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FLASHBACK VIDEO: Bernie Sanders Blames US, Media For Escalating Cold War Tensions

Virginia Kruta Associate Editor
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Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has long been a proponent of socialist policies — but a newly-surfaced video shows just how deep those roots run.

The video, shared on Twitter, showed Sanders circa 1986 talking about nuclear tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union — and appears to place the blame squarely on U.S. policy and the media.

“Why is there a policy in this country which is producing more & more nuclear weapons, which is increasingly antagonistic to the Soviet Union, which is trying to destroy Nicaragua?” Sanders began. “How do we change that policy?”

Sanders went on to take the media to task for not doing a good enough job of letting the American people know what exactly was going on outside of the U.S. (RELATED: New Spokeswoman For Sen. Bernie Sanders Is An Illegal Immigrant)

“Who helps cultivate public opinion, for example?” he asked. “Has the media done, in my opinion — nationally — an adequate job of informing the people of what goes on in Central America or the Third World? The answer, I think is unquestionably no.”

That same year, U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev parted ways after a summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, broke down and resulted in no agreement. However, that meeting sowed the seeds for the eventual agreements that led to the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall.

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