(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) During an interview on CBS News’s Face the Nation on Sunday, host Margaret Brennan confronted supposed anti-capitalist Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., about selling pricey tickets for his book tour via Ticketmaster.
Brennan brought on the senator on to discuss his upcoming book, It’s OK to Be Angry about Capitalism, and a related March 1 promotional event at a Washington, D.C., nightclub, The Anthem, the Daily Caller reported.
Tickets for the front section of the venue cost $95 each. The book itself costs $28.
Brennan suggested Sanders was reaping the benefits of capitalism via ticket and book sales, also noting that Ticketmaster had recently been the subject of a congressional inquiry into its “anti-competitive behavior” for a dynamic pricing model that had driven high-demand tickets into the thousands of dollars.
“Aren’t you benefiting, yourself, from this system that you’re trying to dismantle?” Brennan asked.
Sanders replied that the publishing house makes the decisions about pricing.
“First of all, those decisions are made totally by the publisher and the bookseller,” he said. “I think there’s one case where in one place here in Washington, Politics and Prose, an independent bookseller, is charging some tickets—most of them, I think, are $40, $50—and you get a book as well.”
Sanders maintained that he didn’t “make a nickel” out of the entire process, having already received his cut on the front end.
Brennan then pressed Sanders about whether he was OK.
“No, not particularly, but I have nothing to do with that,” he claimed.
“If you wrote a book, it would probably be the same process,” Sanders told Brennan, explaining that he must “operate in the system” in order to sell his book.
Several Republican politicians called out Sanders for using Ticketmaster to shill for his event.
“Anyone else see the ‘irony’ in Bernie Sanders selling tickets for his ‘It’s Okay to Be Angry About Capitalism’ book tour on Ticketmaster?” Rep. Bill Huizinga, R-Mich., wrote on Twitter.
Anyone else see the “irony” in Bernie Sanders selling tickets for his “It’s Okay to Be Angry About Capitalism” book tour on Ticketmaster?
— Rep. Bill Huizenga (@RepHuizenga) January 31, 2023
The summary of Sanders’s book characterizes it as “a progressive takedown of the uber-capitalist status quo that has enriched millionaires and billionaires at the expense of the working class, and a blueprint for what transformational change would actually look like.”
Despite the insistence by Sanders that socialism is the way forward, the American public is shifting more and more toward capitalism.
A poll from Rasmussen Reports found that only 17% of 900 likely voters preferred socialism to capitalism, with 67% in favor of capitalism.
A large majority of potential voters also said they would never vote for an avowed socialist.
Voters strongly prefer capitalism to socialism, and a majority would not vote for an avowed socialist.https://t.co/rh8kl8FY41 pic.twitter.com/k2dpGMtLpM
— Rasmussen Reports (@Rasmussen_Poll) February 19, 2023
