Advantages of being an outsider

Mo Dhaliwal 00:13

The relationship between media control and political power continues to be fundamentally reshaped before our eyes. For decades, a handful of corporations determined which stories reached mass audiences, effectively gatekeeping democratic discourse. Now, independent creators with minimal resources are bypassing these traditional filters entirely, directly challenging both media monopolies and the political establishments that they've historically protected. So this isn't merely about audience migration, from traditional to modern or analog to digital, it's about power redistribution. When grassroots organizers can mobilize millions without corporate media validation, when crowdfunded campaigns compete with billionaire-backed candidates, and when citizen journalists can expose stories that mainstream outlets ignore, the entire architecture of influence shifts. Yet, this democratization creates new vulnerabilities. Echo chambers and competing truth narratives aren't just fragmenting public opinion; they're actually undermining the shared reality that's necessary for democratic governance. So the stakes extend far beyond media metrics to the foundations of institutional legitimacy itself. And today's guest actually pioneered this revolution. He built a media empire that directly challenged established power structures. Cenk Uygur is the founder and host of The Young Turks. It's the largest online news show in the world with over 27 million subscribers and 29 billion views. Born in Istanbul and immigrating to America at the age of eight, Cenk graduated from Wharton before launching the Young Turks in 2002. Where he pioneered independent digital political commentary, he co-founded Justice Democrats, helping to elect progressive candidates like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and he's run for both congress and president while advocating for campaign finance reform and media independence. Welcome, Cenk. Thank you. Appreciate it. Yeah, you're in Vancouver for Web Summit, and we came from there ourselves, and it's an interesting time to be actually talking about technology, because my day job is actually in a technology company where we work with digital and marketing and media is obviously in the forefront of our minds and how that intersects with culture. But I'm always really interested to hear about a sort of entrepreneurial life journey and how somebody gets to this position of creating change the way that you have. So I'd love to learn about why media, having a voice, these narratives have been so important to you and for such a long time. And how you kind of got started there. Like I understand that a family is Turkish and you all immigrated from Turkey many years ago. You came here when you were eight. Yep. And so life kind of started, I assume, as it does for so many immigrants on a real path of sink or swim, rapid adaptation, and trying to understand what the sort of cultural currents are that you can latch onto and understand how to, how to make it go in a new world. 

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Cenk Uygur 03:28

Yeah, you know, I realized recently that being an immigrant had a more profound impact on me than I realized earlier in life. So when we moved, you know, we were at that point, probably upper middle class in in Istanbul. And I never thought about my status, but I mean, I was a good student. I was a strong kid, liked by the family. So like everything's hunky-dory. You come to America and and and I don't want people to get me wrong. I love America and I and I love the big open green fields and the amazing opportunities, et cetera, that I found in America. But what happens to an immigrant like me, especially at such a young age, is that you get dropped all the way to the bottom of the social status ladder. Right. And so all of a sudden I'm illegitimate by definition. I'm a person they don't know or not familiar with like from Turkey. Right. In third grade, you're mainly going to get gobble-gobble jokes, right? Do you eat your family at Thanksgiving? That type of stuff. Right. So I'm a tough kid overall to begin with, even back then. And so that doesn't bother me too much. But what I didn't realize that I dug into my brain was I all of a sudden got to a point where I was the outsider. I was the foreigner. I was the one with no credibility. You don't know anything. And when you think like, what is an eight year old no or not no, right? Like, how does, what does that even mean? Right? Well, I don't know the right brands and me being by my nature, I don't care about brands, right? So like I'd go back to Turkey and I wouldn't have Levi's or Nike on and in the summers and they'd be like, what are you doing? You live in America and you don't even have Levi's. Like I, I actually, I have irregular jeans from Marshalls and so like, um, and so, but that did put me in this role that maybe ironically was helpful in the long run, which is that of being an outsider and someone who starts with no credibility or legitimacy, et cetera.And I've been treated that way my whole life, by the way, in America, right? So in, and it's, uh, interesting cause it's, it's differs by circles that you're in. So in the business circles, I am not treated that way because so many, uh, immigrants have gone to Ivy league schools, et cetera, that in the business world, that's perfectly normal. Yeah. So you're Turkish, you're Muslim, you're w whatever you are. Like no one's worse there. Yeah. So in the media world, that is not the case in the media world. You know, white folks that are, you know, just standard ethnicity Anderson Cooper is a great example, right? Heir to the Vanderbilt fortune. Tucker Carlson was the heir to the Swanson fortune, right? So these guys are what people expected in media. And now it wasn't that the American people expected it maybe was mainly executives who expected it. Right. So if you're jank, you go with a name that is super hard to pronounce, nearly impossible to pronounce, right? And, uh, and you're different in so many ways, it's much, much harder. Right. And then in politics, also harder. 

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Cenk Uygur 06:47

And, uh, again, not because of the voters, the voters elected Barack Hussein Obama and had him at an 83% approval rating. Right. But the assumptions within the elites, within the higher classes, et cetera, it, you start out at the bottom and you've got to really earn your way up. And as you're doing that though, everything you do is viewed through the lens of illegitimate. Right. So, and then I happen to feed into that because I'm a rebel. So I do things that are against the grain. So now if it's your, you know, Tom Smith and you're six foot one and you're male that came from Indiana and you went to Notre Dame, well, then, you know, Tom is wow, what a rebel. Yeah. What an interesting entrepreneur. You know, that guy's a firecracker. Right. When Cenk Uygur, uh, did from Turkey does it, that guy doesn't know what he's talking to. He doesn't know anything. That's not how it's done around here. Okay. And so that's a lot of hurdles to overcome, but I'm not a guy who believes in a victim mindset, right? Like, so it is what it is that those are the hurdles I had, but then I had other great advantages that in a lot of ways non-immigrants didn't have. Right. And so, and I don't mean to insult non-immigrants, right? Everybody grows up in a different way. Everybody's got a different family, but the upside of the immigrant community is, you know, uh, warm believes in hard work, believes in loyalty. There are a lot of great upsides to being. 

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Mo Dhaliwal 08:20

Yeah, certain assumptions you start with, right? Yeah. You assume it's going to be hard. So that's status quo. And then you move on to the next thing. 

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Cenk Uygur 08:26

Yeah, I've seen a lot of people start companies that are similar to ours, but they weren't used to adversity. And so when they run into it, they don't know how to adjust. Whereas I grew up with adversity, I swam in adversity, I lived in adversity, right? So to me, that's Tuesday, that's the most normal thing in the world. 

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Mo Dhaliwal 08:48

That was actually just the word that I was about to reference because Malcolm Gladwell has this great sort of analysis he does of people who are in positions of success. I think you would agree, you might be too humble to admit that you've attained quite a bit of success in what you've done. And what he actually says is that the hero's journey and the narrative that people like hearing is that, oh my god, I achieved all of this in spite of everything that I came across. And he's got this really interesting perspective where he actually talks about the fact that the human being needs friction, actually. And in many of those instances, it might not have been that they became successful in spite of what they went through, but actually because of adversity is a type of medicine. It's a type of actually nourishment that if it's administered in the right doses at the right times can actually surface incredible superpowers in people. And this is part of why I love origin stories because what you're describing as that eight-year-old that's, even at that age, sure, maybe people weren't coming to you for political perspectives at that time and you were left out of those circles, but we're still aware of in-groups and out-groups, right? And those are little scars that sometimes we carry because we understand that there was an in-group and that was an out-group. But it seems to me like from that age that there was a certain comfort, maybe that was established at that age of just being in the margins. And if you're already, quote unquote, told you're irrelevant, then there's a certain freedom to that, isn't there? 

