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While Rachel Maddow was questioning Bernie Sanders during her one on one interview with him, the issue of the media's coverage of Donald Trump came up.
And during Bernie Sanders' answer, I believe he delivered the best line. Let's take a look.
You know, you mentioned a moment ago, Rachel, that the media is paying attention to Donald Trump. Duh, no kidding. Once again, every stupid remark will be broadcast, you know, for the next five days.
But what is Donald Trump's position on raising the minimum wage? Well, he doesn't think so.
What is Donald Trump's position on wages in America? Well, he said in a Republican debate he thinks wages are too high.
What's Donald Trump's position on taxes? Well, he wants to give billionaire families like himself hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks.
What is Donald Trump's position on climate change? Oh, he thinks it's a hoax perpetrated, shock of all shock, by the Chinese.
You know, on and on it goes.
Every day, he comes up with another stupid remark, absurd remark. Of course it should be mentioned, but so should Trump's overall position.
How much talk do we hear about climate change, Rachel? And Trump. Any?
He knows how to manipulate the media and you say an absurd thing and the media is all over it.
And my concern is that today in America, you got millions of people who are struggling economically.
They want to know how we're going to expand the middle class.
Overwhelmingly, people think we should raise the minimum wage. Vast majority of people think climate change is real and a threat to our planet.
They want to do something about that. What do we do?
Vast majority of the people think the wealthiest people in this country should start paying their fair share of taxes.
But if we don't discuss those issues, it creates the climate for people like Donald Trump to do much better than he really has a right to do.
So we included a lot of context in his answer because I want you guys to know exactly what he was talking about.
But my favorite line is when he mentioned climate change because that continues to be the neglected issue in every election whether it's a midterm election, whether it's a general election.
It's just mentioned in passing, it's not an important issue. No one really genuinely cares about it.
And I love the fact that out of this entire three hour long event, Bernie Sanders was the only person who brought it up and did so in an aggressive enough way to capture people's attention.
And I love the point he made about the media. It's true.
I mean, there's so much focus on the circus that is Donald Trump and his campaign and it started out with, you know, covering him in an entertaining way because no one took him seriously.
And then it immediately went from that to taking him very seriously and all the sudden he's a viable candidate and we want to ask him softball questions because we want access to him.
There was never a middle ground there and that's really a huge disservice to people who care about information and knowing about these candidates and how harmful or good they would be for the country.
Again, invented fears. Not invented fears, but he's focused on I*S*I*S. When he asked him about climate change, "Oh, we've got real problems, we've got real problems".
I*S*I*S is not a threat to the United States. The United States is afraid of I*S*I*S because the military industrial complex wants us to be afraid of I*S*I*S.
Because the military industrial complex makes a lot of money off of YouTube videos of somebody being beheaded...
And then TV journalists *** their pants coast to coast 24 hours a day saying we have to do something to bunch of people who don't even own a plane.
Yeah.
Okay, so let's stop. But there is Donald Trump telling you we don't have to worry about climate change. And by the way, all the other Republicans feel exactly the same.
So it's not him being crazy, it's half the party being untethered from reality and science.
And it would have been nice if gets brought up all the time, like Bernie Sanders said.
I've been, I think, developing a little bit in what I think about the media and Trump. And I read an interesting editorial today talking about the interaction that Chris Matthews had with Trump about abortion.
And they pointed out that that's exactly why they have to stop letting him do the phone-in interviews because he would not have gotten to that point on the phone.
Trump would have spoken over as you've seen him do. You wouldn't be able to see his face. Only by sitting there and talking to him was he able to corral him into giving that answer.
And I'm honestly at the point where I think if they want to cover every day some of the things that Trump says, I'll even give most of a pass to that.
Because if he says something awful and it shows something he would do as President, then fine. It's news worthy to cover it.
They have to stop interviewing him every day regardless of what's happening. They have to stop letting him call into three shows every morning.
They have to stop showing all of his rallies whether he's at the podium or not from beginning to end.
That is not only a disservice in terms of giving him free advertising, but it's a waste of the very valuable time the media has where they could be talking about other issues.
Absolutely.