Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., told a packed New York City church on Monday to repel the "demagoguery" of President Donald Trump and "focus on the real problems facing our country."
The 75-year-old received a standing ovation at the end of an hour-long address to more than 1,000 college students and local residents in which he told them, according to Columbia Daily Spectator:
"Our political job is to stand up to that demagoguery and to come together as a nation . . . not to allow Trump and his political allies to divide us up. When we stand together and focus on the real problems facing our country, there's nothing we cannot accomplish."
The speech at Riverside Church in Manhattan's Morningside Heights, sponsored by Harper's Magazine and Book Culture, was a promotion for Sanders' new book for young adults, "Bernie Sanders Guide to Political Revolution," published by Henry Holt.
Sanders, who unsuccessfully ran against Hillary Clinton for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, called for such social programs as single-payer healthcare and free access to public colleges and universities.
"This is the year 2017: Is it really appropriate, really OK, for so few to have so much when so many people have so little?" he said, per the Spectator.
"We must be loud and clear in stating that, if you work 40 hours a week, you must not be living in poverty. Is that a radical idea? I don't think so . . . If you go around the country, what you see is people in state after state living in despair, living in pain.
"Trump and his campaign stand up and says, 'I see that pain, I hear that pain, I'm going to take on the establishment.' Well, as we all know, Trump is a pathological liar. He lied then, and he lies today."
The Brooklyn-born politician also dispelled the belief by some that Trump voters are all right-wing extremists, DNAInfo.com reported.
"It is a mistake, a serious mistake in my view, to believe that all Trump supporters are racist or sexists or homophobes. If you think that, you are missing the major point," Sanders said.
And he scolded the Democratic Party for its unsuccessful presidential campaign.
"Not everybody, especially my colleagues in Washington, are happy to hear this: It wasn't that Trump won the election, it was that the Democratic Party lost the election," he said, according to DNAInfo.com.
Some attending the event at Riverside, an 87-year-old interdenominational church, wore "Sanders 2020" buttons.
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