(This is a transcript of the portion of Vermont Public Radio’s Jane Lindholm’s interview with Bernie Sanders. The portion transcribed here is about the Russian investigation and begins at 10:27 and ends at 17:58.)
Any transcription errors or questions, please note them in the comments.
Lindholm: If you don’t see, then, a Democratic sweep in the midterms later this year, what, then, does that tell you about what our statistics say versus who people are putting in power in the government?
Sanders: Well, what it says is, as I indicated-when you have a handful of billionaires led by the Koch Brothers spending four hundred million dollars...this is a corruption of democracy. But, having said that, in terms of what I saw on November 7th in Virginia and New Jersey and what we have seen since is I think the American people are catching on. And it’s not only to the insanity and the destructiveness of the Trump administration and all of that craziness but it is to a government which is beholden to powerful special interests.
So I think that one of the beautiful things that we are seeing...and when I ran for president I called for a political revolution and when I said that the only way we’re going to deal with income and wealth inequality and the fact that we’re behind so many other countries and so many social issues is that people got involved. Well, you know what? We’re beginning, beginning, beginning to see that.
And we’ve got to do, obviously, much more.
Lindholm: And yet what we also see are people, foreign governments, and other organizations who are working to undermine that idea of one person, one vote by working on that one person, one vote, by getting people to believe something other than what they might otherwise believe. I mean, we've seen it in the Mueller indictments—
Sanders: Absolutely
Lindholm: We've seen the Russian government according to these indictments working to undermine Hillary Clinton—
Sanders: Absolutely
Lindholm: in many ways, including by supporting your campaign—
Sanders: Well, heh, Supporting my campaign? No, they were attacking Hillary Clinton's campaign—
Lindholm: Well, they—
Sanders: ...using my supporters against Hillary Clinton.
Lindholm: Exactly. But they said they were doing it in support of—
Sanders: Well, but they didn’t. I mean, essentially what they did is what...you...here’s the story on that.
At the end of the campaign, what they were saying is...what the Russians were saying, playing a really disgusting role because they don’t believe in anything and all they want to do is sow division in this country and bring people against each other so what they were saying is well (in so many words), Bernie Sanders is not going to win, so if you’re a Bernie Sanders supporter, let me tell you, Hillary Clinton is a criminal, a murderer, a terrible ta-da-da-da-da-da, crazy—all of these disgusting things while I was out, by the way, running around the country campaigning for Hillary Clinton.
And it turns out that a guy who was on my staff who I don’t know personally— his name is John Mattes, out in San Diego— turns out that what he was noticing...now we’re into September, late into the campaign...he was noticing that hundreds of folks he had never heard of names were suddenly coming into Bernie Sanders’ Facebook and they were attacking Hillary Clinton on all kinds of ways. He checked it out. And he went to the Clinton campaign and he said, ‘’you know what, I think these guys are Russians.’’
We had known that. And what Mueller reported, he had more specificity than we’ve seen before. Not exactly new, you are right. They are trying to bring Americans against each other.
Now, what is totally weird, totally weird and, I think, almost unprecedented in modern American history: How do you have a situation where the intelligence agencies say Russians got involved in the 2016 campaign, likely to be involved in 2018, members of Trump’s Administration saying that, the Mueller report saying that, and you have a President of the United States who is not saying that?What is going on? And there is speculation: Do the Russians really own him? Or do they have something—
Lindholm: Do you believe they do?
Sanders: I don’t know. I think...it’s something very weird. How does it happen? If my staff— all my staff— is saying something and I don’t have anything to say on what is an enormously important issue...so bottom line here, it seems to me, is if Trump cannot, for whatever reason, do the right thing, Congress has got to act.
This is what you do. Three things. First of all, you make it loud and clear through legislation that meddling in American democracy is a very very very serious crime and there will be severe severe consequences. Number two, you provide resources to states all over this country to protect their voting mechanism. And that is to make sure that when people in Vermont or in California cast a vote, that that vote is adequtely counted. I think that there’s got to be a paper trail. To tell you the truth, I’m conservative enough to think we should do what Canada does: in national elections, let’s go to paper ballots because then we can make sure there are not cyberattacks against our voting systems. Thirdly, we have got to get to Facebook and to Twitter and all of these platforms and say, ‘’sorry, you have not done a good job. And you’re going to have to change what you are doing.’’ So it’s a lot of work that has to be done. For whatever reason, the president will not be involved in that. Congress, hopefully...and we’re seeing some bipartisan effort on that...has got to be involved.
Lindholm: So you believe that your Republican colleagues will get board with that number one?
Sanders: I believe ... Some of them will.
Lindholm: Enough of them to pass legislation to move that forward?
Sanders: I hope so.
Lindholm: On the Russia investigation, we’ve got a note from Mika who says, ‘’Senator Sanders said this Sunday on TV that his campaign and he was aware that Russian bots were promoting his campaign versus Mrs. Clinton. He’s also said that he was aware Wikileaks was publishing e-mails stolen from the DNC by Russians. Why did he not once warn his supporters about this? Before the election in November 2016, his supporters obsessed about Wikileaks and many decided not to vote for Clinton because of it or to stay home. If he was aware that Russians were trying to promote him and divide Democrats against Mrs. Clinton, why did he not communicate this to his supporters?
Sanders: Well, as I just indicated...as I have just indicated...this was not supporting me any more than they were supporting groups like Black Lives Matter that are fighting for social justice, trust me, that is not what they were doing. There were trying to cause division, as I just indicated, in September, actually, a guy from our campaign did go to the Clinton campaign—
Lindholm: But Mika wants to know why you didn’t take that to your supporters, take that public.
Sanders: Well, we knew what we didn’t know...look, in the midst of all of this I was out campaigning very hard for Hillary Clinton, so...let me leave it at that.
Lindholm: Why leave it at that? Why not...it was a specific question about why didn’t you go to your supporters, so I’m curious—
Sanders: No, because we did not know early on.
Lindholm: In September (unintelligible)—
Sanders: But she said… what her point —
Lindholm: So, if you knew that Russian bots were promoting your campaign versus—
Sanders: I did not know that Russian bots were promoting my campaign. Russian bots were not promoting my campaign—
Lindholm: Let’s leave that—
Sanders: What we found out is that in April and May, it appeared that there were lots of strange things happening attacking Hillary Clinton.
Lindholm: So...let’s take support out of it because I think support is a charged word. but if you and your campaign knew that there was Russian meddling and that it was trying to sow divisions, why not take that directly to your supporters, many of whom really hung on your every word?
Sanders: Well, I would say that the real question to be asked is what was the Clinton campaign...they had more information about this than we did.
And at this point, we were working with them, so I think that the proper question—
Lindholm: So did the Clinton campaign say don’t talk about this?
Sanders: No, of course not. But who do you think would be raising that issue?
Lindholm: Well, I could see a world in which Mrs. Clinton said, ‘’It’s the Russians’’ and Sanders supporters said, ‘’Oh, that’s baloney’’ but if Sanders says it, they say, ‘’OK.’’—
Sanders: We knew what we knew when we knew it, and that’s about all I can say.