“Millions of people voted for him on the belief that he would keep his word,”
As the Senate continues its debate on repealing all or parts of Obamacare (known more formally as the Affordable Care Act), Bernie Sanders leveraged a hilariously unexpected tactic to show the world that this wasn’t part of the deal.
Many Americans have grown accustomed to rash tweets or statements from President-elect Donald Trump, only to find him backtracking or flat-out lying about having made them in the first place. Well, the Obamacare discussion bears all the hallmarks of a Donald Trump flip-flop, and Bernie Sanders wanted the world, and more importantly, the senators voting, to know that.
So he printed up a giant posterboard-sized tweet from Trump himself. It dates back to May of 2015 and states simply (because that’s how Trump states things):
I was the first & only potential GOP candidate to state there will be no cuts to Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid. Huckabee copied me.— Donald J. Trump (@Donald J. Trump) 1431013120.0
Bernie’s motive isn’t just to save Obamacare, since that’s clearly an uphill battle, but also to fight against the normalization of Trump going back on his statements and simply lying.
He explained it on the floor of the Senate thusly:
“Millions of people voted for him on the belief that he would keep his word. If he was sincere, then I would hope that tomorrow or maybe today he could send out a tweet and tell his Republican colleagues to stop wasting their time and all of our time. And for Mr. Trump to tell the American people that he will veto any proposal that cuts Medicare, that cuts Medicaid or that cuts Social Security.”
The man tasked with the creation of the giant tweet, as well as its transport to the Senate floor, was Mike Casca, the Deputy Communications Director for Bernie Sanders. He said that an unlikely party found humor in the prop as he was lugging it to its destination:
earlier today, sen. ted cruz chuckled when i walked past him carrying this poster. https://t.co/65iAY2106p— mike casca (@mike casca) 1483560288.0
There’s obviously an abundance of humor in Sanders’ act (and a Photoshop contest, naturally), but he’s dead serious in his goal of holding people to their word, and with Trump heading into office, Sanders will need all the earnest support he can get on that front.
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