On Saturday night, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders took his navy sport coat to a place where navy sport coats are rarely seen: The main stage at Coachella.
The octogenarian independent made a surprise appearance at the music festival this weekend, where he introduced the singer-songwriter Clairo and implored the young audience of thousands not to disengage from the current political moment. “The future of what happens in America is dependent upon your generation,” Sanders said. “Now, you can turn away, and you can ignore what goes on, but if you do that, you’re doing it at your own peril.”
The crowd booed at the mention of “the President of the United States,” to which Sanders quipped, “I agree.”
While Donald Trump, who has falsely claimed to have won the 2024 youth vote, could rightly write off this interaction as the grumbling of some hippy dippy liberals in the California desert, the Coachella appearance was but a pitstop for Sanders. Lately, he has been criss-crossing the country along with New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for their so-called “fighting oligarchy” tour, drawing massive crowds—including in red states—along the way. And if there’s one thing that gets Trump’s attention, it’s crowd sizes.
On Sunday, Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez filled a 15,000-seat arena in Salt Lake City, Utah, with thousands more people watching on overflow screens outside the stadium. The Utah rally took place a day after Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez drew a crowd of 36,000 in Los Angeles, where Neil Young, Joan Baez, and Maggie Rogers headlined, but Sanders said he believed the Utah turnout was “in many ways…more impressive,” according to KSL.com.
“We are here in so-called conservative Utah, and tomorrow we are going to be in Idaho because we believe that in every state of this country, people are prepared to stand up and fight back,” Sanders said. The tour will also take Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez to Missoula, Montana this week, where Trump won the 2024 election handily.
