Bernie Sanders on Joe Rogan Experience Podcast #2341 (Transcript)

It’s broken. It ain’t working for ordinary human beings.

So you have an America today where we have more income and wealth inequality than we’ve ever had in the history of this country. That’s just the fact you have one man, Mr. Musk, owning more wealth than the bottom 52% of American families. One man, 52% of the American families, you got the top 1% owning more wealth than the bottom 93%. You got CEOs, large corporations making 350 times what their workers make.

And meanwhile, in this richest country in the history of the world, working class people are getting decimated today. And again, we don’t talk about it in Congress for reasons that I hope I can get into. We don’t talk about it in the corporate media. 60% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.

Now, I grew up in a family. I don’t know your background, but I grew up in a family live paycheck to paycheck. And anyone who lives paycheck to paycheck understands that every single day is a struggle. You know, you got to figure out how you feed the kids. Rents, cost of housing in America, off the charts. Health care, off the charts.

So right now as we talk, there are people worrying. My landlord, you know, is going to raise my rent by 20%. What the hell do I do? Where do I go? How do what schools do my kid go to? How, how do I buy decent food for my kids? My mother is ill. How do I afford prescription drugs for my mother? My car breaks down, you know, so you, you know, if you have money, no one thinks of it, your car breaks down, go to the mechanic, you got it fixed.

You know what, A lot of people don’t have 1000 bucks in the bank right now. So you don’t have a thousand bucks, your car breaks down. How do you get to work? If you don’t get to work, you get fired. If you get fired, your whole life is disrupted. 60% of American, how much different is.

JOE ROGAN: That than past generations?

BERNIE SANDERS: It’s that we’ve always had rich and poor. No question about it. It’s worse now, Joe.

JOE ROGAN: What do you attribute that to?

Attacks on the Working Class

BERNIE SANDERS: I attribute it to decades old attacks on the working class of this country. I attribute it to horrific trade agreements which have allowed corporate America to throw millions of workers out on the street and move to China, Mexico and other low wage countries. I attribute it to a corrupt political system in which billionaires have significant control over both political parties.

So that, for example, right now in Washington, the national minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. So you got millions of workers today, you know, making 10, 12, 13 bucks an hour. You tell me, how do people survive on 13 bucks an hour?

When we were kids, or at least when I was a kid, you work for a large company. You have something called a defined benefit pension plan. That means you work for me for 30 years. When you retire, you’re going to get X hundreds of dollars a week that’s long gone. Corporations have gotten rid of that. So you got something like half of all the workers in America have nothing in the bank when they face retirement.

So I think, to answer your question, I think you got a rigged system controlled economically and politically by very, very wealthy and powerful people who could care less for working families.

Now, I don’t want to romanticize the old days because that would not be true. But there used to be a kind of a culture. If I was a boss and I ran a factory. I had a little bit of concern for you. Right. You know, in general, I would say, I know your wife. How’s your mom doing? And all that stuff. That’s gone.

You got these companies that are owned by other companies that are owned by supernatural. You know, we got involved in my office, we used to be the chairman of the labor committee, Health, education, Labor. So I got involved in a lot of stuff. And when workers were out on strike, we would call up and see what was going on, see how we can help.

So we’d call up to the company and we’d say, you know, why are you cutting back on healthcare for your workers? Well, we don’t make that decision. It’s owned by somebody else. Call up somebody else. Well, we’re owned by somebody. You know how it is. It’s just huge. These huge conglomerates own the bloody world, and these guys don’t give a damn about the needs of working people.

So I would say that the economy becomes less and less personal. I have no. You’re my worker. I. I have no care about you. Because right now I’m owned by an international who doesn’t know that you exist.

JOE ROGAN: And there’s also a diffusion of responsibility.

BERNIE SANDERS: Absolutely.

JOE ROGAN: Not even in your hands.

BERNIE SANDERS: Exactly. So the local boss might say, hey, listen, I’m really sorry, but I didn’t have any decision in here.

JOE ROGAN: Right, right, right. There’s nothing I can do.

BERNIE SANDERS: Nothing I can do. So I add all of that up and you have. And then just look at other things. I mean, you tell me. Tell me about the healthcare system. Does anybody in America think this health care system is working?

Healthcare System Crisis

JOE ROGAN: Well, you could tell by the assassination. When. The assassination of the UnitedHealthcare guy, when that. When that happened, there was people celebrating. When is there ever someone gets assassinated on the streets of New York City and people celebrate.

BERNIE SANDERS: Right. That’s terrible. It’s hard. But it does speak to how people feel about insurance companies.

JOE ROGAN: Right. Well, and I think rightly so, because it’s not what you’re paying for. What you’re paying for is you’re hoping for that you never get sick, but if you pay your insurance, you will be covered. What they’re trying to do is make it as difficult as possible for you to get money from them.

BERNIE SANDERS: You got it? The more money, the more I can deny you, the more money I make.

JOE ROGAN: Right. And that’s the bottom line. And when you’re dealing with these enormous corporations, like we’re talking about this diffusion of responsibility, the people that are doing it, it’s like, this is what I have to do. This is my job. They don’t even think about it.

BERNIE SANDERS: Right, exactly.

The Detroit Example

JOE ROGAN: And this all started when. Like, when. So Michael Moore had that brilliant documentary, Roger and Me.

BERNIE SANDERS: Yeah, I know Michael Moore. Michael’s a good friend.

JOE ROGAN: He’s a great guy. That documentary is fantastic. And it shows the impact of a corporation taking all their factories, moving them away like that, with no warning, no recourse, nothing anybody can do. Decimates basically all of Detroit.

BERNIE SANDERS: That’s right. People don’t know this.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

BERNIE SANDERS: But if my memory is correct, Detroit used to be in the 50s.

JOE ROGAN: Third richest city in the world.

BERNIE SANDERS: You got it.

JOE ROGAN: Yes. Yeah, we’ve talked about it multiple times. It’s disgusting. And especially me, as someone who loves American automobiles, I’m a big fan of what Detroit made during that time. And to see what happened to Detroit now, the last time I was in Detroit, it actually seems to be picking up. There’s a lot of small businesses and a lot of art artists and a lot of people that are proud to, like, shinola companies like that. Proud to be in Detroit.

But there’s just so many abandoned buildings. It’s. It’s insane. You could buy a house there for 500 bucks. It’s really crazy. Like giant factories where every window smashed, all the pipes have been torn out, and it’s just this hulking.

BERNIE SANDERS: And it’s not just Detroit.

JOE ROGAN: Right.

BERNIE SANDERS: I mean, there are other communities. Corporations say, hey, I mean, that path is unsustainable, right?

JOE ROGAN: I think so, yeah.

The NAFTA Experience

BERNIE SANDERS: I mean, look, if we are and again, gets back to what we want as a nation. But you had corporations saying, hey, back then, not now. I could pay workers in China 25 cents an hour. Why the hell do I want to hire you for what it was then? 5 bucks an hour, whatever it was. Right.

And I’ll never forget, Joe, early on, when I was elected to Congress, this was. We had the NAFTA agreement. I went to the maquiladora area. You know what that is? It’s a special zone in northern Mexico near the border, where the government there. This is back decades ago, allowed American and other European corporations to settle and got tax breaks there. So it attracted all these corporations.

So I went there with a congressional delegation, and this is what I saw. You saw these beautiful new factories. Now this is 25, 30 years ago. And then we said, all right, I want to see where the workers live, and I’ll never forget this as long as I live. Do you know those large cardboard boxes that refrigerators come into and stoves those big. That’s where people were living. They were living literally in cardboard boxes making, I think at that point now, this is a long time ago, 25 cents an hour.

So workers in America were thrown out on the street and people in Mexico exploited in a horrible way. And these big, shiny new factories at the time. So what you got? And I believe this. You asked me, you know, how does it happen? Why does it happen? I think especially right now, and for many decades, you have the prevailing religion of the oligarchs and the corporate world is greed. That’s all. I want it all, and I don’t give a shit if I have to step all over you, throw you out on the street, take away your Social Security, I want it, and to hell with you.

And that’s why you end up with a situation in America where, you know, the top 1% now owns more wealth than the bottom 93% and millions of people struggle.

Corporate Competition and Wall Street Control

JOE ROGAN: It’s also a corporate culture of competitiveness. Right. So they’re competing with all the other corporations, and you have to keep up. And there’s no way other than to increase your profits every quarter.

BERNIE SANDERS: That’s right. That’s right. That is exactly. You do the right thing by workers. All right, that’s a perfect example. So, you know, you got Wall Street. Here’s a fact. When we talk about. It’s not only income and wealth inequality that bothers me, it’s concentration of ownership.

So right now in America, in virtually every sector of our economy, whether it’s agriculture, transportation, financial services, whatever, you got a handful of giant multinationals controlling that sector. But here’s another amazing fact. Who do you think owns these corporations? You know, you remember there was a day where somebody actually owned General Motors, Ford. They are now owned by Wall street firms.

You got three Wall street investment firms, BlackRock. You’re familiar with BlackRock.

JOE ROGAN: They’re giant gardens eight street.

BERNIE SANDERS: Exactly. Check it out on Google. They are combined, the three of them combined are the major stockholders of 95% of American corporations. How’s that?

JOE ROGAN: That’s not good.

BERNIE SANDERS: That’s power.

JOE ROGAN: Right. How did that start? And what could have been done to stop that from happening?

BERNIE SANDERS: Well, I think it’s. Again, it’s greed. These guys are smart, they’re hardworking, they’re motivated, they want more and more. So if I can buy this, I can buy this, I can sell this. Right.

JOE ROGAN: But they’re all doing it within the law, right?

BERNIE SANDERS: Yeah.

Campaign Finance and Political Corruption

JOE ROGAN: Right. Which is. Is that the problem?

BERNIE SANDERS: Yeah, but who makes that law?

JOE ROGAN: They do.

BERNIE SANDERS: Now, I want to go to another issue which is very rarely discussed. All right, you ready for it?

JOE ROGAN: I’m ready.

BERNIE SANDERS: All right, hang on. There we go. And is the problem I think that we face as a country is not just economic disparities and all the stuff that we’re talking about the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. It is political power right now, and I doubt that there are many Americans. Whether you’re a progressive, as I am, or a right wing Republican, I don’t think people can disagree that we have a corrupt campaign finance system. Argue with me.

JOE ROGAN: No, I agree with you. Yeah.

BERNIE SANDERS: All right, so let me talk about what it means.

JOE ROGAN: Okay.

Citizens United and Billionaire Influence

BERNIE SANDERS: As a result of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, 15, 16 years old, what it says is you’re a billionaire. You have now the constitutional right because your money is your freedom of expression. Right. So you don’t like Bernie Sanders. You can put millions or hundreds of millions of dollars into a campaign and express your view about how terrible Bernie Sanders is, and you can buy that election. Right. That’s your constitutional right. I think that’s probably the worst decision that the Supreme Court has ever made.

So what is the result of that decision? The result of that decision. Let’s take us to where we are today. Is that Elon Musk? And I know Elon was on your show and he’s here at Austin, huh?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

BERNIE SANDERS: Okay. And we could talk about Elon, but he spent $270 million to elect Trump as president. Okay, I think that’s absurd that any one person.

JOE ROGAN: What’s the most someone donated towards the Harris campaign.

BERNIE SANDERS: They spent a lot of money on Harris’s law.

JOE ROGAN: They spent $1.5 billion just over the course of a couple of months.

BERNIE SANDERS: You got it? All right, let me talk about it. So I’m not here just to say it’s a Republican. That’s my point here.

JOE ROGAN: Right?

BERNIE SANDERS: Okay. So Musk spends that money and what’s his reward? He becomes the most powerful person in government for three or four months. Okay, fine. But what you have right now, and I just saw this the other day, you are a Republican member of Congress, okay? And you say, you know, there’s a reconciliation bill, which we can talk about in a minute. This is Trump’s big, bad, big, beautiful bill that’s coming up literally on the floor of the Senate very shortly.

So let’s say you’re a Republican representing a low income district and you say, you know, I got a lot of people on Medicaid in my district and kids can’t get to college. And I worry about food programs. I don’t think it’s a good idea to give tax breaks to billionaires and cut back on Medicaid. You make that announcement today, what happens to you?

JOE ROGAN: It’s over. You’re attacked.

BERNIE SANDERS: You’re finished.

JOE ROGAN: The swarm comes for you.

BERNIE SANDERS: You got it?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

BERNIE SANDERS: It’s not a swarm.

JOE ROGAN: The problem is it’s already been established, Right. That these laws have been established. The power has been given to these people. The money has started flowing, and it’s been flowing for a long time now. And this is the issue with starting something that you can’t stop.

BERNIE SANDERS: Well, you can stop it. You can stop, and you got to stop it.

JOE ROGAN: Okay? But if you do stop it, all these people are going to throw all their money at stopping you from stopping. Correct?

BERNIE SANDERS: Right, Exactly.

JOE ROGAN: They’re going to come up with the best commercials with American flags. This country’s all about competition and freedom. You got it. The freedom to donate to the party of your choice.

BERNIE SANDERS: You got it.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Stop these Communists.

BERNIE SANDERS: Stop. You’re writing their ads for them. They’re going to pick it up with the American.

