Summary
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. accused Bernie Sanders of taking millions from Big Pharma during a heated exchange, but Sanders refuted the claim, stating his donations came from workers, not corporate PACs.
Kennedy repeatedly insisted Sanders was the top recipient of pharmaceutical money in 2020, but financial data shows no corporate PAC contributions to Sanders.
Meanwhile, Kennedy has profited from anti-vaccine activism, earning millions from lawsuits and speaking fees.
The debate ended without Kennedy answering whether he would guarantee health care for all as HHS secretary.
“And by the way, Bernie, the problem of corruption is not just in the federal agencies. It’s in Congress too,” Kennedy said. “Almost all the members of this panel, including yourself, are accepting millions of dollars from the pharmaceutical industry and protecting their interests.”
“Oh, no, no, no, no,” Sanders said, raising his hand to quiet the applause that erupted from the gallery. “I ran for president like you. I got millions and millions of contributions. They did not come from the executives; not one nickel of PAC money from the pharmaceutical industry. They came from the workers.”
RFK just kept saying it over and over again like Sanders didn’t address it. 1.5 million of the 200 million raised for his presidential campaign came from health care workers. And he still didn’t answer the question, only for Sanders to be told he’s battering the witness.
Fucking hate this time line.
Keep saying it as if it was never addressed because that’s what works.
If you say something enough times it is reality to the majority of the voter base in the US.
If you ignore all refutes logic or facts and simply steam ahead with your word being the only right word then that will become reality
Yup, plenty of people will say that RFK won the argument, simply because he remained aggressive and seemed to be on the offensive. Lots of people don’t critically listen to the content; They just listen to the tone, and determine the winner based on that.
Can’t someone just make him follow in his father’s footsteps already?
Questioning Sanders’ integrity would be the last thing I’d want to do; especially if I were as ill-advised as RFK.
RFK believes that he is above reproach. He is the delusional you get when you are born into massive wealth and privilege and think that you personally hit a home run. Completely surrounded by yes men his entire life. Trumpesk even.
esk
-esque?
Mission accomplished: answer not given and as a bonus fox news gets a clip “RFK jr DESTROYED corrupt Sanders”
…I hate this timeline.
yet another rich asshole lying to congress with no consequences.
rfk. go away. that is all I have to say.
I feel sorry for Sanders calling out that buffoon.
I feel sorry that the Democratic party opted to cheat us out of President Sanders.
Contrary to the circles we reside in, most of the US despises any act of “socialism”. It’s ingrained in the culture after 50 years of waging a cold war against an entity that was associated with everything on the left because of propaganda. It will take a long time before enough of the people born before 1990 have died off before people will warm up to it again (I’m in this group too, being born 1982, but I wasn’t politically aware enough care at the time, but some other kids’ parents no doubt instilled this hate of socialism into them growing up. Millennials/Xennials, the generation that was supposedly the most left leaning in recent times, basically started 4chan, and look what it became).
We ARE in an echo chamber. I came to discover this when talking to young folks about Harris/Trump. Despite the enthusiasm I saw here for Harris, it did not translate to the real world at all. We have to come to grips with the fact that the majority of Americans suck.
There are plenty of Trump supporters that liked Bernie. If you aren’t hearing them, you’re part of the issue. People are sick of being told they suck.
So we need to be pandering more to complete fucking morons?
Plenty of Trump supporters say and do all sorts of stupid fucking shit.
And so do Democrats. Like insult people to get votes.
I am not a democrat, I just voted for one.
So you don’t want people to vote for the candidate you support? Or don’t really care that much? I can understand weariness.
How did they do that?
“Cheat” is a wide-ranging term which is a little too cumbersome to use here, but there were absolutely some shenanigans at play.
The heavily abridged version (which is open to criticism for doing so) is that the democratic leadership had effectively selected Hilary Clinton before the party had even had the chance to select the candidate officially, and Bernie’s campaign had it’s legs done before it even had a chance to take off.
Would Bernie have won? Who knows, but he’s consistently a decent and open candidate.
They consistently presented these super delegates as a forgone conclusion.
Brilliant, thank you for the clarification. Eight years feels like a long time ago.
It’s still infuriating.
The DNC actively worked against his campaign in both primaries. There was ample info in the WikiLeaks drop in 2016.
And in 2020, there was the conspicuous action of every other candidate suddenly dropping out and endorsing Biden. We didn’t get the same inside view as the previous primary, but it’s pretty plain to see that there machinations by the DNC again to push for this.
And we pretty much had a similar move this last election, not allowing for any sort of primary.
I don’t think it can be a serious position to deny that wealthy, powerful interests control the DNC, and therefore actively work against candidates who threaten their wealth and power. It’s not a hidden secret (donors, PACs, politicians getting rich, etc). And of course the same is true with the GOP too.
Why this worries me most is that I think it’s a losing strategy by the DNC. AOC is clearly a preferred candidate for a future election, but if she runs, I fully expect the DNC to do everything they can to sabotage her campaign in favor of a milquetoast politician who won’t upset their donors. And the GOP would win again (presuming we have elections anymore).
Also presuming the DNC decides to bother with primaries.