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Cenk Uygur 10:17

Yeah, I think you're enormously right about that. So I mean, let's just look at, uh, there's so many angles to it, but look at one that is so clear and one you might not necessarily expect. You use the interesting words there, uh, in group, out group, right? So if I was part of the in group my whole life, would I have known what it feels to be an outsider? And so, and this is in, in politics and in media, I explain to people, uh, and I have to explain it because almost everybody else in media is insiders. And so they don't, they have, and politics too. So they have trouble wrapping their minds around it. I got to take them out of their bubble and into a different perspective. Whereas I grew up in that perspective. So, so what do I explain to them? I said, look guys, how many, especially in politics, how many people are insiders? What percentage of population is insider? What percentage is outsiders? Maximum, maximum, 2% are insiders. 98% are outsiders. So which one do you think you should lean into? And so, and for a lot of times I would deal with Democrats, democratic politicians, even when you explain it that clearly, they're like, what, I don't get it, right? Stop talking like an elitist. Stop talking like an insider. Stop using SAT words when you're talking to real people. Stop thinking that the status quo was great because it has you at the top. You don't realize that that's an assumption you're making cause you're already an insider, right? But for those of us on the outside, we're not already at the top. We don't like the status quo. We think there needs to be a significant, massive change. So that point of view I got just as an outsider, let alone the adversity, let alone all the things that I got had to get used to, um, has made an enormous difference and has been a giant gift to me.So I would much rather be out in the woods with the outsiders than, uh, than the insiders in their, uh, you know, castles that have done so much damage. 

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Mo Dhaliwal 12:22

No, there's a lot of power and freedom there. And I suppose it's, again, that comfort of working in spaces where others aren't comfortable, where you're not kind of trapped by the same conformities, right? Especially with media. Because when I was kind of like, you know, digging through your background and kind of learning about your life, it was really interesting to me actually just how early you were to everything, right? Like, you know, not to date you here, but like, you know, serious radio in 2002, right? YouTube, I think 2005, right? And I mean, this is like, we're talking bleeding, bleeding edge. I mean, now it's ubiquitous and we sometimes can't even imagine life before this world and what that was like. But that is such a really odd and interesting time to lean into technology. But what did you see then that, well, frankly, everybody else missed, right? Because it took, you know, a decade and some would say, even now, a lot of media just still hasn't got the picture of, you know, where things need to go. But what do you think you saw then that pretty much the rest of the world missed? 

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Cenk Uygur 13:26

Yeah, first, let me just thank you for saying that because you might look at my track record in my history and think, oh yeah, that's clear, right? But you'd be shocked at how little people recognize that.So we were, Young Turks was the first original talk show for Sirius satellite radio, we're the longest running show in internet history. We were the first partner for YouTube so that I'm literally the original YouTuber, okay? And we've been, and Bernie, I'll give you one more example, there's many others, but, and there's two explanations, which I'll get to in a sec. Bernie Sanders in 2013 was pulling at around 1%. And I did a video saying, no, he has a real shot at beating Hillary Clinton. And he climbed from 1% in 2013 to about 48% in 2016, right? So, and I tell you all that because, Mo, you'd be shocked that other people in media are like, yeah, I don't see it. Like, what's the big deal? Okay, you all saw that YouTube was going to be the number one media company? Okay, if you saw it and you didn't do anything, I don't know why you didn't do anything, but, okay, like there's something about me that insiders despise. And so they won't even acknowledge things that are obvious. Like, hey, brother, I'm the original YouTuber. Maybe I had something figured out. No way. No, it must've been some other answer. You got lucky. You got this. You got that. You didn't know what you were doing. I'm like, okay, and I didn't again and again and again and again. Okay, so, all right, so why? So later on, it got way easier. So by the time I'm making the Bernie prediction, Bill de Blasio is in third place in running for mayor of New York. I say he's going to win. He wins, right? I'm getting all these things right. Why? Because by that time, I have two enormous advantages, okay? One is we have an umbilical cord to the audience. So the audience is telling us which direction they're going, but no one else is listening to the audience. Wolf Blitzer has never listened to the audience. No executive at MSNBC, CNN, or New York Times has been like, hey, you know what? Let's try to figure out what people actually think. They think they have, but they haven't. Like if the New York Times goes to do that, and they're the most likely out of the three that I just named, they will commission a study to find real people and to like almost in an anthropological sense. I have run into a real person here, and we were going to analyze them. Yeah, and they didn't even go to Dartmouth, okay? So that's part of it. Whereas we believe in the audience. The audience helped create the Young Turks, and the audience is us, right? They subscribe to us. They're our source of financing, et cetera, et cetera. So by the time I see Bernie rising, I already know that there's a massive progressive wave coming. But when I tell people there's a massive progressive wave coming in 2013, their reaction is, okay, get a lot of that sky. 

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Mo Dhaliwal 16:40

The YouTube guy thinks he knows what's happening. Yes. 

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Cenk Uygur 16:43

The YouTube guy thinks Bernie's gonna rise. And then they're always condescending. Did you know Bernie is a radical senator who's really on the fringes? Oh, thank you, professional white man. And I don't mean to get into race. I hate talking about race, but generally it's a guy like Jake Tapper who's looking down his nose at you and going, did you know? Yeah, I know that that's elementary, right? But did you know the wave is coming? No way. And then after the wave comes, okay, now can you see that we were right? Nope, nope, I'm not gonna adjust. Hillary Clinton definitely would have won. Joe Biden is young and dynamic. Kamala Harris is definitely gonna win. They never adjust. They can't get outside their bubble. So we have an unfair advantage because we actually listen, right? And there are other advantages too. But back then, why did I think that online video was gonna win? And in 1998, so jeez, that's 27 years ago, I wrote an email to my friend saying online video is going to be larger than TV. And they're like, you're mental. That's the craziest thing anybody's ever heard. Online video barely exists. And at that point, it's like an AOL dial-up and you get the scratchy modem thing. 

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Mo Dhaliwal 17:58

It's like a 320 pixel box that people are looking at and be like, what, this? 

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Cenk Uygur 18:02

Yeah. And so why did I think that? Because I pride myself on logic and the democratization of media was instantly clear the minute the internet began. Okay. Now that you start putting up content at the time, there was like a radio station that had started online and there was some video that was online and I'm like, Oh my God, they're removing the gatekeepers. It's over.It's this, this side is going to win gatekeepers have a terrible track record. They're the worst track record in history. So like in the old days in TV, back in 98, when I'm making this prediction, they would commission 10 pilots for a TV show. They would scrap nine of them and then go with one. And that show most of the time would only last six or 13 weeks. And then they would cancel 90% of those. I'm like, so wait, your track record is 10% of 10%. You're, you get it wrong. 99% of the time, of course that's not the right way to do it. And second thing was they designed shows for advertisers. Whereas online, since you start with nothing, you have to design the show for people, for humans, right? And that's a giant advantage.I remember being in a TV meeting later and the first question they asked about the show pitch was, uh, what will Walmart think of it? And I thought, Oh, this show's doomed. Walmart wants you to do the most boring vanilla show. 

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Mo Dhaliwal 19:29

There is. Well that was the origin of soap operas, right? It's like they had to create a drama around the ad which was to sell soap. Exactly. 

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Cenk Uygur 19:36

And so, but don't, especially in politics, don't say anything interesting. If you say anything interesting, there's no way Walmart's gonna advertise. So you're gonna have dispassionate people in news, right, with no emotions, reading a teleprompter, and not saying anything interesting. And online, me and everyone else is gonna get to say whatever we want, as passionately as we want, as authentically as we want, without any gatekeepers. And by definition, whoever rises up has risen up out of the crowd. And so you add in the wisdom of the crowd and it becomes inevitable. It doesn't matter how small online video was and how gigantic TV was. It was only a matter of time before our side won. And one other thing I thought as a business person is, if I, I'm an immigrant, I barely have any money, right? So if I wanna start a media company back in 98 or eventually when we started in 2002, well, I need billions of dollars to start a TV company, right? I don't have billions of dollars, but I could borrow 25,000 from a friend and start an online video company, right? And then I could catch them because I know the wave is coming towards me, right? So that's exactly what we did. And right now we're catching them, right? 