JOE ROGAN: I could write them.

BERNIE SANDERS: Yeah, we could all write. But. But then we got to take a deep breath and figure out, where do we go from there? Now, I wanted to, in my. You know, as you know, I am the longest serving Independent in American history.

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

Bipartisan Money Problem

BERNIE SANDERS: I caucus with the Democrats. I always have. But you’re not going to hear me defending the Democratic Party on this issue, because you’re right. During the election, it wasn’t just Musk and Republicans putting a lot of money into Trump. It was Democratic billionaires putting a lot of money into complaint and into other candidates as well. And let me. I mentioned there’s a guy named. I don’t even know his first name. Mr. Massie. Is that the name we’re going to do?

JOE ROGAN: Thomas Massie.

BERNIE SANDERS: Thomas from Kentucky.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

BERNIE SANDERS: And this guy, as I am, is opposed to this war in Iran. Just yesterday, Trump gave a long post about how they’re going to primary this guy. And what bothers me is you would hope that there would be respect enough for members of Congress that you can vote your own conscience. You could, you know, represent your constituency. Every district is different than America. But right now, anybody stands up and say, well, you know, I disagree with President Trump. Bam, you are finished. We’re going to primary you. We got all kinds of money. You’re out of there. That happened to Massie yesterday. But let me go back to the Democrats and tell you where the problem this episode is.

JOE ROGAN: Can I point something out? Don’t you think that there’s a Streisand effect to that? Don’t you think that there’s a blowback for that kind of thing? When people recognize that this guy should be allowed to have his own opinions and should be and make some reasonable points, and that people are going to reject this idea, maybe, and that it’s not as simple as. I think the whole MAGA thing right now is very divided, particularly because one of the things that they voted for was no war. Well, now it seems like we’re in a war, right? And it’s quick. We’re six months in, and that’s already popped off.

And then people are very concerned with now what happens to our troops overseas that are in these bases that are in vulnerable positions. And what happens with. I mean, they’re supposedly documented terror cells that got in through the open border over the last four years. So what happens now in America? What happens on American soil?

BERNIE SANDERS: No, I mean, I agree with those.

JOE ROGAN: When a guy like Thomas Massie steps up and says something, he’s going to have a lot more support as well.

BERNIE SANDERS: The answer is yes. And my only point is he has a right.

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

Israel-Gaza and Democratic Money Influence

BERNIE SANDERS: You know, somebody else says, hey, I think the war is a great other. Fine. That’s your view. You got to go back. But what bothers me is that if anybody stands up the next day, we’re going to primary. You’re out of here, man. And that’s the Republicans. Let me talk about the Democrats for a moment, okay? And I don’t even know your views on this, so you may disagree with me.

You know, Israel was attacked by Hamas, and Hamas is a terrible terrorist organization. They killed 1,200 people, which, in a small country like Israel, is a lot of people. Terrible, terrible attack. It’s a war crime. Israel had a right, in my view, to defend itself. But the Netanyahu government did not have a right to kill 52,000 people in Gaza. Wound well over 100,000. And right now, as we speak, Joe, children are starving to death because of Israel’s blockades.

JOE ROGAN: Blockades, yeah, yeah.

BERNIE SANDERS: Starving to death. And I brought forth two resolutions which basically were very simple and said no more US Military aid to Israel under these conditions. One vote got 15 votes in the Senate. The other one got 16. Do you think that members of the Senate do not know what’s going on in Gaza? The kids are starving to death. The innocent people are being shot down right and left. They know it. Why do you think I couldn’t get more votes?

JOE ROGAN: They wouldn’t vote against Israel.

BERNIE SANDERS: Right.

JOE ROGAN: It’s political suicide.

BERNIE SANDERS: Now you’re talking.

JOE ROGAN: Right.

BERNIE SANDERS: All right, so in the Republican side, you have moneyed insurance, saying, you speak up against Trump, you’re out of here. In the Democratic side, you speak up against the Netanyahu government, you’re out of here as well. And they have been successful. You have super PACs like AIPAC spending a fortune, and they have already knocked off a number of members of Congress, good members of Congress, and they will do it again.

So all I’m saying is you got a corrupt campaign finance system on both sides, which is rejecting the will of the American people and end up supporting powerful special interests. And if we do not get a handle on that issue, I worry very much about the future of American democracy.

Presidential Ambitions and Age

JOE ROGAN: Are you going to run for president again?

BERNIE SANDERS: I am 83 years of age.

JOE ROGAN: That’s what I’m saying.

BERNIE SANDERS: Yeah. I’m not sure the American people will be enthusiastic. On somebody’s 100 men, you still vary with it. Thank you.

JOE ROGAN: You are. I mean, you’re a couple years older than Biden.

BERNIE SANDERS: Yeah, Right.

JOE ROGAN: Think of that.

BERNIE SANDERS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: You could be off a lot worse.

BERNIE SANDERS: Yes. Yes.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

Fighting Oligarchy Tour and Healthcare

BERNIE SANDERS: So we have been running around the country doing what we call the Fighting Oligarchy tour, which is why I’m here in Texas. We were in Fort Worth last night, had a good turnout. And I think, interestingly enough, Joe, it’s not most of the people we know, the people who come out to our rallies, you know, we have a big list of millions of people, but a lot of people are coming to our rallies that we don’t know.

And I think we know that some of them are Republicans and some of them are Independents. Many of them are Independents, because I think across the board, there is growing dissatisfaction with the current politics in America of both parties. And people want a new vision for America, which is also something we don’t talk a whole lot about.

So, you know, the issues that we talk about is in the richest country on Earth, why don’t we have the best healthcare system in the world? Why do we have 85 million people who are uninsured or uninsured? And as you were mentioning a moment ago, I mean, he deals with the insurance companies and the drug companies. And the function of the current healthcare system is to make these guys very rich. And it works. They make zillions of dollars.

And every place you go in my state, the cost of health care has gone up this year, like 10, 15%. People can’t afford it, and we lose thousands of people every year. People get sick, they can’t afford to go to the doctor, they die. So one of the fights that I hope we can win is to have the United States join every other major country on earth and guarantee health care to all people as a human. Right.

Healthcare as Community Protection

JOE ROGAN: Well, we’ve talked about that a lot on this show, that if you view this country as a community, the most important thing is to protect the most vulnerable members of your community, Period. Right.

BERNIE SANDERS: I agree.

JOE ROGAN: And if we spend insane amounts of money on all sorts of things that people don’t agree with, and, and I think generally most people would agree on some sort of a national healthcare system.

BERNIE SANDERS: They do.

JOE ROGAN: Most people. Like there’s concepts of socialism that everyone agrees with. One of them is the fire department. Right, right. Everyone thinks that everyone, every citizen should have access, the same equal access to the fire department. And we all pay into that.

BERNIE SANDERS: That’s right.

Education and Making America Great

JOE ROGAN: And we all believe in education. We all believe that there should be free public education. And most people believe that the university system should also be funded. It would benefit everyone.

BERNIE SANDERS: You got it.

JOE ROGAN: It would benefit everyone to have more educated people that are doing better in the world. You’d have better GDP, you’d have more successful people.

BERNIE SANDERS: Absolutely right.

JOE ROGAN: If you want to make America great again. Less losers. How do you make less losers? Don’t stack the deck against them. You know, one of the first things that you’d have to do is figure out why these communities and these cities have been the exact same way for decade after decades. Back to Jim Crow and the red line laws and all these. Why is nothing being done to fix that or to correct that problem?

And it becomes this political beach ball that they just bounce around the air at a concert, you know, and everybody. It’s like there’s certain things that just keep coming up that make you just go, well, how are we still talking about gay marriage? How is that still coming up? And it’s like, poof, throw it up in the air.

BERNIE SANDERS: All right, let me get back to that. But I want to say there’s a.

JOE ROGAN: Bunch of these things. Right.

BERNIE SANDERS: All right, the first point you made, you want to make America great, right? Yeah. The best losers have the best educated workforce in the world. How’s that radical idea? I don’t think so.

JOE ROGAN: Right. You’re absolutely right. Better education, you live longer when you.

BERNIE SANDERS: Have better education, et cetera, et cetera.

JOE ROGAN: Right.

Early Childhood Development and Healthcare

BERNIE SANDERS: All right, so what does that mean? It means right now, you know, I talk to psychologists all the time.

JOE ROGAN: You do?

BERNIE SANDERS: Yeah, I do because I am. I was the chairman, I’m now what they call the ranking member of the Health Education Labor Committee. So, you know, we deal with medical people all the time.

JOE ROGAN: Uh huh.

BERNIE SANDERS: Wasn’t me personally of that. No. That I may need also. But no, I was talking to a more general side. Look, what are the most important years of human development? You’re a human being. What are the most important years?

JOE ROGAN: You’re a child. That’s right, yeah.

BERNIE SANDERS: 0 to 4. How’s our childcare system doing?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, not so good.

BERNIE SANDERS: It’s a disaster. So you got a rational society says, okay, the kids are the future of America. Right. You talked about the sense of being a community. All right, so if I love this country and I want this country to do well into the future, I have to worry about the children. Correct.

JOE ROGAN: Right. Absolutely.

Economic Changes and Family Structure

BERNIE SANDERS: Right now, for economic reasons. When I was a kid. By the way, there’s another shock some of your younger listeners here. There was one worker in a family could actually bring home the bacon and pay the bills.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Back in the old days.

BERNIE SANDERS: Back in the old days, yeah, man. So I grew up in a working class family. We didn’t have any money, but dad went out to work, mom stayed home and that was it.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Made healthier people too, that way.

BERNIE SANDERS: It did. I think in many respects it did.

JOE ROGAN: Well, something happened where they sort of devalued the woman’s role as a mother. And by convincing them that they have to be a part of the workforce.

BERNIE SANDERS: I think that’s part of it. I think the other half is women legitimately wanted, you know, careers as well. And the other thing that happened, maybe most significantly, is you needed to stay alive. Two breadwinners to stay alive.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, that’s the problem. The real problem was financially. It just seemed so difficult for one person to pay for everything.

BERNIE SANDERS: Exactly.

JOE ROGAN: The only way to do it was to have both parents working.

BERNIE SANDERS: You know, I was thinking. I grew up in Brooklyn before I moved to Vermont, and we lived in a rent controlled apartment and I was doing the arithmetic. My dad didn’t make much money, but we didn’t pay much in rent, and I couldn’t quite remember what his salary was and all that, but my guess is we paid, as I recall talking to my brother about this, about 18% of my dad’s salary for rent. 18%.

Ain’t nobody in America today who’s paid 18%. You know what I mean?

JOE ROGAN: Right.

BERNIE SANDERS: That’s why you need two breadwinners, because you’re paying 40%, 50%, right?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

Healthcare Workforce Crisis

BERNIE SANDERS: But getting back to this issue of education, which I think is key, if you are rationally thinking about the future of America, if you loved America as we all do, you’re going to have the best childcare system in the world. So the kids will do well in school. Right now, in childcare, you got workers out there making 15 bucks an hour, and you have families that cannot afford childcare.

My state, I don’t know, it’s about 20 thousand dollars a year to send your kid to childcare. So you’re making 50 thousand a year. How do you pay that 60 thousand? You can do that. And then education, you got kids who want an education. They want to go to college, they want to go to trade school. We desperately need.

Here’s something that really drives me a little bit nuts in America today, Joe. Not only is our health care system failing because it’s based on greed, not on need, but we need more doctors. All right? All over the country, people have to wait, you know, sometimes months to get to a doctor’s office. We have a massive nursing shortage. We need more dentists. Big problem in dentistry. We need more mental health counselors. We need more pharmacists.

How come in the richest country in the world, we don’t have enough doctors and nurses?

JOE ROGAN: Cause it’s very difficult to do. It’s very difficult to become a doctor. And the bills that you have from education are overwhelming.

BERNIE SANDERS: All right, you want to go to. Let’s just say tomorrow you announce to the world, you give it up, this podcast. You want to go to medical school? All right, you got it.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

BERNIE SANDERS: You know much if you don’t have any money, how much are you going to graduate medical school in debt?

JOE ROGAN: Probably quarter million dollars easy.

BERNIE SANDERS: Double that.

JOE ROGAN: Really?

BERNIE SANDERS: Yeah. I’m not. Yeah, obviously it varies per person, but it is not unusual for guys, you know, people working class homes, go to medical school, come out 500 thousand dollars in debt. Nurses, I don’t know. 100 thousand, 50 thousand dollars. That is insane.

JOE ROGAN: It’s insane.

BERNIE SANDERS: All right.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

BERNIE SANDERS: We need more doctors, so I should. I want to encourage you, Joe. I want you to go to medical school. Hey, good news. We’re paying your tuition. Da, da, da. And we need you out there as soon as we can get you.

JOE ROGAN: Why wouldn’t that be subsidized?

BERNIE SANDERS: Of course you should subsidize it, right?

JOE ROGAN: Of course. Yeah, but there’s, there’s, there’s so many different. What would you have done? Like, imagine if you hadn’t gotten derailed and they hadn’t conspired against you and you actually became the Democratic candidate for president and you won. What would you have done differently?

Presidential Agenda and Campaign Finance Reform

BERNIE SANDERS: Sure. Okay. How many hours do we have?

