Bernie Sanders Embraces His New Jet Ski Role In The Trump Era

Image by Nikki Casey
After the general election, senator Bernie Sanders was asked to reach out to America. So he undertook a national tour — on jet skis.
At a crowded waterside meeting with reporters he was voluble in his defense of the economic policies he touted during his candidacy for the Democratic nomination and vituperative in his condemnation of the current president and his team. In a statement to the Washington Post before the press conference he said,
I was surprised but not shocked that Trump won. The Democratic Party has moved away from its roots in the working people of this nation and a real economic plan. We need a 50 state solution and Chuck Schumer has entrusted me with the chair of the outreach effort — it’s a padded waterproof chair straddling a supercharged four cylinders that gets to 65mph in five seconds.
When questioned by a New York Times reporter — whose mainstream Gucci shoes were covered in good honest American mud — about the optics of investing in a gas-guzzling $15,000 Japanese two-person vehicle, affordable mainly by the 1% he professes to despise and with a negligible ethnic ridership, Sanders responded that “Water sports are the New New Deal that America has been waiting for. It’s not a red state or a blue state thing, it’s not about gender or race, everyone can agree on a sweet-riding Kawasaki.”
A Wall Street Journal reporter yelled after him that the red states were all landlocked, but he’d gone, spraying down the Monongahela River with the wind in his thin grey hair and Amy Goodman strapped to his back.
Ian Fist is the autocratic editor of the Backward. Contact him at your peril.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Most Popular
- 1
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
- 2
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 3
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
- 4
Culture How two Jewish names — Kohen and Mira — are dividing red and blue states
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Naftali Bennett is back: Former Israeli prime minister will make another run at Netanyahu
-
Fast Forward Citing post-Holocaust doctrine, Germany seeks to deport 4 pro-Palestinian protesters, including one American
-
Fast Forward Trump administration freezes research funding to Princeton amid antisemitism investigations
-
Fast Forward ‘Another Jewish warrior’: Fine wins special election for U.S. House seat
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.