Bernie Sanders enters 2020 presidential race
Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said on Tuesday he will enter the 2020 presidential race, joining a growing field of candidates seeking the Democratic nomination.
"What I promise to do is, as I go around the country, is to take the values that all of us in Vermont are proud of — a belief in justice, in community, in grassroots politics, in town meetings — that's what I'm going to carry all over this country," Sanders told Vermont Public Radio.
Sanders, who lost the 2016 Democratic nomination to Hillary Clinton, said he plans to take on Wall Street, health insurance companies, drug companies and the fossil fuel industry.
"Our campaign is about transforming our country and creating a government based on the principles of economic, social, racial and environmental justice," he said in a press release.
The Vermont senator recently proposed legislation with Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., to prevent companies from repurchasing shares of their own stock unless they pay all workers at least $15 an hour and offer better health benefits.
WASHINGTON, Feb 19 (Reuters) - U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, who lost a bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, will seek to run for the White House again in 2020, he said in an interview that aired on Tuesday.
Sanders, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, made the announcement in an interview on Vermont Public Radio (VPR). He promised a "very different campaign" in an effort to oust Republican President Donald Trump.
"The current occupant of the White House is an embarrassment to our country," Sanders told VPR. "He is a pathological liar... he is a racist, a sexist, a homophobe, a xenophobe, somebody who is gaining cheap political points by trying to pick on minorities, often undocumented immigrants."
Sanders joins an increasingly crowded field seeking the Democratic Party's nomination to run against Trump next year.
The list already includes his fellow senators Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren.
He is expected to make an official campaign announcement later on Tuesday in an online video, Vermont Public radio said. (Reporting by Susan Heavey; editing by John Stonestreet)