JOE ROGAN: We got all the time in the world, Bernie.

BERNIE SANDERS: I know.

JOE ROGAN: What would you have done? First day in office?

BERNIE SANDERS: Well, it’s not just the first day in office. I would have dealt with this campaign finance reform issue. And there are ways that you can get around that Supreme Court decision.

JOE ROGAN: How do you do that?

BERNIE SANDERS: You move toward public funding of elections, which says that, Joe, you want to run against me, that’s great, but you’re not going to get super PAC money. We’re going to publicly fund you. You get 1500 signatures that says you’re a serious candidate, you’ll get a certain amount of money to run for office.

JOE ROGAN: So funded by the government.

BERNIE SANDERS: Yes, absolutely. Rather than.

JOE ROGAN: So someone running for president funded by the current president.

BERNIE SANDERS: Well, not the current president, no, but the current government. And people say, oh, taxpayer dollars are going there. But that makes a lot more sense than having billionaires fund elections, which is what you got right now. So that’s the more you.

JOE ROGAN: So you think there should be. When you get a certain. Get a certain allotted amount of money that you could use for your campaign, and everybody gets the same amount.

BERNIE SANDERS: That exists in some places right now.

JOE ROGAN: Does it? Where?

BERNIE SANDERS: Yeah. In New York City right now. Oh, in New York City and other places as well. So if you agree, you know, you’re going to raise. You’re not going to raise private money. You go the public route. It exists in a number of communities, and I think that is.

JOE ROGAN: Did you watch the New York City debates? The mayor I heard of.

BERNIE SANDERS: I got involved, and I’m supporting. Mr.

JOE ROGAN: A lot of people are. Well, especially after that debate.

BERNIE SANDERS: Right.

JOE ROGAN: It seems like everybody else was essentially saying, I’ve been to Israel more than you’ve been to Israel. I’m going to go to Israel before you do.

BERNIE SANDERS: Right. They think they’re campaigning to be foreign minister for Israel or something. But talk about money in politics.

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

BERNIE SANDERS: Just look at New York City right now. There’s the election tomorrow, I think, right? I think it’s tomorrow. What say Monday? Tomorrow’s Tuesday, right? Yes, that’s the election. They’re spending a huge amount of money. You know, these are Democratic or some cases.

JOE ROGAN: Who’s in the lead right now?

BERNIE SANDERS: The polls say Cuomo by a little bit, but I think Zoran has a lot of momentum. We’ll see. Polls are weird in a race like that. Yes.

Polling Accuracy and Healthcare Emergency

JOE ROGAN: Well, they’re weird in every race. They were wrong with Hillary in 2020 or in 2016, rather. They were wrong in 2024 with Harris and Trump. Like, I don’t understand polls because I just. I don’t. I have a feeling that the majority of them are inaccurate.

BERNIE SANDERS: Well, I think they are increasing. I don’t know the answer to your question. The pollsters would argue that’s not the case, but I think you got a lot of folks who are not all that enthusiastic about honestly giving honest answers to a pollster.

JOE ROGAN: Absolutely. Yeah. That’s true, too. Yeah. That’s part of the problem. Right.

BERNIE SANDERS: All right. But you asked me on my first day as president. Well, I have you drop in, say hello, have a cup of coffee. All right, good. And then I think we’d declare something like our healthcare system as an emergency and figure out ways that we can do what every other major country on earth does, and that is guarantee healthcare to all people.

So one of the things you do is say, okay, we need tens of thousands of more doctors and hundreds of thousands of more nurses and dentists and so forth and so on. And we’re going to move aggressively to make sure that in America, everybody in this country has health care as a human right? So I think that’s number one.

Number two, at a time of massive income and wealth inequality, you don’t give tax breaks to billionaires. You demand that they start paying their fair share of taxes. And one of the problems that we have, it’s not just an American issue, it’s a global issue. A lot of these zillionaires are hiding their money in tax havens in the Cayman Islands and elsewhere. And that’s an international issue. But I think we have to have a fair tax system which says that individuals and wealthy and corporations that are making a whole lot of money start paying their fair share of taxes.

Tax Policy Discussion

JOE ROGAN: What is their fair share?

BERNIE SANDERS: I don’t know. I mean, you know, on the Eisenhower, the very rich paid at their upper levels 90%, you know, but let me be very honest with you Joe, on this one.

JOE ROGAN: 90% is kind of crazy though.

BERNIE SANDERS: No, that’s not, of course, that’s just for the, you know, your billionth dollar, you know what I mean? It’s not your first dollar.

JOE ROGAN: So if you make a billion, you pay 900 million.

Climate Change and Economic Policy

BERNIE SANDERS: No, no, no, no, no, no. That’s not what it means. It means on your $900 million, you’re going to pay 90%. Okay, all right, but you know, the other thing that I would do and you know, you got to deal with this climate change issue and I know that, you know, there are some people who think climate change is a hoax. It ain’t a hoax.

I think the last 10 years have been the warmest on record and we can create millions of good paying jobs transforming our energy system away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency, to solar, to wind and other sustainable energies.

JOE ROGAN: I think the climate change issue is very complicated and I think. Did you see the Washington Post piece that they wrote where they did this long term view? First of all, the reality is that the Earth’s temperature has never been static, right? We could both agree on that. It’s always been up and down. There’s been ice ages and heat waves.

And then the Washington Post looked at it. What was the time period that they looked at that? Essentially they found that we’re in a cooling period that the Earth over the past X amount of years. And this was like a very inconvenient discovery. But they had to report the data and kudos to them for doing that. Scientists have captured the earth’s climate change over the last 485 million years. Here’s a surprising place we stand now. So look at the far end of that graph and you see we’re in a cooling period.

BERNIE SANDERS: Well, I’m not sure. I didn’t read that article, but you know, the scientists who are out there.

JOE ROGAN: I think I know, but there’s a lot of money involved in that, too, Bernie. That’s part of the problem. There’s a lot of money involved in this whole climate change emergency issue, and there’s a lot of control, and that’s a big part of this problem. Not only that, if we’re just talking about primarily carbon and carbon footprint, what are we going to do about China? Because China. Absolutely. China is like, what percentage of.

BERNIE SANDERS: They are the major. They are the major polluter right now in terms of carbon. We’re number two. We used to be one. They’re number one right now.

JOE ROGAN: I think they have an enormous percent of global. I think it’s.

BERNIE SANDERS: Well, they’re number one. I don’t know what to do.

JOE ROGAN: It’s very high. It’s very high.

BERNIE SANDERS: This is. It’s not an American issue. It is a global issue. And all I can tell you is that we are, in my view, going to see more extreme weather disturbances in the coming years than we have ever. And we’re seeing them right now.

Financial Entanglements and Environmental Concerns

JOE ROGAN: Right. But scientists don’t agree. This is where it gets confusing, because scientists that are in agreement, there’s all these entanglements. Whenever someone’s discussing something, whether it’s economics or whether it’s health issues or pharmaceutical drugs, there’s financial entanglements. I think we both agree with that, Right?

BERNIE SANDERS: Yep.

JOE ROGAN: And I think this is part of the issue with this whole climate change emergency as well. Because it’s not just that we could all agree pollution is a major factor. It’s a huge issue in the world today. We could all agree with that, Right. I think one of the things that we have to recognize is that there’s. Whenever there’s an issue that everyone can agree on, you’re going to have a bunch of people that capitalize on that issue and they look to gain more money.

They have financial issues that they push forward in order to capitalize on this issue, but then also power and control. These things like they’re trying to institute in the UK where they have these 15 minute cities, this concept where you’re not allowed to travel, they’ll be able to look at your carbon footprint. It’s. Yeah, see, that’s the problem.

The problem is giving people that are in power, these people that we’ve all discussed that have so much money and so much control over our societies. Multinational corporations giving them more control over citizens. And this is a vehicle for that. And this is what’s dangerous about this whole climate change emergency, because it allows these fucking creeps that have been controlling people and controlling what you do and what you say and how you spend your money with people that already live in check to check.

And you put additional constraints on them and you make them even more scared. And then you put additional measures where you can look at their carbon footprint, you can look at the amount they travel, put a carbon tax on these people. Let’s figure out how to extract more money from them. That’s what bothers me about this climate change emergency.

Not that we can all agree. Pollution is a terrible thing. Everyone should agree to that. The beautiful earth that sustains us and all life on this planet is being poisoned as we speak. We’re killing all the fish in the ocean and sucking them out in giant numbers. 94% of all the big fish that are in the ocean are gone over the last. You know, whatever it is, when you.

BERNIE SANDERS: Go to war against nature, you lose.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Because you’re part of nature.

BERNIE SANDERS: Exactly right.

JOE ROGAN: We’re worshiping the almighty dollar above the mother.

Native American Wisdom and Environmental Harmony

BERNIE SANDERS: You know, you asked me when I ran for president, one of the interests. It’s, you know, it’s something else to run for president because you get around, you meet all kinds of people and you learn all kinds of things. And one of the things that I did, we went to a lot of met with a lot of Native Americans.

And one of the reasons is, you know, their tradition was going from way back, respect for nature. That they understood way back when that you kill off all of the buffalo, you ain’t going to have nothing to eat. Right, Right. They understood that. And you understand that you live in harmony with nature, which is, I think, what you’re talking about.

JOE ROGAN: Absolutely.

BERNIE SANDERS: And if you lose that harmony, I worry about the future of humanity, which.

JOE ROGAN: Is the problem with financial competitiveness. When you put the almighty dollar above all else.

BERNIE SANDERS: That’s right.

JOE ROGAN: Then all you think about, and you’re only alive for 100 years. So it’s just hit the gas, Hit the gas for 100 years. And who gives a shit what happens after I’m gone? I’m going to die with the most toys. Yay. I win. In the dirt.

BERNIE SANDERS: That’s exactly right.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

BERNIE SANDERS: And that is. Which takes us to another issue.

JOE ROGAN: Okay.

Artificial Intelligence and Automation

BERNIE SANDERS: And that is artificial intelligence and robotics.

JOE ROGAN: Automation.

BERNIE SANDERS: Automation, yeah. Okay.

JOE ROGAN: Giant issue.

BERNIE SANDERS: Huge issue. All right, so let’s back it up. Americans are angry. And one of the reasons they are angry is that over the last. Just give you one fact here, last 52 years, you and I understand, everybody in the world understands there’s been a huge explosion in technology. Correct. What we’re doing today never could have happened 50 years ago. Factories far more automated. Offices far more automated. I became mayor of Burlington, Vermont in 1981. There was not a computer in the building. Okay.

JOE ROGAN: By the way, great town.

BERNIE SANDERS: It is a great town. In any case, an explosion of technology, significant increase in worker productivity. Right. We’re talking to millions of people now. Never could have happened before, right? That’s true. Workers are producing a lot more. Tell me, how are real inflation accounted for wages been over the last 52 years? With all of that increase in worker productivity, workers doing a lot better.

JOE ROGAN: Not so good.

BERNIE SANDERS: Not so good.

JOE ROGAN: No.

The Disconnect Between Technology and Quality of Life

BERNIE SANDERS: In fact, there are studies out there that suggest in real inflation accounted for dollars, wages are actually lower now than they were 52 years ago. Okay. And during that same period is a massive transfer of wealth from the bottom 90% to the top 1%. So that’s what technology has done over the last 50 years. It is not.

There was a study, I don’t know if you saw this. Blew me away. I can’t remember who did it. Kaiser, some reputable guy. People did it. This is what they said. They do a poll to the American people and they say, Americans, do you think you are better off today than somebody in your situation, you know, middle class, whatever you may be, was 40 years ago. Okay. Are you better off today than somebody in your circumstance would have been 40 years ago? What was the answer?

JOE ROGAN: No. Yeah.

BERNIE SANDERS: And what the answer was. And this is. And we got to deal with this one. This is big. The answer was, you know, there were a number of people saying, hey, look, I got a cell phone, it’s great. I got a big screen TV, it’s great. I can fly all over the world. It’s great. I get sick, I get treatment now that I never could have had 40 years ago. Right.

JOE ROGAN: Those are facts.

BERNIE SANDERS: All really positive developments. But on average, most people said, I think this situation is worse today than it was 40 years ago. And that is what we got to deal with. So you can have all the technology in the world. What the hell does it mean if your life is not improving? In fact, in many ways getting worse.

Minimum Wage Crisis

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Well, again, we’ll go back to polls again, because I don’t necessarily believe that polls are totally accurate, but I do think that the Issue with it being virtually impossible for one person to sustain the entire family these days. One worker, the father or the mother, whoever it is, to sustain the entire. That’s a giant issue.

All these issues when it comes to labor, when it comes to minimum wage. I think you and I are in agreement of all these. On all these. I think the minimum wage in this country is ridiculous. I mean, to $7. What?

BERNIE SANDERS: It’s insane.

JOE ROGAN: It’s insane. How do you live off $7? You go to Jimmy John’s, you get a sub. How much is a sub? How much is a sub? Like a big sub. At Jimmy John’s, some guy was just did a TikTok video where he’s like, they’re trying to say that minimum wage, $15 is too much. I think he had a sub that he bought for 25 bucks. So imagine that’s your lunch. So imagine you have to work three and a half hours just to pay for a sandwich. Imagine how insane that is.

