CBS News
Transcript: Sen. Bernie Sanders on “Face the Nation,” March 10, 2024
The following is a transcript of an interview with Sen. Bernie Sanders, Independent of Vermont, that aired on March 10, 2024.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Good morning and welcome to Face The Nation. We are coming off a big week in politics. But there are challenges ahead, particularly with the war between Israel and Hamas reaching a critical point as the holy month of Ramadan begins. And we turn now to that crisis in the Middle East and renewed fears of violence in Jerusalem. I do want to note that we have an extensive bipartisan conversation with the chairs of the Senate Intelligence Committee that will be coming up in a moment, but we’re going to begin with Senator Bernie Sanders from Burlington, Vermont. Good morning to you, Senator.
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: Morning.
MARGARET BRENNAN: You have long been a critic of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The other night, President Biden was heard on a hot mic after the State of the Union address saying he has to have a come to Jesus talk with Netanyahu about letting humanitarian aid into Gaza. Have you spoken to President Biden about whether he’s had this conversation? If he hasn’t, what is he waiting for? And if he already had it, has it made any difference?
SEN. SANDERS: Well, I’ve spoken to people very high up in his administration. Here’s the bottom line. Margaret, what we are seeing in Gaza today is literally an unprecedented crisis. It’s not just that 30,000 people, two thirds of them are women and children have already been killed. We are looking at the possibility of hundreds of thousands of children starving to death. The United States of America cannot be complicit in this mass slaughter of children. So it is one thing to talk to Netanyahu to pressure Netanyahu. But here is the bottom line. Year after year, we have provided billions of dollars in military aid to the Government of Israel. Right now, you have a right wing extremist government under Netanyahu. There are plans to provide him with another $10 billion in unfettered military aid. What you can say to Netanyahu, stop the slaughter, allow the massive amounts of humanitarian aid that we need to come in to feed the children. Please, please, please. Oh, but by the way, if you don’t do it, here’s another $10 billion to continue the war. Now we have written a letter to the president, it turns out that Israel is in violation of the law, stopping American humanitarian aid is in violation of the law. That should be clear, no more money to Netanyahu’s war machine to kill Palestinian children.
MARGARET BRENNAN: You said Israel’s in violation of the Foreign Assistance Act as have a handful of other Democratic senators, they may also be in violation of the Leahy Act, the President himself has the national security powers to suspend. Do you really think though, in a presidential election year, that the President of the United States would halt or pause or condition aid to one of the closest allies in the Middle East?
SEN. SANDERS: Well, I think it is the right thing to do. You can’t beg Netanyahu, you got to tell him if you want any money, you got to change your policy. Allow the trucks to come in to feed their children. And by the way, in terms of politics —
MARGARET BRENNAN: Yeah.
SEN. SANDERS: — Which is secondary, to my mind in this issue. The truth is, whether you’re a conservative Republican or a progressive, you do not want to see children in Palestine starve to death. So I think it’s good politics, and it’s the moral and right thing to do.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Do you stand by your view that a full ceasefire with Hamas is unrealistic? Because that terror group seeks to destroy Israel?
SEN. SANDERS: Look, what you have, what you need right now is a ceasefire tomorrow so that the trucks, the massive amount of humanitarian aid can come in to feed the people who are starving. But you have Hamas has dedicated to destroying Israel. You have the Natenyehav- Netanyahu government which is dedicated to destroy Hamas. I think at the end of the day, commands cannot be continuing to run Gaza. And Netanyahu government cannot continue to run Israel, if we’re going to ever leave- bring peace to that region,
MARGARET BRENNAN: But a temporary ceasefire is sufficient for you?
SEN. SANDERS: To feed the children right now is —
MARGARET BRENNAN: — Understood.
SEN. SANDERS: What we’ve got to exactly do.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Okay. Yesterday, President Biden was asked about Israel’s plans to launch an operation into the southern city of Rafah in southern Gaza. Listen to what he said.
