Jimmy Kimmel has a pretty obvious question about Bernie Sanders' 2020 campaign slogan

Jimmy Kimmel interviews Sen. Bernie Sanders

(Image credit: Screenshot/Twitter/Jimmy Kimmel Live)

published 26 July 2019

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), making his second bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, got a very warm reception on Thursday's Jimmy Kimmel Live. "They still love you," Kimmel said.

Sanders said he couldn't watch former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's testimony on Wednesday, but the bottom-line "message from Mueller is that the Russians intervened in the campaign in 2016, they are still intervening, and we've got to stop that. Whatever your political view is, you want to make sure that the election in the United States is controlled by the people this country, not the Russians or anybody else." Kimmel said "that seems very obvious and it seems like something that would be embraced by both parties, but it can't even get a vote in the Senate. Republicans have stopped it twice today." Sanders agreed and said the Senate is broken and owned by greedy powerful monied interests.

Sanders and Kimmel talked about the need to boldly tackle climate change (blocked by the fossil-fuel industry), Sanders' Medicare-for-All proposal (opposed by the insurance industry), and the high price of prescription drugs (thanks to the pharmaceutical industry). They also discussed Sanders' conversational friendship with Cardi B., the pro-Sanders community on Etsy — which Sanders has never visited, he said — and how President Trump would demand a cut from all the unlicensed fan merch, some of which Kimmel showcased.

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"Do you relish in the idea of debating Donald Trump?" Kimmel asked. "Not only debating him but defeating him," Sanders said. "He is trying to divide our country up based on the color of our skin or where we came from or our religion or our sexual orientation ... and it will give me great pleasure to defeat this president and create a government of compassion and of love rather than just of hatred and divisiveness."

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.