BERNIE SANDERS: It’s insane.

JOE ROGAN: That’s insane. Like, how do you eat? How do you eat dinner? How do you eat lunch? Breakfast?

BERNIE SANDERS: I have talked to people who make 10, 12 bucks an hour trying to raise a kid.

JOE ROGAN: Jesus.

BERNIE SANDERS: That’s right.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Well, the argument against that is, hey, these are entry level jobs that are supposed to be for kids.

BERNIE SANDERS: And that’s factually incorrect. Yeah, of course it’s true to some degree.

JOE ROGAN: To some degree. But if you have grown adults that are working those jobs now, it becomes disgusting.

BERNIE SANDERS: That’s right. That’s exactly right.

JOE ROGAN: Especially when you’re dealing with an enormous corporation.

BERNIE SANDERS: You got it right. So we put a lot of pressure, you know, we, you know, are trying to raise the minimum wage, federal minimum wage to 17 bucks an hour.

JOE ROGAN: That’s a reasonable amount of money. You know, I mean, it’s still. It’s not. It’s going to be real difficult to live off of 17 bucks an hour.

BERNIE SANDERS: But at least. That’s right.

JOE ROGAN: At least you can get a sandwich in under two hours worth of work.

The Epidemic of Loneliness

BERNIE SANDERS: All right, but I want to get back to this issue because it’s one that we don’t talk about. And it gets to AI. Why do. Why do we have what, you know, some of these people call an epidemic of loneliness in America? All right.

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

BERNIE SANDERS: All right, why are we. Mental illness rates are pretty high. Suicide rates are too high, too much. God, drug addiction, horrible problem all over the country. Why?

Technology’s Impact on Mental Health and Society

JOE ROGAN: Well, there’s a lot of factors. First of all, there are a lot of people that are very unhealthy, physically unhealthy. I think metabolic health is a gigantic issue in this country. There’s a lot of people in this country that feel completely disenfranchised and so they turn inward and then technology invites them to do that.

You get online and you spend your time staring at a screen, having communications with people, arguing on Twitter all day, you know, changing the flag in your bio from Ukraine to Palestine and now you got an Iranian flag. You’re just like in a constant state of anxiety and chaos. You’re dealing with the entire problem, the problems of the entire world. You’re dealing with 8 billion people’s worth of problems every day. I think that’s unsustainable.

And then that’s also a function of technology because this interaction that we have is unprecedented. The interaction with the news, with each other, all this stuff we’re not designed to handle. And it gives you massive anxiety, particularly for young people, particularly Jonathan Haidt’s written about this. With young girls who have the biggest problem with social media comparing themselves to other people. Massive increase in self harm, suicide, suicidal ideology, depression, anxiety. All this stuff accentuated by technology and our unchecked use of it.

BERNIE SANDERS: I think you hit the nail on the head. And so I think we got to take a deep breath and understand that we got to figure out how we make technology work to improve human life.

JOE ROGAN: Right.

BERNIE SANDERS: Not to hurt you.

JOE ROGAN: Don’t you think this is the 11th hour?

BERNIE SANDERS: I think it is, yeah.

JOE ROGAN: This is. The problem with it is like it’s already. The genie’s out of the box.

BERNIE SANDERS: The genie’s out of the box. There’s no question about it. But, you know, we can’t sit around and just do nothing.

The Automation Crisis

JOE ROGAN: But when it. This is the real issue, when it becomes a problem where you have massive automation of almost all jobs, which is something that. Especially when you deal with a corporation that is entirely based around making the most amount of money possible. Well, what better way when you don’t have to pay them anything.

BERNIE SANDERS: You got it. There are signs. I don’t know if you’ve seen them. Signs advertising from AI companies. What was they saying? Don’t hire humans. Something like that. Did you see how it posted it?

JOE ROGAN: That’s adorable.

BERNIE SANDERS: Don’t hire humans.

JOE ROGAN: That’s demonic.

BERNIE SANDERS: It is.

JOE ROGAN: But also from the perspective of a corporation where you deal with human issues, problems, mistakes, people showing up late.

BERNIE SANDERS: Why do I need you when I can get a robot?

JOE ROGAN: Exactly.

BERNIE SANDERS: You’re not going to get sick. I can fix you a lot easier than paying for your health care and so forth and so.

JOE ROGAN: Right. So what do you do? What do you do about that? So if you’re the President and President Sanders, we have this issue. The whole country is going to go automation. What do we do?

Sanders’ Vision for Technology and Workers

BERNIE SANDERS: All right, first of all, we make the determination that we are not going to let a handful of CEOs make these decisions that they’re going to be made by the American people. What does that mean, bottom line? It means that technology is going to work to improve us, not just the people who own the technology and the CEOs of large corporations.

What does that mean? All right, first thought, you are a worker, your worker, your productivity is increasing because we give you AI, Right?

JOE ROGAN: Right.

BERNIE SANDERS: Instead of throwing you out on the street, I’m going to reduce your work week to 32 hours. All right? So you’re going to have a nice.

JOE ROGAN: Four day work week.

BERNIE SANDERS: Exactly. And by the way, not a radical.

JOE ROGAN: Idea, not a radical idea at all.

BERNIE SANDERS: There are companies around the world that are doing it with some success. The UAW, the United Automobile Workers, they had a big strike a year ago, you remember, against the big three. You remember that? And they won a very good contract. And I’m a big fan of the trade union movement. I think workers need that.

And one of their demands, interestingly enough. And people thought that Sean Fain, who was the president of the union, was crazy. But Sean said, you know what, we want a 32 hour workweek because our people are producing more. People thought he was crazy, but the idea is catching on.

So first thing to say is let’s use technology to benefit workers. That means give you more time with your family, with your friends, you know, for education, whatever the hell you want to do. You don’t have to work 40 hours a week anymore.

Second thing I think we have got to do is take a look. As you just said, you said it, you know better than I said it is. What does it mean that we have so many young kids living on the Internet?

Technology’s Impact on Education

JOE ROGAN: Right.

BERNIE SANDERS: All right. There are schools all over the country now who are getting cell phones out of schools. I talk to teachers in Vermont and they say, you know, kids attention spans now have been greatly diminished.

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

BERNIE SANDERS: You know, how do we deal with that In Vermont again, there was a, somebody told me that there’s a teacher now who does. He demands that his students write with a pen in blue books now because he doesn’t trust what they’re sending in that it’s not artificial intelligence.

All right, so if I say to you, all right, Joe, tell me what happened in the American Revolution, you go to the Chat box, you give me a wonderful essay that you know nothing about. Right?

JOE ROGAN: Right.

BERNIE SANDERS: What does that mean for your intellectual development? That all you can do is press a button and give me an answer.

JOE ROGAN: Right. Unless you’ve absorbed that information.

BERNIE SANDERS: Unless you have. But many kids are not, and we got to worry about that as well. So I think we have to take a deep breath. And many of the things, what has been the impact of all this stuff? How do we stop the negative impacts? How do we go forward with what is positive? And it is not easy stuff to be sure.

But I just thought what I worry about right now is I think artificial intelligence is going to displace millions and millions of workers. People are going to be thrown out on the streets. I think the corporate guys who are running these companies could care less about these workers. I think robotics is going to be running a lot of the factories in America. And I think these are issues that we just have got to address in a bold way.

The Corporate Dilemma

JOE ROGAN: Yes, but how do you do that? And like you’re balancing it out in one way. If you are a corporation, like imagine you’re an automobile manufacturing corporation. Your Ford, Ford is struggling right now. There’s a giant issue with Ford. Right. So what does Ford do if all of a sudden something comes along that allows them to be more productive, they’re more profitable. These machines can work 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They don’t need time off. And you’re going to make a better product. You’re going to make more money for your shareholders. The corporation succeeds, but you don’t need X amount of workers anymore.

BERNIE SANDERS: Right.

JOE ROGAN: How do you mitigate this?

BERNIE SANDERS: I mean, that’s the right question.

JOE ROGAN: What do you do?

BERNIE SANDERS: All right, nobody has a simple answer. Let’s just talk. Does Ford simply does corporate America have the right to say to workers throughout this country, hey, sorry, guys, we don’t need you anymore. Have a nice life. You’re out on the streets.

JOE ROGAN: Instead of thinking them as workers, should we think of them as, look, there are people that make the decisions. There’s the executives, there’s the corporation itself. But without the people that worked on those assembly lines, you have nothing.

BERNIE SANDERS: That’s right.

JOE ROGAN: You have nothing. You couldn’t have done any of the things you’ve done without those people. But those people are replaceable because it’s skilled labor that you could teach another person to do. And they’re replaceable because there’s plenty of people that want those jobs and there’s a demand. So you file them in. You file them Out. Which is why they developed unions. Right? So they developed unions to keep people from being exploited.

And then the problem becomes the unions get exploited, and then the unions have a lot of money, and then there’s a lot of influence, and then they decide, okay, fuck these unions. Let’s go to Mexico. And these laws that Ross Perot famously talked about the giant sucking sound headed south. Remember that? Yeah.

BERNIE SANDERS: Oh, I remember him well.

JOE ROGAN: Boy, was he right. Boy, was he right.

Reframing the National Conversation

BERNIE SANDERS: All right, let’s get back to this issue of which what do you do.

JOE ROGAN: Like, if you’re the president?

BERNIE SANDERS: Ain’t no easy answer. Let me throw that out to you. I don’t have a magical solution. I wish I did. I don’t. I think the first thing you say, all right, I’m Ford, I’m General Motors. I got all this technology. I can produce my products much more efficiently. I don’t need workers anymore.

JOE ROGAN: Right, right.

BERNIE SANDERS: Well, I’m sorry, Mr. GM, and I’m sorry, Mr. Ford, because this country is more than just your profits. We got human beings. And you’re not going to throw people out on the street, many of whom will have a hard time getting health care, et cetera, et cetera.

So let me reframe the question again, of which, admittedly, it is complicated. I don’t have the magic answer. How, as a nation, forget Ford, forget General Motors. How, as a nation, do we deal with this exploding technology so that it benefits all of us and not just Mr. Ford and Mr. General Motors? That’s the question, I think. And it’s going to require radical solutions.

So for a start, it gets back to something we talked about a little while ago. If you had healthcare as a human. Right. Right. As people in almost every other wealthy country have, and not attached to your job, that would be a major step forward, right?

JOE ROGAN: Yes, absolutely.

BERNIE SANDERS: All right, Joe, you lost your job, but you know what? Your family still has health care.

JOE ROGAN: Imagine if you are a diabetic and now you don’t have access to insulin because now you no longer.

Wealth and Poverty in the Age of Technology

BERNIE SANDERS: So this is the way I frame it. We are the wealthiest country in the history of the world, right now, with all of this artificial intelligence and robotics, we are going to be wealthier, correct?

JOE ROGAN: Correct.

BERNIE SANDERS: All right, so we’re not in the 1820s where people had to work 100 hours a week to grow food to eat. Right?

JOE ROGAN: Right.

BERNIE SANDERS: You’re not in the 1920s. You’re in 2025. You have all of this productivity out there. How do we utilize it to create a decent standard of living for all people? Let me ask you this. With all of this technology, can we wipe out poverty in America?

JOE ROGAN: Well, we should be able to, right?

BERNIE SANDERS: You should be able to.

JOE ROGAN: Well, we should have been able to do that a long time ago. If that was something that was politically motivated.

BERNIE SANDERS: If you wanted to do it. But it’s easy enough.

JOE ROGAN: If it was profitable.

BERNIE SANDERS: Pardon me?

JOE ROGAN: If it was profitable to wipe out poverty, which it should be like overall as a community. Like I said, less losers, higher GDP.

BERNIE SANDERS: If we love the country.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. If you really love America, you want more people to have a chance.

A Vision for Healthcare and Society

BERNIE SANDERS: All right, so what kind that. All right, good. I mean, and again, please, these are complicated issues. I surely don’t have all the answers, but I think we throw on the table. You got all of this technology. What is our goal?

So, all right, our goal is if we’re going to create all of this wealth, that we have a health care system that guarantees health care to all people. And by the way, we have drug companies whose function is to come up with cures to diabetes and dementia and Alzheimer’s and other terrible illnesses rather than just make huge profits for themselves.

All right, you have a publicly funded healthcare system, guarantees healthcare to all people. Just doing that would lower the stress rate in this country enormously.

JOE ROGAN: Enormously. Okay, sure.

BERNIE SANDERS: Okay, you got that. We talked a moment ago about education. I think you and I agreed.

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

Education as a Human Right

BERNIE SANDERS: We want the best educational system in the world. What does it mean that all. You don’t have to worry. You’re a working dad out there. You’re worried that your kid may have a lower standard of living than your kid can’t afford to go to college. You don’t want your kid leaving school $50,000 a day. We say education is a human right.

God, you know, you mentioned public education a while ago. That didn’t happen by accident. You know, back in the early 20th century, a lot of people, working class people fought and said, you know what? We don’t only want the rich kids to get a decent education. We want our kids. And that’s how public education began.

JOE ROGAN: Right, right.

