Bernie Sanders took to Twitter following President Donald Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night, causing us all to wonder whether the Vermont senator is generally out of touch with American opinion thanks to his own political bent, or perhaps dementia has started to settle in -- in which case, our bad.
Here are five tweets Sanders blasted out Tuesday night, proving just how disconnected the self-described socialist seems to be from the concerns of ordinary Americans (and lending a certain amount of credence to his loss in the Democratic primaries last year).
1. Sanders complains about climate change.
In Trump’s speech I did not hear one word about climate change – the single biggest threat facing our planet.https://t.co/rVEIsnjKNW
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) March 1, 2017
Now, we all know Sanders likes to tout man-made global warming as the Greatest Catastrophe In All Of Human History. He regularly rolls out this doom-and-gloom apocalyptic prophecy to terrify his followers into believing we’re all about to melt to death in the next five seconds, and the only power great enough to save us from ourselves is our own government, who can’t even balance a budget.
But according to a recent Gallup poll, the environment is actually pretty low on the totem pole of important concerns for most Americans. In fact, only five percent of Americans said they considered “the environment/pollution” to be their No. 1 worry for the future. But contrast, 16 percent listed “the economy” as their top concern.
2. Sanders frets over income inequality.
I didn’t hear Trump mention the words “income and wealth inequality” or the fact that we now have the widest wealth gap since the 1920s.
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) March 1, 2017
True to typical socialist form, Sanders blasted Trump for not caring about poor people struggling while rich folks do backstrokes in pools filled with Benjamins.
However, despite the picture Sanders often paints of millions of unwashed masses begging for food while the fat cats on Wall Street toss them cake, it looks like most Americans aren’t really all that worried about income inequality. Gallup’s poll reveals only two percent of Americans listed the gap between the rich and the poor as their top concern heading into 2017. Likewise, only two percent listed a “lack of money” as their chief worry.
More of then (13 percent, to be exact) were a lot more concerned about being unemployed – a chronic problem Trump has repeatedly vowed to tackle during his presidency.
3. Sanders whines about health care.
I did not hear Trump mention the fact that the U.S. is the only major country on earth that does not guarantee health care as a right.
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) March 1, 2017
That would probably be because health care isn’t a right – it’s a service offered by medical professionals. We also have very expensive government programs like Medicaid to make sure struggling Americans can get necessary care.
Gallup’s survey shows only five percent of Americans listed health care as their top issue in 2016, far lower than the 13 percent who listed a dysfunctional government as their primary concern. Perhaps Sanders might want to look in his own backyard for that one.
4. Sanders pouts about corporations.
Trump said corporations pay the highest tax rates in the world. Not true. 1 in 5 large profitable companies pay $0 in federal income taxes.
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) March 1, 2017
Even if we assume Sanders’ statement is true and accurate (it’s not), by his own admission, four out of five (80 percent) of corporations do pay taxes – and they pay a pretty hefty sum. From taxfoundation.org:
The United States has the highest corporate income tax rate set at 35 percent at the federal level, but the average tax on corporate income at the state and local levels amounts to an additional 4 percent, which brings the total tax rate to 39 percent. The majority of countries fall below the GDP-weighted worldwide average rate of around 30 percent.
5. Sanders blames Russia!
Despite the Obama administration flat-out admitting there was no evidence that Russia influenced, changed, swayed or otherwise made any impact on the U.S. election for Donald Trump, that’s just not good enough for Sanders.
Let us not forget that we still do not know whether or not the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government to get him elected. pic.twitter.com/wvYO2lzbgF
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) March 1, 2017
With this amount of vitriol at the mere possibility of Russian involvement in a U.S. campaign, it’s a wonder Mr. Sanders didn’t get more teed off the Democratic National Committee last year.
You know, when they rigged the primary for Hillary.