Editorial: Bernie Sanders on health care, homelessness and Trump

Warming up for a giant campaign rally in Los Angeles on Dec. 21, Bernie Sanders, the three-term U.S. senator from Vermont making his second run for the Democratic presidential nomination, sat down for an hour with the Los Angeles Times editorial board to talk about the economy, health care, immigration, homelessness and other top issues. The following is a partial transcript, edited for clarity and brevity.

Sanders: So this is a major improvement over the old building. God, the traffic, I don't have to tell you. It wasn't bad today. We went, it must have been a mile, and it took us what, 45 minutes or something.

Nick Goldberg, editor of the editorial pages: You complain about that at the rally later, you'll make some ...

Sanders: That'll win me some votes. (Laughter)

Goldberg: So let's get started. Welcome. This is the editorial board only. The meeting is for the purpose of helping us make decisions about who we're going to endorse in the race. We're on the record. You're being videoed. You're welcome, if you want, to make a very short, one minute or so intro.

Sanders: I'm used to 60-second remarks.

Goldberg: And we have a couple of our (editorial board) members on the phone.

Sanders: We are at an unprecedented and dangerous moment in American history. We have a president who is a pathological liar, who is running, in my view, one of the most corrupt administrations in American history, who rightfully was impeached, was a racist and a sexist and a homophobe and a xenophobe and a religious bigot. And it gives me no pleasure to say that. But that is who the president of the United States is.

I will do everything in my power to defeat him. And in fact, I believe I am the strongest Democratic candidate to do that. We could discuss that later. But the crisis that we're facing as a nation, as a world, is not just Donald Trump. And we'd be wrong to think that just defeating Trump will solve all of our issues. We're dealing with massive levels of income and wealth inequality. I'm deeply concerned about big money controlling the political process and undermining American democracy, not to mention all the voter suppression that's going on among Republican governors.

The more I study the issue, the more frightened I become about climate change. And the scientists now are telling us that they have underestimated the severity and the degree to which climate change is ravaging this country and the world. And there is no middle ground in terms of dealing with climate change. I wish that it was. But right now we'll need to throw all of the resources and intelligence that we can in leading the world, because this is not just an American issue, to literally save the planet for our kids and future generations. This is a major, major, major crisis.

So, I mean there are many, many other issues out there, obviously, but I just wanted to lay out some of the concerns that I have.

Goldberg: Let me kick it off then by asking you, do you think that the U.S. can repair the damage that Donald Trump has done? Can it be done quickly and easily? And how would you go about it?

Sanders: The answer is I think it will be difficult. I really do think it will require extraordinary leadership. I think what Trump did in the 2016 campaign is rather intelligently pick up on the fact that there are, what, tens and tens of millions of people in this country who are suffering, who are in pain, who are going nowhere in a hurry, are seeing decline in their standard of living, seeing a decline, literally, in their life expectancy, worried about their kids. And they're looking around them and they're saying, 'Who is concerned about me? Is the Democratic establishment worried about my kids? (Are they) worried that I'm working for 9 bucks an hour, that I don't have any health care? That my kid can't go to college?" And he played on that.

Now he turned out to be a fraud and a liar, but he certainly exposed, I think, the weakness of the Democratic and the political establishment in general, including the Republican establishment. So what we are going to need is leadership in this country that brings people together