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Mo Dhaliwal 20:57

That's a ton of foresight. And again, especially for that period, because, you know, we forget the world that we lived in previously, right? And it's almost hard to take your mind back to that point. Like, as you were mentioning, I'm trying to think of 1998. And I'm like, Oh, shit, like, it is wild to even think about online video at that time of, you know, what was I doing? And what was going on around us? You know, and timing is such a big part of your story, because the intersection of the, you know, passion you brought to political discourse, and the timing and the intersection of that with technology, it was kind of a perfect storm, right? Because you obviously had a lot of political interest coming into that, you know, both from your background. And the fascinating thing that I found is, you know, you assume that somebody that's working with digital and technology platforms, you're already in a fast moving sort of culture of adaptation, and you're moving and you're evolving. And that kind of seems to be like your vibe in every space, because even politically, you know, you lean in a different direction, but kind of not afraid to change your mind. And could you talk about that? Because it's pretty wild to me to, you know, be sitting across from someone that has such passionate views politically, is also super adept at online and digital channels, but also went through this sort of transition of like Republican, you know, independent, Democrat, and then, you know, quite critical of the Democratic establishment. Would you talk about like what happened? Yeah, that they created that shift. 

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Cenk Uygur 22:26

You know, the more we talk to more, I think that this theme of being an outsider has been even more helpful to me than I realized because, so why are some of the mainstream media guys blinded by their bias and they can't see straight and whereas we see it? Well, as an outsider, in a sense, I'm outside of every bubble, right? So when I don't, Joe Biden's not my uncle. I'm not emotionally, psychologically, financially invested in Joe Biden winning and listening to democratic leadership, et cetera.So I can not only see that he's old two years earlier, right? And we started a petition in 2023 to get Biden out of the race. I run as a protest candidate, et cetera. But I can also see the polling. It's amazing when you're in a bubble what you cannot see. So the polling has him in the mid thirties and incumbent in the forties has never won. An incumbent in their thirties has no chance whatsoever. Anyone who knows politics knows this brother has zero percent chance of winning, right? Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. All the insiders I know love Joe Biden. We all listen to Joe Biden. He is young and dynamic, right? Peak form. Peak form, right. So now, so as as you're going forward there, shoot, I forgot the question you asked, Mo. I was going to relate it back to it. It was really just about the transition, right? Oh, the transition. So as you look at as you look at me coming into the country, I'm not on any team, right? Our family didn't grow up. Republicans, we didn't grow up Democrats. My dad comes. He's a small business owner. Republicans talk about helping small business owners, too much regulation, too much taxes. Remember, tax at that time in America are at 70 percent for the top bracket. Not that we were in the top bracket, but that's where they were. And so we and we watch mainstream media and they tell us that Ronald Reagan is the cowboy that's going to save the shining city on a hill. Right. So we buy into that. We're Republicans. And so why did I change? Well, facts, right, because I didn't start on a team. I wasn't an insider. Right. So then when I see they keep saying they're going to balance the budget, but the Republicans never balance the budget. They say that their real goal isn't tax cuts for the rich. But the only thing they ever pass is tax cuts for the rich. Right. They say peace through strength, but we never get the peace. We have nonstop wars always started by Republicans. So then you begin to piece it together and you go, wait a minute. Bill Clinton balanced the budget, but the Republicans never did. And, you know, they say overregulation, but what are we regulating? Doesn't it depend? Right. So can you have overregulation? Of course you can. Can you have underregulation of Wall Street as we found out in 2008? Yes. You could have underregulation. Right. So the question is how. So you begin to see all these things. And here's what I changed my mind on: policy. So I don't know that this speaks well of me, especially in Vancouver, where it's very liberal, but I was pro death penalty. And so I thought, you know, justice is you take someone I love. 

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Cenk Uygur 25:39

Sorry, brother, but you've got to go. OK, so why did I change my mind on that? Because I became a nicer person. No, I wish I could say I did, but I didn't know. I saw the Innocence Project showed that dozens of people on death row were actually innocent. They didn't do it. It's one thing to kill the right guy. It's a totally different thing to kill the wrong guy. Yeah. Right. So once I saw that fact, I'm like, I don't understand how anyone can stay pro-death penalty. You're really OK with killing the wrong guy every once in a while. That's crazy. Right. Before it was theoretical, that was real. Those were 24 people we were going to kill and they didn't do it. The DNA proved that someone else did it. Right. No, I'm done with the death penalty. And if you're not, then like if you like, some folks are so proud of never changing their mind. Why is that a thing you're proud of what you were born with a perfect ideology that somehow you got into your head through your parents or media or some whatever it was. And it's just so golden that no fact ever disputed any part of your ideology. That's crazy to me. And I can't believe that we think like that. And a lot of people do, whether you're on the left or the right. And I know that now because we've now taken on the left in a lot of ways. We're the largest network on the left. But we've got people that are radicals that are attacking us 24 seven. And their number one complaint is you are not following a preset ideology a hundred percent. You're only following it 94 percent. That means you're a heretic and that means you're a right winger. And that means you support Donald Trump. Well, if you're an idiot, that's the conclusion you would draw from agreeing with someone else 94%, right? That's what radicals do. You have to be pure. You have to be ideologically pure. If you're on that radical on the right, you have to be racially pure. If you're a radical in religious circles, you have to be religiously pure, et cetera. I hate radicalism, despise it. So anyway, switch from Republican to Democrat. And then, but within the Democratic Party, they kept wanting us to support our worst possible candidates. I'm like, why does that make sense? So here's another thing of inside the bubble versus outside the bubble. So in 2016, every poll showed that Bernie Sanders did better against Donald Trump than Hillary Clinton. Every liar in mainstream media would say the opposite. Yeah, but he has no chance. Yeah, he has no chance. And then if you pick Bernie Sanders, it's young people. 

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Mo Dhaliwal 28:15

Young people don't vote, it's gonna collapse. 

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Cenk Uygur 28:17

Yeah. And I would say, Look, it's your own poll. CNN, you just did a poll. And it said that Bernie has a better chance of winning than Hillary. And they're like, No, we don't believe our lying eyes, because in their cocktail circuit, and I said, Liars, to be fair, it's not they're not really liars. They really believe it. In their cocktail party circuit, everyone loved Hillary Clinton. And everyone hated Bernie Sanders. Why? He's an outsider. He's gonna bring us change. If you're at the very top, you don't want any change. But they don't realize that because they're in that bubble. So they would see their own poll, Bernie doing six points better, and they'll say they would say he's doing worse. It was unbelievable. It was grating on the nerves. Even if I didn't agree with Bernie politically, which I do ideologically, I still would have been in favor of Bernie because I wanted to beat Trump, I wanted to win. And so they had inverted logic and truth and facts on its head.And they do it all the time. And one more thing about that. So as we're so old, we're around before the Iraq war, right? So at that time, my co-host is Ben Mankiewicz. He's now the host of Turner classic movies. So Ben and I, we're the only two shows nationally saying don't go into Iraq, us and democracy now. Okay, so we're screaming, don't go in. They didn't attack us. They didn't attack us. Right. And mainstream media is like, well, you know, it came from the general region. There's Al Qaeda. I'm like, Saddam murders Al Qaeda. Saddam is totally opposed to Al Qaeda. And so when we attacked Iraq at that date, 69% of Americans, seven out of 10 Americans, believed that Saddam Hussein had personally attacked us on 9/11. Why? Because mainstream media consciously or subconsciously lied to the American people and told them these are the bad, these are bad guys. They're Muslims. They're a real problem over there. They're from the same region. Who cares? Who cares if we're attacking the exact wrong people who are also opposed to Al Qaeda, right? Who cares? They're all savage Muslims. Let's just attack them. But the Anderson Coopers of the world, they have no idea that they actually think that it's subconscious. Right. And to be fair, I don't think Anderson Cooper was around at that time, but the people that were on air were just despicable in that. But again, it's because I'm open to change my whole life changed. If I wasn't open to change, I wouldn't have survived. I'm open to the idea that outsiders might be right. They're not open to any of that. And they really, one last thing about it, they truly believe in their elitism. They really believe we have gone to the best schools. We are professionals. We know what we're doing and you don't. Right. Well, I mean, how many times are you going to get it wrong before you realize, no, just because you have a nice suit and you went to the right schools, doesn't mean you know what you're doing. You've never even analyzed your own opinions and beliefs. How could you possibly be sure you're right? Well, you never even thought about it. Whereas I was forced to think about my beliefs over and over and over again. 

