A Populist in the Heartland
Given your wife's cancer diagnosis, how do you balance hope and fear?
You have hope until you have no choice, and that's exactly how we live our lives. And we have been through the experience, we've reached a place where hope is gone with the death of our son, and as long as hope is alive, and it is very much alive, in the case of Elizabeth's cancer—it's treatable, we're optimistic about it.
If elected, what legacy would you want to leave?
This is a president who made opportunity available to everybody. Period.
You are running on the theme of two Americas. How would you address the country's growing wealth disparity and address the deficit?
We are at the worst income and asset disparity that we've had in America since the Great Depression. If you want to reduce the deficit, the most important thing to do is to deal with the structural deficiencies in the American economy: a dysfunctional healthcare system, addiction to oil, access to college, and the general economic inequality that exists. If you address those, in a serious, comprehensive way, it will strengthen the middle class, grow the middle class, lift millions of people out of poverty, and strengthen America's economy, and the deficit will be reduced.
Has it been more difficult than expected to be a wealthy candidate running on a have-have-nots theme?
People in the world who have an entrenched interest and don't want to hear this message on fairness, equality, trade, tax policy, healthcare, etc., they will assault anytime anybody challenges their interest. This will not stop. This will continue. And they will use anything they have available to them. Anything. The bad news for them is they will never silence me no matter what they do.
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