I hope Rick Sanchez gets a prime time slot soon...
Rush transcript:
RICK SANCHEZ, CNN ANCHOR: Michael Moore, thanks so much for being with us.
MICHAEL MOORE, FILMMAKER: Oh, thank you very much for having me on.
SANCHEZ: You know, it's funny, because we're going through a time in America -- I have been reading all these signs and all these banners and bumper stickers. They say the president of the United States is a socialist, if not a communist.
You say what?
MOORE: The only socialism I have seen in the last year is the Welfare payments that we've made to Wall Street, bailing them out. It's just so funny how up is down all of a sudden.
I think President Obama has inherited a catastrophe, and he's doing the best he can at this point. I think a lot of us wish that he would move a little faster, do a little better. But we're lucky to have him in the Oval Office right now. This is when you want the smart guy in there.
SANCHEZ: However, you know, I have been reading and listening to you lately, and you're saying, you know what? This guy needs to be pressured and he needs to be held accountable. In fact, you're even more terse than that.
Explain it for our viewers.
MOORE: Well, I mean, millions of people voted for him on the promise of change, real change. Now here we are a year later, and with all the talk about how we just have to regulate Wall Street and everything will be OK again, where's the regulations, where's the rules? I mean, they're off making up new derivatives on life insurance now. So I think that, again, the president has -- you know, he's got a tough job in front of him. I wouldn't want the job, but he's brought in Mr. Geithner and Mr. Summers and Mr. Rubin, three of the architects of this mess. And it's kind of like how the big banks, they actually hire bank robbers to advise them on how to prevent bank robberies. So maybe President Obama has brought these three in to advise them on how to fix the mess they helped to create.
SANCHEZ: So then what we have is, toward the end of the Clinton administration, some people could argue that Rubin and the president himself were, to a certain extent, complicit with all these schemes, these ways of unregulating the very people you call robbers. The same thing you could argue continued during the Bush administration.
What's to say Obama's going to stop these guys? And is he showing any signs that he will?
MOORE: You know, this man was raised by a single mother and his grandparents. He comes from a working class. He's lived life as an African-American in this country. When he graduated from Harvard, instead of going to Wall Street to make a lot of money, he chose to go to the inner city of Chicago.
I think that at his heart, at his core are some very good and important values. And I think he's going to end up siding with the people and not Wall Street on this.
I'm almost certain -- I think we have a chance of having a Roosevelt of the 21st century here, somebody who is going to take this country out of the muck that it's in and get us back to, you know, what we were doing best -- people making money through their labor, through their ideas, through their inventions. We don't make anything really anymore. We've just got guys down on Wall Street making money off money and taking insurance policies out on the money, and then betting against those insurance policies, and then betting against those vets. And it's like totally insane.
SANCHEZ: What's different, though? I mean, explain to me how when you and I were growing up, you know, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, these things didn't happen, this wasn't going on?
MOORE: That's right. Thirty years ago, you didn't put your pension money into a 401(k) -- in other words, gamble with it into the casino called Wall Street. You had a defined pension plan.
Your dad, my granddad, my dad all had pension plans that were locked away, set aside. They were going to be there when they retired.
You know, when I was young you didn't have a credit card in the family. Nobody had -- I think there was one lady on the street that had a JCPenney credit card. You know? I mean, that was about it.
SANCHEZ: And the gas cards were always real cool, too.
MOORE: Exactly. Actually, there was a guy down the street, his dad had a Shell card. And that was it. You weren't $10,000 in credit card debt.
And when you and I went to college, we didn't have to go to a private bank to take out a loan that would have us in hock for the next 20 years, a loan that would eventually have us paying $500,000 to the bank just so we could go to college. When we went to college, there was a sign on a door that said "Financial Aid Office," and you went in there and you got a grant or a scholarship, work study, you might have to work in the library 10 hours a week, you know, maybe a low-interest loan, like a one or two percent, pay it back when you can to the college.
I mean, that's the way it worked. People got to go to school and you weren't in debt. Our 22-year-olds now, when they leave college, they are socked with so much credit card debt because, of course, the credit cards are all over the campus encouraging kids to sign up for these things. And they're in student loan debt.
The noose is already around their neck, and they don't really maybe get to go and explore their dreams, or work the jobs that they would like to work, because they have to get to work right away at any job they can get because they have to start paying off these loans and these credit cards. It wasn't that way 30 years ago.
But this beast, this beast call capitalism, just got so out of control and it just said, you know, I'm going to gobble up whatever I can gobble up. And it's an insatiable beast. You can never stop it. And even when it's exposed for being a corrupt system, like it was in this last year, it just moves on to the next thing to suck money out of.
