Steve Hilton on The Next Revolution, discusses the extreme policy differences between Bernie Sanders and President Donald Trump. Bernie Sanders is not a populist candidate like Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders is a socialist.
Steve Hilton: Well, it was a blowout for Bernie in the Nevada Caucas and he is now the Democrat clear front-runner so its time for a closer look at Bernie, and in particular, the superficial cliche trotted out by nearly every pundit, that Bernie is a populist, the Democrats version of Donald Trump. That is completely wrong and tonight I’m going to show you why. But first I want to say this about the Bernie. I do admire the way he pushed himself to the position he’s in today through sheer force of character and ideas. I agree with many of the things he says a wrong with a country, the corruption of the establishment, the way working people lost power. I used to agree with him on immigration until he totally changed his position. More on that in the moment. And on a personal note, I’ve got a lot of time for his campaign co-chair, Nina Turner. She’s a huge talent with a big future, but here comes the but. No one should buy the pundits lazy consensus that Bernie is a populist like Trump, he’s not, and here are the four reasons why.
First, Trump was an outsider. Bernie is actually an insider. Before entering the presidential race Donald Trump never ran for anything. He was never in politics before and approached it like a problem solving businessman. He combined traditional conservative ideas with new more populist ones, Pro business on tax and regulation but pro worker on trade and immigration, pro America on defense, pro family on paid leave and child tax credits, conservative judges and criminal justice reform and perhaps in the long term his most significant policy shift of all, upending the establishment consensus on China. Trump’s original innovative policy mix is something only an outsider could have put together. By contrast, Bernie has been the political Insider all his life. For almost decades he’s collected taxpayer-funded paychecks as a mayor, congressman and now a senator. But he’s not even an effective insider. He’s introduced 239 bills won in the Senate, guess how many became law? Two. Maybe for once Hillary got it right when she said,
Hillary Clinton: “Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done.”
Steve Hilton: Here’s the a second reason, it’s wrong to see Bernie as just a Trump of the left. Donald Trump’s policies are mainstream, Bernie’s are extreme. The policy agenda President Trump ran on in 2016 has been implementing since, is based on mainstream positions with majority support. Whether that’s strong borders, renegotiating trade deals, cutting taxes, or school choice. But Bernie’s positions they are wildly out of the mainstream. They are extreme and have only minority support, open borders, rejected by over 75% of Americans, abolishing ice, rejected by over 50%, prisoners voting, rejected by nearly 70%, abolishing private health insurance, rejected by a majority, and of course the multitrillion-dollar Green New Deal, actually the centerpiece of Bernie’s plan for the economy, rejected by a massive 67%. You’re not a populist if your policies aren’t popular.
Here’s the third big difference between Bernie and Trump. The president stands up to the establishment. In the early days Trump had establishment people around him trying to block him on everything, trade, China the war, endless wars, immigration, you name it. But the president stuck to his populist instincts and now were seeing the results. That is a huge contrast with Bernie. In his last presidential campaign he was firmly against open borders
Bernie Sanders: Should we have a completely open border so that anybody can come into the United States of America. If that were to happen, which I strongly disagree with, there is no question in my mind that that would potentially low wages in the country.
Steve Hilton: But he realize he couldn’t get anywhere with that position in the new woke Democratic establishment, so now he’s completely caved, he’s for decriminalizing border crossings, breaking up our ICE, the whole crazy package.
But here’s the fourth, a most important difference between Trump and Bernie and the thing that the pundits most infuriating get wrong, they call them both populist, Bernie a populist of the left, Trump on the right. No, populism means taking power out of the hands of the elite and the establishment and putting it in the hands of the people. That’s what Trump is doing. Deregulation takes power from government bureaucrats and puts it in the hands of employers and business owners, especially small businesses who are hurt most by over-regulation. Tax cuts put more financial power in the hands of working people. Judges, like Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, and hundreds of others appointed by Trump, are upholding people’s rights in the Constitution and curbing the power of the administrative state. School choice gives power to parents, parental leave gives power to families. In so many areas Trump is truly delivering the populist promise of power to the people.
Bernie wants to redistribute power all right, but he wants to take power from the private sector elite and give it to a new public sector elite, a new army of bureaucrats and busy bodies running around telling you what to do, once Bernies told them what to do. Nationalized healthcare, nationalized rent control, nationalized energy. Wherever you look Bernie wants to nationalize power. Populism is all about decentralizing power. Bernie is the direct opposite, he is for centralizing power, he is not a populist he is a socialist. And by the way don’t believe the spin that socialism is nothing unusual, is normal in places like the UK or Sweden or Denmark, that is rubbish. I know those countries. What they have is not Bernie’s democratic socialism, it is social democracy and is totally different. Nowhere in Europe is as extreme as Bernie’s plan for America. Even the UK with the National Health Service doesn’t ban private insurance. Sweden has massive school choice and vouchers. Denmark has one of the lowest levels of government regulation in the world. Bernie is a Washington insider with extreme socialist positions who panders to The establishment when it suits his own political purposes. I’ll give the last word to a well-known Democrat who doesn’t think that the Democrats, in the end buy what Bernie is selling.
James Carville: They’re not interested in socialism, in the revolution and all that foolishness you hear.
Steve Hilton: And in another interview he went a little farther than foolishness
James Carville: Most of the people aren’t into all this distracting bleep about open borders and letting prisoners vote. Democrats talking about free college tuition or usual debt forgiveness… people all over this country worked their way through school, sent their kids to school, paid off student loans… they don’t want to hear this bleep…
Steve Hilton: You are right James Carvelle. People don’t want that bleep. They don’t want socialism, they want populism, positive populism, and from President Trump that is exactly what that getting.
All right, let the pundits know what you think of what they saying about Journey please send this around, stop them getting it wrong.
