At a "Fight Oligarchy" event in Los Angeles on Saturday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) spoke about the arrests and deportations of migrants and legal residents under the Trump Administration.
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00:00But it's not just oligarchy. We are fighting a president who undermines our Constitution every day and threatens our freedom of speech and assembly, and whose agents are rounding up innocent people off the streets, putting them in unmarked vans, and throwing them in detention centers.
00:23That is what happens in dictatorships, not democracies. And we're going to stop that outrageous action on the part of the president.
00:38You know, our founding fathers of this country were no dummies.
00:46They wrote a constitution and established a form of government with a separation of powers.
00:55Remember we're reading all about that? You got a legislative body, Congress, you got an executive branch, president, you got a judiciary, the federal courts.
01:06And they wrote that document because they had just fought a brutal war against the autocratic king of England.
01:14And what they understood as they were forming this new country, that they never wanted to see a nation where one person had unlimited power.
01:27Well, Trump wants that power. We are not giving it to him.
01:38Trump is suing the media because they say bad things about him.
01:45Oh, how horrible is that? He has sued ABC, CBS, Meta, the Des Moines Register. His FCC is investigating NPR and PBS.
02:00He loves the media when they fawn over him. But he can't take criticism. This from a guy who has made vulgar comments about his opponents.
02:11Hey, Mr. President, if you can't take criticism, get out of politics. That's what democracy is about.
02:19Trump is going after the powers of Congress. He is illegally abolishing agencies that Congress created.
02:35He's withholding funding that Congress has appropriated. He is establishing tariffs that he has no legal right to do.
02:44But it's not just the media in Congress that he's trying to intimidate. In an absolutely outrageous and unconstitutional way, he is going after the judiciary.
03:00His view, his view is if a decision comes down from a judge that you don't like, you try to get rid of that judge and impeach him or her.
03:17He is going after law firms that have opposed him and his interests in the past. And disgracefully, a number of these law firms have caved in.
03:32He is going after universities.
03:35You know, the function of a university school of higher education is to pursue the truth, not to cave in to an authoritarian president to protect the federal grants they get.
03:53But it is not just Trump's and his administration's domestic policy that we should be concerned about for the first time in our two hundred and fifty year history.
04:10We have a president who is aligning himself with dictatorship abroad.
04:17No, Mr. Trump, Ukraine did not start that war. Putin and Russia did.
04:29We must leave the world in supporting democracies, not supporting Putin and dictatorships.
04:41So let me tell you something else.
04:45Trump wants over eight billion more dollars to go to Netanyahu's war machine.
04:52Israel has a right to defend itself against terrorism, but it does not have a right to go to war against the entire Palestinian people.
05:13It does not have the right to kill 50,000 people, injure over 100,000 and destroy the entire infrastructure.
05:26And as bad as that is, as bad as that is, Trump wants to expel the 2.2 million people in Gaza in order to create a playground for his billionaire friends.
05:42That is beyond insane and we will never, never let that happen.
06:01Brothers and sisters, not just oligarchy and authoritarianism.
06:06Our job right now, at a time when the very richest people in America are becoming phenomenally richer,
06:14our job is to create an economy that works for all of us, not just the people on top.
06:21We have reached a lot of this world of Congress.
06:22The last year before the world has been founded, we have become a better leader for all of us, not just the people on top.
06:24We have no longer longer than just the people on top, but they never have become a better leader