Bernie Sanders has blasted Donald Trump's Project 2025 as "radical" while throwing his support behind Kamala Harris for the presidency. The independent Vermont Senator had faced calls in recent weeks to back the Democrat's presumptive nominee, and did so to the floor of the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday.
On a star-studded night that saw Michelle and Barack Obama electrify a packed Chicago convention hall, socialist Bernie kept the focus on the US' "massive wealth inequality." Speaking to delegates at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Sanders, who previously fought for the Democratic nomination against Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton, did not hold back in his criticism of Trump's agenda.
The 82-year-old Senator declared: "Let me tell you what a radical agenda is - that is Trump's Project 2025. At a time of massive income wealth inequality, giving more tax breaks to billionaires is radical."
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He continued his onslaught by saying: "Cutting benefits and social security is radical. Letting polluters destroy our planet is radical. We won't let that happen."
Despite Trump's denials of any association with Project 2025, a conservative blueprint from the Heritage Foundation for the next Republican president, Sanders was adamant about the need for change, reports the Mirror US.
Sanders further stated: "We need an economy that works for all of us and not the billionaire class. My fellow Americans, when 60 per cent of our people live paycheck to paycheck, the top 1 per cent have never had it so good."
He rallied the crowd with calls for higher taxes on the wealthy: "We should tax the rich. We are going to win this struggle because this is precisely what the American people want from their government."
Concluding his speech, Sanders took aim at the influence of money in politics: "We need to get big money out of our political presence. Billionaires in both parties should not be able to buy elections, including primary elections. For the sake of our democracy, we must move toward public funding of elections."
Sanders has slammed the state of America under Trump's presidency, recalling the dire situation as Biden took office. He stated: "I want you all to remember where we were three and a half years ago. We were in the midst of the worst public health crisis in 100 years. 3,000 Americans were dying every day. Our hospitals were overwhelmed with Covid patients.
"All across the country, businesses were shutting down. Workers were losing their health insurance. Schools were closing. People were being evicted from their homes. Children in America were going hungry. That was the reality the Biden-Harris administration faced as they entered the Oval Office. A nation suffering.
"At home right here, we must take on big pharma, big oil, big tech and all the other corporate monopolists denying progress to our working people. On November 5, let us elect Kamala Harris as our president and create the nation we know we can become."