(START SOUND ON TAPE)
JONATHAN CAPEHART: Would invasion of Rafah, which you have urged him not to do, would that be a red line?
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: It is a red line, but I’m never gonna leave Israel. The defense of Israel is still critical. So there’s no red line. I’m going to cut off all weapons so they don’t have the Iron Dome to protect them. They don’t have- but there’s red lines that if he crosses, they can cannot have 30,000 More Palestinians dead.
(END SOUND ON TAPE)
MARGARET BRENNAN: Was that clear to you in terms of where that red line is? And what do you make of it?
SEN. SANDERS: Look, Margaret, 1.7 million Palestinians, 80% of their population have been driven from their homes and displaced. Many of them end up in Rafah. To go in there and to displace them again and start a major military campaign would be an unmitigated disaster. So my view is, of course, we cannot support an attack of that kind on Rafah. Bottom line is, though, Netanyahu has got to be told no more money for his war machine, unless there is humanitarian aid coming in to feed the people.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, that’ll be in the hands at the moment of- of the House of Representatives, which hasn’t scheduled a vote. On the politics of this, more than 100,000 voters in Michigan went uncommitted to protest Mr. Biden’s policy. In the state of Minnesota in the recent primary there, you saw a similar boycott, almost 20% went uncommitted. Giving your moral objections, your personal issues here, can you, in good conscience, ask your supporters to vote for Mr. Biden?
SEN. SANDERS: Well, look, the contrast that I think President Biden made it very clear in the State of the Union address. If you believe that climate change is real, you’ve got to vote for President Biden, if you believe that women have a right to control their own bodies, you’ve got to vote for President Biden. If you think that at time of massive income and wealth inequality, you don’t give trillions of dollars in tax breaks to the 1%, you’ve got to vote for Biden. If you want to lower the cost of prescription drugs, you’ve got to vote for Biden. If you believe in democracy, and involving people in the process, rather than keeping people from voting, you have to vote for Biden.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So you’re saying —
SEN. SANDERS: — So I am in talk —
MARGARET BRENNAN: — Progressives need to put this aside?
SEN. SANDERS: I am saying we’ve got to come, not put it aside. The fight continues to change Biden’s policy in Gaza. But the contrast between Biden and Trump is day and night. The election of Trump would be a disaster for this country. And in my view of the world, we’ve got to come together, reelect Biden, but at the same time, we have to demand that we have a progressive agenda, where we have an economy that works for all, not just a few.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So you’re standing by your endorsement of Mr. Biden’s election, despite the current policy?
SEN. SANDERS: No, I’m not supporting Mr. Trump, no —
MARGARET BRENNAN: — No, no, no Mr. Biden.
SEN. SANDERS: The election of Trump would be- yes.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Senator Bernie Sanders, thank you for your time this morning.
SEN. SANDERS: Thank you.
Watch CBS News
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
On Tuesday, a new Malcolm Gladwell book comes out. And if history is any guide, it will be a bestseller. “They’re stories about ideas,” he said. “They have characters. They have plots. I’m usually trying to say something about the world.”
His first book, “The Tipping Point,” published in 2000, established the Gladwell recipe: he explores a theme through anecdotes and little-known scientific studies. “‘Tipping Point’ was about the epidemic as an incredibly useful way of understanding how ideas move through society,” Gladwell said. “And epidemics have rules. Let’s learn the rules, right?”
His seven New York Times bestsellers have sold 23 million copies in North America alone. His fee for corporate speeches is $350,000. His fans have downloaded a quarter-billion episodes of his podcast, “Revisionist History,” and he founded a company called Pushkin Industries to produce it.
CBS News
In other words, Gladwell has come a long way from the small Canadian town where he grew up, son of a British father and a Jamaican mother, whom he describes as “subversive,” someone who would write notes to excuse her son from class with a blank space. “I would just fill out the date,” said the man who skipped a lot of school.
