Bernie Sanders has broken his silence on whether he would run for president in 2028 in a new Joe Rogan interview.
Almost six years after his first appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience during his 2020 election campaign, the 83-year-old Vermont Senator sat down with the podcasting behemoth in his Austin, Texas, studio on Tuesday.
In a wide-ranging interview that covered topics including Israel, AI, and electoral reform, Rogan asked Sanders if he wanted to succeed Trump as president.
“Are you gonna run for president again?” Rogan asked, a reference to the congressman culling his 2020 presidential campaign to endorse Joe Biden.
“I am 83 years of age,” Sanders, an independent who has long caucused with the Democratic Party, replied.
“That’s what I’m saying,” Rogan returned with a wry smile.
“I’m not too sure the American people would be too enthusiastic on someone who’s 108…,” Sanders teased, before the host chimed in: “You’re still very with it.”
“Thank you,” Sanders chuckled. “Well, yeah.”
“You are. You’re a couple of years older than Biden,” Rogan continued. “Think of that. You could be off a lot worse.”
Sanders and Rogan agreed before the senator took a long pause with a drawn-out “um,” before making a segue to express his commitment to his Fighting Oligarchy rallies held beside Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Later in the podcast, Rogan asked Sanders to imagine a world where his 2016 presidential run hadn’t been “derailed” by the Democratic National Committee, which Rogan suggested had “conspired against him.”
“What would you have done differently?” Rogan pressed.
“Okay… how many hours do we have,” Sanders said, before going to share his views that the U.S. political system has been corrupted by big money from the likes of corporate PACs and megadonors.
“What would you have done first day in office?” Rogan said.
“Well, it’s not the first day in office… I would have dealt with this campaign finance reform issue,” he said, suggesting that candidates get an allotted amount of publicly funded money for their campaigns.
“That makes a lot more sense than having billionaires fund elections, which is what you got right now. So that’s number one.”
On X, Sanders chose to highlight his discussion with the former Fear Factor host that covered the “insanely low” $7 minimum wage.
The socialist also highlighted the work done by AOC in the first few months of Trump’s second administration.
“She looked around her, and she saw a society that was fundamentally unjust and, in many ways, ugly to the people in the community in which she lived in New York City,” Sanders said.
“She stood up and took on one of the most powerful people in the House of Representatives, and she started with almost no money against the guy who had unlimited funds, and she beat him,” he added.
Sanders also took on the American Israel Public Affairs Committee for preventing the passage of any policy that could help people in Gaza.
Sanders said the group “have already knocked off good members of Congress, and they will do it again.”
“So all I’m saying is you got a corrupt campaign finance system, on both sides, which is rejecting the will of the American people and end up supporting powerful special interests,” Sanders said.
“And if we do not get a handle on that issue, I worry very much about the future of American democracy.”
Sanders also took the time to slam Tesla CEO Elon Musk for contributing $720 million to Trump’s campaign.
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