Sen. Bernie Sanders called out GOP frontrunner Donald Trump for "pathological lying" about the thousands of people in New Jersey supposedly celebrating 9/11 right after the destruction of the Twin Towers on ABC's This Week:
STEPHANOPOULOS: Opening moments last night with Senator Bernie Sanders. He joins us live here in New Hampshire this morning.
I'm going to get to that in a second, but first you just heard Donald Trump call you out. He said you lied. He doubled down on that embrace from Vladimir Putin.
SANDERS: I tell you, it really is rather extraordinary. I think -- and I say this straightforwardly -- I think you have a pathological liar there.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Pathological.
SANDERS: Pathological, I really do. I mean, I think much of what he says are lies or gross distortion of reality. Here's the fact. I mean, he's been saying over and over again that he saw on television, as I understand it, thousands of people in New Jersey celebrating 9/11 right the destruction of the Twin Towers.
Either that's true or it's not true. And what I understand, there have been a lot of research, they archive what goes on television. You're a TV guy, right? Everything was saying that was going to be archived.
Either it is true, it is not true. Nobody has seen a tape of thousands of people celebrating the destruction of the Twin Towers in New Jersey. It doesn't exist. And he keeps claiming it. That's called pathological lying.
Yes, he just (INAUDIBLE) a few moments ago accused me of lying when I said last night is that he has suggested that Mexicans who were coming to this country are criminals and rapists. That is exactly what he said. What somebody like a Donald Trump is doing is playing on the fears and anxieties of the American people. And people are afraid.
They're afraid of terrorism, rightfully so. They're anxious about an economy in which the middle class is disappearing, missing massive levels of income and wealth inequality. People are worried about the future for the kids. These are legitimate fears.
So instead of having a rational discussion about how we rebuild the middle class, how we deal with Wall Street, how we have a tax system in which wealthy and powerful start paying their fair share of taxes, what Trump is saying is it's all the Muslims' fault, it's all the Mexicans' fault.
STEPHANOPOULOS: How do you explain why that's doing so well right now?
SANDERS: Because it's an easy solution.
How do we rebuild the middle class?
Well, you're going to have to stand up to corporate America. You're going to have to stand up to Wall Street. You're going to have to create millions of decent paying jobs by rebuilding our infrastructure. You're going to have to provide health care to all people, et cetera, et cetera.
But what Trump says, this is new, this is what demagogues all over the world historically have done, they say are you nervous, are you scared, are you frightened for the future? I'll tell you the reason. It's the Muslims. All those Muslims out there are terrorists; we have to stop them coming into this country. It's the Mexicans, it's the immigrants who are coming in. They're all rapists and criminals. Oh, OK. I'm angry. We're going to take it out on them.
Meanwhile, this same Trump says minimum wage in America, which is $7.25 an hour, he says it's good that we have a low minimum wage. This guy Trump is saying we need to give hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks to the top 0.3 of 1 percent, the very richest people --
(CROSSTALK)
STEPHANOPOULOS: How do you defeat that?
SANDERS: You defeat it by going out to the working people in this control and making it clear that if we are going to create an economy that works for our kids, that works for working families, we have got to do it together. We have to understand the real causes and the real causes are the greed of corporate America, the greed of Wall Street, not some poor Mexican who is in this country trying to live on $7 an hour.