He attended the University of Toronto, but his best education was the ten years he worked for the Washington Post. “I knew nothing about newspapers,” he said. “I was so raw. I was 23, I think, or 24. Bob Woodward was two rows away from me. I learned at the feet of the greatest journalists of my generation.”
In 1996, Gladwell joined The New Yorker. He wrote about why, in the 1990s, New York’s crime rate plummeted in an article called, “The Tipping Point.” A book followed. It introduced a recurring Gladwellian theme: hidden patterns in the way the world works.
He’s a world-class contrarian, about college (“You should never go to the best institution you get into, never; go to your second or your third choice. Go to the place where you’re guaranteed to be in the top part of your class”); about working from home (“It’s not in your best interest to work at home. … If you’re just sitting in your pajamas in your bedroom, is that the work life you want to live, right? Don’t you want to feel part of something?”); about football (“I think the sport is a moral abomination”).
Gladwell says he enjoys being provocative: “Of course!” he said. “I like poking the bear. I mean, journalists should poke the bear.”
CBS News
Gladwell’s fans love his storytelling, and the A-ha! moments they bring. His critics, on the other hand, have described his writing as “generalizations that are banal, obtuse, or flat wrong,” and “simple, vacuous truths [dressed] up with flowery language.” “I’m with the idea that not everyone’s gonna like my work,” Gladwell said. “100% of people don’t like anything.”
In a 2021 “Sunday Morning” interview, Gladwell said, “I would rather be interesting than correct.” He called that “an overly provocative way of saying things! No, I think what I meant was, if I turn out not to be right, I’m not devastated. I accept that as the price of doing business.”
Gladwell often turns his mistakes into new chapters or podcast episodes. In “The Tipping Point,” he explained that New York’s crime drop was the result of “broken windows policing.” As he described it, “Little crimes were tipping points for big crimes.” But that philosophy led to New York’s policy of “stop and frisk.”
“Doing 700,000 police stops a year of young Black and Hispanic men is deeply problematic,” Gladwell said. “We were wrong. I was part of that. I’m sorry.”
Which brings us to the new book, “Revenge of the Tipping Point.” “The original ‘Tipping Point’ is a very optimistic, rosy book about the possibilities for using the laws of epidemics to promote positive social change,” he said. “In the last 25 years, I spent a lot of time thinking about the other side of that problem, which is, what happens when people use the laws of epidemics in ways that are malicious or damaging or self-interested?”
Little, Brown & Co.
The book’s stories range from topics as obscure as cheetah reproduction, to stories as big as the Holocaust. He writes that almost nobody talked about the Holocaust, or even called it that, until NBC aired a miniseries called “Holocaust” in 1978. “And what changed happened like [snaps fingers]. I mean, it was just there was a tipping point in our understanding of the Holocaust,” he said.
This book arrives at a tipping point in Gladwell’s own life. In a span of five years, he got engaged, had two children, turned 61, and moved from Manhattan to pastoral Hudson, New York. “It’s a lot to handle. There isn’t a single person who ever lived whose parents did not say, ‘This is a lot!'” he laughed. “I have become the person that, you know, I once despised, and nothing makes me happier.”
He also despises Ivy League colleges, accusing them of prioritizing their own reputations over focusing on their students.
Has parenthood affected his outlook on any of the things that he’s written about before? “Well, it’s prepared me for the possibility that I will be a massive hypocrite!” Gladwell laughed. “So, you know, it’s one thing to write about what you should do with your kids when you don’t have them.”
For all his success, Malcolm Gladwell maintains that nothing has changed in his approach, his work ethic, or his contrarianism. “It hasn’t changed what I do,” he said. “I don’t farm out my research; I still go on reporting trips. It hasn’t gotten old. In fact, my great regret is I don’t have time to do more.”
READ AN EXCERPT: “Revenge of the Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell
For more info:
Story produced by Wonbo Woo. Editor: Remington Korper.
Watch CBS News
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.