Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., on Thursday blasted businessman Donald Trump as a “demagogue” who was exploiting Americans’ fears and anxieties.
“He wants to ‘make America great,’ and here’s a guy who is a billionaire who thinks that wages in America are too high,” Sanders said in an interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo.
The Democratic presidential candidate said that Trump’s strategy was, “playing off the anxiety and fears that the American people have. The fears about terrorism, the fears about our economy, and becoming a demagogue about that and then trying to get us to hate Mexicans, or to hate Muslims.”
Sanders said, “I think that is a strategy that is not what America is supposed to be about.”
Instead, Sanders emphasized his democratic socialist message on income inequality, college costs, child care, Wall Street greed, and climate change.
“Trump is trying to play on fears and divide us up,” he said.
Sanders comments come as high-profile Democrats have migrated away from their initial strategy of treating Trump as a joke candidate to taking him seriously.
President Obama made similar comments about Trump in a Monday interview with NPR and Hillary Clinton has been engaging in a war of words about Trump since claiming that the businessman’s rhetoric helped Islamic State recruitment.
