USA Today reports:

Sen. Bernie Sanders has always been a political maverick, but these days the longest-serving independent in U.S. congressional history is not afraid to show his pragmatic side.

In an exclusive interview with USA TODAY on Wednesday, the senior senator from Vermont spoke about topics including the Israel-Hamas war, antisemitism, college protests, and President Joe Biden’s record. One throughline that quickly became apparent was that Sanders would not let his differences with Biden on some issues get in the way of confronting something more urgent: the threat of former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee.

He believes a policy change by Biden on Israel is long overdue, but also worries that young people are underestimating the true threat that Trump poses and in their anger over Israel and other issues, may not recognize that Biden is better on their side – even if he is not where they want him to be on Israel.

“We can be extremely upset at the Biden administration for their policies with regard to Israel and Gaza, but the difficulty is that in the real world that you live in, you’ve got to take a look at a whole lot of things,” he said, sitting in the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee hearing room on Capitol Hill. “On the other hand, I would hope that most of the young people and protestors do not want to see Donald Trump, who is a racist, a sexist, a homophobe who doesn’t acknowledge the reality of climate change, become elected president of the United States.” [Continue reading…]