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Cenk Uygur 31:41

Wait, I'm in a whole new culture in America. I got to adjust. Yeah. You're continually tested against that. Exactly. Oh, wait a minute. The things that Republicans said they were, it turns out they're not. I got to adjust. Hey, wait a minute. The powerful people in the Democratic party that we're all told that we have to bow our heads to and obey don't seem to know what they're doing. I've got to adjust. But the Jake Tapper of the world have never had to adjust for a day of their lives. So that's why they were always wrong. The. 

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Mo Dhaliwal 32:08

So I kind of said this in my lead up here as well, that these echo chambers, the great democratization of media, the massive double-edged sword that it is, because there was very old philosophies that with information and higher education that we're going to be entering some sort of egalitarian utopia and life would be better. And what we found instead is that it's actually just amplified perhaps the best and worst parts of human nature.And part of what you're describing, whether it's republican, democrat, but anybody that's a part of these systems and that in-crowd, is that media is kind of allowing them to actually get even deeper and more reinforced in their opinions. And it's kind of creating a membrane of hyper-identification, right? Republicans hate identity politics, but that in itself is an identity that they hold, right? It's we're against identity politics and they stick to it so hard without ever having any empathy to think beyond that. And what you're describing on the left as well is like this hyper-identification. There's this actually pretty jarring graph I saw recently where it was it was kind of a data plot showing a republican and democrat sort of where where people intersected in the States over the past 50 years. I'm not sure if you've seen this, but basically backcasting like 50 years ago, it showed, you know, family relationships like marriages and places of work. And you had these sort of, you know, two poles. It was democrats, republicans, and then this kind of area where they bled together. And there was cases where you'd have workplaces, you know, families, even some marriages where there was a lot of intersection of, you know, democrats and republicans. And that was kind of normal. Like you could in one family have have both. You could be running a business and have both. And in the last 50 years, it's gotten to this place where there's like a such a severe separation, right? That there's entire workplaces that will be ideologically one way or the other, right? There's families where you might be ostracized if you're not identifying the right way. So when we're living in an environment where, frankly, you know, we're ruled by algorithms, right? And this is the negative side of the technology and democratization I'm talking about. These algorithms will actually make us feel good. It'll reinforce our opinion, right? Because who wants to destroy their ego, really? Right. I mean, it feels good. It feels good when we feel like we're right. We're in the in the right space. We've got the right message. And our entire, like, sycophant sort of technological environment has been built and engineered to reinforce that. How do you counter that? Right. How do you how do you cut through that and say, actually, even the Young Turks isn't just another one of those, but it's something that might be a bit of an antidote to that hyperidentification. 

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Cenk Uygur 34:47

We definitely are the antidote. But you know, you take the antidote after you've been poisoned. And so this one is the hardest one. So like taking on the establishment is easy compared to this.Okay, so there's two problems that you're identifying one is, you know, the issue of identity, the other is the issue of the algorithms, and they're interrelated. So on identity. So I hate identity politics. That's not to say that your identity is irrelevant. We just had a long conversation about how my identity informed my perspective, right? So it is definitely not irrelevant.At the same time, it is not determinative. So when people judge purely based on identity, that is obviously a mistake. Even within any identity, there will be a massive range of human beings. Why? Because we're all human, right? So, oh, Turks are this way. No, they're not. There's a giant spectrum. And some Turks are super friendly. Some are super mean because they're human, right? So is there some cultural norms and values and expectations? Sure, of course, right? But you can't ever look at someone and go because they're black, white, Turkish, Jewish, Canadian, American, etc. I know who they are. No, you don't. No, you don't. Okay. And if you do politics based on that, you are excluding by definition.So when the Republicans did it with the southern strategy, that was, I don't know if it was the beginning historically, but certainly in modern history, the beginning of identity politics. What the Republicans did was, oh, the Democrats used to be, for lack of a more sophisticated way, I'll be a blunt instrument. The Democrats used to be the racist party. They had what was called the Dixie Crats. Those were the Democrats in the south who believed in segregation and that white people were superior to black people. So that was not like theoretical. That was not subconscious. That was very overt, right? This is 1950s and the 1960s. So Lyndon B. Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and the Democrats flip and they become the party of civil rights. The Republican sense, Richard Nixon does, Patrick Buchanan does, and I talked to Buchanan about this when on my show on MSNBC and they decide, oh, let's go pick up those racist voters in the south. And we'll call that the southern strategy. And so there are more white people in the country than minorities. So we'll have, we'll dominate for a long time. When I asked Buchanan about this, he was one of the Nixon aides who came up with this other strategy. At the time he said, yeah, we had a good 40 year run. Okay. And so, so they did identity politics ad infinitum. Okay. So then the Democrats come back and they start doing identity politics. Now minorities are gaining in America. You have a certain percentage of white people that are going to vote for Democrats. If you get all the minorities to vote for Democrats, you get more women to vote for Democrats. We're got the numbers, right? 

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Cenk Uygur 37:55

So they start leaning into identity politics. Okay. And it starts out subtle and it starts out very legitimate, which is, Hey, wait a minute. Why shouldn't we be involved in politics too? Why shouldn't our voices matter? That's as legitimate as it gets.That's not identity policy. That's fighting back against identity politics. And so, but then eventually it starts to get further down the spectrum. Okay. We need representation in these fields. Wait, which fields are we talking about? And we're talking about longshoremen and all the jobs, which are really high paying blue collar jobs in America. And at the time they were all white and they wanted to pass them on to their sons because they, you know, they were really good jobs. Okay. No black folks need representation there. Latinos need representation. That is true and accurate and really important.But most of the time when they said representation, especially in the later years, like pretty recently, Democrats meant I'm a black female and I need to be an anchor on this station or I need to be the candidate instead of the white guy. Right. So we need representation in Congress on television, et cetera. In other words, I'm already rich elite minority and I want that job and so the white guy. Okay. all right now we watered it down to the point where you're playing identity politics right and you could tell why so when it's a black candidate like Nina Turner who was one of the co-chairs of the Bernie Sanders campaign nobody talks about representation like nobody mentions that she's a black female they just savage her right they tear into her they lie about her etc the minute you have Kamala Harris wait a minute wait a minute we need representation because that is a cover story they want the corporate politician they happen to find a black female that was a corporate politician and they're hiding behind that now they've weaponized identity politics from the left and I hate that okay so here's an easy example to understand Dr.Oz is Turkish like I am Turkish-American he's running in Pennsylvania against Federman. Now Federman turned into a disaster but we didn't know that at the time right and Dr. Oz is supporting Donald Trump saying crazy things lying etc so according to the identity politics model I should have been like Turkish-Americans need representation, we should go with Dr. 