BERNIE SANDERS: So it said, okay, everybody in America, you know, state by state, started in Wisconsin, actually, is going to have public education from first grade or kindergarten to 12th grade. God didn’t create 12th grade as the limit. Right, right. All right, you go to Scandinavia, you go to Germany. Right. Now, you know how much it costs to get a higher education?

JOE ROGAN: How much?

BERNIE SANDERS: Zero.

JOE ROGAN: That’s great.

BERNIE SANDERS: Of course it’s great because they.

JOE ROGAN: That’s why they make such good cars.

BERNIE SANDERS: Well, it could be, you know, they great engineers. That’s right. But the bottom line is what you said.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

BERNIE SANDERS: If I want this country to be productive.

JOE ROGAN: Right.

BERNIE SANDERS: I want the best educated workforce. That’s not a debate. Right?

JOE ROGAN: Unquestionably.

BERNIE SANDERS: All right.

JOE ROGAN: That’s how you want your family. And if the country is a community, the country is your family.

BERNIE SANDERS: Exactly.

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

Technology and Worker Rights

BERNIE SANDERS: All right, so that’s what we got to start thinking about. It’s not just what Mr. Ford and Mr. General Motors and Mr. Apple want.

JOE ROGAN: Right.

BERNIE SANDERS: You’re right in saying they are motivated by making millions.

JOE ROGAN: Right.

BERNIE SANDERS: All right. Their motivation is throw the workers out on the street, bring in the technology and screw the workers. That is not what we should be doing as a nation. You got to tell them that. All right, all right. So we got to sit there and say, all right, all this technology, all right, we talk about healthcare as a human Right. I think we’re talking about education as a human right.

JOE ROGAN: Right.

BERNIE SANDERS: I think we should be saying with all of this technology, we got to be thinking seriously about lowering the number of hours that people work.

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

BERNIE SANDERS: You know how many people, millions of people in this country don’t work 40 hours a week. They’re working 50, 60 hours a week. That’s insane. So we can say all of this increased worker productivity, guess what? I don’t know what the number is. We got to work on a four day workweek with no loss of pay. I introduced a bill to do that. I got to tell you, I go to airports, I go around. People came up to me. People are stressed out by the amount of hours they have to work.

JOE ROGAN: Absolutely.

Life Expectancy and National Priorities

BERNIE SANDERS: All right, so what I’m saying here is let’s take a hard look about how we utilize this technology to improve life for all people. Our goal should be, instead of bombing Iran, our goal should be right now, Joe, our life expectancy in America is lower than it is in other major countries. You know that?

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

BERNIE SANDERS: Four years younger than four years shorter lifespans than other wealthy countries. If you’re working class in America, you live seven years shorter life than the 1%, which is, to me, just outrageous. All right, so here’s the thing. Instead of bombing Iran, how do we increase life expectancy so that we’re living the longest lives of many people on Earth? How’s that for a goal?

JOE ROGAN: Well, that’s a great goal. And how do you go about achieving that goal?

BERNIE SANDERS: Well, healthcare is one. Reducing the work week is another. Education. All the things that we’ve talked about, all the things we talked about will increase life expectancy. But Have a goal out there.

JOE ROGAN: Also taking toxic food.

Food Industry and Public Health

BERNIE SANDERS: Exactly, exactly. You know, I don’t. You know, I don’t. I’ve known Bobby Kennedy for a long time and, you know, he and I have gone in different directions politically. But the point about health, food, Food.

JOE ROGAN: We spend the most and we’re the sickest.

BERNIE SANDERS: Absolutely, absolutely. And food is one of the. When I was chairman of the committee, we worked very hard to get serious labeling. You know, some kid drinks, mom buys a bottle of Coca Cola for the kid, there’s like what, 10 teaspoons of sugar in that product.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

BERNIE SANDERS: You know, I don’t think people know that. And we try to get labeling. Maybe that will happen. Now.

JOE ROGAN: People also weren’t aware until like the last 20 years with the consequences of that sugar is.

BERNIE SANDERS: That’s right, absolutely.

JOE ROGAN: Also because of money.

BERNIE SANDERS: You got it. I mean, you. Yeah, don’t get me going on that one.

JOE ROGAN: Let’s go. Yeah, I’ll get you going. Come on.

BERNIE SANDERS: You know, you would think, how hard is it to say, if you have a bottle of soda or you have a food product, tell people in English what is in the damn product.

JOE ROGAN: Right, right.

BERNIE SANDERS: Do you think anywhere right now they have any grams? Do you think anybody in America knows what the hell a gram is? I mean, just. That’s how ridiculous it is. So I want parents to know that if the food that they’re serving their kid could lead to obesity, which is an epidemic in America, could lead to diabetes, which is an epidemic, a terrible illness costing us hundreds of billions of dollars. So you’re absolutely right. All right. And then that ties into rebuilding family based agriculture in America. Wouldn’t it be nice?

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

Family Farming vs. Corporate Agriculture

BERNIE SANDERS: In my state of Vermont, all over this country, family farmers are, you know, they’re just being driven off of the land. And that to me is a real tragedy because. And again, Vermont is one of the most rural states in America. Growing up, if you talk to people who grew up on farms, they say, you know, Bernie, that was a pretty good way of life, and we’re losing that. So how do you create an economy in which we once again put an emphasis on family based agriculture, not corporate agriculture? Family farmers who are growing good, in many cases, organic food for our kids rather than corporate regenerative.

JOE ROGAN: Regenerative agriculture.

BERNIE SANDERS: You got it.

JOE ROGAN: Like, true. Like White Oaks Pastures, the way they run it. White Oaks Farms. There’s a bunch.

BERNIE SANDERS: And wouldn’t that be great?

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

BERNIE SANDERS: All right.

Corporate Food Engineering and Addiction

JOE ROGAN: Well, we’d be a lot healthier if we ate that food, that’s for sure. But the problem is people are already addicted to that other food. And this is the problem with money. These corporations have engineered these products.

BERNIE SANDERS: You got it.

JOE ROGAN: And these are the same corporations, unfortunately, that were in charge of tobacco. You know, this is where it gets really weird. They bought out all the major processed food corporations, and they make this stuff that’s unbelievably addictive because it’s engineered by scientists. We’ve got the brightest and the best who figured out what’s the best way to get these people totally addicted to whatever, you know?

BERNIE SANDERS: How sick is that? How pathetic is that?

JOE ROGAN: It’s pretty sick. Yeah. And they say these people, they have choice. They could eat whatever they want. They want to go to the grocery store and eat tomatoes and have a nice salad. They can. But shouldn’t they also be able to get Pop Tarts?

BERNIE SANDERS: Yeah, I know. Look, and your point is interesting. You remember there’s a photograph, a very famous photograph, I don’t know when it was done. 50s, maybe 60s, 70s, I don’t know. Of the tobacco industry executives coming before Congress. And remember that photograph?

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

BERNIE SANDERS: And the congressman said to him, and tell me, I maybe get this a little bit wrong. Are you aware that cigarettes kill people? No, no, Congressman, we have no evidence to that effect. Right. They were lying through their teeth.

JOE ROGAN: Of course. Yeah.

BERNIE SANDERS: And it’s exactly. Your analogy is exactly right. These food manufacturers know exactly that they are causing obesity and God knows what else in kids leading to diabetes. They know exactly what they’re doing.

JOE ROGAN: Right.

BERNIE SANDERS: And they’re lying. And they’re opposing all of us who are trying to, among other things, make our food supply healthier.

Corporate Profit Cycles and Wall Street Pressure

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, they are. And this is also a function of corporate America. Right? This is a function of wanting to do better in each quarter, you know, having this endless. That’s right, endless growth cycle where they’re never sat, they never say, hey, we make X amount of money every year. This is perfect.

BERNIE SANDERS: That’s right.

JOE ROGAN: Let’s concentrate on doing better for our community.

BERNIE SANDERS: And the companies don’t even make that decision, that Wall street investors make that decision. You got to make more. You got to make more.

JOE ROGAN: Right. Because the shareholders would be like, there’s no way. You need to make more money.

BERNIE SANDERS: Exactly.

JOE ROGAN: Otherwise I’m dumping your stock and the company’s going to go in the toilet.

BERNIE SANDERS: Right?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

BERNIE SANDERS: So how. I mean, this is what we have got to deal with as a nation. Is that acceptable? All right. Is it acceptable for food companies to poison our kids?

JOE ROGAN: No.

BERNIE SANDERS: All right. What are you going to do about it? I’m the senator, not you. Right.

Food Safety Standards and International Comparisons

JOE ROGAN: It’s a good question. Yeah, it’s a solid question. And I think the things that Bobby Kennedy is proposing and implementing, I think are very valuable. First of all, getting all these poisonous dyes and all that have been kicked out of all these other major companies, including Canada. There’s the same factories that make these food products in America literally have to make a different version of it for Canada. And then they’re complaining that they can’t do it because economically, it won’t be profitable for them anymore. But you’re already making them. You’re making them, and you’re shipping them to Canada.

BERNIE SANDERS: My son brought me back from Canada. Fruit Loops, I think it was Fruit Loops, actually.

JOE ROGAN: They look kind of plain. They don’t have that bright pop to cancer gives you.

BERNIE SANDERS: You’re absolutely all right. I mean. So I think this is, you know, almost gets back to the need to revitalize American democracy and say to large corporations, you know what? You can’t poison our children. I don’t think that’s a terribly radical concept. You can make money, fine, make money, but don’t poison our children. Say to large corporations, technology is coming. That’s good, but you’re not going to use it just to throw workers out on the street.

Automation and Driverless Technology

JOE ROGAN: But let’s go to that, too, because we kind of glossed over that. We never got back to it. So automation comes. And one of the things that Andrew Yang warned us about a long time ago, and back then, I kind of saw it in the distance. I was like, yeah, he’s got a real good point about universal basic income. But the speed in which it’s happening, I didn’t anticipate. And when it. You know, we live in Austin, and when you go around Austin, you see these waymos everywhere. So.

BERNIE SANDERS: All right, I’m going to plead ignorance. Tell me what a Waymo is.

JOE ROGAN: Waymo is a driverless automotive. So you use an app you call a Waymo. I know a lot of people like it because you don’t get a shifty Uber driver who’s trying to sell you fentanyl or whatever. I’m not saying that they do that. Uber, don’t sue me. But then they’re very good. They don’t get in accidents. They follow the speed limit. They’re good about merging. They’re good about pedestrians. They have cameras all around them spinning.

BERNIE SANDERS: I’ve seen them.

The Impact of Automation on Society

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, they were very effective. And what was really fascinating was during these ice riots, they were lighting those things on fire. And I was like, I disagree with that. But I also think it’s directionally correct. You know, I mean, that’s your enemy. Your enemy is automation, the enemy of the human being. A human that lives in this functional society. And everybody has a task and get paid for the task. Automation is going to take all that away.

So if you do say this, okay, we’re going to lower your work week. What if there’s no job left for the human being to do? If the entire assembly line. We talked about this, about China and some of their coal factories. There was this video that I watched. This coal factory in China, which is entirely automated every step of the way. The trucks.

BERNIE SANDERS: No human beings at all.

JOE ROGAN: No human beings at all. I mean, there’s probably a few overseers that make sure that all the systems are functioning correctly. So you have software engineers and, you know, people that are the repair people. But the trucks even park themselves next to the charging station and recharge. And then they’re moving 24 hours a day, unloading, documenting where everything is. It’s all in computer databases. It’s wild to watch because there’s no people. It’s all just 24 hours a day machines.

What do you do when there’s no need for these people and what happens even with universal basic income, what we’re talking about? I support it. I’m a big supporter of social safety nets. Look, when I was a kid, my family was on welfare and we were on food stamps too. Like, if you don’t have that, people go hungry again. If we’re going to support the community, we want people to be able to survive and be able to work their way out of that. My family did work their way out of that. So it was cool for me as a child to see my parents struggling, but then succeed and get out of it.

What worries me is that if all the jobs are gone and everything gets automated, even if people have universal basic income, they don’t have meaning.

The Importance of Work and Purpose

BERNIE SANDERS: Good. All right. You’re touching on really deep issues.

JOE ROGAN: Right. This is the big one. Because a lot of people, you know, work gives. A car fixed. You go to KC, he’s the best. He knows how to fix your car.

BERNIE SANDERS: And work gives, as you’ve just said this word, purpose is an enormously.

JOE ROGAN: It’s huge.

BERNIE SANDERS: I don’t care if you sweep the streets. People have purpose. They want to do their job well. Work is an important part of our lives. Is that right?

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

BERNIE SANDERS: At the end of the day, it’s.

JOE ROGAN: Your identity a lot of times, right? Yeah.

BERNIE SANDERS: And you want to be a productive member of society. I’m contributing.

JOE ROGAN: Right.

BERNIE SANDERS: All right, so you asked the right question and I think there and I, you know, we can just bat around. I mean, I don’t have any, you know, quick answers here. But I think the good news, you talk about this coal mining thing and I’m not a great fan of coal, but you know that it’s automation. People do not have to do dirty work, dangerous work. Is that good? Yeah, I guess that’s good.