Not only was the primary rigged, but it was established in court that both, it was rigged, and that the DNC are fine to rig their primaries.
the term rigged is bullshit. What people have answered before is more accurate which I would describe as pushing other candidates to endorse and play ball and they would be rewarded. Your article uses the term rigged a lot but gives no explanation for the actions its considers to have rigged it.
Rigged is the correct term, in spite of you lack of curiosity.
NPR didn’t call it rigged. They quoted a tweet from Donald Trump calling about. Why are you spreading Trump lies?
Says the revisionist historian. What a crackup.
No it is not. Rigged implies making it impossible for the result. Like changing votes or otherwise just messing with the system like that. What was done was basically cajoling influential people. The voters could have still voted bernie in by giving him the majority of votes. Heck even trumps win is more rigged because of voter disenfranchisment and jerrry mandoring which is directly mucking with the process. Encouraging heavy hitters or influential folks to be negative about him or positive about clinton while being bs just does not fit with rigged. man its just like both sides kind of thing. its like yeah in the broadest terms, yes but folks take it way down to be like literally exactly the same and its like. no. by no means. in the details there is a massive gulf between them. details being things like no surprise billing or funding renewables and such. pretty big deal items. calling it rigged is disingenuous.
Since you are trying to rewrite history, I’m at least going to post this here so people understand the context of why we say, with out mixed words or a lack of emphasis, that the DNC rigged the primary against bernie.
- DNC officials secretly worked against Sanders while claiming neutrality. Emails show them strategizing ways to discredit him, including attacking his religious beliefs to hurt him in Kentucky and West Virginia.
- The DNC colluded with major media outlets to boost Clinton and undermine Sanders. They leaked debate questions to Clinton in advance, controlled coverage, and worked with reporters to push pro-Clinton narratives.
- Debate schedules were rigged to benefit Clinton. The DNC deliberately scheduled fewer debates and placed them at times designed to limit Sanders’ exposure.
- DNC funding was funneled to Clinton’s campaign. The “Hillary Victory Fund” raised massive amounts of money supposedly for the party but sent it straight to Clinton while starving down-ballot candidates and Sanders of resources. This directly contributed to the growth of MAGA, since down-ballot candidates suffered so massively.
- Sanders’ campaign was blocked from crucial voter data while Clinton’s team had full access. When a glitch in the NGP VAN database briefly allowed Sanders’ team to see Clinton’s data, the DNC punished only Sanders, locking them out.
- The DNC chair and top officials were forced to resign after getting caught. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, CEO Amy Dacey, and CFO Brad Marshall all stepped down, but the damage was already done. The primary had already been rigged beyond repair.
This wasn’t incompetence—it was outright election interference. The DNC didn’t just favor Clinton; they actively sabotaged Bernie Sanders while pretending to be fair. The leaks confirmed everything.
Don’t forget they were DKIM verified to be real and unaltered.
But Assange was turned into the villain in this story because he didn’t personally hack the Republicans and get dirt on them too, and because nobody did it for him, that’s all his fault somehow. I’m still not entirely convinced of the story that he somehow had similar access to similarly compromising material on the Republicans and just chose not to release it.
Yet somehow…
https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/13/media/trump-campaign-hack-news-media-report-iran-wikileaks/index.html
News outlets were sent leaked Trump campaign files. They chose not to publish them
Huh. Hmm. Interesting. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, there’s a thing called “editorial discretion” something no one seemed to think Assange deserved. Let alone once again that I have never seen definitive proof that Wikileaks had documents on Trump in 2016 that they refused to release. We even had a massive internal leak of their chats and nothing about having Trump info that they were sitting on and not releasing.
Note: Assange is shown in the chat logs to be quite the sexist and to in particular have an overly glaring hate for Hillary Clinton. I’m not saying Assange is a good dude, I’m pretty sure he’s a sex pest, and he has the sexist attitude to support it. But in this instance, regarding the DNC emails, I think he was unfairly maligned.
To quote Orwell apocryphally: “The truth is the truth, even if it comes from a scoundrel.”
Assange is no hero here and clearly has/ had an agenda of his own. I think if anything it shows we shouldn’t rely on personalities or tribes of one for necessary acts of public good. Its a good thing that the DNC emails were leaked, and more importantly, found to be unaltered. Anything about Trump also should have just been fully released. Its a bad thing that didn’t happen. It would be better if Assange had no editorial hand in what did or didn’t get leaked, but thats not what happened.
So people think Democrats in Congress aren’t corrupt? Just the Republicans? That’s cute.
Your comment is a great case for the importance of teaching reading comprehension
Idk where you draw that conclusion from. Many of us are quite aware many democrats are in bed with lobbyists. The main issue here is that RFK tries to slander Bernie Sanders who is one of the least corrupt politician we have.
We’re talking about Bernie Sanders taking money from Big Pharma. If you have any evidence that he did, please share.
I like Bernie, despite his age. I’m just speaking in general. But I’m glad RFK said it. The other members were just as shocked.
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You’re glad RFK Jr. tells lies about Bernie Sanders?
No, I just laughed my ass off when Bernie was like “oh no no no no”.
again where is the proof?
