Bernie Sanders isn’t holding back when calling out Trump’s lies
In a two-hour-long address to Congress, Donald Trump delivered a torrent of twisted truths and outright falsehoods. Now, Bernie Sanders is clapping back.
In a nearly 25-minute-long rebuttal posted on X, Sanders tore into the president’s many lies, beginning with what he believes to be the most pernicious: the idea that Social Security money is being sent to centuries dead Americans.
“Well over 99% of Social Security checks are going out to people who earned those checks – 70 million people,” Sanders explained. “Nobody who is 150 years old or 200 years old or 300 years old is receiving Social Security checks.”
The president didn’t originate the Social Security false narrative, Elon Musk came up with it first. In an Oval Office interview, Musk told reporters that he uncovered “crazy things” – including social security payments made out to Americans who died decades ago – in his effort to cut “fraud, waste and abuse” in the federal government. According to the Social Security Agency statistics, Musk is misrepresenting the data: of the nearly 70 million people who receive payments, only a tenth of a percent are over 100 years old. Nevertheless, Musk amplified the false claim on social media, and as evidenced by the president’s Congressional address, the Trump administration is doing its best to peddle the lie. Musk has since doubled down on sowing seeds of doubt surrounding Social Security, calling the program “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time” while simultaneously attempting to seat himself the rest of the nation’s billionaire’s on top of the pyramid.
Bernie Sanders tears into Trump after wildly untruthful Congressional Address
It is this sort of oligarchical double dealing that has drawn Bernie Sanders’ ire. “The Trump administration is a government of the billionaire class, by the billionaire class and for the billionaire class” Sanders continued. “They’re not hiding it.”
After buying his way into political power with a quarter billion dollar donation to the Trump administration, Musk saw his net worth skyrocket after Trump’s election victory by over $200 billion. Despite having never been elected to office, Musk has used his unprecedented level of political power to influence Congressional spending and gain control over the federal bureaucracy. Musk isn’t the only billionaire on the president’s side. Some of the world’s wealthiest citizens have flocked to the Trump administration in order to increase both their sphere of influence and net worth. Despite his promises to better the lives of working class Americans, Donald Trump has largely sold out his political base through his economic policies while courting the wealthiest of the wealthy.
“And let’s be clear. Not only did Trump fail to talk about some of the most important issues facing the working class of America, but the solutions he proposed would only make a bad situation even worse,” Sanders said of Trump’s economic policies.
Trump’s financial planning is deeply worrying for Sanders
While Trump’s working class voters (whether they know it or not) are poised to get hit with the business end his taxes and tariffs plan, Sanders points out that additional financial woes are still to come. The Senator slammed Trump’s budget proposal for Congress, saying that the president’s plan to cut Medicaid spending would compound on Americans’ economic woes, and could jettison 36 million healthcare aid recipients from the program. “It means that nursing homes that receive two-thirds of their funding from Medicaid would either have to shut down, lay off workers or significantly scale back the services they provide seniors,” Sanders explained in his address.
According to Sanders, the United States is no longer under threat of becoming an oligarchy – it is one. Despite the grim reality of the Trump administration, Sanders ended his address with a message of hope. If Americans band together to fight autocracy, “we will win.”
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