US: Senator Bernie Sanders slams Trump as a ‘demagogue’ ⁰

US Senator Bernie Sanders, who announced he is running for president again in the 2020 elections, has responded to President Trump’s attacks on him, calling him a “demagogue.”

In an interview with CBS News aired Tuesday, the Independent senator from Vermont who caucuses with Democrats, said the American people should not believe what Trump says.

“You got a president who is a demagogue, you got a president who is leading us in an authoritarian direction, I would hope that the American people don’t believe too much of what he says,” Sanders said.

Sanders to run for US president again

Sanders, who announced his 2020 election campaign on Tuesday, has been a relentless critic of Trump, and has called him “the most dangerous president in modern American history.”

“We are running against a president who is undermining American democracy as he leads us in an authoritarian direction,” Sanders said in an email to Reuters on Tuesday.

Trump has in turn railed against what he claims is the Democratic Party’s turn to socialism, citing the rising popularity of Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, both self-proclaimed democratic socialists.

A spokeswoman for Trump’s 2020 election campaign took a swipe Tuesday at Sanders and the Democratic Party in general, saying Sanders had already won his party’s nomination for president because the rest of the Democratic candidates had adopted his brand of socialism.

“But the American people will reject an agenda of sky-high tax rates, government-run health care and coddling dictators like those in Venezuela,” Trump campaign national press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said in a statement.

A former mayor of Burlington, Vermont, Sanders won a US House of Representatives seat in 1990, making him the first independent elected to the House in 40 years. In 2006, he won a US Senate seat and in 2018 was voted in for a third six-year term.

Sanders made an unsuccessful bid for the presidency in 2016, losing out to Hillary Clinton, who was in turn defeated by Trump.

His call for universal health care, a $15 minimum wage and free public university education has gained huge strong support among young liberals.

He mounted a fierce challenge to Clinton as he spoke to swelling crowds and garnered passionate support on social media. His 2016 campaign also rejected the use of corporate money and instead relied on small-dollar donations.

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