicare for All and criticize Medicare for All. And then we had Corey Booker criticize Bernie Sanders' student loan debt cancellation program. Now both critiques are totally disingenuous. However, Bernie Sanders does a pretty good job at shutting them down. And I wanted to address what Bernie Sanders said and I also want to talk about the areas where there is opportunity for improvement because Bernie Sanders does a good job when it comes to the rhetoric, when it comes to the policy substance. But I do think that he needs to be a little bit more aggressive. Like, these are disingenuous, bad faith attacks on his progressive policies. And even if he's shutting them down in an adequate way, he needs to go out of his way to kind of explain why people like Joe Biden, people like Corey Booker are after him and why they're taking a stand that is best for their donors, their special interest donors that are funding their campaigns. So these are dishonest actors and Bernie Sanders shut down their criticism. So first is Joe Biden's attack on Medicare for All and Bernie Sanders' response. Your Medicare for All plan will be front and center, no doubt. Senator Kamala Harris says she supports it and she will not raise taxes on middle class Americans to fund it. I want you to take a listen to what former Vice President Joe Biden had to say about that. Well, I find that people will say that for Medicare for All, but they're not going to tax the middle class because you don't need to do that. Come on. Why is this? Is this a fantasy world here? Do you agree with Vice President Biden that Senator Harris is a fantasy world? The first thing that we have to understand is under Medicare for All, similar to what Canada has, people are not going to pay any premiums, they're not going to pay any deductibles, they're not going to pay any copayments. So if you call a premium a tax, we're getting rid of that. But I do believe that in a progressive way, people will have to pay taxes. The wealthy will obviously pay the lion's share of those taxes. But at the end of the day, the vast majority of the American people will pay substantially less for the health care that they now receive because we're going to do away with hundreds of billions of dollars of administrative waste. We're going to do away with the incredible profiteering of the insurance companies and the drug companies. So people will be paying, in some cases, more in taxes, but overall, because they're not going to pay premiums, deductibles, copayments, they'll be paying less for their health care. So is Vice President Biden correct that anybody who says Medicare for All is going to happen, but we're not going to raise taxes on anybody or on the middle class is a fantasy world? Well, obviously, health care is not free. Right now, we pay through it through premiums and out-of-pocket expenses. In Canada, it's paid through taxes. We'll have to do that. A senior aide to former Vice President Biden is laying out his campaign's debate strategy and a new memo that they issued this weekend. The strategist writes, quote, he's going to draw a contrast where there are policy disagreements in the field, like on health care. Booker, Gillibrand, Harrison Warren, all have signed on to Bernie Sanders' Medicare for All plan, which means higher taxes on the middle class. That's a non-starter for Joe Biden. Now, you're not going to be on the stage with him because of the luck of the God. But you see, that is disingenuous on the part of Joe. Yeah, it's going to mean higher taxes. But if I raise your taxes, say, hypothetically, by $8,000, and I lower the health care costs that you're now paying with premiums and deductibles, which are now $12,000, you're $4,000 for the good. We are the only major country on earth that does not guarantee health care to all, or in one form or another, have a national health care program. So we, under a Medicare for All, are going to substantially lower prescription drug costs. We're going to do away with the incredible complexity and bureaucracy and waste in the current system. But at the end of the day, again, you may pay more in taxes. You're not paying premiums. You're not paying co-payments. You're not paying deductibles. You will pay less for your health care costs than you're currently paying right now. And you think Vice President Biden knows that? Of course he knows that. Nobody, nobody, every study out there tells us that Medicare for All will save substantial sums of money. Last year, the drug companies made $69 billion in profit at the same time as one out of five Americans can't afford the medicine that they need. So you're seeing massive profiteering on the part of the health care industry. You're seeing just incredible bureaucracy and waste. Anybody who deals with an insurance company understands the kind of bureaucracy that exists. You're seeing now over 80 million Americans who cannot afford the health insurance that they need. They're either uninsured or they are underinsured. This is a dysfunctional system designed to make profits for the people in the health care industry, not to provide quality care to all. We're going to end that. Okay. So there's a lot to say about that. When Kamala Harris says that we don't need to raise taxes on the