 Joe Biden currently, according to public opinion polls, is in a really solid position. He is looking more and more likely to defeat Donald Trump. So there was a little bit of controversy around a Washington Post article where Bernie Sanders allegedly kind of sounded the alarm about Biden's chances, right, and poured cold water over everyone's hopes and dreams about Donald Trump getting defeated. Because he's saying that, you know, if Joe Biden runs his campaign as a centrist, it's not a foregone conclusion that he's going to win. Now in an interview with Ali Velsche on MSNBC, Bernie Sanders actually denied having said this, but then he kind of goes on to confirm that he is concerned with Joe Biden's chances. So take a look and then I'll tell you what I think about this afterwards. With just 51 days until Election Day this weekend reports emerged of a potential rift between Democrats. The Washington Post reporting the Democratic primary runner up Bernie Sanders has expressed his concerns privately over the Biden camp's approach to financial economic policy matters and their appeal to more progressive voters. Sanders, the independent Vermont senator, quote, has told associates that Biden is at serious risk of coming up short in the November elections if he continues his vaguer, more centrist approach according to the people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive talks. Senator Bernie Sanders joins me now. Good morning, Senator. Good to see you. Thank you for joining me. You've obviously seen these reports. Are they true? No, of course they're not true. I mean, look, what I have said privately is what I have said publicly. And that is, I think, Biden is in an excellent position to win this election. But I think we have got to do more as a campaign than just go after Trump. Trump is a disaster. I think most people know it. But we also have to give people a reason to vote for Joe Biden. And Joe has some pretty strong positions on the economy. And I think we should be talking about that more than we have. Now we have done, Ali, eight battleground states, battleground states, virtual rallies talking to several million people. And I think what people want to hear is what Joe is going to do to raise the minimum wage. And he supports a $15 an hour minimum wage. What he's going to do to make sure that we create millions of good-paying jobs in this country, and he has a very strong plan for the infrastructure. He knows that we can create jobs combating climate change, which God knows we need to do, seeing what's going on in the West Coast right now. They want equal pay for equal work. They want us to expand health care to as many people as possible, lower the cost of prescription drugs. I think those are some of the issues that people want to hear a little bit more from the Biden campaign about. So this is interesting to me because Bernie Sanders denied the report from the Washington Post, but then he kind of inadvertently confirmed that the report is true because he says, you know, Joe Biden is in a position to beat Donald Trump. But at the same time, we've got to do more as a campaign than go after Donald Trump. We've got to give people a reason to vote for Joe Biden. And then he lists policy positions that Joe Biden supposedly supports but never talks about. The fact that you have to make that caveat tells me that the report is actually probably accurate. Now, I don't necessarily trust the Washington Post too much. But what Bernie Sanders allegedly said, like the concerns that he raised, it sounds like something Bernie Sanders said. But I think that he wants to walk back that supposed criticism because whenever you bring up something that Joe Biden does that is bad, even if it's strategically, you are immediately lambasted by centrists because it's basically seen as a tacit endorsement of Donald Trump. Like you have to just pretend like Joe Biden is perfect. Never say that he's done anything wrong. He's never made a strategic error. Everything he's doing is perfect. And that's that. Shut the fuck up. Come on, man. If you actually do want to win, you should listen to constructive criticism, especially from people like Bernie Sanders, who are good faith actors, who want Joe Biden to win. And if you don't criticize Joe Biden, then it's not us that are helping Donald Trump. You are the one that's helping Donald Trump because if you just pretend as if everything is peachy keen and Joe Biden is perfect in spite of polls, then you are getting complacent and you may hand Donald Trump another victory. I mean, polls right now show that Joe Biden is in a good spot, right? So I wouldn't necessarily say he needs to change too much. I mean, I'd love for him to talk about policy, but I mean, he's doing OK right now. But if you want to appeal to a broader coalition of people, get young voters excited, then