Veteran US senator Bernie Sanders says he is proud of the political opposition he has taken on Israel’s attacks on Gaza and “has no apologies to make” about his position on the conflict.
The 83-year-old Vermont senator, who was beaten by Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, was speaking in advance of his visit to Ireland this weekend to deliver the keynote address at the Robert Tressell festival at Liberty Hall in Dublin on Saturday.
On his last public engagement in Ireland the independent senator, attracted protests from supporters of Palestine who argued he had not done enough and criticised his failure to characterise the situation as a genocide.
There has been some concern on the part of organisers of his trip this time that there could be further attempts to disrupt his programme of events.
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His Irish visit includes a public interview with Hugh Linehan of The Irish Times at Vicar Street in Dublin on Tuesday, a visit to President Michael D Higgins at Áras an Uachtaráin and the Dáil, and he will travel to Athy, Cork and Dalymount Park..
Mr Sanders says he has repeatedly condemned the Israeli response to the events of October 7th, 2023 and last month led efforts in the US senate to block new sales of offensive weapons and other military aid to Israel’s government led by Binyamin Netanyahu.
“I am the leader in the United States senate in attempting to block military aid to Netanyahu and the horrific war against the people of Gaza. So I have no apologies to be made. I’m leading that effort and proud of the work that we are doing,” he told The Irish Times.
Mr Sanders has been at the forefront in recent weeks of public opposition to the actions of US president Donald Trump’s administration, embarking on a series of public rallies, the “Fighting Oligarchy” tour, with Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others.
Mr Sanders said some of those making accusations that senior aides of former US president Joe Biden covered up his cognitive decline so he could run for re-election were attempting to explain away their own failings.
“A lot of the people who are leading the attack against Biden right now are precisely the people who ran a failed campaign for Kamala Harris,” said the Vermont senator, referring to Mr Biden’s vice-president who stepped in to run against Mr Trump in the 2024 presidential election after he dropped out of the race.
“I think what they are trying to do is to avoid their responsibility in a campaign that should absolutely have been won.”
Mr Sanders said Ms Harris, whom he campaigned for across the country, had “more than enough time but she ran a campaign which largely avoided discussing the crises facing the working class in America and solutions to those crises”.
He believed that this was the reason she lost to Trump.
“Many of us begged them to start changing the tone of their campaign, start speaking to working class issues, talking about the healthcare crisis, raising the minimum wage and other issues that would resonate with the American people,” he said.
“She didn’t do that. So I think it’s they’re kind of trying to deflect attention away from their own failed campaign.”
Mr Sanders says criticising Mr Biden is a distraction when Mr Trump is facilitating a situation where “a handful of extraordinarily wealthy people [are] exercising enormous economic and political power”.
He considers the Trump administration’s policies “chaotic” and many are hugely damaging to the interests of working people.
However, when it comes to trade, the 83-year-old veteran believes Mr Trump’s tariffs on imports from overseas could be worth pursuing if implemented in a coherent way on a “case by case basis”.
He declined to comment on how the tariffs might affect Ireland because he says he is not familiar enough with the detail of the tax arrangements availed of by large companies.
* Bernie Sanders will speak at the Robert Tressell Festival at Liberty Hall in Dublin tomorrow and in a public interview at Vicar Street on Tuesday
