Bernie Sanders said Donald Trump has “absolutely” created a constitutional crisis in the United States and is pushing the country “very rapidly toward an authoritarian form of society”.
The independent senator from Vermont has been rallying the anti-Trump resistance on a cross-country “Fight Oligarchy” tour, drawing some of the largest crowds of his decades-long political career as he taps into rising anger over the president’s stunning power grabs.
In an interview after an event in Tempe, Arizona, on Thursday night, Sanders accused Trump of “illegally” attempting to dissolve government agencies, including via an executive order, signed hours before the senator took the stage, to dismantle the US Department of Education, which cannot be done without the approval of Congress. He also pointed to the Trump administration’s defiance of a federal judge’s order not to deport a group of Venezuelan immigrants.
“So yes, I think we are in the midst of the constitutional crisis,” Sanders said.
In the dizzying two months since Trump returned to power, Sanders is packing venues across the country – in Republican-held districts and swing states Democrats lost in 2024. The senator said Americans were clearly “very disturbed” by the daily turmoil in Washington, and that they felt squeezed, stressed and desperate for leaders who are willing to fight for them.
“For years, I’ve talked about the concept of oligarchy as an abstraction,” Sanders said. But he believes the message hits harder now that Elon Musk, the world’s richest person who donated nearly $300m to elect Trump and other Republicans in 2024, is leading the administration’s government-slashing effort that includes overhauls of veterans’ services and social security. “You’ve gotta be kind of blind not to understand that you have a government of the billionaire class, for the billionaire class, by the billionaire class.”
Locked out of power in Washington, the opposition party must learn to fight harder, Sanders said, echoing the calls of angry constituents across the country.
“There’s got to be more militancy in the Congress in making Republicans pay a price in one way or another for what they’re doing,” Sanders said, calling the Democrats’ support for the GOP-written spending bill a “disaster”.
Despite his criticism, Sanders has refused to engage with questions about the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, who is facing calls for his resignation after he paved the way for the bill without extracting any concessions. During an interview with ABC News on Sunday, Sanders dismissed as “nonsense” a question about whether the New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez should run for the Senate, which some have suggested is a way to primary Schumer. Schumer has remained defiant, and cited his early encouragement of Sanders’ cross-country tour as an example of his strong leadership instincts.
In the interview, Sanders, a progressive who caucuses with the Democrats and has twice sought the party’s nomination, argued that Democrats’ troubles run much deeper than one person or one decision.
“The problem is the Democratic party has no grassroots,” he said in the interview on Thursday. Gesturing to the overflow crowd that turned out to his rally with Ocasio-Cortez in Arizona, he said of his colleagues: “You tell me how many people are going out?”
Sanders’ popularity comes at a moment when approval of the Democratic party is at record lows.
In his view, the party’s descent traces the rise of money in politics, which over time made Democrats reliant on wealthy donors and inside-the-Beltway consultants. While he credited the party with ushering in progress on social issues such as civil rights, women’s rights and LGBTQ+ rights, the senator said Democrats have for too long failed to champion an economic agenda that would meaningfully address the concerns of working-class people – an assessment many leaders roundly rejected.
Yet after decades of warning against the ills of corporate concentration and rising wealth inequality, Sanders, a big smile spreading across his face, said he was “noticing” that more of his colleagues were starting to adopt his populist pitch.
“My colleagues are not dumb people. They are by and large very, very smart people. And you’ve got to be deaf, dumb and blind, not to analyze the solution,” he said, noting that Democrats not only lost support among working-class voters, but saw their support decline with young people and Latinos – key parts of the party’s electoral coalition. “They see those things, they read the polls. And I think some of them at least understand that there has to be a turn around, and they’ve got to start addressing the needs of working-class people.”
At 83, Sanders has all but ruled out a third presidential run. His joint appearances with Ocasio-Cortez last weekend generated speculation about her political future and whether she was prepared to assume the mantle of his progressive movement.
In the interview, Sanders reflected on how much the movement had grown since he was first elected to Congress in 1990 and co-founded the Progressive caucus: “There are dozens and dozens of really strong progressives out there who are, I think, going to be the future political leaders.”
