OAN Staff Blake Wolf and Brooke Mallory
1:23 PM – Thursday, December 5, 2024
Independent Senator Bernie Sanders recently sung the praises of Trump-allies Elon Musk and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., claiming to be willing to work together with the pair on key issues fueling America’s “unhealthy society” and the military industrial complex’s “waste and fraud.”
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Sanders (I-Vt.), who identifies as a Socialist Democrat, recently bashed the Democrat party for “abandoning” the working class and has issued unlikely support for Musk and Kennedy’s plans to “Make America Healthy Again,” and root out government waste and fraud.
“It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party, which has abandoned working class people, would find that the working class has abandoned them. First, it was the White working class, and now it is Latino and Black workers as well,” Sanders said, following the 2024 election.
“Will the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party learn any real lessons from this disastrous campaign?” he continued. “Will they understand the pain and political alienation that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing?”
“Do they have any ideas as to how we can take on the increasingly powerful oligarchy which has so much economic and political power? Probably not,” Sanders added.
Sanders’s comments regarding Musk and Kennedy came during an interview with Business Insider on Tuesday, discussing Musk’s appointment to run the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). DOGE aims to audit government agencies in order to detect wasteful overspending, fraud, and to examine certain government regulations as the federal government currently sits at thirty-six trillion dollars in debt.
It is important to note that the Pentagon has been unable to fully account for its hefty $824 billion budget for seven years in a row, a November report stated last month. The fiscal year 2024 Department of Defense funding bill provides $824.3 billion, an increase of $26.8 billion above fiscal year 2023, according to the U.S. House Committee on Appropriations.
“If somebody on the other side [GOP] has a good idea, sure, I’ll work with them,” Sanders stated, adding that Musk is a “very smart guy” who is correct to call the Defense Department’s spending into question.
“We need a strong military, but we don’t need all the waste and profiteering and the fraud that exists in the Pentagon right now,” Sanders continued.
The Independent senator also reiterated his support for Musk’s proposal in an X (Twitter) post, highlighting how it’s unacceptable for the Pentagon to be so frivolous with its funds, which are provided by American taxpayers.
“Elon Musk is right. The Pentagon, with a budget of $886 billion, just failed its7th audit in a row. It’s lost track of billions. Last year, only 13 senators voted against the Military Industrial Complex and a defense budget full of waste and fraud. That must change,” Sanders wrote.
As Sanders mentioned the $866 billion figure, a December 14th Reuters report stated that this number is in direct reference to the DOD’s military spending and foreign aid, whereas the $824.3 billion figure, highlighted by the U.S. House Committee on Appropriations, specifically refers to the fiscal year 2024 Department of Defense funding bill.
Additionally, Sanders later vocalized his support for Kennedy, who was appointed as the secretary of Health and Human Services. Kennedy has vowed to fight for a healthier America in his campaign, titled “Make America Healthy Again,” by fighting back against processed foods, certain seed oils, unnecessary fluoride in tap water, among other concerns.
Seed oils have been linked in numerous studies to an increase in chronic illnesses like obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. Additionally, consuming high levels of fluoride can cause Dental fluorosis, Skeletal fluorosis (bone disease), thyroid dysfunction, neurological problems, acne and other skin issues, and reproductive issues, according to Medical News Today.
Strengthening tooth enamel is essentially understood to be the only positive benefit of fluoride, but some dentists and experts, like management of caries (MMC) expert and educator Dr. Jeremy Horst Keeper, do not even agree with that consensus.
“Our philosophy is to maximize effectiveness while minimizing the exposure to fluoride — or any drug. We accomplish this by applying tiny amounts of high-concentration medicines directly to the problematic areas of the teeth and gums,” Keeper said. “The medicines absorb into the tooth, where they react to restore health, and there is hardly any left to spread into the body. The blood levels of fluoride never go up.”
The National Toxicology Program has also conducted childhood studies on fluoride.
“Higher levels of fluoride exposure, such as drinking water containing more than 1.5 milligrams of fluoride per liter, are associated with lower IQ in children,” according to the National Toxicology Program, which is apart of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Meanwhile, Sanders concluded his thoughts in explaining why he feels optimistic about the future in relation to Kennedy and Musk’s appointments.
“When Kennedy talks about an unhealthy society, he’s right. The amount of chronic illness that we have is just extraordinary,” Sanders asserted.
“We want our people to have long lives, productive lives, happy lives. That’s what we want,” he continued. “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.”
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