Tom Williams/Getty, The Washington Post/Getty, Jason Mendez/Getty, Tyler Le/BI
Sen. Bernie Sanders is extending an olive branch to President-elect Donald Trump and his incoming administration.
In an interview with Business Insider on Tuesday, the Vermont senator listed areas of common ground with Elon Musk, a cochair of a new extragovernmental body aiming to cut costs, as well as with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on health and Trump on credit debt.
"If somebody on the other side has a good idea, sure, I'll work with them," Sanders, who at 83 is the longest-serving independent in Congress, told BI.
Sanders made headlines on Sunday when he posted on X his support for Musk's pitch to curb defense spending.
Musk, whom Sanders has previously criticized as a threat to democracy, responded with a laughing emoji and said, "Maybe we can find some common ground."
Sanders told BI he had no qualms about working with Musk on the Department of Defense's spending, or on any other good ideas he has as cochair of DOGE, the new Department of Government Efficiency announced by Trump.
"Many of the things he did during the campaign were really ugly. On the other hand, he's a very smart guy," Sanders said, adding that "he is absolutely right" to call for the first independent audit of the Pentagon in over seven years.
"We need a strong military, but we don't need all the waste and the profiteering and the fraud that exists in the Pentagon right now," he said.
While Musk has yet to outline specific plans to curb defense spending, he has criticized the Department of Defense's F-35 program and cited its $841 billion budget in a Wall Street Journal op-ed about his mission to cut costs. In April, Sanders pushed to cut $88.6 billion, or 10%, from the military budget.
The amendment was outvoted, and Sanders slammed lawmakers, saying they're pouring money into an unaudited department.
In 2021, the Pentagon said that it was trying to learn from each failed audit but that it would take until 2028 to make all the logistical changes necessary to meet standards.
The Department of Defense did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Sanders, a cochair of the Senate health committee, told BI he also saw common ground with Kennedy, particularly when it comes to ultraprocessed food.
Kennedy, Trump's pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, faces a tough confirmation hearing, given his opposition to vaccines and plans to take on food giants and industry lobbyists.
If confirmed, he has pledged to "make America healthy again" by tackling chronic disease. He promises to ban processed foods from school meals and remove food dyes from the US food system, among other measures.
Sanders is game for a shake-up of our nutrition system. This week, he's leading a Senate hearing on ultraprocessed foods, interrogating how processed products are regulated and how they affect health.
"When Kennedy talks about an unhealthy society, he's right. The amount of chronic illness that we have is just extraordinary," Sanders told BI.
Darryl Webb/AP
He cited the millions of people living with obesity and diabetes and the ripple effects across all sectors. Diabetes care now costs the US an estimated $400 billion a year, a GlobalData analysis found. And a recent report said the military was struggling to recruit young people who meet the physical requirements to be enlisted.
"Our kids are not healthy enough. In the long run, you want a healthy society as an end in itself," Sanders said. "We want our people to have long lives, productive lives, happy lives. That's what we want. And if the industry is giving our kids food that's making them overweight, leading to diabetes and other illnesses, clearly that's an issue that we've got to deal with."
Sanders, who has previously criticized Kennedy's views on vaccines, added: "I think a lot of what RFK is saying is kind of crazy and driven by conspiracy theory. Some of what he's saying is not crazy.
"Anybody with a brain in his or her head wants to deal with this issue, to get to the cause of the problem. I think processed food and the kind of sugar and salt that we have in products that our kids and adults are ingesting is an important part of addressing that crisis."
Kennedy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP via Getty Images
While Trump and Sanders are on opposite sides of the political spectrum, they may have common ground on credit-card interest rates.
Credit-card debt held by American consumers hit $1.17 trillion in 2023, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
"Donald Trump came out with an idea during this campaign. He said, you know what, credit-card interest rates, which in some cases right now are 20, 25%, should not be higher than 10%. Well, you know what? I agree with that," Sanders said.
While Trump said a cap would be "temporary" to help Americans "catch up" with payments, the suggestion made a splash. Mark Cuban, a longtime critic of Trump, mocked him for going even further than "self-described socialist Bernie Sanders."
It would be tough to drive through Congress, as Sanders knows. He and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tabled an interest-rate cap of 15% in 2019, which went nowhere.
Now Sanders is challenging Trump to wield his strong mandate to make this a key issue.
"We'll see if Mr. Trump is prepared to keep his word. We're looking forward, and we will work with some Republicans on that issue," Sanders said.
Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
"Where Trump and Republicans make sense, happy to work with them," Sanders said. "And we will be in vigorous opposition to many of their policies, which to me are extremely distasteful."