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Cenk Uygur 40:13

Oz. No, no I don't care about representation in Congress. Especially if that brother isn't actually representing us, right? So did the minorities in Congress like James Clyburn ever represent black voters no he represented corporate donors again and again and again so don't hide behind your identity brother. I'm not going to give you a pass on it. And then it became lately the last couple of years and this is what the revolt was about and part of why Trump won in 2024. It got to that absurd point where some DEI programs, some DEI programs were great. Some DEI programs got so over the top that we were reporting on these cases, there was a DEI officer who was an Asian woman, a white woman says in in meeting, hey you know I'm a little afraid to speak out here and is it okay if I say something, and another participant says, no shut your mouth, you're a white woman, your role here is to listen. Okay, the Asian person in charge of DEI says to the company, I don't think that's right, I think that we should, if we're going to do inclusivity right and and equity and diversity, obviously we should let everyone speak, including white people, right? She gets fired. No, no, that's insanity.No we're not going to tell white people to shut up, that's crazy talk. We're not going to tell women to shut up, that's crazy talk. No, I won't stand for it. That's how injustice from our side. So, that's partly what America rebelled against.

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Mo Dhaliwal 41:49

And the so, you know, it seemed like the pendulum was kind of swinging in, again, as a Canadian observer, what seemed like the, quote unquote, right direction, because, you know, a lot of energy around burning, obviously, for a period of time, I believe you started something called Justice Democrats, this movement, and that actually caused AOC to get elected. And there seemed to be a real kind of progressive swing happening in the right direction. And what we witnessed, I think, was, you know, speaking on behalf of all Canadians, apparently, was that there was like a bit of an overcorrection, maybe on that side, but also this massive backlash, right? Like, you know, President Barack Obama gets elected. And again, it's feeling like America is kind of heading in some sort of progressive direction. But in hindsight, it almost looks like it was kind of getting spring loaded, right, that there was like something getting repressed in attitudes, and maybe there was, you know, some amount of privilege that was getting compromised now. You know, I'm very much a believer that equity sometimes to their privilege will feel like oppression. And so the sort of racism, the sort of like, you know, hateful attitudes were kind of getting spring-loaded during that eight year period, and then really kind of unleashed afterwards, right?Yeah. So what were you trying to do with Justice Democrats at the time? And what are you trying to do with the Democratic Party now? Because like, from a values perspective, I understand, you know, you're way more aligned on the progressive side of things, aside from some of the hyper identification that you pointed out. But you're also the most critical of that side right now. And, you know, so how does that score with what you were trying to do with Justice Democrats then? And what are you doing now? 

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Cenk Uygur 43:31

Yeah, great question. So Trump wins in 2016. We're on the air on election night. And we're pretty distraught. In fact, there's a very famous video that somebody does of edited mashup video of Young Turks on 2016 election night. And that is one of the favorite videos for MAGA of all time. And they love to see us distraught, etc. Right. But that video is actually misleading, because, by the way, Trump retweeted it, he loved it, etc. Right. But because I was not, first of all, they say, ha ha, you got it wrong. No, we didn't. I was on ABC. In that election cycle, I was the only one on their panel to predict that Trump would win. Right. And on election day, with Hillary Clinton still having a significant lead in the polls, you say, well, the numbers look like she's going to win. Right. But both Ben and I said the very first thing we said on election day in 2016 was brace for impact, because even if he's got only a 35 percent chance of winning, you know what that means? I mean, it's 35 percent of the time he's going to win. And as gamblers, we know that happens. Yeah. Okay. So this idea, the Huffington Post had Hillary's chance of winning at 98 percent. We're like, that is nonsense, utter nonsense. Even if her polling is correct, that's not a large enough lead for you to guarantee that she's going to win. Right. But more importantly, after he won that night, I was not sad. I was mad. And when one of my co-hosts, Aida Rodriguez, asked, Cenk, what are we going to do now? I said, now we fight. Okay. So I was mad, not at Trump. I know who Trump is. Right. And I've been fighting for for now over a decade. Right. I was mad at the Democratic Party. We were right all along. Hillary Clinton was a terrible candidate and America didn't want the establishment. They wanted populism and they were even willing to vote for a fake populist like Donald Trump. Right. Just to get to change. And so I said, okay, that's it. Let's take this into our own hands. Democratic Party is never going to fix itself. Right. So let's fix it. Let's take action. So, you know, look, in my lifetime, everybody tells me things are impossible and then we do it. And then, and by the way, they never learn. Right. So I've been told things are impossible. Like at every step in my life, in fact, I'll tell you things now and people will tell me that's impossible. Right. So we'll get to that. That'll be fun. Okay. So, so I decided that I'm going to go on a search and find out who is primary Democrats, Democratic incumbents. Why this Democratic Party is too weak. We need to create a party that's stronger. We need to create a party that's more progressive. And if we get enough people in and we win a couple of important races and we open the gates from the inside of Congress, oh my God, we could flood progressives and look at how well Bernie did and we take over the party. So how does it go? It goes amazing. So we, I started with three co-founders. They brought the organization. I brought the media. I named it Justice Democrats because I'm obsessed with justice. The name of my book is Justice Is Coming. 

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Cenk Uygur 46:53

Right. So we picked 78 candidates. And I asked reporters at the time, how many do you think we're going to get into Congress? They universally said zero. But some said, well, you might win one, get lucky somewhere, right? So at our, at the peak, Justice Democrats had 11 people in Congress. So I said, we thought AOC was our best chance. And that was mainly the other co-founders. Saikat Chakrabarti, who's now running against Nancy Pelosi, and then Zack Exley. And then Corbin Trent, was critical in the organization. And they all said, let's, let's lean into AOC. So I said, okay, great. We did 34 videos about AOC before her primary one. Now, remember at the time she's running against the fourth most powerful Democrat in Congress. He's not, he's there from Queens district of New York. And he was known as the king of Queens. And, and the conventional wisdom was that he was going to be the next speaker of the house after Nancy Pelosi. Okay. And at the time AOC is a bartender, literally, right? Her brother submitted an application saying, I think she'd be really good at politics. Okay. So again, that's not me. They, the staff picks her, they do an amazing job. The other guys lean in, they run her campaign. Amazing job. And oh my God, we did it. And AOC topples Crowley, right? So now everything's going along great. Meanwhile, mainstream media, they're like, oh my God, how did we miss AOC victory? We can't believe we didn't see it coming. So I'm like, okay, well now let me tell you other just Democrats are going to win. And so they're like, oh, that's crazy. That's never going to happen. You just said it was crazy that AOC would win and she did win. And now the same guy is telling you other justice Democrats are going to win. And we're going to take over. No, there's no way. I'm not going to write that. That's ridiculous. Okay. Still happening today. I got a story about it today. Okay. So, but then where did we go wrong? Because just Democrats did not take over cars. So this is painful. And, and when I say it, people think I'm attacking people. I'm not, I'm just being honest and sharing what actually happened. Okay. So, uh, they were supposed to do two things. Uh, the people that got it in the beginning, they were supposed to open the gates. What does open the gates mean? That means you support other progressives, primary incumbent Democrats, but that is the third rail in Washington. So as soon as they got to Washington, first of all, they offered to have money. Uh, and I remember having lunch with AOC when she told me Nancy Pelosi called and she's offering this kind of money and she said, no, okay. And I loved it. I'm like, there we go. Then AOC doesn't sit in Pelosi's office and puts Green New Deal on the map. There we go. Perfectly running perfectly. But then the colleagues got in her ear. Oh, we're your precious colleagues. So are you going to be so mean and support primaries? We thought you were better than that AOC. That is very disappointing. You're a very rude, terrible, mean person. Oh no, I don't want to be mean. Okay. 

