Watch Killer Mike chat with Bernie Sanders about health care and economic disparity
It’s no secret that Killer Mike loves the hell out of Bernie Sanders. The Atlanta rapper endorsed Sanders hard during his 2016 presidential campaign, introducing him at a rally in Atlanta in 2015 and conducting an hour-long conversation with him at an Atlanta barbershop called The Swag Shop. The pair have remained friends, with Sanders returning the favor by introducing Killer Mike and his Run the Jewels co-hort El-P onstage (kinda) at 2016's Coachella. It appears Killer Mike’s opinion of Sanders hasn’t changed much (“he got bars,” to quote Mike), because he’s once again all in on campaigning for the 77-year-old Vermont senator. On Thursday, the two have released a new video where they sit down to discuss Sanders’ views on the working class, health care, and what it means to be rich.
Killer Mike, who thinks Ronald Reagan was the actual devil, opens up the video with some kind words about Sanders and his integrity, just before sharing some details as to why he rides so hard for Bernie. “Your policy is the only policy that I have seen in my lifetime that matches up with the policy that was the Poor People’s Campaign,” Mike said. The two then discuss the proposed unionization efforts of Martin Luther King Jr. before he was shot and killed in 1968.
They then discuss health care, and why it’s so essential to the working and poor class of people in America. “Black people are more disproportionately affected by diabetes than any other group,” says Mike. “So when you say diabetes and are talking about free health care, I want people who look like me on the other side of the camera to recognize that that is a black issue. And if you don’t have the ability to have health care, which isn’t just treating it, health care is being able to go early enough to be pre-diagnosed.”
Last month, Cardi B sat down to talk with Bernie to talk about student debt, insurance and police brutality, and Mike cleared the air to defend Sanders from the criticism he received for his hip-hop endorsements. “It’s not like you sent out feelers in the hottest clubs,” Mike said. “You don’t have Bernie Sanders in the compound, buying bottles, recruiting us. Kids in hip-hop come from working class and poor environments.” And that’s why it’s pretty cool that any politician would speak with a rapper in such an intimate setting, let alone a loud and political one like Killer Mike.