Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) stated that he appreciates corporations weighing in against “bathroom bills” in states like North Carolina, but doesn’t want a situation where “politicians will be elected who represent the wealthy and the powerful” due to money spent by the Koch Brothers and other billionaires in an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Wednesday.
Sanders was asked, “Senator, you have been a fierce critic of the influence of the wealthy and big business on our politics, not just on who gets their way, but who sets the agenda. As Republican legislatures and governors have recently been weighing new laws that are discriminatory, particularly against LGBT people, in North Carolina, in Georgia, in Missouri, in Indiana, big business, including Bank of America, today in North Carolina, has weighed in strongly against those discriminatory laws. Do you think those businesses should butt out of those issues? Is it inappropriate for them to try to wield political influence, even when they do it in a progressive way?”
Sanders responded, “Well, you know, look, they have — when we look at politics in America, you have CEOs of major corporations, who have children who are gay, who have friends who are gay, whose wives or daughters have had abortions. They live in the real world, and they’re responding to this type of very right-wing reactionary policies, and I understand that, and I appreciate that. When I talk about money in politics, what I talk about is the Koch Brothers and billionaires, spending hundreds of millions of dollars, along with Wall Street, to create a situation where politics — politicians will be elected who represent the wealthy and the powerful.”
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