H/T to elenacarlena for the transcript of the now oft re-characterized interview on Meet The Press:
Chuck Todd: Senator Sanders, welcome back to Meet the Press, sir.
Senator Sanders: Good to be with you, Chuck.
Todd: Let me start with Russia, since I ended there, to keep this sort of the flow of the conversation going here. You, your campaign, perhaps these Russians were told to leave it alone, that the only people that they were not to criticize were Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. I'm curious, did anybody in your campaign get interviewed by Mueller to just make sure your campaign had nothing to do with this?
Sanders: To the best of my knowledge, nobody in our campaign was interviewed. Mueller mentioned me twice, our campaign twice in his report. And I think what he was talking about is kind of old news, what most Americans know is that at the end of my campaign, when it appeared that Clinton was going to win, and certainly after she won the nomination, what the Russians were doing is flocking to Bernie Sanders Facebook sites, and they were saying to Bernie Sanders supporters, as they were by the way to Black Lives Matter supporters, people who were fighting for social justice, as they were saying to the Muslim community, "If you voted for Sanders, you have to understand Hillary Clinton is crazy, she is a murderer, she is terrible," all kinds of horrible, horrible things about Hillary Clinton. And it turns out that one of our social media guys in San Diego actually went to the Clinton campaign in September and said, "Something weird is going on, Bernie is not in the campaign, hundreds of these people are now coming onto his Facebook site." So I think we already knew that, it was an effort to undermine American democracy and to really say horrible things about Secretary Clinton.
Todd: Do you have an idea of how to prevent this going forward, I mean this was a sophisticated sort, they basically used the divide in the Democratic party between you and Secretary Clinton at the time, to polarize things even more.
Sanders: Look, first of all, the main point to be understood is what everybody understands except Donald Trump, is this was not just the 2016 campaign. They intend to do this in 2018. And I think one of the weirdest things in modern American history is you have every intelligence agency, you have the Mueller report, you have Trump's own administration saying the Republicans [sic] want to sabotage the 2018 campaign. Everybody knows this except the president of the United States. And I think people are asking, "What is going on with this president?" And what we have to do, and I think Senator Lankford touched on some of the issues. Front end, front end, what we have got to say to the Russians, "You are doing something to undermine American democracy, you are not going to get away with it, this is a major assault, if you do that there will be severe, severe consequences." We have to protect states and communities, to make sure that their voting is not compromised.
Todd: Adam Schiff, the lead Democrat on the House intelligence investigation, had some tough words on the Obama administration following the indictment. Take a listen.
Schiff: While I respect the motive in terms of the Obama administration, they did not want to be seen as meddling, they should have defended, being more public and aggressive at the time.
Todd: Would it surprise you, Senator, that the president has already picked up on that and has tweeted, saying, "Even Adam Schiff is blaming the Obama administration, he should have done more." In hindsight, did President Obama worry too much about the look?
Sanders: Look, Obama was in a very difficult position, he did not want to make it appear that he was favoring Hillary Clinton. Maybe he should have done more. But the real issue right now is how do we have a president of the United States not saying what everybody knows to be true? Russia interfered in 2016, they are going to interfere in 2018, and we have got to do everything we can to make sure that they do not undermine American democracy. Chuck, this is a huge deal, and that we don't have a president speaking out on this issue is a horror show. And we have got to bring Democrats and Republicans together despite the president, to go forward to protect the integrity of American democracy.
Todd: All right, let me move to the tragedy down in south Florida. After Newtown, you said, "If you pass the strongest gun legislation tomorrow, I don't think it will have a profound effect on the tragedies we have seen." And Senator, you ended up voting for some of those reform gun control measures that you were not 100% sure would solve all the problems. Where are you today? Do you think now...?
Sanders: Hey Chuck, let's be very clear. I have a D- voting record from the NRA. I lost an election probably for Congress here back in 1988 because I believed that we should not be selling or distributing assault weapons in this country. I am on record and have been for a very long time in saying that we have to significantly tighten up the background checks. We have to end the absurdity of the gun show loophole, 40% of the guns in this country are sold without any background checks. We have to deal with the straw man provision, which allows people to legally buy guns and then distribute them. We have to take on the NRA, and that is my deal. And I will do everything I can. The tragedy that we saw in Parkland is unspeakable, and all over this country, parents are scared to death of what might happen when they send their kids to school. This problem is not going to be easily solved. Nobody has a magic solution, right? But we have got to do everything we can to protect the children (inaudible, Todd talks over him).
Todd: What does that mean? You say everything we can. Does that mean raising the age when you purchase an AR-15? Does that mean limiting the purchases of AR-15s? What does it mean?
Sanders: Yes. Yeah, look, Chuck, what I just told you is that for 30 years, I've believed that we should not be selling assault weapons in this country. These weapons are not for hunting, they are for killing human beings. These are military weapons. I do not know why we have 5 million of them running around the United States of America. So of course we have to do that. Of course we have to make it harder for people to be able to purchase weapons. We have people now who are on terrorist watch lists who can purchase a weapon. Does this make any sense to anybody? Bottom line here, Republicans are going to have to say that it is more important to protect the children in this country than to antagonize the NRA. Are they prepared to do that? I surely hope they are.
Todd: Senator Bernie Sanders, I have to leave it there, out of time, unfortunately. But as always, sir, thank you for coming on and sharing your view. Much appreciated.
Sanders: Thank you.
And thank you ec!