I think that you should listen to the feedback of people from the left, especially Bernie Sanders, who cares? He's popular, right? He knows what he's saying. He knows what he's doing. He wants what's best for Joe Biden's campaign. So for people to like criticize Bernie Sanders over this, it's irritating to me like to just sit on your criticism of Joe Biden is deeply disingenuous, right? It's lying by omission because Joe Biden has fucked up left and right. He just called for an increased military spending on top of that. He told Wall Street Downers in a phone call that he's not going to impose any new legislative regulatory measures. And one of the worst things he's done is he flaunted the endorsement of criminal governor, Mitch Snyder of Michigan, who poisoned 100,000 residents of Flint's. I mean, for him to go so far to court Republicans that you boast about the endorsement you received from someone who should be in jail. If we don't call that out, we're helping Donald Trump. Like if you truly want to defeat Donald Trump, then you have to listen to criticism because Hillary Clinton was supposedly untouchable, and it was blasphemy whenever we criticized her back in 2016, but she lost. She lost. I'm not saying the same is going to be true for Joe Biden, but I am concerned with the way that Joe Biden is running his campaign because there's not really much policies. There's not much policies. He is talking about how bad Donald Trump is. And I think he's hitting Donald Trump where it matters, specifically COVID-19, that's important. But again, you still have to offer voters something. Now, maybe just being anti-Trump will be enough this time. But again, for Bernie Sanders to walk back, you know, what he supposedly said about Joe Biden's campaign and the concern that he raised, according to the Washington Post, you know, I think that he thinks that he's going to look like the good guy, but it's not, it's not really helping. Like Joe Biden should be taking your advice. He should be taking your concerns seriously. And he should run a more substantive campaign. Like they don't know, like they're clearly lost, right? They don't know how to appeal to young voters. A strategist is trying to position Joe Biden as like one of the Democratic Avengers, they're, you know, trying to give people QR codes that they can scan into Animal Crossing so they can put up Biden, Harris yard signs and their Animal Crossing islands. This isn't the way to do it. So if you genuinely want to win these people over, then you have to listen. You can't just plug your ears because you feel cognitive dissonance whenever somebody criticizes Joe Biden. I mean, it's not an endorsement of Donald Trump to criticize Joe Biden. It's logical to criticize Joe Biden. It's objectivity to criticize Joe Biden because he needs to be criticized because he is, you know, in a good position now, but that can change. And so you have to build the biggest coalition possible if you actually want to defeat Donald Trump. But what am I saying? Centrists know everything, the Democratic Party, they, you know, in spite of losing a thousand seats in legislatures across the country, they know more than all of us. So we just have to shut the fuck up, let them appeal to moderate Republicans. And, you know, if we criticize them, then we support Donald Trump. That's the way that it's been and that's the way that it's going to be because they don't want our input because they seem to not really care about courting Bernie Sanders supporters in the left. So, you know, I hope that the strategy plays out for them. But don't you want like the biggest coalition imaginable? Don't you think that the policies that he already supports, it makes sense to actually promote them more like a $15 minimum wage? Like this is literally a life changing policy. This is a raise for the working class. And Joe Biden never talks about it. Like it's not a bad thing to say, hey, maybe you should talk about these policies that you supposedly support. But whatever, I mean, he's in the lead right now. So, you know, they're kind of justified in saying this. But back when, you know, his numbers were starting to go down a little bit, especially in swing states, it still was blasphemy to criticize Joe Biden. So you can't really win if you point out his flaws that are obvious. And you say, hey, you have to do X, Y and Z to win over non-voters. You are supporting Donald Trump. So, I mean, whatever, it's a dangerous game that you're playing. But nonetheless, I'm not going to bite my tongue. I'm going to be critical of Joe Biden where it's warranted. And I think that like flaunting the endorsement of a criminal governor who poisoned 100,000 people in Flint, Michigan, that's something that we should definitely criticize. I think we have an obligation to criticize it if we're actually moral human beings.