Last Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation, Democrat presidential candidate U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders claimed another candidate’s supporters had misplaced loyalties.
“Look, many of Trump’s supporters are working-class people, and they’re angry,” he said. “And they’re angry because they’re working longer hours for lower wages. They’re angry because their jobs have left this country and gone to China or other low-wage countries.
“And what I’m suggesting is that what Trump has done with some success has taken that anger, taken those fears, which are legitimate, and converted them into anger against Mexicans, anger against Muslims. And in my view, that is not the way we’re going to address the major problems facing our country.”
The next day, on MSNBC’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, Sanders repeated his appeal to Trump’s working-class supporters, and added that his campaign was now actively reaching out to those voters. The approach deals with differences in policies regarding taxes and the minimum wage.
Sanders supports raising the minimum wage and taxes on the highest wage earners. Trump opposes an increase in the minimum wage and has advocated a tax plan that reduces taxes for most wage earners.
Trump didn’t take the news lightly. In typical fashion, he lashed out at Sanders on Twitter:
“@BernieSanders-who blew his campaign when he gave Hillary a pass on her e-mail crime, said that I feel wages in America are too high. Lie!”
“Strange, but I see wacko Bernie Sanders allies coming over to me because I’m lowering taxes, while he will double & triple them, a disaster!”
“Wages in are country are too low, good jobs are too few, and people have lost faith in our leaders.We need smart and strong leadership now!”
“The middle-class has worked so hard, are not getting the kind of jobs that they have long dreamed of – and no effective raise in years. BAD”
Trump has said on two different occasions—during the FOX Business debate in November and in an interview with MSNBC’s Morning Joe program the next morning—that wages are “too low.” Those comments, perhaps two cases of misspeaking in the heat of the moment, have been used repeatedly by Sanders and other Democrats to attack the GOP national front-runner.
In numerous other interviews, however, Trump has said wages are too low.
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