Bernie Sanders: 'Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Trump golfs.'

Sen. Bernie Sanders.
(Image credit: Handout/DNCC via Getty Images)

In a fiery speech during the Democratic National Convention, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said that amid President Trump's first term, the "unthinkable has become normal," and for democracy to stand a chance, people must elect former Vice President Joe Biden in November.

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Shifting his attention to the coronavirus crisis, Sanders said by rejecting science, Trump has "put our lives and health in jeopardy," and his inaction "fanned this pandemic, resulting in over 170,000 deaths." The president has "attacked doctors and scientists trying to protect us from the pandemic, while refusing to take strong action to produce the masks, gowns, and gloves our health care workers desperately need," Sanders continued, before dropping the biggest diss of the night. "Nero fiddled while Rome burned," he said. "Trump golfs."

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Sanders also thanked his supporters for backing him, and said they "moved this country in a bold new direction, showing that all of us, black and white, Latino, Native American, Asian American, gay and straight, native born and immigrant, yearn for a nation based on the principles of justice, love, and compassion." Biden supports many of the same things they fought for, from raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour to providing 12 weeks of paid family leave, and Sanders said for the sake of democracy, the economy, and our planet, "we must come together to defeat Donald Trump and elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as our next president and vice president. The price of failure is too great to imagine."

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.