But always we have to be thinking how it benefits not just the bottom line of a corporation, but the happiness and well being of human beings. So if what you’re saying is that in years to come a significant part of work is going to be done by machinery or by computers, whatever, I think that’s inevitable. Okay, then we have to rethink our own purpose in life. All right? And it’s not sitting around watching TV 24 hours a day.

So I think you raised the question. I would say the simple answer, and then you got to go a lot further than that is to say that under those circumstances of that kind of technology, everybody has at least a decent standard of living, all right? That people don’t have to worry about, you know, survival, they don’t have to worry about food, they don’t have to.

JOE ROGAN: Worry about the profitability of this corporation. Provide a fund that’s a universal basic income fund. If you’re going to replace all these people with robots and you’re going to be even more profitable, share some of that profit, then you’ll be more profitable than if these people just stayed working doing nothing. Right.

BERNIE SANDERS: Well, whether you will be or not be, I think once the machines are.

JOE ROGAN: Running everything, they’re going to be running 24 hours a day and you’re not going to have to pay the machines. It’s going to be more profitable, right?

Learning from Norway’s Wealth Fund Model

BERNIE SANDERS: Of course it will be. And we want to, you know, right now, where is it? Jeez. I think, don’t quote me on this. Maybe in Norway they have a huge wealth fund which came from oil. They had publicly owned oil companies. They made a fortune and they have like a trillion dollars in their wealth fund for a small country, you know, so. And they have free health care, free college education, affordable housing, all that stuff.

JOE ROGAN: Here it is. Norway’s growing 1.37 trillion dollar oil empire, Norges bank investment management, market value growth since inception. That’s great.

BERNIE SANDERS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: And they use that government pension fund of Norway.

BERNIE SANDERS: There you go. Well, yeah, so they use that wealth fund to provide probably the highest standard of living in the world. For people, you know, free health care, education, all that stuff. But that’s what we got to be talking about here. Use the profits that come, the wealth that’s created by this technology to improve life. It doesn’t answer the question that you raised of meaning. That’s right.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. So what do you do about that?

BERNIE SANDERS: Well, somebody was a workaholic. It would be hard for me, you know.

JOE ROGAN: Are you a workaholic?

BERNIE SANDERS: Yeah. Yeah. Well, it’s the nature of the job.

JOE ROGAN: Do you have hobbies?

BERNIE SANDERS: Yeah, I got seven grandchildren. That’s a hobby. I used to play ball as a kid. You know, I was a good basketball player.

JOE ROGAN: Well, I think people can find other things do with their time. Like, if I never worked again, I’d probably play pool eight hours a day. Cause I really love playing pool. Yeah, I’d find a thing. I’d do jujitsu. I’d find a thing that I find value in.

Finding Meaning Beyond Work

BERNIE SANDERS: You know, I think somebody once wrote, you know, you think about what are the deepest things? What’s the goal in life? So somebody says work. And I believe that. I think people. You know, one of the sad things that’s happened, you know, we talked a little while ago about the decline of. We mentioned Detroit and other communities where people worked hard, they were proud of what they produced, right?

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

BERNIE SANDERS: They earned a decent living. Maybe they had a union and so forth and so on. A lot of that is gone. But. All right, so work, love. There’s a thing called love, right?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

BERNIE SANDERS: At the end of the day.

JOE ROGAN: Problem is, people are trying to find that on apps, too. Now.

BERNIE SANDERS: Let’s get to that one in a minute. But, you know, to be human, nobody wants to be alone, right?

JOE ROGAN: Right.

BERNIE SANDERS: You want to embrace other people, you know, physically, sexually, emotionally, just humanly. Right.

JOE ROGAN: That’s community.

BERNIE SANDERS: That’s community. That’s right. That’s being human.

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

BERNIE SANDERS: All right, so you want love and knowledge. I think you forgot the knowledge part. Sure. You like pool? That’s good. Sadly enough, I have to confess that when I was in college, I spent half my life in the library. All right.

JOE ROGAN: You know, why is that bad?

BERNIE SANDERS: No, I’m just kidding. But knowledge, just trying to understand things.

JOE ROGAN: And curiosity.

BERNIE SANDERS: Curiosity. Fantastic. Travel, My God.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

BERNIE SANDERS: You know.

JOE ROGAN: Absolutely.

BERNIE SANDERS: Just came back from Ireland. You know, it’s fantastic to see the world. And, you know, when we talk about, you know, one of the things that I, you know, we didn’t talk about Trump much, but it bothers me is trying to divide us up, you know, we got to bring, for so many reasons. Whether it’s all of these issues that we’re talking about and everything else. Pandemics. You know what? We got to bring the world together.

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

BERNIE SANDERS: Okay. And not hate people because they’re in Canada or they’re in China or Iran.

JOE ROGAN: Ridiculous.

Building Unity and Understanding

BERNIE SANDERS: All right? And that ain’t easy, but we have to. When I was mayor, way back, I did this. That was when the Soviet Union still existed. Never forget this. We brought kids from a city in Russia, Yaroslavl, an old city in Russia, and we brought them to Vermont. And they were kids. The boys and girls from Russia. Kid around with boys and girls from America. You look at these kids, they had a great time. You know, people do not have to hate each other.

JOE ROGAN: It’s stupid. You don’t even know them.

BERNIE SANDERS: Exactly. That’s why you hate them.

JOE ROGAN: It’s the dumbest part about it. Yeah.

BERNIE SANDERS: You know why people hate is based on ignorance. Right?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. And fear. And, you know, there’s a lot of stupidity attached to it that people exploit. They exploit that stupidity, you know, and the guy. Under the guise of nationalism.

BERNIE SANDERS: Exactly.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, exactly.

BERNIE SANDERS: And I hate that. And by the way, I don’t know that the planet survives if we continue in that way. So the goal, you know, we talk.

JOE ROGAN: About what’s the greatest fear? The greatest fear is thermonuclear war, Right? Yeah.

BERNIE SANDERS: Well, pandemics as well. Let me tell you. Covid was not the last one.

JOE ROGAN: But, you know, well, the pandemic, the problem with that is it’s engineered. Like people actually made that virus. And Obama tried to stop that gain of function shit back in 2014.

BERNIE SANDERS: That’s a long.

JOE ROGAN: That’s a long conversation. But, you know, should we be funding that kind of stuff?

BERNIE SANDERS: No, we should not.

JOE ROGAN: No, we should not. No, no, no. And yet. Yet we were.

BERNIE SANDERS: But you’re going to have to bring the entire world together. You know, it is, but I think, you know, we have.

JOE ROGAN: We have to bring the country together first.

Progress and Consistency in Public Service

BERNIE SANDERS: That’s right. And by the way, and you know, I’ve been kind of. I’ve been kind of negative, but take a deep breath. And we have made some progress in this country in recent years, if you think about racial relations. All right. You know, it wasn’t that many decades ago that some black kid couldn’t go to a movie theater in Mississippi. Right.

JOE ROGAN: By the way, I want to tell you that when people say, like, why were you a fan of Bernie Sanders? I point to a photo of you getting arrested at a civil rights protest, and I think it was 63.

BERNIE SANDERS: Sounds right. In Chicago.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, yeah. You’ve always been at the forefront. You haven’t changed, you know, and people always try to accuse you of that, especially because you’ve made some money off your books, but you haven’t changed your positions through the entirety of your career. I think that’s very admirable because there’s not a lot of people that serve in Congress for as long as you have and become, you know, a very prominent public figure that don’t just cash in.

You know, when you have people that are public servants that are making $170,000 a year, and yet they’re worth hundreds of millions of dollars through some magical way that no one can explain. And you haven’t done that. And I think you should be applauded for that.

BERNIE SANDERS: Thank you very much. And I remember. I mean, it’s just, you know, you talk about education and so forth. I grew up in a, you know, in a white neighborhood in Brooklyn. And, you know, you go to Chicago and you see things that you didn’t. Didn’t understand.

JOE ROGAN: There you are. Look at that.

BERNIE SANDERS: God, look. I had a hair in my head at that point. Huh?

JOE ROGAN: Look how handsome.

BERNIE SANDERS: There you go. I’ll tell you that funny story about that one, please. All right. What? This, as I recall.

JOE ROGAN: Look at the guy with the cigarette. Nah, fucking hippie. Look out his hand in his pocket.

The Chicago Protest and Civil Rights Progress

BERNIE SANDERS: Here is the cigarette. This is the truth. Back then. Back then, the world has changed. There was the Chicago Police Department, and what they said is, if you go across this line, you’re going to get arrested. As I recall, that was what. The thing. So I went across the line, and we were protesting segregated housing in Chicago, okay?

So I get dragged in, and they’re taking me to a paddy wagon, okay? So they pick me up and other people in it threw me into the patio. My glasses went flying someplace, all right? And then just as this was happening, within a few minutes of this picture, some genius on the sideline throws a brick, hits a cop on the head.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, Jesus.

BERNIE SANDERS: So there’s. I’m being thrown into the paddy wagon. Some cop is lying down on the ground. You know, it was a scary moment, okay? So to continue the story, we’re in the paddy wagon and they’re taking us someplace. And suddenly the paddy wagon stops. You look out. It’s like in the middle of nowhere, right? This was not like in the city going to a jail. We thought we were going to be taken to a. To jail, you know, And I said.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, my God, they’re going to kill us. Yeah.

BERNIE SANDERS: I mean, that was the thought. We’re in the middle. Why the hell are they stopping here?

JOE ROGAN: Right.

BERNIE SANDERS: I don’t know what. They stopped for whatever reason anyhow, so we spent, you know, a big thing was I spent the night in jail, which was a weird experience, too.

JOE ROGAN: You get street cred for that.

BERNIE SANDERS: What I remember about it is, other than not sleeping very well, this is. You get up at it in the middle of the night. I go to the thing and I try to open the door. It didn’t open. It was the weirdest thing of having a door that did not open because you were in a jail cell. It was like a weird thing.

But anyway, you know, the idea, you know, that’s all that. And we have made progress since that time. And in racial relations, we have a long way to go. We’ve made progress. Women’s rights, we’ve made progress. Gay rights, we’ve made. So there’s a lot that as a nation, we should be proud of in progress that we’ve made. You know, when I was a kid growing up, I am sure there were many kids who were gay. No one ever talked about it.

JOE ROGAN: Right, Right.

BERNIE SANDERS: And, you know, so there’s a lot as a nation that we should be proud of in terms of the progress that we’ve made in terms of fighting bigotry.

JOE ROGAN: Agreed.

BERNIE SANDERS: But we got so much more to do. We don’t need to be hating people. In China, you could disagree with people. Christ. I mean, there’s so many issues out there. Hatred should not be a value.

JOE ROGAN: It solves the political exploitation division. The fact that you can use the division that people already have to galvanize your side instead of unite. Instead, unite the country.

BERNIE SANDERS: I’m older than you, and I can remember. Remember you had white politicians in the south saying, see those black people? They want your job. Vote for me. And that’s why we’re going to keep segregation or all this other stuff. All right, yeah, that’s true. I mean, people ran for office. It’s no great secret. That’s what happened. But we’re making. Gays are taking over the school system, blah, blah, blah, blah.

So it’s, you know, we’ve made progress, but I. You know, what we’ve been talking about is if you create a society where you have massive technology that can produce all of this wealth, how do we live? Right. That’s the question you posed. And I think one of the ways. One of the goals has got to be to bring this world together. We should not be having wars right now where countries have disagreements. There are bad news guys out there, no question about it. But bring them to the table arguing it out, right? We don’t have to go around killing people right now. What’s going on in Gaza breaks my heart. Children are starving to death, you know, so we can do better as a planet.

The Challenge of Universal Basic Income and Government Dependency

JOE ROGAN: Unquestionably, yeah. No, we all agree. I think this is something the entire country could agree to. The question of meaning, like giving meaning to people, like, just. And then my fear is also the same fear that I had when I talked about climate change, that it’s going to be exploited. Once people are entirely dependent upon the state for universal basic income, then it becomes a question of like now your entire life, like all the money that you get being from the government. The problem is if you step outside the lines, if you do anything that the government doesn’t like, if there’s.

BERNIE SANDERS: They pull the plug on you.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, they pull the plug on you. Or if a new administration comes in and says, you know what, this is unprofitable. These people have to figure it out for themselves. The United states is really $37 trillion in debt. We can’t sustain this. People have to pull, do the, you know, you have to adjust, learn to code.

BERNIE SANDERS: Right.

JOE ROGAN: Remember that, right? Yeah, that kind of shit. Well, how do you give these people meaning? What do you do with all the drivers? Like think about how many truck drivers in this country. This is going to be the first thing that goes away.

BERNIE SANDERS: You’re right. Taxi cab drivers, Uber drivers, drivers gone.

JOE ROGAN: And the question about like factory workers, a lot of people say, yeah, well those people, that, those jobs are terrible anyway, it’d be great if those jobs went away and people, you know, they, they free to pursue their interests. What interest?

BERNIE SANDERS: You got it.

JOE ROGAN: You’re a 60 year old man, you’ve been working for this fact. You’re looking to your retirement and now all of a sudden the plug is pulled, all the money’s gone, your 401k has been erased, your company’s been bought out by another company. Now everything’s automated, there’s no jobs. What do you do?

BERNIE SANDERS: Well, I think that is the question, right?

