- [Mike] Am I starting right here?
- [Director] Yup. And I
am ready, Fred, you ready?
- [Fred] Rolling.
- [Director] Great, and Jess, you ready?
- [Jess] Yeah.
- You are different. Why?
Because you are certainly shrewd enough
to be a politician of a different manner.
You're certainly smart enough
and have been here enough moons
to know how to properly take advantage
of the political system.
- Let's back up.
Yeah, I am different.
- Why?
- Because I never got into politics.
You know, a lot of
people get into politics
and they say, "Okay, I'm 24 now,
"where will I be when I'm 30?
"Maybe by the time I'm 54
"I can run for President
of the United States."
They've got it all calculated.
- Gotcha, alright.
- I ran for office the
first time in my life
for the United States Senate
in the state of Vermont.
You know what percentage
of the vote I got, Mike?
Take a wild and crazy guess.
- 15? 20?
- Nah. 2%.
- I was really gonna
guess three. (laughter)
- Alright, now would I
be a smart politician
to run on a third party?
Not the Democratic party,
not the Republican party,
running on a small third party,
talking about, in those days,
social and economic justice
and the war in Vietnam, alright?
So I was a different type of politician,
and I ran a year later.
You know what I got?
1% of the vote.
I was going in the wrong
direction, alright.
So I think it's fair to say
that my political career
is different than anybody else's.
Because I didn't get into
politics to figure out
how I could become President or a Senator.
I got into politics because I give a damn.
- Yeah.
- Alright, because I do think
it is an outrage that we
have people sleeping out on
the streets in this country.
That 51% of young African-American
kids are unemployed
or underemployed.
That millions of people don't
have any health insurance.
That's what I feel in my gut.
And that's what I'm fighting to change.
Is that a good answer?
- That is a good answer.
That's a answer that I
think people need to hear.
I trust old people, I'm
gonna be very frank.
Not all old people, but some.
- Oh, I'll talk to some old people.
I myself, as a young person,
I respect old people myself. (laughter)
- I say that because my
grandparents raised me.
I was raised by people who
were born in 1922 and 1932.
And their relationship to government,
it was radically different
than young people.
- Absolutely.
- You know, their
relationship to government
was one that was always fluid.
They understood that change would come,
they understood that you
weren't always gonna be happy,
but their thoughts and
concerns were bigger
than their individual
needs at every given hour.
And it seems that in my lifetime,
I'm an old man by my sport, I rap.
40 years old is an old age in rap.
Luckily, I'm still relevant
for whatever reason,
but I've been around long
enough to see this country
be a very very selfish
country, very very selfish.
I saw steel leave, an
industry leave, in the 80s.
I saw arts and trades get
pulled out of public schools.
So we have children that
are not only not graudating
and going to college,
but kids who are graduating and don't know
how to build a wall.
Kids who don't know, who used
to do auto body mechanics
and auto repair and aviation.
We lost a whole brain trust of service.
- Yup.
- And you know, of people
simply before our own greed.
- And not to mention that
we have more people in jail.
- Exactly. I was gonna get to that
- Okay, okay.
- I wanna talk about that.
But have you in your 74
years in this great country,
seen Americans become more immature,
more money consumed, more
greedy, more self-absorbed,
and is this taking us in a direction where
we're destroying the
democracy or the republic
that we want everyone else to emulate?
- You've said a mouthful.
I mean, that's a lot of stuff.
And the answer is yes.
But I wouldn't say it's all Americans.
I would say we have a culture now,
look, in America, in the world,
there's always been rich and poor, right?
- Yeah.
- There's always been boss and worker.
- Yeah.
- But generally speaking,
there was some kind of
social contract that said,
"You know, I own the
company, I'm making money,
"I'm gonna share it with you."
- Yeah.
- Right? I make more than you do,
but you're gonna get something.
- Yeah.
What you've got right
now, this is the culture:
I own a company, I'm making money.
I can make more money by going to China.
- Yeah.
- Throw you and your
family and everybody else
who works for me out on the street,
I don't give a bloody damn.
- Yeah.
- That doesn't matter to me.
I can avoid paying taxes
by putting my money
in the Cayman Islands and not
pay a nickel in federal taxes.
Alright?
I don't care that we have a deficit,
I don't care that we need
decent revenue coming in.
I can avoid paying taxes,
I have no responsibility to
anybody else other than myself.
Is this what's going on on the top?
Absolutely.
You saw the whole Wall Street business.
Their greed and illegal behavior
helped destroy the country.
Do you think they gave a damn?
Do you think they stayed up
nights worrying about it?
No.
So what you've got on
top is incredible greed.
I don't think it's pervasive,
I don't think everybody
in America is like that.
- Yeah.
- But that's the culture
of the people on top.
Greed is their mantra,
it's what they believe,
and we've gotta change that.
- But it seems to be like
what the former middle class
is worshiping now.
Like, you know, when
you look at television
and when, you know, I hate the name,
"Woah, you look at Fox, you
look at CNN, you look at MSNBC,"
because a lot of times I
don't even see the difference
between newscasters.
But it seems that we are in,
people are voting against
their own best interests.
- Yes.
- When people vote against
your socialist rhetoric,
they say, like, the people
that commented in my Instagram,
for instance, when I said I was
gonna be at your rally today
and we were gonna have this conversation.
"You're gonna lead us to
socialism and communism, Mike."
And I'm thinking to myself,
but you're a former veteran
who doesn't get the
proper medical benefits
that you deserve through the VA.
You're a former veteran
who doesn't own a home
because you don't have
the proper incentive.
The government and banks
don't have the incentive
to make you a homeowner
like post-World War II.
If you were a white veteran,
it was different for black veterans.
But you don't have the basic rights
that he's trying to give you.
But we have such a
worship or a theory that
"I'm going to be a millionaire one day."
What if that one day never comes?
What looks after you then?
- That one day is not gonna
come for the majority of people.
- I don't think so, either.
Some people do, but two questions:
even if it does come, is
that what you think society
should be about?
Would you rather live in a community
where everybody was doing pretty well?
- Yeah.
- Rather than a community
where you have people
out on the streets and some
people making billions?
- Absolutely.
- So that's the main point.
Second of all, I think that,
in terms of our campaign,
you know we started, if I
were to be here in Atlanta
seven months ago,
I would say that 80-90%
of the people in Georgia
did not have a clue as to
who Bernie Sanders was.
So I'm feeling pretty
good about our campaign.
We have made a lot of progress,
we still have a long way to go.
I'm running against a
woman who's probably the
best known woman in the United
States of America, alright?
It's a tough fight.
But we're doing pretty good.
- You brought it up, I
wasn't gonna mention Hillary,
and I'm not gonna talk long,
but are we in this country
in danger of creating,
essentially, monarchs
of political families?
(heavy music)
