Cenk Uygur

They're just going to tsunami you, you know, corporate medias and the corporate politicians are going to run roughshod over you. You have to make the case against them. And so two times Bernie flinched. One in 2016 in the Brooklyn debate, they asked, did the money that Hillary Clinton taken from the banks affect her votes? And he said, no. Of course it affected her votes. Of course it did.

You have to say yes and you have to show it and prove it. The bankruptcy bill. When she was first lady, she was totally in favor of the American people and against the bankruptcy bill because it... has the banks, you can't discharge any debts, credit card debt and bank debt, et cetera. It's an awful bill. It's one of the most corporatist bills. She was on the right side as a first lady.

She becomes a senator, takes banker money, and all of a sudden she flips over to the banker side. Say it, Bernie, for God's sake, say it, right? Then in one of the debates in 2020, his team prepares attacks against Biden. They're not personal. They're not like I... You can sense by now, if I'm in a political race, my objective is rip the other guy's face off, right? Yeah.

Politically, rhetorically, never physically. Yes, yes, yes, yes. And so, but I would get it to a point where they'd think, I don't know if I'm going to vote for Cenk, but I know I'm not voting for the other guy. Okay. So you got to do that if you want to win. So they prepare this. He says, I'm going to do it. He goes on the podium. and doesn't do it because he can't. He's too damn nice.

He just can't attack the other guy. Now that's problem number one in strategy. Problem number two is something you alluded to. So Biden gets into office. Bernie thinks they're friends. They're not friends. Biden's just using him. So he uses him to get the credibility. And then he eviscerates 85% of the progressive proposals that Bernie put forward. Biden throws away $15 minimum wage.

That was Bernie's signature issue. Doesn't even propose the public option. Dumps paid family leave for no reason. I can go on and on. And Bernie co-signs on it because he thinks he's in an alliance. He thinks Biden's on his side. And he thinks we're going to get things done. And to be fair to Bernie, like I said earlier, Obama got only 5% of his agenda passed, and Biden got 15%.

Okay, so you're right, Bernie, you got three times more than under Obama, but you're wrong, that is not fundamental change, and without fundamental change, we're screwed.

So AOC, in my opinion, lost her way. In which way? So it's tough talking about these things because people take it so personally, right? And that's why you'll see very few politicians on our shows because we give super tough interviews. And the words on the street, right? Like don't go, you know, they'll, they'll ask you super hard questions, right?

So the only couple do it like Ro Khanna does it. He's brave. We'll get into shouting matches sometimes in the middle of bills and stuff, but at least he's there to defend his position. I respect him for the Tim Ryan, a little bit more of a conservative Democrat. When he was in the house, he would take, take on any debate, et cetera.

So there's a couple of good guys that do it, but generally they don't. So what this relates to AOC, because. When AOC's running, we do 34 videos on her. We get her millions of views. We founded Just Democrats and now launched it on the show. Our audience, Ryan Grim documents it in one of his books. Our audience raises $2.5 million for those progressive candidates overall. And at that point,

AOC and all those Rashida Tlaib, et cetera. They're all dying to come on a young Turks. Makes sense. I would too. Of course, it's not because it's the young Turks, any media outlet and most media outlets, almost all the media outlets reject them. We cover AOC more than all the other press combined. Right. And she wins for a number of reasons. That's one of the reasons, but there's many others.

And she did a terrific job herself. Um, She then takes Shoikot and Corbyn, who were the, Shoikot was the head of Just Democrats and Corbyn was communications director for Just Democrats. Then Shoikot made one of the most brilliant political decisions in arguably in American history. He said, he called me and he said, Cenk, I'm gonna go from head of Just Democrats to running AOC's campaign.

And I'm like, well, the other candidates are gonna get pissed. And you're staking the entire enterprise on one candidate. I'm like, shortcut. I'm not in it. I'm doing the media arm. You're, you're in the, in the trenches. You're the guy making the decisions. So I'm going to trust whatever you say. You sure? And he said, yeah, I'm sure. So him and Corbin go over to AOC's campaign.

AOC then wins that miraculous win. Then she hires shortcut to be her chief of staff. And she hires Corbin to be her communications director. Within six months, they're gone. And once they're gone, AOC then goes on an establishment path. Okay. Because why were they gone? Oh, they insulted one of her colleagues. Yeah.

That colleague who's a total corporatist and was selling out one of our policy proposals. If you don't call out your own side, you're never going to get anything done. But if you call out your own side, you become persona non grata and it is super uncomfortable. Okay. And we couldn't get them to do things that were uncomfortable. Now, she's going to find that outrageous.

And she's going to be very offended by that. And she's going to point to a bunch of things she did that were uncomfortable. And to be fair to her, she has. Until that speech, she was pretty good on Palestine when we desperately needed it. She was pretty good on a bunch of issues. Cori Bush did that campaign on evictions, et cetera, on the Capitol steps. That was great.

AOC's original sit-in in Pelosi's office. That point, we're all still on the same team. It's a spectacular success. Me, Corbin, and Shortcut are saying, do it again, do it again. Like, now, don't abuse it. Like, don't be a clown and do it every other day. But, like, when it matters, you need to be able to challenge Pelosi, right? And...

See, in my opinion, she just got to a point where she got exhausted being uncomfortable. It's like, it's really hard. The media hates you and they keep pounding away and calling you a radical and you're destroying the democratic party. You're destroying unity. So, whereas if you go along, all of a sudden you're a queen, you're

And now all of a sudden the mainstream media is saying, oh, AOC, she could be the progressive.

No, she's still true on that.