middle class to pay for Medicare for All, she's lying. She's saying that because that's the politically expedient position to take, because she doesn't want to admit that she would raise taxes on the middle class to pay for Medicare for All. But that's not a bad thing. Taxes aren't inherently evil and you shouldn't be promoting that idea if you are running to be the Democratic Party nominee, because that's the way that Medicare for All in single-payer systems work. You pull resources, pull money together, and have one single payer, the government, be the health insurance provider for everyone. That's the way that it works. And everything Bernie Sanders said here is on point. It does raise your taxes, yes, but it gets rid of premiums, copays, deductibles, and that means that you're still going to be better off in spite of the tax increase. And Gerald Friedman, who's an expert on this issue, already crunched the numbers for us. And as you can see illustrated here in a beautiful chart by Andrea Witte of connectthe.USA.com, most people will be saving money under Medicare for All in spite of the tax increase. So if you make $30,000 per year, you will save an estimated $300. If you make $40,000 per year, you'd save an estimated $7,000. Now if you make between $400,000 to $1.5 million per year and above, yes, you will be paying more. But you see, the thing is that these people, they make enough money to where they can afford that tax increase. So to fearmonger about a tax increase assumes that any and all taxes are inherently bad, but that's an intellectually dishonest way to frame the discussion. And we need to be more nuanced than that, because it's a lot more complicated than that. People only have this visceral reaction to taxes because they assume that it affects them negatively. But when we educate them and explain to them that a tax increase with regard to health care will actually be conducive to them having more money and better health care simultaneously, well, obviously if they see that that's in their best interest, they're going to go for that. So they just need to know what they're getting. But the problem is that it's difficult to educate people when we're fighting a constant misinformation campaign by both the media and health industry shills like Joe Biden. Now, Jake Tapper quoted Joe Biden where he asserted that any tax increase on the middle class, any tax increase is a non-starter for Joe Biden. And in response to that, Bernie said that is disingenuous on the part of Joe. And he says, of course, Joe Biden knows that. Now that's true, but take it a step further, Bernie, explain why Joe Biden would say something that's dishonest about Medicare for all, even if he's educated about the fundamentals of health care and Medicare for all and knows exactly what it would accomplish. Explain that he's corrupt. He's taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from health professionals, HMOs, hospitals, nursing homes, as well as pharmaceutical companies. And he's also taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from big banks that invest in private health insurance companies. See, there's a reason why the health industry is betting on Joe Biden to stop Medicare for all, because they paid him to fight it. So Bernie has got to take the gloves off and he's gotta hammer this point away. Because if you just say, no, Joe Biden is wrong, I disagree, then basically what you're communicating to viewers is that this is just a good faith disagreement between two political opponents. But that's not actually the case. Joe Biden is a bad faith actor who is operating in a way that would help special interests who are funding his campaign. His conclusion about Medicare for all is derivative of the corruption of him being entrenched in the system. One side represents greed and the other side represents the people. Bernie needs to be aggressive here and call out Joe Biden. Call him out for propping up a system where profits are prioritized over people. Call him corrupt explicitly. Call him a shill. Stop tap dancing around it because you're not going to move up in the polls if you keep playing nice with people who continue to attack you. And I get it that Bernie Sanders, he doesn't want to be negative, right? It's against his nature to be overly aggressive, but here's the thing, if they're attacking you first, then you have an excuse to go after them explicitly. Ask people, why do you think Joe Biden is trying to mislead people about Medicare for all? Why do you think that the health insurance industry is banking on Joe Biden's victory to save their asses? Why do you think that is? It's because he's being propped up by this pro-death status quo system. Call him out because here's the thing, this is literally a fight for our lives. So if you're going to be aggressive, then I think you're justified in doing that if you're being aggressive for the purpose of fighting for the American people. Now, speaking of liars, Cory Booker attacked Bernie Sanders, student loan debt cancellation plan. Bernie Sanders then responded to his idiotic attack, and the attack that Cory Booker decided to lob against it is just baffling to me because it's so stupid, you'd think he'd come up with something a little bit more