The Revolution in Human Existence

JOE ROGAN: So if you, if you have what, you know, Andrew Yang was talking about this giant epidemic of automation in this country and the solution being universal basic income. But that’s not the solution for meaning. And how do we convince all of these people that they have to not just take this money from the government, but also take action to give themselves meaning in their lives?

BERNIE SANDERS: What you’re talking about here is a revolution in human existence.

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

BERNIE SANDERS: So throughout history, people have worked so hard just to stay alive. Right. I mean, not so many hundreds of years ago today, today in parts of the world, people are working in America. In America. Right. And in the poorest countries in the world, just struggling every day to put a little bit of food on the table. So what you’re saying is what happens.

JOE ROGAN: When that, that plug gets pulled?

BERNIE SANDERS: Well, what you’re saying is what happens when people no longer have to do that. Right?

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

BERNIE SANDERS: Okay, so if work. We work now. Everybody works. Get our earned money. If you don’t need to do work. Right. Because we’re wealthy enough, how do you find meaning in your life?

JOE ROGAN: Right.

BERNIE SANDERS: That what you talked about.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

BERNIE SANDERS: And this is absolutely.

JOE ROGAN: That’s the million dollar question.

BERNIE SANDERS: That is. Try the trillion dollar question. It’s a. You know, it’s one. But I’ll tell you this. I was seeing. I don’t know him, Sam Altman. Do you know Sam? I don’t know, but I mean, in other. Zuckerberg, you know, talking about, well, you know, if you’re lonely, we got a machine for you. Right, Right. I mean, true. Yes.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

BERNIE SANDERS: This is what they’re saying. We got a friend for you on AI and her name is Mary, and you can chat with her 20 hours a day. And she really loves you, man. I don’t think that is.

JOE ROGAN: That’s so dystopian.

BERNIE SANDERS: It is.

JOE ROGAN: It’s very. Yeah. And we. We covered this story recently about this guy who proposed to his AI and she said yes, and he was crying. I’m like, oh, we’re done. We’re cooked.

Human Connection in an Automated World

BERNIE SANDERS: Look, I mean, at the end of the day, all we got is us.

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

BERNIE SANDERS: Is that right?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

BERNIE SANDERS: We are human beings.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

BERNIE SANDERS: And we’re going to have to cling to each other to get through this thing. And you’re raising again. I’m trying to think here, and I wish I had better answers for you. You’re asking, correct me if I’m wrong. I mean, the question that you’re posing is if in years to come, in the near future, technology is going to replace work. Right. Human labor. Correct.

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

BERNIE SANDERS: What do human beings do? Right.

JOE ROGAN: What do they do now? Yeah.

BERNIE SANDERS: All right. And you know, there are. It’s a good. Because work has been so essential to human existence forever. Right.

JOE ROGAN: Right.

BERNIE SANDERS: And you’re suddenly taking that away. What do people do? How do they relate to each other? All I would say at this moment is the answer is not to fall in love with your AI creature out there.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Don’t do that. But also, how do you find meaning if all you’re doing is just getting a check and you can just stay at home and stare at the TV and the money keeps coming and then you eat processed food all day and it’s all subsidized. What is life? How do you re educate a giant percentage of our population to find meaning, external meaning? Find something else. Find a thing that you can do that not maybe even that’s profitable that these computers can’t do.

BERNIE SANDERS: Look, the human brain evolves. And I think we. I mean, it’s a great question. I don’t have the easy answer to it.

JOE ROGAN: It’s the question, right?

BERNIE SANDERS: It’s not going to happen. Well, what’s going to happen tomorrow? You just talked about these automated cars and trucks. Yeah, that is going to happen in the very near future.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, that’ll be step one.

BERNIE SANDERS: And to me, I have some answers for that one. And that is that you ain’t going to throw millions of truck drivers and taxicab drivers and Uber drivers out, just out on the street. They need protection.

JOE ROGAN: Right?

BERNIE SANDERS: All right, that’s an easy one. What you’re talking about is years later.

JOE ROGAN: But it’s not even an easy one because they’re just step one. You know, the real wave is going to be white collar work.

BERNIE SANDERS: That’s right.

JOE ROGAN: I know that there’s a lot of people that do things that they think are very valuable that are going to be worthless. To have a human being do it.

BERNIE SANDERS: Right. I mean, that’s the immediate. I think the deeper one that you’re talking about is what is when virtually all workers replace them.

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

BERNIE SANDERS: All right. But right now, I mean, for a start, I think getting back to the. I think you tell those workers you’re going to have health care as a human right. You’re going to have education as a human right. You’re going to have a decent income as a human right. And we’re going to lower, substantially lower the work week. So we’ll have. In this process, we’re going to have everybody working. If you’re working 20 hours a week, you’re working 20 hours a week. What happens later when even more work is eliminated and what people the purpose of human life becomes? That is a very profound question.

JOE ROGAN: That’s the question. What do you think happens?

BERNIE SANDERS: I think, I mean, it’s hard to imagine, you know, because it’s so far away from what we have ever lived.

JOE ROGAN: Right.

BERNIE SANDERS: I mean, for thousands of years, people have struggled to put food on the table. And you’re saying what happens when they don’t have to do that, right?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, it’s inevitable.

BERNIE SANDERS: All right. Then the answer will be that we are going to have to find different meaning in life. We have to find it in ourselves in ways that you don’t know and I don’t know because we’re not there yet. We’re not living 50 years from now.

JOE ROGAN: I don’t even think it’s 50.

AI Displacement and Economic Inequality

BERNIE SANDERS: No, I don’t know. I don’t know. Yeah. Who knows? But I think human beings are capable of finding, replacing work with other emotionally satisfying things. Yeah, I think we can do it.

JOE ROGAN: We can on an individual basis. The problem is having mass groups, literally 100 million plus people displaced. What do you do to all those people to give them some sort of a sense of meaning? You’re essentially redefining life for them.

BERNIE SANDERS: That’s a good point. Okay, I don’t have the answer to that question.

JOE ROGAN: That’s the problem. I don’t think anybody does. And I think we’re foot on the gas, full steam ahead with AI, with no consideration of this. And then there’s the same thing that you’re dealing with in terms of corporations constantly trying to achieve higher and higher and higher numbers. They’re just always trying to make more money.

You’ve got this exact same issue when applied to meaning for all these human beings. Like if you have hundred million plus people that what do they do now? They just sit at home and become depressed and they just make enough money to what? To just be able to get by? What about savings? What about the ability to earn more money to get ahead? What about the very ambitious people that are willing to put in extra hours and go to night school and do everything they have? That’s all gone. Right?

So what are these hyper ambitious people do? What does everybody who’s displaced by this very impersonal thing, this impersonal thing that you need because you can’t compete with China.

BERNIE SANDERS: I agree with everything you’re saying, except there is something else that’s going on in this while all this is going on, while all this technology is throwing people out on the street, something else is happening. The people who own that technology and the corporations who utilize the technology are becoming phenomenally richer.

JOE ROGAN: Exactly.

BERNIE SANDERS: And that is the issue which gets back to things like tax reform, like making sure that in America we do not have the massive levels of income and wealth inequality that we currently have.

Government Accountability and Corruption

JOE ROGAN: But the problem with that is the taxes go to what an incompetent, corrupt government. This is the issue that people have fair Enough.

BERNIE SANDERS: All right.

JOE ROGAN: Willing to pay our fair. Look, I’d be more than willing to pay more taxes if we lived in a better country. I’d be like, this would be great. If I felt like if I pay more taxes, then your job is everybody’s surviving, everybody’s doing. Doing well. That’s great.

BERNIE SANDERS: All right, then that is the issue of how you revitalize American democracy. I’m not going to argue with you that the system today is pretty bad. I live it. I’m going there today.

JOE ROGAN: And ironically, it’s bad because there’s no competition. Right. It’s corrupt, but it’s also. It’s not a free market. Like the government itself has a monopoly on governing. And when they’re completely corrupt and when they’re making insane amounts of money through taxes and they’re not accountable.

BERNIE SANDERS: All right. I don’t know. This is the way I see it.

JOE ROGAN: By the way. I’m not advocating for making it privatized, making all of government privatized. I’m just talking about the realities of corruption in our current.

BERNIE SANDERS: But here’s. Let’s talk about what we mean by corruption. I do not believe, by the way, because I know these guys. Some of them are corrupt.

JOE ROGAN: Okay. Let’s say incompetent and waste.

BERNIE SANDERS: Okay. All right. Let’s take.

JOE ROGAN: We could take fraud out of the equation and just talk about incompetency and waste.

Worker Ownership and Democratic Participation

BERNIE SANDERS: Is there waste? You got it. All right. But let me back it up again, okay. Because I think it ties into everything else that we’re talking about, you know, why I believe in democracy and why I believe. Among. What we didn’t talk about is we brought in some money to Vermont and elsewhere, I think, for helping workers own their own companies.

JOE ROGAN: Right.

BERNIE SANDERS: Are you familiar with that concept?

JOE ROGAN: Yes. Yes.

BERNIE SANDERS: And I meet every year with. In Vermont, we got a. We’re doing pretty well. Number of. When workers own their own companies, you talk about a sense of purpose. They are more than just a cog in the machine.

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

BERNIE SANDERS: You know, they make decisions and they feel good about it. Absenteeism is less, productivity is higher. Because they have a real stake in the thing.

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

BERNIE SANDERS: Okay. So I think as a nation, we should be talking about moving toward allowing workers more power, but getting back to government itself. The corruption is, in my view, that government is very far removed from the needs of ordinary people because it is largely controlled by billionaires in both political parties who have their agenda.

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

BERNIE SANDERS: All right. One of the things that I do, what my campaigns for president were about, what I’m doing Right now, we’re doing what we call a fighting oligarchy tour. That’s why I’m in Texas, is to try to say to people out there who are mostly working class people, you gotta get involved. I know it’s hard. People are working long hours. You gotta get involved in the political process. You gotta make demands on government that it serves you, not just the very wealthy.

So to answer your question, I think one of the goals, not only that, we’ve talked about how you deal with the exploding technology and how people gain purpose. The other thing is, I want people to be able to take control over their own government. We can argue what the government should or should not do, but I don’t think we can allow a handful of people, handful of people with incredible wealth to control both parties.

JOE ROGAN: Well, it’s dangerous.

BERNIE SANDERS: It is.

Constitutional Checks and Balances

JOE ROGAN: It’s very dangerous. And I mean, no one who. The founding fathers of this country never saw that coming.

BERNIE SANDERS: That’s right.

JOE ROGAN: They made this incredible system of checks and balances.

BERNIE SANDERS: You got it.

JOE ROGAN: But who could have ever possibly saw that coming?

BERNIE SANDERS: And what I worry about Trump is. You’re right. You know, I read it is astounding, back in the 1780s, when these guys wrote the Constitution, how perceptive. They were.

JOE ROGAN: Amazing.

BERNIE SANDERS: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: I mean, they said their understanding of human desires and the power and all the corruption.

BERNIE SANDERS: Exactly.

JOE ROGAN: Pretty amazing.

BERNIE SANDERS: And they wrote that having just fought a war and won a war against the most powerful despot on earth, the King of England. Right, right. And I think in the back of their minds, we’re saying, all right, we just beat the King of England. Absolute power. How do you create a new country which has checks and balance so that nobody ever has that power?

JOE ROGAN: Right.

BERNIE SANDERS: And I gotta say, I mean, one of the things, and there’s a lot of arguments about Trump that worries me very, very much is this movement toward authoritarianism and going after media, suing media, taking away the authority that Congress has.

Media Lawsuits and Press Freedom

JOE ROGAN: When you say suing media, are you talking about the CBS lawsuit?

BERNIE SANDERS: Among other things? Yes.

JOE ROGAN: But don’t you think there’s a real issue with what they did?

BERNIE SANDERS: No.

JOE ROGAN: You don’t think that there’s a real issue in editing conversations to give someone an answer?

BERNIE SANDERS: Joe.

JOE ROGAN: Different than what they really answered?

BERNIE SANDERS: Joe, I’ve been on eight zillion shows right. In my life.

JOE ROGAN: Okay, okay.

BERNIE SANDERS: Now, should I sue you if you ask me some stupid question that I don’t like? Right. Or that you do something? Do I ever. Shall I sue you?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. But that’s not what he’s getting.

BERNIE SANDERS: He has sued ABC. He has sued Meta. He is suing the Des Moines Register because of a poll that came out during the campaign that he didn’t like. All right? He is suing CBS for this Kamala Harris interview. So do I think how many. I cannot tell you the number of stories done about me that were based. That were not good stories.

JOE ROGAN: Right.

BERNIE SANDERS: That were dishonest stories. That’s what a free press is about. You don’t like it, you gotta live with it. All right? You do something. I’m not going to sue you, Joe.

JOE ROGAN: Right, but it’s not that simple. Right? Like, let’s imagine, let’s not talk about Trump, but let’s talk about another candidate. Let’s just imagine there’s someone on the right and someone on the left, and there’s a concerted effort to promote this person that’s on the right. And so the polls are rigged, or these are funded polls that make it look like this person on the right is winning by a substantial margin. And what this does is decreases the motivation that people have to come out and vote against them.

BERNIE SANDERS: That’s happening.

