“Taxes too high, wages too high, we’re not going to be able to compete against the world. I hate to say it, but we have to leave [the minimum wage] the way it is…People have to go out, they have to work really hard and have to get into that upper stratum. But we cannot do this if we are going to compete with the rest of the world. We just can’t do it,” he declaimed.
Contradicting himself again, the candidate tweeted to his over-five-million followers on Monday, “the middle-class has worked so hard, are not getting the kind of jobs that they have long dreamed of — and no effective raise in years. BAD.”
On Sunday, Sanders appealed to Trump supporters, saying that he believed he could convince some of the Republican candidate’s voters to defect, describing them as frustrated working-class voters.
“What Trump has done with some success is taken that anger, taken those fears which are legitimate and converted them into anger against Mexicans, anger against Muslims, and in my view that is not the way we’re going to address the major problems facing our country,” Sanders explained.
Trump snapped back at Sanders during his Twitter tirade, posting: “strange, but I see wacko Bernie Sanders allies coming over to me because I'm lowering taxes, while he will double & triple them, a disaster!”
Trump smeared Sanders in October with fabricated claims that the Vermont senator will tax everyone at “90%.”
"He’s gonna tax you people at 90 percent. He’s gonna take everything. And nobody's heard the term communist, but you know what? I’d call him a socialist/communist, okay? ‘Cause that's what he is,” Trump declared.
Sanders has long stated that he will create a tax plan that targets the extremely wealthy, consistently explaining, “the wealthiest and large corporations will pay when I'm president.” His plan would result in higher taxes for hyper-rich people like Trump, but not American working-class wages, counter to the assertions of the GOP.
"Yes, we are going to ask Trump and his billionaire friends to pay more in taxes….We'll come up with that rate. But it will be a damned lot higher than it is right now,” Sanders said in an October 18th interview with ABC’s This Week.
Sanders has not yet released a specific tax plan, but he has clarified that it would be focused on raising taxes for wealthy individuals and corporations.
In October, Politifact ruled Trump’s claim that Sanders wants to push absurdly high taxes on everyday Americans as “Pants on Fire,” a rating reserved for the most flagrant lies by politicians.
Judging by the inflated stridency of his latest tweets, Trump apparently is noticing that people like what Sanders has to say.