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Cenk Uygur 49:57

I'm going to be nice to my colleagues. No, but that wasn't, no, that wasn't the plan. The plan was to open the gates and yes, support progressives in all of these primaries, running against all of those incumbents, right? So no one opened the gates and that was a giant problem. Okay. So the second problem was if you run on, if you focus on economic populism, the core of Bernie's message in 2016, higher wages, corporations hated, paid family leave, corporations hated, by the way, enormously popular with the American people paid family leave, for example, is at 84%, even 74% of Republicans want it. Anybody that wants to pass paid family leave can pass it tomorrow, but no politician in America is willing to propose it and pass it because they're all owned by the donors owned completely. If you can't pass a bill that's at 84% popularity, that means you're the world's worst politician. You should retire immediately. Right? But they're crooks, they're corrupt. They don't want to pass these bills.And, but if you say that your colleagues are crooks, Oh my God, you're going to get pilloried. So I get it. I understand why they hesitated and mainstream media is just toxic. And they would have destroyed AOC and left Omar, Presley and all of those folks. I get it. But that's why we set you in there to take on that fight. If you don't take on that fight, you're not going to do it. So, but something unexpected happened that made it even worse since all of the economic issues are not doable because almost all the Democrats are also corrupt.Like drug prices. Are you kidding me? Negotiating drug prices is over 90% in approval. And yet you didn't fight like hell for that. Why? Because 80% of the Democrats in Congress take money from drug companies. They're crooks, they're corrupt, but they didn't have the nerve to say that. So what do they do instead? But they've got to prove their progressive bona fides, right? I'm a progressive and et cetera. So I'm going to lean into identity politics. Oh no. And now the establishments loves that. Why? Because now you're going to split all Americans fighting over their identities, black, white, Latino, this, that men, women, gay, straight. And now you're all fighting each other and that doesn't hurt us economically at all. No. 

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Mo Dhaliwal 52:27

Policy conversation's gone. 

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Cenk Uygur 52:28

Policy conversation is gone, economics is gone, and you're all in a food fight over your identity, OK? So instead of it being productive, it became counterproductive. So now half the Justice Democrats won't stop doing culture wars. And I'm like, get out of there, get out of there, do the economic stuff. And since people hate identity politics, it made progressives less popular. I'm like, oh my god, we took a movement that was enormously popular and let it down the wrong direction until it became unpopular. Oh, that's so frustrating. But when you say that, instant heretic, right? So look, not only do we not get credit for helping AOC win, we raised two and a half million, Young Turks raised two and a half million dollars for Justice Democrats, featured in 34 videos, which is more than the rest of the media combined, right, et cetera, et cetera. But now we get discredit for disagreeing with AOC later now that she has status. And she's, so now she's an elite, she's privileged. So when the Young Turks say, hey, I think she's going in the wrong direction, they're like, how dare you? She's the true progressive because she's a congresswoman with status. You, you're back to outsider, off you go, right? Well, who was right and who was wrong? So now AOC is going around saying, oh, no more culture wars, no more culture wars. We're doing economic populism and I'm rallying with Bernie. By the way, I'm a guy who doesn't care about the past. You attacked me or you said this or that, who cares? Join the crowd, you're late to the party, right? So now AOC is back on the right track. Great, I'm super happy to have her. In fact, I'm desperate for her to run against Chuck Schumer in New York for the Senate seat. Schumer would retire, she would definitely win it. There's no way Schumer is going to risk losing. And right now she's at 55%, Schumer would definitely lose, right? So that's, now that she's back on the right path, to have a powerful New York Senator who's doing economic populism versus Schumer who protected the donors above all, that would be amazing. So don't like, this isn't personal, it isn't personal. So super happy to have AOC back on the right track and let's get her on the set. 

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Mo Dhaliwal 54:55

So in light of all that, though, and especially the tensions and what you're describing for what happens with even Justice Democrats of once they're in the seat things change You know, they're in a different culture and they start owing people favours and things like that. The perspective that you shared in your book. Do you still believe that America is headed for a progressive future? Do you still think it's inevitable? Yeah

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Cenk Uygur 55:16

Okay, so good news. Now, we finally get the news. So what's on the rise now is populism and so these words are important and interesting and so let me explain why I think that that's going to sync up with progressivism and what the intersecting circles are etc so does do Americans hate the establishment as I suspect, yes, overwhelmingly. So if the Democrats are still that blindingly stupid and biased I don't mean the voters I love the voters. I mean the leadership and the politicians, right? So if they come in there and they're like okay here's a lesson we learned we need a corporate robot, like Pete Buttigieg, to have new talking points, all right. Feed the robot new talking points. I guarantee you're gonna see Buttigieg in a flannel shirt suit, okay. So we're gonna get back to faux populism right well you know what really went one was fake populism from the right, from Trump, so we should do fake populism from the left. No! You should do real populism from the left. That's what you should do. And and why did the Democrats lose favour? So some of the identity politics hurt but that was secondary the number one reason was because every time they got an office they never did anything. So that's why I actually disagree with one thing you said earlier. It wasn't that, hey Obama etc was an aberration and we were actually trending towards the right, no no. We were definitely trending to the left. And Obama was not an aberration. And when he at his inauguration, he was pulling at 83%. That is unbelievable. Mobody's ever seen a number like that. And certainly not seen it since, right. So they were ready. And what did Obama do? Delivered no change and delivered no hope. All big Obamacare, yeah. It was marginally better, than the earlier disastrous health care plan that we had in America, which is no plan, at all. But it was originally called Romney Care. It was cooked up by the Heritage Foundation, the same group that did Project 2025. And if you're on the left_, you have to be thinking there's no way that's true. Go look it up! Heritage Foundation. Why and that's why it mandated that you buy from private health insurance, it kept drug prices non-negotiable. It was a right-wing plan that was just slightly better than the awful health care situation we were on, right. And it was meant to release the pressure, but not actually solve the problem. So Obama gives a warmed-over Heritage Foundation plan and then brags about it like, oh I'm good for eight years, I passed Heritage Foundation's health care plan, I don't need to do anything else. He barely tried barely tried. Come on, brother. He didn't raise the minimum wage at all in the eight years. The minimum wage is $7.25. You may if you work every day, 40 days, 40 hours a week, no vacation you'll make $15,000 a year on minimum wage. In America, nobody can survive on $15,000. What do Obama do about that? Nothing. Paid family, what did Obama do about it? Nothing. Now if you criticize Obama, that's a third rail, that's where both Democratic voters get really mad. Because that's their hero. And then the establishment loves that. They get mad and they use that against you. They're like did you know. And New York Times literally did this to me. Did you know that Cenk Uygut criticizes Barack Obama? And they made it seem like I'm on the right now. I'm criticizing him from the left, right. But they leave that out on purpose. So, I mean we can get into a New York Times, says some of their investigative stories are amazing, so it's not it's not an easy, you know, simple binary answer, but some of their political reporting is the worst in the world. They're so deeply biased in favour of the establishment. And they will literally lie about you. it is what they did to me, to try to get to Bernie, it was unrea,l okay? So we'll get back to that.

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Cenk Uygur 59:31

So why am I hopeful that in the midst of all of these things that are wrong? Because the jury's in, you're going to have to go populist. Okay. Now, they tried populism from the right, or at least they think they did with Trump, right? And that's going to fail. It's guaranteed Trump's barely 70 IQ, right? Like, why does he do 145% tariff? What a ridiculous, nonsensical thing. Because by the way, I think the tariffs could work if they're super limited to a specific industry and you stick with them for 10 years, and you rebuild, it takes three to four years to build a plant or a factory. What are we talking about here? No, do 145%. You can't sell anything if there's 145% tariff on it. So the guy, he's going to crash things. And once he, what's he doing? Again, his number one priority is $4 trillion tax cut for the rich, right? At some point, they're going to catch on. This brother's not a populist, right? And they're going to, and they're already starting to get mad at him. Independence are already mad at him. And even some of the right is being to get mad at him. So what's the one thing we haven't tried in America? We tried establishment right. We tried establishment left. We tried populist right. The only thing left is populist left. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. We have the right answer. What is left progressive? What is populist populist, right? So you take the two things I've been talking about the entire time, progressivism, which is economic populism. You put those two things together. Oh my God, you put chocolate in my peanut butter. You put peanut butter in my chocolate. What a great combo, right? 

