While Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has traveled around the country since late February on his “Fighting Oligarchy Tour,” his principal campaign committee has reportedly spent more than $200,000 chartering private jets in the last few months.
“Friends of Bernie Sanders, which manages the Fighting Oligarchy Tour, contracted three firms that charter jets: Cirrus Aviation Services, N-Jet, and Ventura Jets, according to the filings,” The Washington Free Beacon, which examined the campaign’s expenditures, reported. “Payments to those three firms accounted for nearly 75 percent of the campaign’s total transportation costs during that period. The campaign spent another $63,830 on commercial airline tickets. It also spent nearly $41,000 on lodging and $248,245 on event production.”
Sanders and his chosen favorite Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) “chartered a private jet worth up to a staggering $15,000 an hour for several West Coast stops on their ‘Fighting Oligarchy’ tour,” Fox News reported Thursday.
“Champagne socialists Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez demand Americans surrender their pick-up trucks, air conditioning and meat from the luxe leather seats of their private jets that cost more per hour than most Americans earn in months. Their hypocrisy is staggering,” National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) spokesperson Ben Petersen stated.
In the third quarter of 2017, Sanders’ campaign spent more than $37,000 on private jet travel, according to Federal Election Commission records. In 2014, Sanders railed against carbon emissions, writing, “The fossil fuel industry is destroying the planet with impunity and getting rich while doing it. That must end.”
“We will not accept a rigged economy where working people struggle while billionaires become richer,” Sanders said on Tuesday. “We have got to create an economy that works for working people, not just Mr. [Elon] Musk and the billionaire class.”
In the February 2020 Democratic presidential primary debate in Nevada, Sanders declared, “We are living in many ways in a socialist society right now.” He continued by attacking former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, saying, “I believe in democratic socialism for working people, not billionaires, health care for all, educational opportunities for all. Creating a government that works for all, not just for Mr. Bloomberg.”
Bloomberg fired back, “What a wonderful country we have. The best-known socialist in the country happens to be a millionaire with three houses. What did I miss here?”
Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus once said of Sanders, “Don’t bring up Bernie Sanders, because that’s a red flag in front of me. He is the enemy of every entrepreneur that’s ever going to be born in this country and has been born in the past.”