intelligent, but this is what he's got. You recently revealed a plan to forgive all $1.6 trillion of student debt in the U.S., covering 45 million people. Senator Cory Booker had some criticism of that. Again, you're not going to be on the stage with him, so I want to give you a chance to address it. Here's Senator Booker. It's canceling debt for people that are of higher income brackets or going into jobs, whether they're large corporate jobs or Wall Street jobs, so they're going to give them the ability to pay that for their money. Why should the American taxpayer pay the student debt for the child of a millionaire or an entry-level employee in Goldman Sachs? Those are not the people who have the student debt. The overwhelming majority of people are student debt of working-class people who are lower-income people. They're African-Americans, they're Latinos. They are struggling right now, and many of these people right today, unbelievably, and I talk to them every day. They can't afford to get married and have kids. They can't afford to buy a house. They can't afford even to buy a car. There's a tremendous weight of oppression around their shoulders. They were told, go to college, and they did. They took out huge loans. They were told they're going to get good-paying jobs. Well, that did not happen. Now, my view is that if the United States Congress could bail out the crooks on Wall Street who destroyed this economy, if we could give a trillion and a half dollars in tax breaks to the top 1% and large profitable corporations like Amazon, 11 billion dollar profits in last year owned by the wealthiest guy in this country didn't doesn't pay a nickel in federal income taxes, if we can do that, you know what? We can help save a generation, a millennial generation and cancel those debts. So everything that Bernie Sanders said there with regard to the substance is great, but my only advice again is for him to be more aggressive. You've got to actually hit Cory Booker because he's the one who attacked your policy program first. So now you say if Cory Booker believes that millionaires are taking out student loans, if he's really that out of touch, do you think that he's the best representative of the American people? Really? I mean, there's a reason why we call him Big Pharma Booker because he, at the behest of his Big Pharma donors voted against a bill that I sponsored with Amy Klobuchar that would allow Americans to import cheaper prescription drugs from Canada. So he's not looking out for you. He's looking out for his donors and presumably he's doing the same thing here by attacking a program that explicitly would help 45 million Americans. How disgusting is Cory Booker gonna come out and apologize for being so out of touch for proving that he hasn't talked to normal Americans who are affected by student loan debt? Look, you've just gotta hit them hard. That's my one wish for Bernie. Stop handling these candidates with kid gloves. They've gone after you countless times. Now take the gloves off, be aggressive. There's more than 20 people still in the race. So it is time to stop just being nice to them and thin the field, attack them. Nobody has the record as good as Bernie's. Nobody has the credibility, the progressive credibility that Bernie Sanders has. Boast about how, look, Cory Booker is the one who's following my lead, right? He is the one who's cosponsoring my Medicare for all bill. He's the one who had to come around and support a bill that would allow us to import cheaper prescription drugs from Canada because he wouldn't support my bill and then he got called out for it by his own constituents. I mean, Bernie, he's gotta go on the offense. Like there needs to be a spark, as I said in a different video, that reignites the energy in his campaign because currently he's stagnating, right? I mean, he's not doing poorly. He's number two, but you've got to make sure that you set yourself apart and you use your record and use their poor records against them because again, you're not being overly negative if you just respond to a bad faith attack that they initially lobbed against you. So even if the media paint you as negative, so what? If you're fighting for the American people, you are fully justified to go on the offensive if it's for the American people and take down these shills who are explicitly and brazenly corrupt like Joe Biden and Cory Booker. And that's all I'll say. I love Bernie Sanders, the substance is on point, the rhetoric is on point. He's just gotta be more aggressive at calling them out and their motivations because that's what will show the American people why he's different than them. If the American people know that Joe Biden and Cory Booker are motivated by the interests that their donors have, that sets Bernie apart from them. Bernie's not taking money from special interests when Joe Biden and Cory Booker are. When Cory Booker and Joe Biden are holding these private fundraisers, so Bernie Sanders needs to definitely use that to his advantage and just rip them apart because it's warranted in circumstances like this when they're spreading misinformation about your policy proposals that would literally not just save lives but change lives for the better, lift people out of poverty.