Following the outcome of the 2024 election, Senator Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent who caucuses with Democrats, explained on Sunday what Donald Trump did during the election that worked with voters.
Trump’s victory in the 2024 election was marked by the Republican, who secured the Electoral College and popular vote, significantly improving his numbers among a number of key demographics compared to his performance in 2020.
Exit polls showed that Trump’s support rose among male Latinos, people under 30, those living in rural areas and moderate voters.
In an interview with CNN‘s State of the Union on Sunday with host Dana Bash, Sanders, who won reelection on Tuesday night, spoke about several issues that he believes the Democratic party should have focused on more, including healthcare, raising minimum wage, union rights, expanding social security, etc.
“All of these issues are not Bernie Sanders ideas, these are all without exception popular ideas that Democrats, Republicans, and Independents support. Now the people who don’t support it is the billionaire class,” Sanders said.
However, Bash pushed back stating, “But what the voters supported is a man who would never do any of what you just said. I mean, not even close.”
DANA BASH: But what the voters supported is a man who would never do any of what you just said. I mean, not even close.
BERNIE SANDERS: Right. But what that man named Donald Trump did do is he said, ‘I feel your pain.’ pic.twitter.com/bo7gL1L8Ba
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 10, 2024
In response Sanders explained what Trump did do stating, “Right. But what that man named Donald Trump did do is he said, ‘I feel your pain. I know that you are hurting and I have an explanation,’ adding that “the cause of the problem right now is to have a small number of people on top who have enormous economic and political power.”
Newsweek has reached out to Trump and Harris’ campaign via email for comment.
One chief concern throughout the election campaign has been Social Security, which currently faces a funding crisis that would see benefits slashed by roughly 20 percent by as early as 2035.
Trump has been vocal in his pledge not to cut any Social Security benefits once he becomes president.
However, in other interviews, Trump talked about how he would solve Social Security’s funding crisis and seemed to indicate cuts could be on the horizon.
“There is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting,” Trump told CNBC in March.
Mandel NGAN / AFP/Getty Images
Meanwhile, Sanders’ comments come after he has spoken out following the 2024 election outcome.
In a statement about the results of the 2024 election posted on X, formerly Twitter, Sanders launched a critique of the Democratic party as he wrote: “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working-class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.
“While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right.”
However, Sanders’ former adviser Tezlyn Figaro has called out his response saying on a recent NewsNation segment that he needs to “take a seat.”
Figaro, who worked as a campaign adviser to Sanders in his 2016 presidential election bid, hit back at the Vermont senator after his statement.
“Let me just address Bernie Sanders right out the gate,” she said.
“I want him to go back and have a seat in that folding chair,” Figaro said, referencing the viral photo of Sanders from President Joe Biden‘s presidential Inauguration in 2021.
“The bottom line is, although what he said may be true, Bernie Sanders never supported VP Harris,” said Figaro, who stated that she was “appalled,” by Sanders’ statement.
Figaro then called Sanders out for allegedly not fully supporting Harris’ presidential bid. “He waited until the very last minute to endorse, very much like he did with Hillary Clinton,” she said. “He did not do anything to try and help get her elected. So he’s not in position to really speak.”
This comes as the Democratic party is currently trying to make sense of the election loss.
In addition, Sanders told The Washington Post in an article published Saturday that the Harris campaign should have focused more on issues such as expanding Medicare benefits and raising the minimum wage.
“We tried hard to do this—to have this campaign focus or emphasize an economic agenda that speaks to the need of the working class in this country,” the senator said. “The status quo is working very, very well for the people on top but it’s not working well for working people, and the Democratic Party has become far too much a defender of the status quo…You have to acknowledge the pain and the reality of people’s lives, or people will say, ‘Screw you.'”
While Sanders praised Harris for her messages on abortion rights, democracy and Trump’s perceived unfitness for office, he—and other progressive critics—said the campaign fell short on bold, economic policy plans that they believe would have appealed to more working-class voters.