During an interview this week, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who has long been aligned on most issues with the Democrat party, offered some praise for President-elect Donald Trump’s allies.
While speaking with Business Insider on Tuesday, Sanders dubbed tech billionaire Elon Musk a “smart guy” and also said that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was “right” in his remarks about America being an “unhealthy society.”
Musk has been selected to lead Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency and has promised to cut wasteful spending.
This isn’t the first time that Sanders has said something positive about Musk, as he also agreed with his stance on rolling back funding for the Department of Defense, which they both criticized for failing seven straight audits.
“Elon Musk is right. The Pentagon, with a budget of $886 billion, just failed its 7th audit in a row. It’s lost track of billions,” Sanders said in a post on Sunday. “Last year, only 13 senators voted against the Military Industrial Complex and a defense budget full of waste and fraud. That must change.”
While speaking with Business Insider this week, he doubled down on his praise for Musk, saying he would consider working with him.
“If somebody on the other side has a good idea, sure, I’ll work with them,” Sanders told the outlet.
However, he said that some of Musk’s actions during Trump’s campaign were “really ugly.” Still, he said he is a “very smart guy” who is the right choice to lead an independent audit of the Defense Department.
“We need a strong military, but we don’t need all the waste and profiteering and the fraud that exists in the Pentagon right now,” he said.
As for RFK Jr., Trump has nominated the once-independent presidential candidate to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. Despite his promise to “Make America Healthy Again,” he has raised eyebrows from senators due to his sometimes controversial statements on vaccines and other health-related topics.
Despite this, Sanders, who is the co-chair of the Senate Health Committee, shared that he also agreed with some of what RFK Jr. had to say, like his take on processed foods.
“When Kennedy talks about an unhealthy society, he’s right,” Sanders told Business Insider. “The amount of chronic illness that we have is just extraordinary.”
Sanders said that the country is facing an obesity and diabetes problem, which is impacting more than just millions of people but also the health care system.
“We want our people to have long lives, productive lives, happy lives. That’s what we want,” Sanders said. “And if the industry is giving our kids food that’s making them overweight, leading to diabetes and other illnesses, clearly that’s an issue that we’ve got to deal with.”
However, he also noted his issues with Kennedy’s anti-vaccine stance, dubbing it “kind of crazy.” Still, he said that overall, “some of what he’s saying is not crazy.”
Since Trump’s victory last month, Sanders has been outspoken about the failures of the Democratic party, saying that they’ve “abandoned” the working class.
“It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them,” Sanders said in a statement. “While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right.”