Andrew Schulz's Flagrant with Akaash Singh
Bernie Sanders Rips DC Corruption, The Israel Lobby, & Reveals How Billionaires Buy Politicians
Mon, 19 May 2025
YERRR – the one and only Bernie Sanders sat down with us to talk the failures of the Democratic party, Elon & corporate interest upending modern democracy, and why the system’s still rigged against the working class person. From taking on billionaires to clashing with Congress, Bernie keeps it blunt: he breaks down socialized healthcare, fixing student debt, and why he is still bitter about the Dodgers leaving Brooklyn. All that and more on this week’s episode of FLAGRANT. INDULGE. 0:00 Start and introduction to Senator Bernie Sanders 1:11 Bernie reflects on the Dodgers leaving Brooklyn and how it exposed him to politics 6:03 Bernie watched Jackie Robinson play & can still name the starting rotation 8:44 the 3 questions of REAL politics & how they apply to the US 14:31 America’s lack of care for educators 16:52 Elon’s wealth & uber capitalist rulers 20:40 Citizens United & Super PACs explained and how billionaires use it in elections 26:25 US funding Israel, speaking out against Netanyahu & AIPACs power 30:10 “Bernie Bros” origins & podcast similarities 31:35 Bernie on “Bernie Bros” & “Podcast Bros” similarities 35:40 Are Americans better off now than in 40 years ago? 39:20 Democrats failures with the status quo & Trump’s acknowledgement of the working class person 42:58 Are the Democrats also a threat to democracy? 47:30 Politicians trading stocks 49:01 Has Trump changed the American culture and dream? 56:22 is it possible to tax billionaires effectively? 1:03:45 Is college tuition and debt fixable? 1:08:10 States should provide their own health care and why they do not 1:11:14 Trump’s new bill to lower drug prices 1:17:40 Will Bernie run for President? 1:17:51 is AOC next in line? 1:19:48 Bernie’s bravery and does he have fear from powerful people? 1:21:55 how can YOU help Bernie? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who is Bernie Sanders and why is he important?
What's up, everybody? Welcome to Flagrant. Our guest today is one of the only people in politics who hasn't traded conviction for convenience. And somehow, he is still here.
Chapter 2: What impact did the Dodgers' move have on Bernie Sanders?
For decades, he has stood in the middle of the storm, unbought, unbossed, untethered, saying what so many were too afraid to say, that working people deserve dignity, that healthcare is a right, that the system isn't broken, it was built to screw you over. He has been mocked, sidelined, betrayed, and that's just by his own party. And still, he shows up-
Not for power, not for fame, but because he actually gives a damn. In a country drowning in cynicism, he made people believe, maybe for the first time, that someone in Washington was actually fighting for them. So please give a warm, flagrant welcome to the last honest man in politics from Brooklyn, New York, Senator Bernie Sanders. Hey! All right, let me get you out of here. That's it!
That's it!
I have a question, okay? Listen, and this is probably a sensitive topic. It might be too soon, actually. It actually might be too soon, okay? So if you don't want to answer, I totally understand. In 1958... I think you know where this is going. Going? When Walter O'Malley. Oh, God. I know. I know. This one cuts deep.
When he moves the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles, and he does it for corporate greed. Absolutely. And profits. And he doesn't care about the community that built up that team. That's right. It broke a young Brooklyn boy's heart, probably many. Yep. It seems like, and it could be a coincidence, that ever since then you've had it out for the billionaires.
Is that where it all started? I'll tell you something. Two things. There was a joke going around my neighborhood, Flatbush, and what it said, the three worst people in modern history were Hitler, Stalin, and Walter O'Malley. And not necessarily in that order. That was a joke. But, you know, what I did learn. You're kind of joking about the question. Yeah. But I'll tell you something.
When you grow up as a kid, you have a thing called the Brooklyn Dodgers. Of course. Yeah. So when you're a kid, the idea that it could be moved someplace else. When you're a kid, you can't. That is privately owned. Yeah. run for profit, and then it can be moved to California, was literally beyond your comprehension, beyond my comprehension. So it was a real shock.
And if you're asking me, did that have an impact on my political views? It did, actually. It did. Because the Dodgers were a cohesive force in Brooklyn, bringing people together, Jackie Robinson, et cetera, et cetera. So yeah, that had an impact on me.
Really? So it all starts there. I don't say it all starts there, but...
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Chapter 3: How do billionaires influence American politics?
That's how you silence Bernie.
