On the January 25 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Michael Savage attacked Sen. Bernard Sanders (I-VT), saying, “Kiss my behind, you psycho,” and “Screw you, you jealous loser.” Savage also called Sanders “a rat,” “a bum,” and “a dirty socialist” and told him to “go to hell.” These remarks followed audio clips Savage played on his show, in which Sanders addressed the issues of wealth distribution and childhood poverty. Savage asked: “Now, how did child poverty become an issue all of a sudden? ... Two weeks ago we heard that -- before the elections, three months ago -- that children were overweight and fat from eating too much McDonald's; they were dying of diabetes from being little piglets. Now, we hear about childhood poverty, childhood poverty.”

According to The Washington Post, Sanders is “the first self-proclaimed socialist to become a U.S. senator,” after being elected to the Senate in the November 2006 elections. He served in the House before that for eight terms.

During the same broadcast, Savage falsely stated that Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) “will not reply” to a report from InsightMag.com claiming that “sources close to [a] background check” supposedly “conducted by researchers connected to” Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) found that Obama was raised as a Muslim by his stepfather in Indonesia and spent at least four years in a madrassa, or a Muslim religious school. In fact, in a January 20 New York Post article, Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod, was quoted as saying that "[Obama] was not raised as a Muslim, and he did not go to a madrassa." Axelrod called the story “a complete contrivance,” adding that it was “divisive, destructive garbage.” Axelrod also stated that he did not “believe ... for a second” the idea that Clinton's camp was behind the allegation.

Obama's office also released a statement on January 23 that categorically denied InsightMag.com's report: “All of the claims about Senator Obama's faith and education raised in the Insight Magazine story ... are false. Senator Obama was raised in a secular household in Indonesia by his stepfather and mother.”

During his program, Savage also said that, “assuming the world is still here” after a Clinton-Obama administration, Obama would then run for president with “Saddam Hussein's younger grandson” as his running mate.

From the January 25 edition of Talk Radio Network's The Savage Nation:

SAVAGE: But if you look at the attention that is being lavished on Barack Hussein Obama, you will see a completely unqualified man, who is being held up as a potential presidential candidate. Now, in spite of the media's attempt to push this anointed candidate over the top, Barack Hussein Obama is consistently outpolled by even minor entrants into the race like [2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee and former Sen.] John Edwards [D-NC], a lawyer who made his fortune by suing doctors.

So, why does the media continue to position Obama as the front-runner? Here's Michael Savage's analysis: The liberal media is pushing Obama knowing he can't win. They're pushing Obama so that he becomes the target of critics instead of Hillary. Obama gets the attention, Obama generates buzz, and all the while Hillary flies along under the radar. Then after all of the conservative and other critics have spent all of their ammo to take down Obama, such as his years in a madrassa as a Muslim student in Indonesia, which he will not reply about, Obama then falls out of the race, but he comes back in a year as the VP candidate on Hillary's ticket. So, you'll have a Hillary candidacy with Obama as a vice presidential candidate, which will be a liberal juggernaut that will win in the absence of any real conservative opposition.

[...]

SAVAGE: Then after they get all of this press, and blah blah blah, then he says, “OK, now we're gonna run him as a vice president,” and you say, “Well, you know, this guy could have been president. Why not?” They're grooming him for after eight years of the Clintons. Assuming the world is still here, then they give you eight years of Obama with Saddam Hussein's younger grandson as the vice presidential candidate.

[...]

SAVAGE: What should I talk about? Penny, is it time to call -- how about that freak from Brooklyn who lives in Vermont -- the socialist, who sounds like he's, you know, the ILGW: Bernie Saunders. I love him. Vermont socialist Senator Bernie Saunders, the guy who always sounds like someone's uncle. I had an uncle like this who I didn't like very much. No one in the family liked him -- he was a psycho commie.

So, this guy Saunders goes up, Bernie Sanders -- Saunders, is it? Or Sanders? What is his name? He's a complete and total lunatic. He goes up to Vermont; he pulls the wool over their eyes; he becomes their senator. When did Vermont become a socialist state? I don't know. What? When Ben and Jerry got there? I mean, are they crazy? Whatever happened to the rock-ribbed Republican Vermont with red barns? What are they making in those barns? They're not making milk; they must be making porno films.

So, here's Vermont socialist Senator Bernie Sanders, the commie from Brooklyn, and a voice on him, like -- this guy was like a ward chairman for a democrat in the 1930s he sounds like, or an ILGW low-level hack. He sounds like he could have been like Barbara Boxer's father. Listen to clip one.

SANDERS [audio clip]: We have got to address the reality that, in the United States today, we have by far the most unfair distribution of wealth and income of any major industrialized country --

SAVAGE: Kiss my behind, you psycho.

SANDERS [audio clip]: -- and that we have a moral obligation --

SAVAGE: Screw you, you jealous loser.

SANDERS [audio clip]: -- and we have a growing gap between the rich and the poor --

SAVAGE: Go to hell. How's that? Go to hell. I worked all my life for what I have and you'll have to kill me to get it from me, you rat. You know the thing about socialists that kills me is they're just jealous losers. They want the government to take away from those who made it on their own and give it to the schmucks or the idiots, or the lazy. Listen to this. It gets even worse. It's ugly. It's disgusting. Listen to this dirty socialist in clip two.

SANDERS [audio clip]: How often do we hear people say, “USA, number one”? And I share that sentiment. Unfortunately, in terms of childhood poverty in the industrialized world, we are also number one --

SAVAGE: Oh God!

SANDERS [audio clip]: -- and that is not being number one.

SAVAGE: Go to hell. How about going to hell? Get him out. Get him out of my headphones. Now, how did child poverty become an issue all of a sudden? The Democrats won by a hair and, suddenly, all of the old issues are back. Now, we're back to childhood poverty. Two weeks ago, we heard that -- before the elections, three months ago -- that children were overweight and fat from eating too much McDonald's; they were dying of diabetes from being little piglets. Now, we hear about childhood poverty, childhood poverty. Listen to Bernie Sanders, socialist bum, in clip three.

SANDERS [audio clip]: In 1999, the British government -- six years later, child poverty in the United Kingdom had been cut by 20 percent. Similar progress, as I understand it, has been made in Ireland.

SAVAGE: Ooh, wow. So, they've cured child poverty in the UK by -- what? Giving houses to Muslim immigrants and teaching the children how to set off a suicide bomb on an underground [subway train]? Poverty's over? All right, listen to clip four now from this lunatic.

SANDERS [audio clip]: Unfortunately, at the same time that Britain was taking important steps to reduce childhood poverty, in the United States, childhood poverty increased by about 12 percent.

SAVAGE: Right, that's the exact number of illegal aliens who invaded the country: 12 percent of the population. So, that's where the poverty came from, we imported child poverty.

[...]

SAVAGE: There is a solution, Bernie, to curing the childhood poverty: deport the 12 percent of children who shouldn't have been here to begin with because their parents came here illegally, and poof, there goes childhood poverty.