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Mo Dhaliwal 01:01:06

So is this where Rebellion Pack comes in, then? Exactly. 

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Cenk Uygur 01:01:09

OK, so I did Justice Democrats after the 2016 win and then, you know, basically that went awry at one point in the way that I described. So after the 2024 Trump win, I revitalized Rebellion Pack, okay, and relaunched. So Rebellion Pack is all the things that I've been describing in the core of it are six intensely popular policy proposals. They're Democratic proposals, but independents love them, and tons of the right wing voters love them. Number one, anti-war. The whole country is anti-war now. The only people who want more left are supporters of Israel that want us to fight all their wars for them. That's really the only reason we fight these wars, okay. And military industrial complex, that makes money for a war, and everyone in the establishment that is paid off by those two lobbies. OK, so for the outsiders, for the average Americans, like no more wars. Come on, for God's sake. The right hates wars, the left hates wars, the middle hates wars. So this is not a hard policy. OK, now we'll see if Trump meant it or not in a minute, but the Democrats never mean it. So this long story, but that's easy connects money out of politics. Of course, Republicans and Democrats hate that. The politicians, the voters love it. It's at over 90 percent, right? That's anti-corruption. A higher minimum wage, which pushes up all wages. They'll say, oh, no, that's going to create inflation. No, it keeps up with inflation. When are you ever going to actually give it to the average guy instead of the top? Oh, no, no. What won't drive up inflation is if we give four trillion to the rich and then eventually they'll trickle all over you. Yeah, no, thank you. No, thank you. We've tried that 100 times. It's a trick. It's not to help you. It's to rob you. Right. So now lower drug prices. All you have to do is get Medicare to negotiate. In America, the fact that Medicare can't negotiate drug prices is the most anti-capitalist, anti-free market thing I have ever seen. And when you explain that way to the right wing, they already hated it, the fact that we couldn't negotiate. Then it makes them furious. They're like, this is a drug companies destroying capitalism by buying off our politicians. Hugely popular. OK, lower housing prices by making sure that private equity bankers can't buy residential homes. People love it. So. 

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Mo Dhaliwal 01:03:39

An epidemic that's like sweeping across the states. 

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Cenk Uygur 01:03:42

100%, right? Again, even Charlie Kirk came on our show and agreed with us. Right-wing agrees, left-wing agrees. Paid family leave, we all agree. So you see, these are built to be super popular. They are our proposals, meaning Democrats and left-wingers. We should be super proud that our policy proposals are loved by the American people.So I have a simple idea. Why don't we run on our most popular proposals? Shocking, crazy. Oh, my god. And really, no one does. So I'm like, OK, get out the way, yo. Get out the way. We're doing rebellion pacts. So who signs on first? Ro Khanna, also the first guy to sign on to Justice Democrats. Him and Nina Turner are the economically populist wing of the Bernie movement. They've always been on the right side. They never played identity politics. They never got into the culture wars. Always about, let's fight for the average guy no matter what their race is, no matter what their gender is, et cetera, right?So then we go and sign up a 24-year veteran, Richard Ojeda in North Carolina 9. I mean, this guy is as popular as you'll ever meet. So I love him. He has this one idea that I love so much. He thinks that lobbyists should be forced to wear body cams. Like, OK. So he's in an R+10 district. That means Republicans have a 10-point advantage. So when I talk to reporters, guess what they tell me about his chance of winning? Impossible. OK, later when he wins, they'll say, well, it doesn't really count. It was inevitable. That's what they'll say. I guarantee it. You'll see it. And then we got Randy Bryce running in Wisconsin 1. In another Republican district, we think we can win. He's an iron worker. He ran once before. He was known as Iron Stash, OK? These are some real populist guys, OK? So if we win in, forget blue districts, forget purple districts.If we win in red districts, then we go into 2028. Then we say, the establishment guys told you they knew how to win. And it led to nothing but nonstop losses, right? How many times did they lose to Donald Trump, right? We told you we could win. And we won in red districts, in Republican districts. So now when we tell you our candidate has the better chance of winning, which is the number one talking point we have to defeat, that, oh, no, you outsiders. You don't know anything. The country loves insiders. You guys can't win. Only we can win, right? Once we defeat that talking point, then they're toast. They're toast. We find a great candidate. But now, one last thing, because it's so important. Because, brother, once you win the 2028 primary, you've got the Democratic Party. You have the presidential candidate. You can remake the DNC. You can remake the Democratic Party. And then people hilariously say they still say it. They're like, oh, no, you can't remake the whole party. We just saw Trump do it. We just, I mean, how blind are you? 

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Mo Dhaliwal 01:06:43

Utterly change the DNA of the Republican Party and it'll be generations before it changes again. 

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Cenk Uygur 01:06:48

Yes. And we could do the same for the Democratic Party and bring it back to what it was under FDR, under JFK, under LBJ, economic populism. When we created Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, by the way, the three most popular government programs in American history, we did that. The Democratic Party did that. We can go back to that. We can be proud to be Democrats again. But on you're not allowed to take corporate PAC money. If you take corporate PAC money, we can't trust you. Okay. So you have to be clean. All right. So all three of those candidates are clean.We'll add more clean candidates going forward. Number two is you have to actually do it. If you get into Congress or you're the president and you don't do it, we're going to turn on you. And I'm telling you ahead of time. Perfect. Okay. Because the number one problem with the Democratic Party is that they never deliver on their promises.We're going to deliver, put any enforcer. If you want, I'll do it. Okay. Just go up there. Here's, here's how I'd get paid family leave passing. We can get a pass in two weeks and I'm not kidding. I'm not exaggerating. We just go up new press conference, president, steward, president, Connor, whoever it is, uh, has, uh, said we're going to pass paid family leave. Now here's what I'm, uh, daring Congress to do, whether you're a Democrat or Republican. I dare you to vote against it. Good news. We're going to make you famous. Whoever votes against this, we're going to put your picture up in the next press conference at the white house and we're going to show all the donor money that you take and why you voted against American moms. They're just asking for 12 weeks off after they have a baby right now in America. They were the only country that doesn't have paid family leave.Every other developed nation has it. Almost every other nation on earth has it. Right. And we're the richest nation and we can't afford it. No, you hate American moms and we're going to tell everyone you hate American moms and it'd be the last goddamn vote you ever take. So go ahead. I dare you to vote against it. It'll pass immediately and it might be unanimous. No one's ever tried. So if Rebellion Pack wins, we're going to try. 

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Mo Dhaliwal 01:09:01

What I'm going to I want to operationalize this a little bit. It's going to be a little, I think, perhaps mundane a conversation to have after sharing a perspective about, you know, reforming the American political system, but you've been so far ahead of the curve in terms of like how you use media, how you use technology, how you kind of operationalize these things.So you've described what you were going to do differently or what you want to see the Democrats do differently with this sort of populism. What is the Young Turks going to do differently? What are you going to do differently? What do you see coming that you're alive to? And you think that whether it's media or other politicians, just from a tools and technology perspective that they haven't caught up to yet, that they're not using. 