But could we bring professional baseball? So we got to work on it and we ended up getting a double. I think it was a double A team. Very good team. in the Cincinnati Reds for its size. And we were talking hard about how we can municipally own it. And we actually... Oh, wow. Love it. Yeah. And we would have put public money into it.
It would have been... We would have made money off of it and all that. So we ended up losing it on the city council. But it was an effort that we tried to make. Anyhow, we brought the team in. It was really good for the community. But years later, they left it, et cetera, et cetera. But the idea that... And taxpayers are putting huge sums of money. Hundreds of millions of dollars.
If school systems are falling apart, they're putting billions of dollars or huge sums of money to build these huge stadiums. These guys make a fortune. And then, you know, 10 years later, they move out.
And there's this excuse that they all use. They're like, yeah, but we're providing jobs. It's like, yeah, so you could have a business that functions. You can't have a basketball team that functions. without people working there.
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Chapter 4: What is the relationship between the U.S. and Israel?
Part-time low-paying jobs, by the way. This whole thing of professional sports owned by a small number of very wealthy people is something that... What's the irony? You want to go to a Red Sox? We go to Red Sox games. You go to Yankee games. How much does it cost to take a family? Husband, wife, two kids. Hundreds of dollars. Yeah.
You buy a Coca-Cola, it costs you five bucks, 10 bucks, whatever it is. I mean, that's kind of crap. I mean, when I was a kid going to Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, you remember Ebbets Field? You know what it was? No, no, I'm a little bit younger than you.
Yeah.
And the same was with the Dodgers. Yes, of course. All right. You're kidding me. Absolutely. So we used to sneak in and get 60 cents, you know, sitting in the bleachers. And during that period, you know, a family could go to a game. Yeah. And now it's, you know, pretty on. Yeah. And that's unfortunate. Really, it's great athletes out there. People want to see them. Yeah. Can't afford it.
And also, in that time, you saw Jackie Robinson play. I did. Is that true? Yes, I did. What was the energy like in the stadium watching Jackie Robinson play?
It was awesome.
What I remember about him when he was older.
Different Brooklyn back then.
What we used to do is hang out after the games to see if we got autographs. And I remember him coming out. He had problems with his ankle or his foot or something. He came out holding his shoes. How did you know it was Jackie Robinson? Hard one. You talk about impact as a kid. We used to do, this is true, I mean, the Dodgers will like your family. Yeah. So I can tell you today, the Dodger lineup.
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Chapter 5: What are the main failures of the Democratic Party?
You know, Robinson is batting, you know, 308. If he gets two hits, we know what the average is. Well, you learned arithmetic. Through baseball. Yeah, absolutely. I could, as a kid, most of the kids on the block could tell you how many games the pitchers had won, who they were playing. I think now we call that autism.
Okay, Senator Sanders, we've got a very interesting situation, especially this last election. You've spoken about it a lot, where it's like a lot of unions decide to not endorse the Democratic Party. Some even endorse the Republican Party. If the Democratic Party cannot win the votes of union workers, who are they for?
Okay. All right, let's take a deep breath. You ready? Okay, I'm ready. All right, here we go. Is it a fair question? Yeah. It is a very fair question. All right. Politics, you know, what politics, how politics is conveyed in the media is, you know, who's running for office, what Donald Trump said and all that stuff. And that's all important.
But if you take a deep breath and you think about real politics, serious politics, what's it about? It's about three things, it seems to me. Number one, where are we as a country today? And that that seems like a simple question. It is not a simple question. OK, how did we get to where we are? And equally important, where do we want to go in the future?
Reasonable questions? Absolutely. All right. Andrew, where are we today? We're in New York City, New York. What do you mean, where are we politically?
No, where are we as a nation? What are the things that we should be looking at? If I asked you, how are we doing as a nation? I would say we're struggling financially. Good.
That's right. Quality of life.
That's exactly right. And I think that we are disillusioned with the institutions that should be supporting and protecting us.
Excellent. All right. All right. So that's right. All that's right. So let's start off with, in one sense, we are the richest country in the history of the world, right? We have enormous wealth. Yep. Is that wealth, does that wealth apply to the vast majority of the people? Absolutely not. So unbelievably, and nobody talks about this. You ask me, we start off on the Democratic Party.
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Chapter 6: Can billionaires be taxed effectively?
And you know what else it results in? The study from Yale was that 68,000 people a year die precisely. You go talk to the doctor. Next time you go to a doctor, say, are people coming into your office much sicker than they should be? And the answer is yes, they are. And that's just avoiding co-pays. Exactly. Okay, fair enough. So people do die by the large numbers. What about our educational system?