JOE ROGAN: So it’s fake, by the way.

BERNIE SANDERS: That happens right now.

JOE ROGAN: Engineer. It is happening right now. And I think. Is that part of what he’s suing them about?

BERNIE SANDERS: No, it doesn’t look.

JOE ROGAN: But isn’t that what he’s suing them about?

BERNIE SANDERS: Well, he’s suing ABC for one thing.

JOE ROGAN: But with the Des Moines Register about the poll.

BERNIE SANDERS: Yeah, I know the polls are there.

JOE ROGAN: Was the poll incorrect?

BERNIE SANDERS: Yeah, the poll was wrong. So what? Guess what.

JOE ROGAN: But did they know it was incorrect when they published it?

BERNIE SANDERS: No, they published what they thought was an accurate poll. And that pollster, by the way, what’s the name? I guess Seltzer Polls.

JOE ROGAN: I don’t. I should just state for the record, I don’t know this lawsuit, but I.

BERNIE SANDERS: What it was about.

JOE ROGAN: But I am aware that in talking to people that understand polls, that some of these are politically.

BERNIE SANDERS: The answer is yes and no. There are polls right now doing exactly what you say.

JOE ROGAN: Right.

BERNIE SANDERS: I could doctor A poll. I could talk to more conservative, more progressive people, get the results that I kind of want. Right.

JOE ROGAN: And they do it to motivate people or demotivate people to vote. And it’s effective.

BERNIE SANDERS: It has an impact. All right. On the other hand, this particular postal. It’s at the Des Moines Register. Not a huge newspaper. I bumped into them because when you’re running Democratic primaries, Iowa is a big deal. They are a very, very respected pollster. Okay. They don’t Doctor Polls. So they made a mistake on a poll. It turns out they had Trump doing worse than he ended up doing. Guess what? Posters. Honest pollsters make mistakes, too.

JOE ROGAN: But what is the basis of his lawsuit? Like, what is he saying?

BERNIE SANDERS: I think he is saying that that gave energy to his opponents and that it was like we talked about, like you talked about. But I don’t believe that’s the case. There are honest pollsters who make mistakes.

JOE ROGAN: But what about the other. The other lawsuit with the conversation that they had with Kamala Harris where they edited the answers that she had to make it look more precise?

BERNIE SANDERS: 60 Minutes. They were suing 60 Minutes.

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

BERNIE SANDERS: Is to my mind, historically, even around for a very long time, you know, they’re not infallible. But I think you look at most objective people will say 60 Minutes has a sterling reputation for investigative journalism. Are they wrong?

JOE ROGAN: But that’s not investigative journalism. If you change someone’s answers, if you ask her a question and she comes with a rambling answer that doesn’t make sense, and you edit that out and insert another answer to a different question.

BERNIE SANDERS: That seems more cogent, Joe, then you’re walking down. It’s a really. You’re walking down a dangerous path. Suing media has the impact of intimidating media. All right, if somebody sues you. All right, let me finish.

JOE ROGAN: All right, okay.

BERNIE SANDERS: Somebody sues you, why not you? You could be sued tomorrow. Right? Because you are doing this. You’re too sympathetic to this.

JOE ROGAN: Right?

BERNIE SANDERS: And, Joe, you did that, and they have a big law firm behind you, and you’re going to have to send zillions of dollars defending yourself. You know what? Next time you do an interview, you say, maybe I’m not going to go in that area.

Media Accountability and Presidential Power

JOE ROGAN: No, but it’s not that. It’s editing things to make deceptive editing. So in. Deceptive editing gives people a different perception of who this candidate is than reality. But that’s not objective journalism. That’s campaigning for that person. Would you agree with that?

BERNIE SANDERS: I don’t have those details. I don’t know that I agree with your analysis of it. I don’t know enough.

JOE ROGAN: I think that’s universally accepted, that that’s what they did.

BERNIE SANDERS: Then you got to tell me why he is suing ABC, why he’s suing Mellon.

JOE ROGAN: Let’s just talk about the 60 Minutes.

BERNIE SANDERS: No, but. No, but it’s not just, he could.

JOE ROGAN: Go to ABC, but I’m not aware of that one.

BERNIE SANDERS: Well, George Stephanopoulos said something that he didn’t like.

JOE ROGAN: But the point is, what did Stephanopoulos.

BERNIE SANDERS: Say, I can’t remember. I honestly don’t remember. But.

JOE ROGAN: Well, I think what he was saying was factually incorrect about the results of one of Trump’s trials.

BERNIE SANDERS: All right, guess what? If I were to sue everybody who said things that were factually incorrect about me, I’d be suing people millions of times. But, Joe, what you’re saying is, look, does media get it wrong sometimes? Absolutely. Should you have the most powerful person in America suing media? What is the impact of that? The impact is clearly intimidation.

He wants to defund public Broadcasting, NPR. Why is that? Well, because they also would run critical stories of him. This is part, in my view, without getting into any one case, it’s part of a pattern that says, hey, I got the power. Don’t you criticize me. You criticize me, I’m going to sue you.

So it’s not whether this show was right or wrong. There are shows every day. They get it wrong. It’s whether you, you know, you respect you and other media people to do the best that you can. And if I don’t like what you’re doing, I’ll go someplace else. But I don’t like presidents suing media. And then it’s, you know, threatening to impeach judges who rule against you. Really? Is that a concern? I think it’s a concern.

JOE ROGAN: I agree. That’s a concern. Well, my concern is when you have media organizations that are purported to be objective and then they say things that are defamatory and factually incorrect, and they should know that before they say it, what other course does a person have other than a lawsuit? And isn’t it important that you shine the light on what is a political bias from an organization that you would hope would be objective?

BERNIE SANDERS: Needless to say, I get attacked all the time by right wing media.

JOE ROGAN: Right.

BERNIE SANDERS: Every day.

JOE ROGAN: Needless to say.

BERNIE SANDERS: Needless to say. All right, I don’t sue them. So you expose him, then he’s the President of the United States.

JOE ROGAN: They say things factually incorrect, defamatory, and slanderous.

BERNIE SANDERS: If there’s anybody in the world who knows how to use a microphone, his name is Donald Trump. And Donald Trump, get up. You saw that program on CBS the other day. It was crap. It was wrong, and let me tell you why it was wrong.

JOE ROGAN: But then they do it again and again and again.

BERNIE SANDERS: Then you take them on and you.

JOE ROGAN: The problem is, the more people do stuff like that, but if you don’t have any consequences to what you’re doing, you’re going to continue that path. And most people only see that. They’re not. Like, if you’re a left wing leaning media organization and you print something that’s factually incorrect or you say something on television that’s factually incorrect, your viewers who are left leaning are most likely not going to see Trump’s rebuttal in some speech that he does in the middle of Pennsylvania.

BERNIE SANDERS: But that’s another problem, you know, and that is our media is becoming very divided.

JOE ROGAN: Exactly.

BERNIE SANDERS: Okay, but all I would say is.

JOE ROGAN: So you don’t think that lawsuits against that are valid?

Corporate Media and Government Influence

BERNIE SANDERS: I don’t think that it is appropriate for the President of the United States to be, in my view, intimidating media again. I get attacked. I’ll be attacked tomorrow for probably things I’ve said on the show. I’ll get attacked. Then if I want to respond, I respond. I have a, you know, not a president’s bullet. I have a bullet. I say, you see that thing on Fox? They’re wrong and I’ve done that.

But when you. Joe, you got to take it another way. I’ll give you an example about CBS. We talked about corporate power. The owners of CBS is owned by Paramount, Big multimedia corporation. Right, sure. Paramount’s wants to sell, wants to be sold to. What is it, Bluesky? Is that ring a bell?

JOE ROGAN: Blue Sky’s that social media app.

BERNIE SANDERS: Then it’s another one. I’m sorry, it’s. I always forget the name of it. Skydance. Thanks. Skydance is a large media corporation that Paramount wants to have by. Okay, to get this merger, huge merger. They have to go, guess what? To the federal government.

All right, so you are the head of CBS. You want to sell the company to Skydance for many, many billions. Do you remember how much? What was the sale? It’s billions of dollars, to be sure. And you got to go to the federal government and the President sues you, what do you think you’re going to do? You’re going to settle the lawsuit, give him millions of dollars and get your merger approved. All right, so look, I, I see.

JOE ROGAN: A problem in that, all right?

BERNIE SANDERS: And I see the, I see where you’re coming from. We want honesty in media. But all I can tell you is that the way to respond to the lies which take place every day is to take them on, not to intimidate media. You know, we talked about the Constitution. What’s the First Amendment is freedom of speech.

JOE ROGAN: Right, right.

BERNIE SANDERS: You’re right. You’re sitting here, you disagree with me. God bless you. Say what the hell you want to say. All right, I’ll never take that away from you.

JOE ROGAN: Right.

BERNIE SANDERS: And I’m not going to threaten you with a lawsuit, but if you start suing, hey, Joe Rogan said this. Joe Rogan has this. We found out about Joe Rogan. I’m going to sue Joe Rogan for $100 million. Joe may not talk about those issues in the future. Okay, that’s what I’m saying, Joe.

JOE ROGAN: No, I agree with you. And listen, I’m not a fan of lawsuits either, which is why I never sued CNN.

BERNIE SANDERS: I’ve never done.

JOE ROGAN: CNN lied about me over and over and over again. And they said I was taking horse dewormer and they altered the color of my face on television to make me look green.

BERNIE SANDERS: I could testify. Yay, green.

JOE ROGAN: I didn’t sue them. I’m not a fan of. And my response to them was just speak out and say how ridiculous.

BERNIE SANDERS: That’s what I’m saying. Look, Joe, look, anybody in the public eye. You’re in the public eye. I’m in the public eye. You’re going to get attacked every day, right?

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

BERNIE SANDERS: That’s what. You’re in the public eye. You don’t want to be in the public eye. Put down the microphone.

JOE ROGAN: Agreed.

BERNIE SANDERS: Play pool, whatever.

JOE ROGAN: No, I agree with you.

BERNIE SANDERS: I mean, so I just worry.

JOE ROGAN: I also agree that CBS shouldn’t be altering a presidential candidate interview.

BERNIE SANDERS: I agree to. I mean, I don’t know enough about it, so I’m not going to say what is isn’t. All I know is that 60 Minutes is a well respected program. Do they make mistakes?

JOE ROGAN: But that’s not a mistake.

BERNIE SANDERS: All right. I don’t know enough about it, so I can’t.

JOE ROGAN: I understand.

BERNIE SANDERS: All right. What else you got for me? I should get a plane and get out of here.

The Value of Long-Form Discussion

JOE ROGAN: You probably should. I mean, I appreciate your positions on all these different things.

BERNIE SANDERS: And I appreciate, by the way, one of the. You know, we talked about media and the bifurcation of media. You know, right wing people talk to right wing people. Left wing people talk to left wing people. I happen to think that the development of podcasts is a really positive step, because I can tell you, I’ve been on a million TV shows. All right, Bernie, literally, you got seven seconds to explain the issue. Well, I can’t explain it.

JOE ROGAN: It’s impossible.

BERNIE SANDERS: Nobody can.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

BERNIE SANDERS: And the fact that you give people a couple hours to sit here and have a good discussion and be a good host and trade ideas, I think that improves life in America and helps people think about things. So thank you for what you’re doing.

Common Ground and Shared Humanity

JOE ROGAN: My pleasure. And I think that one of the things this conversation highlights is that there’s a lot of issues that all Americans agree on. And this ridiculous position that we find ourselves in, where you have to be ideologically opposed to one thing because your side supports the other thing. It’s just terrible for all of us.

And if we looked at the issues that really face our country and our citizens and our human beings that live here as a community, we agree on almost all of them. We agree that you should have a better life, that you should have healthier people. We should have healthcare and education. We should have safer streets. We should have a community that lets people do what they want to do as long as they’re not harming other people.

And I think the divide that we have in this country accentuates the farthest ends of each end of the political spectrum. Not recognize that most of us exist in the middle.

BERNIE SANDERS: I think we share a common humanity. And I think. Look, why am I. I just been in this Fighting Oligarchy tour. You know where I was? I was to Oklahoma, one of the more conservative states in the country. I was to Louisiana, here in Texas. Precisely because, I mean, I think we have so much more in common. And let’s focus on how we can create a better life for all of us.

JOE ROGAN: Absolutely.

BERNIE SANDERS: All right, Joe, you’re doing a great job.

JOE ROGAN: Thanks, sir.

BERNIE SANDERS: Thanks very much.

JOE ROGAN: See you again.

BERNIE SANDERS: You, too. Take care. Bye.

JOE ROGAN: Bye. Bye. Bye, everybody.

Related Posts

• Transcript: The Spiritual Crisis of Modern Intelligence: Sam Harris
• Transcript: Producer Dan Farah on Joe Rogan Podcast #2416
• Transcript: 9/11 Widow Kristen Breitweiser on Tucker Carlson Show
• Transcript: Ryan Montgomery on Roblox, Minecraft, Discord & the Darkest Online Cult – Shawn Ryan Show (SRS #255)
• Transcript: Ryan Montgomery – #1 Ethical Hacker on Shawn Ryan Show (SRS #56)