WASHINGTON (AP) — Bernie Sanders said Thursday that he’s “getting my endurance back” and growing “stronger every day” after suffering a heart attack last week. He promised to return to the presidential campaign trail “as soon as possible.”
In the meantime, he’s batting baseballs around the yard.
“I am feeling great,” the 78-year-old senator said in a seven-minute video posted online from his home in Burlington, Vermont.
While lying in a hospital bed last week in Las Vegas, he said, he “thought about a lot of things, needless to say,” including “what would have happened” if he did not have health insurance through his job as a senator and Medicare.
Sanders insisted the experience made him “feel even more strongly” the need to continue “efforts to end this dysfunctional and cruel health care system.”
“Understand the enormous opposition that we’re facing from the drug companies and the insurance companies,” he said of his promises, if elected, to provide universal health insurance through a “Medicare for All” plan. “We are going to win this struggle. History is on our side.”
Sanders also said he thought, “Yeah, I’ve had a rough week. I’ve suffered adversity and that’s true. And I don’t wish anybody to have a heart attack and get scared the way that our family did.”
But, he added, many people are dealing “with a lot more pain than I am,” including homelessness, the need to work multiple jobs or having to forgo college because of fears about debt.
“We’re going to be out there on the campaign trail,” Sanders said, noting that he planned to attend next week’s debate in Ohio. His wife, Jane O’Meara Sanders, has said he would stay home recuperating until then.