Bernie Sanders all but said he agrees with Donald Trump that money in politics is a problem on CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday, telling host John Dickerson billionaires pouring money into campaigns “is a disaster for democracy.”
Trump said in a June 25 clip played Sunday on “Face the Nation” that he’s “not doing what’s right for a man that gave me a million dollars to run for office and I owe him,” adding that when Scott Walker, Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton are given millions by donors they are “controlled.”
Dickerson: Do you agree with Donald Trump on that?
Sanders: I think that the Citizens United decision, which allows billionaires, as Trump mentioned, to pour huge amounts of money into campaigns, to allow the Koch brothers to spend more money — an extreme right-wing family — to spend more money in this election cycle than either Democrats or Republicans, is a disaster for American democracy. And do I think that the people who make these contributions, huge contributions, do it out of the goodness of their heart or do they want something? Of course they want something. Now the problem is it’s easy for Trump to say, I don’t need that money, yea, because he’s a billionaire. But the logical consequences that the only people who can run for office in America who don’t have curry favors are billionaires themselves. I am trying another way. We have gotten well over 300,000 people made individual contributions. You know what the average contribution is 31 bucks. We’re running a campaign…