US President Donald Trump is supported by “billionaire after billionaire,” says Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders, questioning the New York businessman’s claims of being an outsider to the United States establishment.
The former Democratic candidate, who chose to endorse Trump’s opponent, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, appeared on CBS on Monday to comment about the new president’s inauguration ceremony.
Vermont senator said he found Trump’s speech at the ceremony “somewhat amusing.”
“Mr. Trump… President Trump was punching the establishment but right behind him, sitting in the VIP sections, were billionaire after billionaire after billionaire,” Sanders said on “Face the Nation.”
Central to Sanders’ own 2016 campaign was targeting the one percent in control of the US economy and raising minimum wages for American workers, pledges that the New York billionaire also made particularly to appeal to the white working class.
Sanders noted that Trump is backed by “some of the most powerful people in this country, who over the last 10 or 20 years have become much, much richer while the middle class has shrunk.”
He also referred to “billionaires and large corporations,” who fund many of the president’s “inaugural events,” noting that “if Mr. Trump is serious about standing up for worker families, then he is not going to throw 20 million working people off of health insurance.”
As a way to appeal to voters, Trump vowed during his campaign for the November 2016 presidential vote to repeal the ObamaCare as soon as he gains the power.
Hours after being sworn in as the 45th president, Trump issued his first executive order in the Oval Office, giving agencies the go-ahead to grant waivers, exemptions and delays of provisions in the Affordable Care Act, a move whose impacts on American citizens and their healthcare is yet uncertain.