Psychologists tell us that zero through four, most important years... Of emotional and intellectual development. Makes sense, right?
Yeah.
Okay. So we must have a great childcare system, right? Because we love our kids. We nurture our kids. We pay childcare professionals. Really, we appreciate them and respect them. We pay childcare workers McDonald's wages.
Yeah, it's shocking. It's also shocking how much competition there is to get your kid into like a favorable preschool. Right. You have to start lobbying these preschools at one year. My daughter is 15 months and already now you're like, he's like a pharma company. Exactly. Like you're kind of walking in, you're meeting people that are exchanging pleasantries.
And it's all under this guise of, I hope they accept my kid. Because you have a massive shortage.
Yeah. And if people don't have any money, it is really difficult. And so I don't know what it costs here in New York City. You know, in Vermont, it costs $15,000, $20,000. Imagine you have two kids. Forget it. That's right. Exactly. But again, take a deep breath and say, okay, if we as a nation understand that that's the future of America, we want the best.
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Chapter 7: Is college tuition and student debt fixable?
You would say, okay, we're going to have really great teachers for them. We'll treat these teachers with respect, pay them well. They're doing really important work. Taking care of your daughter is important stuff. Agreed. We don't. Public schools, I was talking to a principal in Vermont, in southern Vermont, they're starting teachers off at $32,000 a year.
So kids, young people graduate school in debt. We're not getting the best and the brightest people. Do we respect, you tell me, do we respect education in this country? No, we don't really. What do you mean by respect? That we say, man, you're going to be a teacher. Oh, educators.
I don't think educators get close to enough respect.
We give them a lot of platitudes. Oh, how noble of you. We say we respect them.
But we don't treat them with respect. We don't feel the same way as if they're like some finance bro or something like that.
Exactly. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just to that point, take a look at it. Harvard College, one of the best colleges in America. Something like 5% of the graduates will go into education, and they're not going into public education. Of course not, yeah. 50% will go to Wall Street. They'll go to consulting.
You make a great point, though. If college loans are so expensive, they don't even have a choice to go into education. So is there some sort of system built in where, like, if you choose to go into education, that there's a way that the— The loan will be forgiven? Something like that.
Yeah, there are small programs. They have something like that. But that's a good idea.
Teacher America. and again, I'm not making this up, so I'm sure there was some system like that, but I imagine, like, maybe back in your day, no, that there was a version where, like, highly educated, not highly educated in terms of master's program, but like people that went to elite universities before they went and got their master's or their doctorate, spent some time educating.
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Chapter 8: What does Bernie Sanders think about running for President again?
I've only talked to him many years ago, so I don't know him personally. But I'll tell you what I do think. I think there is a new breed of uber-capitalists out there. really believe, and they write about this as well, really believe that they are superior human beings.
You know what I'm telling you?
This is the quote-unquote high IQ guys who say, look, we work hard, we're smart, we have started these businesses. To the victor go the spoils. Not only that, I think what, that's yes. It's a dog eat dog world.
I made it.
You didn't make it. Hey man, that's the way life goes. It's deeper than that. You have some writing on the right, on the far right, which really diminishes democracy. And that really the smart and the wealthy and the powerful have the right to rule. So this is not just, oh, I want a tax break. There's nothing new about that. This is, we have the right.
It's the divine, you know, used to be the divine rights of kings. Manifest destiny. Exactly. All right. Back in the 19th century, the 1850s, you know, I am the king. God made my family king. And sorry, you're starving to death, but that's the way life goes. God told me my family rules.
So there's something about this that's quite interesting that I've seen lately. And it's actually not lately. There is a trend with the ultra-wealthy, which is upon their death, a lot of them have decided to give away their money. Right? Some of their money. Or some. Some. Okay. Some of the most prolific. Right? Or as they get closer to death, they're like, our goal is to give away all our money.
Okay. Which... which seems to tell me that they think that there is an issue with them having all that money. If they truly felt entitled to it, like it seems to me it's an admission that they agree with you. They're like, it's kind of wrong that we should just keep all this in our family. We should probably not have it. Now, they're not.
It's almost like Benjamin Franklin freeing his slaves on his death. He's like, this is wrong, but I don't want to leave it until, you know, I might need some shit and my back hurts. But what do I do? So when you see billionaires do that, right, or this elite class that you're talking about do that, is there a part of you that goes, you're getting it? Why don't you do that maybe 40 years earlier?
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