We watched, so you didn’t have to. And the fact that FOX held their town hall with Bernie Sanders (D-VT) on Tax Day was not lost on this viewer. And, as anticipated, the question on how much Sanders’ much ballyhooed Medicare-For-All will cost in tax increases came up.

1. HEALTHCARE. Well, hallelujah! After spending years promising voters that healthcare will be FREE!!!, and that IT’S A RIGHT!!!, these four words finally dripped out of Sanders’ mouth:

“Healthcare is not free.” — @SenSanders #MarkThatDown

— Meech (@michi83) April 15, 2019

Regardless, insisted Sanders, every American will spend less on healthcare—where have we heard that before?—and the fact that we can “take our Medicare cards to any doctor” will give us more choice. His rationale? Participating in an employer-based program limits us to only those doctors within the network. Mmkay. What Sanders didn’t explain is exactly how much our taxes will increase, why the current healthcare system is dysfunctional and expensive (cough, Obamacare), exactly how he’ll convince doctors to accept a set fee dictated by the federal government, or what will happen when doctors decide they don’t wish to participate. Can you say: healthcare rationing? So yes, the progressive (that’s left-speak for “communist”) Bernie Sanders wants to take away your health insurance. Like, ALL OF IT. And replace it with a government-run system. You know, like the VA. And the DMV. For 300-plus million people. Because it works oh-so-well in other countries. (And by the way, I’ve yet to find where “healthcare” resides in the federal government’s constitutionally-mandated duties. Must be next to “education” and “the EPA”…).

2. TAXES: Just before airing, FOX received Sanders’ 2018 tax returns, showing he donated…drumroll…just 3.4 percent to charity, paid a 26 percent tax rate, and is, in fact, a millionaire. Suffice it to say, Bernie Three Houses is not exactly walking his talk. Now contrast that with how much Sanders wants to tax you and me and every American employer (ie: “the rich” who employ many of us) for all of his free programs. Remember, this is the same guy who thinks bread lines are indicative of a productive economy. According to Sanders, he wants:

• A 52 percent “wealth tax” for those earning $250,000 and above
• A “speculation tax” for Wall Street investors
• Estate taxes (he didn’t define what exactly that means)
• And steep increases on corporate taxes just for starters (again, with no specifics)

And when asked if raising corporate taxes would chill employment and thus the economy (the current state of which he credits to Obama), Sanders couldn’t answer. Because he knows the answer. And it’s OF COURSE IT WILL!

By the way:

The top 1% of income earners in the United States pay more in taxes than the bottom 95% *combined*: https://t.co/pmhaXZxsni https://t.co/SuRaAUM1ie

— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) April 15, 2019

Also:

Well, maybe thats because the media is telling them that they didn't get a benefit knowing full well that they did. Just look at the tweets from some laughing about he fact that they were able to do it. Remember the media works for the DNC like an unpaid intern. https://t.co/exHiLBfnlq

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) April 15, 2019

Yup.

By the way, place me firmly in the “taxation is theft” camp.

3. DEBT. When asked to address the unsustainable, and immoral, mountain of debt the sitting senator helped amass, after blaming “Trump’s tax cuts,” he quickly pivoted to climate change and how we’ve got JUST 12 YEARS!!! to address it, and don’t you dare discuss nuclear energy, because nuclear bad, wind good. Just look at our renewable energy successes in (the tiny state of) Vermont! Debt shmebt.

4. SANDERS’ PERSONAL WEALTH. Capitalism has made Bernie Sanders a very wealthy man. Not surprisingly, he deflected when asked how he marries that fact with his Socialist platform, even denying that capitalism is to thank for selling millions of his bestselling books.

“I pay the taxes I owe and, by the way, why don’t you get Donald Trump up here and ask him how much he pays in taxes?”

Nice try. He’s not trying to saddle us with Socialism and its inevitable high taxation, Bern.

The truth is, his personal fortune is something he’d never have achieved in the Socialist economy he envisions for you and me. And regardless of his protestations otherwise, what Sanders wants for America is, indeed, the Venezuelan model: a government takeover of our entire economy—he embraced the insane Green New Deal his Socialist protégé in the House champions—with faceless bureaucrats and fat-cat politicians deciding what you and I do and do not need, just like they do in Britain.

Socialism for Dummies https://t.co/rary17K1QG pic.twitter.com/rJNVX59PRV

— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) April 15, 2019

5. ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION. Here’s where Sanders surprises a lot of people. He’s AGAINST the Left’s nutty open-borders push. But not for the security and human trafficking reasons thoughtful people are. No, he want’s strict immigration enforcement to ensure that only American citizens benefit from his Free Everything agenda. While he made several references to “comprehensive immigration reform” and called for more immigration judges, he offered no specifics on what “reform” looks like. Funny, I don’t see him working on legislation that would overhaul our insane immigration laws. Nor did I see him take up President Trump’s generous offer to protect DACA recipients in exchange for effective border security. So while he’s right in theory, he does nothing to protect American citizens from harm while the border crisis explodes. Which brings us to…

6. FOREIGN POLICY. Sanders has precisely ZERO experience in foreign policy. He’s an appeaser in the vein of Neville Chamberlain and his policy twin, Barack Obama. And when pressed, he offered, correctly, that nations like China and Russia are America’s biggest threats, but in the same breath insisted we spend too much on defense, promising to slash funding (while not offering similar language about any other waste-filled government agency). Except…the nations posing threats have a say so, too. And as we learned after eight years of the Obama administration’s leading-from-behind policies, bullies like Iran, North Korea, Russia, and China will indeed attempt to kick the crap out of us while we’re down. Couple that with our mountain of unsustainable debt, and an increasingly belligerent China and its re-education camps, and a President Sanders would have us prostrate before multiple rogue nations, unable to effectively defend ourselves.

7. ABORTION. I’ll share Bernie’s own words on this one, because I’ll be off hurling rocks at things…watch:

Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders says that he supports aborting babies up until the moment they are born, claims that people who care deeply about the issue are turning it into “a political issue” pic.twitter.com/SYYPanm9Lu

— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) April 15, 2019

Separating children from (human trafficking) adults at our border is cruel, but killing full-term babies is a “political issue?” And the audience claps like seals.

Here’s the full town hall should you care to watch:

Even as he viciously bashed the network and our sitting president repeatedly, I will offer kudos to Sanders for appearing on FOX. That said, he offers a utopian vision for America. It sounds good. On paper. But in practice it’s a recipe for destroying our economy. All we need do is look to Cuba, Venezuela, and even Britain to see that Socialism kills innovation. It kills motivation. And it usurps freedom. Here’s hoping the American electorate can read between the lines of the dangerous policies Sanders would impose should he be elected. Because there’s little else that’s less free than Free Everything.

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Feature Image Credit: Gage Skidmore under Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License; image cropped.