- Sen. Bernie Sanders told Business Insider he is reaching across the aisle to find common ground.
- He has no qualms about working with Elon Musk on any good ideas he has about spending.
- Sanders also cited areas of mutual interest with RFK Jr. on health and Trump on credit-card debt.
Sen. Bernie Sanders is extending an olive branch to President-elect Donald Trump and his incoming administration.
In an interview with Business Insider on Tuesday, the Vermont Senator listed areas of common ground with Elon Musk, co-chair of a new extra-governmental department to cut costs, as well as with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on health and Trump on credit debt.
“If somebody on the other side has a good idea, sure, I’ll work with them,” Sanders, who at 83 is the longest-serving independent in Congress, told BI.
In Musk, Sanders may find an ally to cut defense spending
Sanders made headlines on Monday when he tweeted his support for Elon Musk’s pitch to curb defense spending.
Musk, whom Sanders has previously criticized as a threat to democracy, responded with a laughing emoji and said “maybe we can find some common ground.”
Sanders told BI he has no qualms about working with Musk on the Defense Department’s spending, or on any other good ideas he has as co-chair of DOGE, a new Department of Government Efficiency set up by President-elect Trump.
“Many of the things he did during the campaign were really ugly. On the other hand, he’s a very smart guy,” Sanders told BI. “He is absolutely right” to call for the first independent audit of the Pentagon in over seven years, Sanders said.
“We need a strong military, but we don’t need all the waste and the profiteering and the fraud that exists in the Pentagon right now,” he said.
While Musk has yet to outline specific plans to curb defense spending, he has criticized the Department of Defense’s F-35 program and cited its $841 billion budget in a Wall Street Journal op-ed about his mission to cut costs. In April, Sanders pushed to cut $88.6 billion, or 10%, from the military budget.
The amendment was outvoted, and Sanders slammed lawmakers for pouring money into a department that can’t pass an audit.
Finding connection through Kennedy’s MAHA movement
Sanders, co-chair of the Senate health committee, told BI he also sees common ground with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., particularly when it comes to ultra-processed food.
Kennedy, Trump’s pick to lead the Health and Human Services department, faces a tough confirmation hearing, given his opposition to vaccines and plans to take on food giants and industry lobbyists.
If confirmed, he has pledged to “Make America Healthy Again” by tackling chronic disease. He promises to ban processed foods from school meals and remove food dyes from the US food system, among other measures.
Sanders is game for a shake-up of our nutrition system. This week, he is leading a Senate hearing on ultra-processed foods, interrogating how processed products are regulated and how they impact health.
“When Kennedy talks about an unhealthy society, he’s right. The amount of chronic illness that we have is just extraordinary,” Sanders told BI.
He cited the millions of people living with obesity and diabetes, and the ripple effects that has across all sectors. Diabetes care now costs the US an estimated $400 billion a year, and a recent report found the military is struggling to recruit young people who meet the physical requirements to be enlisted.
“Our kids are not healthy enough. In the long run, you want a healthy society as an end in itself,” Sanders said. “We want our people to have long lives, productive lives, happy lives. That’s what we want. And if the industry is giving our kids food that’s making them overweight, leading to diabetes and other illnesses, clearly that’s an issue that we’ve got to deal with.”
Sanders, who has previously criticized Kennedy’s views on vaccines, added: “I think a lot of what RFK is saying is kind of crazy and driven by conspiracy theory. Some of what he’s saying is not crazy.”
“Anybody with a brain in his or her head wants to deal with this issue, to get to the cause of the problem. I think processed food and the kind of sugar and salt that we have in products that our kids and adults are ingesting is an important part of addressing that crisis.”
Sanders wants Trump to stick to his proposed cap on credit-card interest rates
While Trump and Sanders are on opposite sides of the political spectrum, they may have common ground on credit-card interest rates.
Credit-card debt held by American consumers hit $1.17 trillion in 2023, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
“Donald Trump came out with an idea during this campaign. He said, you know what, credit card interest rates, which in some cases right now are 20, 25%, should not be higher than 10%. Well, you know what? I agree with that,” Sanders said.
While Trump said a cap would be “temporary” to help Americans “catch up” with payments, the suggestion made a splash. Mark Cuban, a long-time critic of Trump, mocked him for going even further than “self-described socialist Bernie Sanders.”
It would be tough to drive through Congress, as Sanders knows. He and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tabled an interest rate cap of 15% in 2019, which went nowhere.
Now, Sanders is challenging Trump to wield his strong mandate to make this a key issue.
“We’ll see if Mr. Trump is prepared to keep his word. We’re looking forward, and we will work with some Republicans on that issue,” Sanders said.
“Where Trump and Republicans make sense, happy to work with them. And we will be in vigorous opposition to many of their policies, which to me are extremely distasteful.”
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