PoliticsBernie SandersDonald TrumpBarack Obama

Watch Bernie Sanders' Powerful Condemnation Of Birther Donald Trump

“My father came from Poland. What's the difference? Maybe the color of our skin."
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By 

Senior Culture Reporter, HuffPost

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Thursday blasted Republican Donald Trump's anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rhetoric and called out the racism implied in birther claims by Trump and other Republicans that President Barack Obama is Muslim and wasn't born in the U.S.

Sanders, answering a Muslim voter's question at a town hall in Nevada about how he would address Islamophobia, delivered a powerful condemnation of Republican candidates' racist and nativist rhetoric. He specifically referred to Trump’s proposal to ban all Muslims from the U.S. and his offensive comments against Latino immigrants. 

After telling the voter that he would try to eradicate Islamophobia “bluntly and directly,” Sanders continued:

We have welcomed people into this country. My dad came from Poland at the age of 17. People can disagree about immigration and immigration reform. I believe we need comprehensive immigration reform. It's absolutely unacceptable to me that in the year 2016, we have people like Donald Trump and others who are trying to gain votes by scapegoating people who may be Muslims or people who may be Latinos. That's unacceptable. This country has struggled too much for too many years.

Sanders slammed Trump and other so-called birthers who have falsely suggested that Obama is a Muslim and was born in Kenya, noting the racist undertones behind the claim.

“By the way, I’m appalled," Sanders said. "People can agree with Barack Obama, you can disagree with Barack Obama. Anybody who doesn't understand that the kind of obstructionism and hatred thrown at this man, the idea of making him a delegitimate president by suggesting he was not born in America because his dad came from Kenya. No one asked me whether I'm a citizen or not. My father came from Poland. What's the difference? Maybe the color of our skin.

"All of us together have got to say no to racism and bigotry of all forms," Sanders said.

He ended by thanking the voter, a doctor, for serving his community.

Watch Sanders’ full response above.

Also on HuffPost:

Bernie Sanders' Most Interesting Quotes
On Youth Unemployment(01 of15)
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"We got to put young people to work, we got to give them an education, rather than putting them in jail," Sanders said in an interview on MSNBC's "The Ed Show."

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On The Middle Class(02 of15)
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"Ordinary people are profoundly disgusted with the fact that the middle class is being destroyed and income going to the top 1 percent," Sanders tweeted. (credit:Justin Sullivan via Getty Images)
On Gun Control(03 of15)
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"Folks who do not like guns [are] fine. But we have millions of people who are gun owners in this country -- 99.9 percent of those people obey the law. I want to see real, serious debate and action on guns, but it is not going to take place if we simply have extreme positions on both sides. I think I can bring us to the middle," Sanders said in a CNN interview.

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On Free Tuition(04 of15)
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"It is insane and counter-productive to the best interests of our country, that hundreds of thousands of bright young people cannot afford to go to college, and that millions of others leave school with a mountain of debt that burdens them for decades. That must end," Sanders said during his campaign announcement.

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On Wanting Top Marginal Tax Rate Over 50 Percent(05 of15)
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"In the last 30 years there has been a massive -- we’re talking about many trillions of dollars being redistributed from the middle class to the top one-tenth of 1 percent. It is time to redistribute money back to the working families of this country from the top one-tenth of 1 percent," Sanders said on PBS's "Charlie Rose."

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On Marijuana(06 of15)
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“I coughed a lot, I don’t know. I smoked marijuana twice -- didn’t quite work for me,” Sanders told Yahoo.

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On Universal Health Care(07 of15)
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"So I do believe that we have to move toward a Medicare-for-all, single-payer system. I think it's not going to happen tomorrow, but that certainly should be the goal," Sanders said on ABC’s "This Week."

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On Police Reform(08 of15)
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"We’ve got to demilitarize the police -- we don’t need tanks, you don’t need heavy military equipment in the communities of the United States. We gotta pay attention to the African-American communities, to poverty so these kids get the education and job training they need," Sanders told Yahoo.

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On His American Citizenship(09 of15)
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"Well, no, I do not have dual citizenship with Israel. I'm an American. I don't know where that question came from. I am an American citizen, and I have visited Israel on a couple of occasions. No, I'm an American citizen, period,” Sanders said in an interview with a D.C. NPR affiliate. (credit:Tom Williams via Getty Images)
On Health Care And Education(10 of15)
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"Please don't tell me that the United States of America, our great country, cannot guarantee health care to all people. Don't tell me that every person in this country should not be able to get all the education that they need regardless of their income," Sanders said in Portland, Maine.

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On Campaign Finance Reform(11 of15)
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"A major problem of our campaign finance system is that anybody can start a super PAC on behalf of anybody and can say anything. And this is what makes our current campaign finance situation totally absurd," Sanders said to the Burlington Free Press.

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On Undocumented Immigrants(12 of15)
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"Despite the central role that undocumented workers play in our economy and in our daily lives, these workers are too often reviled by many for political gain and shunted into the shadows," Sanders said at the National Association of Latino Elected Officials conference.

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On Bank Bailouts(13 of15)
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"If a bank is too big to fail, that bank is too big to exist," Sanders said in Denver, Colorado.

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On Raising The Minimum Wage(14 of15)
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"Our goal as a nation is that if somebody works 40 hours a week, that person will not be living in poverty," Sanders said in Iowa.

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On The War On Drugs(15 of15)
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"What I can tell you is this: We have far, far, far too many people in jail for nonviolent crimes, and I think in many ways, the war against drugs has not been successful, and I think we've got to rethink that," Sanders told Yahoo News' Katie Couric. (credit:MICHAEL B. THOMAS via Getty Images)

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