Sen. Bernie Sanders blasts U.S. wealth gap

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on Wednesday rebutted Republicans who accused President Barack Obama of engaging in class warfare.

"They talk about class warfare -- the fact of the matter is there has been class warfare for the last thirty years," he said on MSNBC's Politics Nation. "It's a handful of billionaires taking on the entire middle-class and working-class of this country."

"And the result is you now have in America the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on Earth and the worst inequality in America since 1928. How could anybody defend the top 400 richest people in this country owning more wealth than the bottom half of America, 150 million people?"

Sanders said he was mostly pleased with Obama's State of the Union address on Tuesday night. But he was concerned that Obama signaled he was willing to compromise with Republicans on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

"Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are life and death for tens of millions of our people, we've got to defend those programs."

Watch video, uploaded to YouTube by Sander's office, below: