Sanders: 'The job you have today ain‘t going to be here in 10 or 15 years'

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) issued a warning to all workers in the United States, proclaiming during a town hall that the jobs currently filled by employees around the country are not going to be there in the next decade. 

“I want everybody to think about this. Most people — we have millions of federal employees. Most people are not federal employees. And I think many people are saying, 'Wow, that's outrageous. I really feel for these federal employees thrown out on the street,'” Sanders said during the Wednesday night town hall moderated by CNN host Anderson Cooper. 

“But I want you to think about this. If Musk can do this to federal employees, some of whom are in unions, some of whom work for years, what do you think he's going to be doing when artificial intelligence and robotics comes for your job? Guess what? The job you have today ain't going to be here in 10 or 15 years,” the longtime progressive senator stated. 

Sanders offered a resounding rebuke of President Trump’s presidency and tech billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cost-cutting efforts, which have led to terminations of thousands of federal workers, and criticized the U.S. political campaign finance system. 

Musk, Trump’s close adviser who heads six companies, was one of Sanders’s main targets Wednesday night. 

The Vermont senator, who ran for president in the 2016 and 2020 elections, contended that Musk and his tech allies do not care about working-class employees and that they could face a similar fate as ousted federal workers in just over a decade. 

“And you think Musk and his friends are saying, 'Oh, my goodness, how do we protect American workers from the explosion in technology that we're seeing?' They don't give a damn about you. If this is what they could do to federal employees, think about what they could do to people in the private sector,” Sanders continued.

“So, bottom line there is, I am not a Luddite. I think technology has many positive things to say. But we have got to understand that new technology, AI, robotics, has got to work for working people, not just for the billionaires and Mr. Musk,” he added.