SANCHEZ: Well, then why is it -- you know, it's funny, because I don't think anybody who just listened to you say that, whether they are on the right or on the left, Republican, Libertarian, whatever the heck they call themselves, are going to disagree with what you said, but yet when we watch protests, all we hear people say is give more power to the corporations and take it away from the government.
How have they been able to pull what appears to be a snow job off?
MOORE: Well, that's a very good question. It's the classic Ponzi scheme, really. Isn't it?
It's a pyramid where the people at the top of the pyramid, the richest one percent in America who have more financial wealth than the bottom 95 percent combined, they're at the top of the pyramid. Their job is to convince everybody else in the lower parts of the pyramid to believe that they, too, can get to the top of the pyramid if they just work hard and support the corporation.
And so have you all the -- all the worker ants down here thinking they can get to the top, when only a few people can actually sit on the top. And that's the sat part of this.
But I think the other problem is, too, is that people on my side of the political fence, the people who consider themselves liberals, or whatever, need to quit complaining about people on the right or conservatives who are showing up at these meetings or having their demonstrations. I mean, this is a free country. That's great that they are involved in the political process if that's what they believe in.
Where are we? Where are the millions who voted for President Obama? You know, he looks like he's out there all alone, like nobody's got his back.
SANCHEZ: That's a good point, but, you know, it's hard to compete with $400 million spent between January and August of this year...
MOORE: Right.
SANCHEZ: ... by companies who want to make sure it's only their message that gets out, which, by the way, is the most that's ever been spent on any legislative debate in the history of the United States. That has got to have an influence, too, doesn't it?
MOORE: That's correct. It has a huge influence, and I know that firsthand from my last film, because as Wendell Potter, the vice president of Cigna Health Insurance, who became a whistleblower last month, came forward with the documents to show how much money they spent, all the health insurance companies, on trying to discredit me or my film when he said my film, "Sicko," everything in it was true. And I knew what he said as the vice president of a health insurance company, but we spend all this time and money trying to stop Michael Moore.
It's amazing. I mean, that was just a movie. I'm thinking if they are that upset or thinking that a movie is going to have that kind of impact, I know what they are doing right now on Capitol Hill. They are spending tens of millions of dollars to stop what the 75 percent of the people of this country want -- universal health care.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HOLMES: They are not done just yet. The question on Cuba after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HOLMES: All right. What does Jesus have to do with capitalism?
The rest now of the discussion between Rick Sanchez and Michael Moore.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SANCHEZ: Last question, Michael, because I'm being told that you have got 50 other interviews you're doing, and I understand that. You're a hot property right now. Good for you.
As a guy who was born in a communist country, Cuba, we look at the criticism of capitalism, and some people would argue, well, hold on there, Mr. Moore. We don't want to get rid of capitalism entirely, right? And is that the argument that you're making? Because if we get rid of it, we're left with totalitarianism, correct?
MOORE: Yes. Unfortunately, the people who call themselves capitalists got rid of capitalism. They got rid of the old system where if you worked hard, you were rewarded for it. If you made things, if you invented the next light bulb or the next Internet, you were able to do well.
Right now, we're just, like I said, making money off money. And I'm glad you brought that up about, you know, communism and where you come from.
Pope John Paul II, who is also a very avid anti-Communist coming from Poland, and when the Berlin Wall came down he was very happy about that. But he issued a speech and he said, "I'm glad this evil system has been eliminated in Eastern Europe, but there's one other system that has a lot of evil in it, too, because it benefits the few at the expense of the many." And that's not what Jesus said is correct.
Jesus said that we're to take care of the poor, that the rich man is going to have a very hard time getting into heaven. And I believe in that. That's my own personal faith. And I think that if we had more democracy in our economy -- in other words, where you and I had some say in how this economy is run, and a moral and ethical core to it based on our Judeo-Christian values that we claim to have as a country, but all the great religions say the same thing about the wealthy cannot -- a person cannot come to the table and take nine slices of the pie and leave one slice for everyone else at the table.
That's just -- it's a sin. It's unfair. It's anti-American. It's got to be stopped. And I'm hoping that my fellow Americans will involve themselves in the political process and make that happen.
SANCHEZ: And we'll be going to see your movie, because I understand it's well done.
MOORE: Well, thank you. And it's a comedy.
(LAUGHTER)
SANCHEZ: Just stay on that mega horn.
I appreciate it.
Michael Moore, quoting the Prince of Peace.
Good opportunity to talk to you. Thanks for being with us.
MOORE: Thank you, sir. Thank you.
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