In a Democracy Now! special, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders sat down with Amy Goodman at the Free Library of Philadelphia in late November in his most extensive broadcast interview since Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton just weeks earlier.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. In this holiday special, we’re spending the hour with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. I recently interviewed him before a live audience at the Free Library of Philadelphia. The date was November 28th, less than three weeks after Donald Trump’s defeat of Hillary Clinton.
AMY GOODMAN: Where were you on election night?
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: Home.
AMY GOODMAN: And talk about what you went through.
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: Well, when the results came in from Indiana, I was very nervous. We had an outside chance with a conservative Democrat to win that seat — no one thought that Clinton was going to win it — and he got beaten rather badly, and I started getting nervous. And it was downhill from there. I went into the evening thinking that it was about a two-to-one shot that Clinton would win. So, I mean, I was — I was not shocked that Trump won — surprised, but not shocked — for the reasons, some of the reasons, that I gave. But I will not deny to you that it was a very depressing evening. I did not want to deal with the media. I didn’t want to — I was invited to be on, you know, a million different things. I didn’t even show up at the state event, you know. So, I will not deny that it was a depressing evening. And since then, I’ve been thinking as hard as I can, with other people, about how we go forward and what the best response is.
AMY GOODMAN: This also catapults you into the position of the most powerful, non-Democratic Democrat in the country.
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: Well, there are not too many non-Democratic Democrats who are in the United States Senate, so it doesn’t say much. But yeah, it — but I think your point is that last…