TOPEKA — Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., rallied a group of more than 3,000 spectators Saturday evening during the 2017 Washington Days Convention at Topeka High School’s gymnasium.
As the keynote speaker for the Kansas Democratic Party’s annual event, Sanders called on President Donald Trump — famous for using tweets as his favored style of communication — to “send out one more tweet,” and “in that tweet tell the American people you are going to keep your word, that you are not going to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.”
In reference to Tom Price, Secretary of Health and Human Services, and Mick Mulvaney, Secretary of the Office of Management and Budget, Sanders said Trump’s nominations for cabinet positions have spent their entire careers advocating for the same cuts Trump said he was against during the presidential campaign. He referred to the appointment of Gary Cohn as chief economic advisor as an “unusual way to ‘drain the swamp.’” Cohn was most recently an investment banker with Goldman Sachs and has a net worth of $3 billion. Sanders said Trump has more millionaires and billionaires in his cabinet than any president in American history.
“Instead of draining the swamp, he has brought the entire swamp right into his administration,” Sanders said.
Norman Armold, registered Democrat from Topeka, said he agrees with Sanders’s perspective.
“I support his democratic socialism,” he said. “Just the idea that he is for the people and wants the government to be for the people and not for corporate interests.”
Morgan Hammes, Manhattan, said she attended the event because she believes it’s important to stay motivated.
“Bernie just started this energy that can’t be stopped and I think it’s really important to get fired up right now and make some changes,” she said.
Sanders accused the president of trying to divide the nation.
“We as a nation have struggled and have had a very rocky road in fighting against racism, against sexism, against xenophobia and against homophobia, and President Trump, we are not going back,” he said.
In an age when technology has increased production, Sanders said millions of workers are working longer hours for lower wages, the middle class is shrinking, education is poorly funded, college tuition is too high, daycare costs are unaffordable and the country faces a dental and health insurance crisis. Sanders said patients have died because they could not see a doctor in time due to a lack of health insurance or high deductibles. Sanders said he is working overtime to tell his Republican counterparts that they are not going to repeal the Affordable Healthcare Act because every American deserves to have health insurance. He reminded the crowd of when in the not too distant past Americans were denied health insurance because of pre-existing conditions such as cancer, diabetes or heart disease.
“We are not going back to those days,” Sanders said, as the crowd rose to its feet cheering loudly.
Sanders alluded to raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, free college education and universal healthcare as solutions to some of the nation’s problems and bellowed out for pharmaceutical companies to “stop ripping off the American people” by charging them the highest prices in the world for the same prescription medications that sell for less in France, England and Canada.
Nobody in this country fails to understand that America is the wealthiest country in the history of the world and has the means to support healthcare, infrastructure, and to have the best education system, Sanders said.
“So please, whenever you hear anybody on television or any of the political leaders argue that we have to cut this, we can’t do this for our kids, we can’t do that for the elderly, we don’t have the money, tell them they are not telling the truth,” he said.
After the event in the gymnasium, Sanders spoke to a smaller crowd of high school students in the school’s auditorium.
Sanders ‘berns’ Trump at Topeka rally