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Cenk Uygur 01:09:40

Yeah, so two answers that one is policy. The other is mechanics, as you're pointing out. So on the policy front, we already started doing it. And that's part of why other shows on the left have started attacking us voraciously. So what are we doing? We're going to talk to the right wing. We're going to talk to independence. And they're like, you can't do that. Talking to Charlie Kirk makes you a Nazi. Does it or does it introduce ideas like banning private equity from buying residential real estate to right-wing audiences? Oh, you can't trust Tucker Carlson. Who said I'm trusting Tucker Carlson? I'm not trusting Tucker Carlson. But if Tucker Carlson says that we shouldn't go to war with Iran, I'm going to encourage that. And whoa, he's probably lying. Who cares if he's lying? If he's telling his right wing audience day in and day out, do not go to war with Iran, I don't really care what he actually thinks. I care what he's telling people and how he's influencing them. So I'm going to go and find allies. And I am going to go speak to independents and right-wingers and tell them the populist left is coming and we're going to rescue you guys. And Trump's going to let you down. And after Trump lets you down, you know where to come. Now, the reason why other shows can't do that and why other Democrats can't do that is the very first thing that Rogan will ask, or Patrick Bet-David, on the right will ask is, oh, yeah? Did you say Biden was too old? Or were you one of the liars? Oh, good news. I said Biden was too old. OK. Oh, yeah. Did you call out democratic corruption? Good news. I called out democratic corruption. Oh, you say Donald Trump is trampling on the Constitution. Did you call up Barack Obama when he violated due process in killing Anwar al-Awlaki? Good news. I did. And in fact, I was furious at Attorney General Eric Holder. And I said, you're opening a door you should not open. OK. So we have been right. We have been consistent. We have been principled. And so have these candidates like Ro Khanna, Nina Turner, and there's others, right? And all of these guys. So we're providing them an answer that they have been looking for the whole time. So now, on the left, a bunch of radicalism has begun, not just on the far left of cultural warriors, et cetera, but also the previously moderate camp, the Biden-Hillary camp. They are so, the MSNBC poisoned their mind. To the point where Democrats or angels, this is the tribalism. Democrats or angels, Republicans are all Nazis. And they're all racist, OK? So if you voted for Donald Trump, you're racist Nazis, OK? But wait a minute, guys, a lot of those are Obama voters. So how could they be racist Nazis if they voted for Obama? And I'm not talking about one or two, I'm talking about millions. Wait a minute, do you understand that the most extreme person on the right does not represent the whole right? The most extreme person on the left does not represent the whole left. Isn't this obvious? So when you get closer to the middle, the swing voters, they're not at all racist. They're not at all interested in burning the Constitution. 

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Cenk Uygur 01:12:44

Some on the radical right are, yes, you're correct about that. Now, those are the guys I've been fighting my whole life, right? But that doesn't mean every Trump voter, 71 million Americans are all Klan members? No, they're not, right? Oh, that is just despised. So the MSNBC former moderates have become the most radical. They're like, no. And if you talk to Charlie Kirk and if you think that his voters aren't all racist, then you're a racist. You're a fascist, right? So I mean, attack, attack, attack. We've been attacked from every quarter, right? And no, I say no to everyone who's a radical, and I'll fight you to the end of time.So this happens in religion, too. If you're going to be a good Muslim, you have to believe in the most radical clerics says. Why? Who said that? No, the radical cleric made that up. That's not true at all. I don't have to listen to him. I can interpret it any way I like. No, you have to listen to the leaders. Why do I have to listen to the leaders? Did Allah come and tell you himself? No, he didn't. That brother pretended that he speaks for Allah, which by the way, is sacrilegious, right? We can all interpret it any way we like, okay? And if that bothers you, that's a sad day for you, okay? You do not own Islam, okay? You do not own Christianity. You don't own Judaism. You don't own the Republican Party or the Democratic Party or the left or the right. They say, oh, well, you don't agree with us on X, Y, or Z. Okay, these are tiny little issues, right? Trans sports at the professional level. That is a microscopic issue that was created by the right wing to drive a wedge between us. And then, that's worked. And it worked beautifully because the radical left walked right into that ambush. And they're like, hey, everybody come with us. We've got a great ambush to go to. And I'm like, no, it's an ambush, please. It's a trap, don't go there. Heretic, Nazi! Okay, all right. So, and to this day, those guys don't acknowledge, yeah, that hurt us in the election. It was not the number one issue. Number one issue is how corporate the Democrats are and how they never deliver, right? But the second issue was that we were stuck with these ambushes you just guys willingly walked into, right? So, those are radicals and I fight against them. So it is what it is, you know, there is no way to get to the right answer without going through all of these wars. Because when you propose change, the people in power don't say, oh, you'd like to change the system that put me at the very top. Well, come on in! We'd love to have you. No, they smear the hell out of you and they have your own side attack you. They have the other side attack you. They have every side attack you. Some of it is conscious. Some of it is subconscious and they'll feed into it. They'll establish them and be like, oh yeah, Cenks is a heretic, right? He wants Democrats to win. Boo! No, no, no, no, no. You want the Democrats to have the most unpopular positions. Wait, guys, even if we sit, look, for example, I was for gay marriage and at the time, back in, you know, forever, that was unpopular all the way up until 2013. 

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Cenk Uygur 01:16:00

How do you know it became popular in 2013? Because Biden and Obama switched their position in 2013. That means it crossed the 50% barrier, those cowards, sorry, I know, you love Obama, sorry, okay? They would have never gone to that position if it was unpopular, okay? And besides which, it's a fact.You can see the tracking of the polls, right? So we were in favor when it was very unpopular. So wait, wait, doesn't that contradict? No, because that is a constitutional right. That is a fundamental human right. I don't have a constitutional right to play in the NBA. You don't have a constitutional right to play in the WNBA, okay, but we do have a constitutional right to love whoever we love, associate ourselves with whoever we want, marry whoever we want, and the Supreme Court agreed with us, we do have that constitutional right.We were right all along. But how do you win on that fight? Do you start there? No, you start by doing popular things and building up the credibility and the leverage to then make an ask of the American people.Hey, remember when we delivered social security and Medicare for you and you remember how much you loved that? Now can you trust us when we ask you to pass the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act? Hey, we got enough credibility to be able to do that and then we do it. Hey, after we do popular things, can you see that we were also right that maybe our gay and lesbian and bisexual, et cetera, LGBTQ brothers and sisters also are equal and should have equal rights? And you frame it in a way that all Americans relate to, justice, equality, right? And equality means equality. It doesn't mean I have more rights than you. It means I have the same exact rights as you, right? So we won on gay marriage doing that.So instead when we went radical on trans sports, we went backwards and we lost trans people in the military. Now they're starting to get into which bathrooms you should go. Those are disastrous. If you're a transgender person and they're making you go into the wrong bathroom, the one you don't identify with, that hurts your life. How many transgender people are gonna plan to WNBA? Maybe one, right? Whereas they all need to go to the bathroom and we need, and so that should have been sacrosanct and military. 

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Mo Dhaliwal 01:18:15

And there's a real skillful conflation of these things to drive the wedge and to undermine the overall purpose. 

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Cenk Uygur 01:18:19

Exactly right. And so now when I make the case for trans people being in the military the right wing goes oh you're one of those you know libs and you and then I have to talk them through it hey they're volunteering to die for you that's a good thing hey shouldn't don't you believe in equality oh yeah goddamn right I do well then we shouldn't they be equal to you and then they've been well they better pass a fitness test that's right and they have that pass the fitness test so right now the transgender folks are kicking out of the military have X not everyone I don't can't vouch for every single person but overall have excellent fitness tests etc all the different metrics and requirements that you need well if that's true aren't you doing DEI in reverse saying even though they qualify I would like to disqualify them based on gender ideology when congratulations you look apparently you love the right so you flip the frame there's ways of winning but if you just blunder into right-wing ambushes and then drive everyone out of your party that disagrees 2% because you're clinging to this purest mentality. Yeah. 

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Cenk Uygur 01:19:30

Purist radical ideology, you're never gonna win, right? And then we're all gonna get marched backwards. And that's what's happened. Okay, so now on mechanics, what are we doing? So mechanics is harder. So the algorithms reward extremism. They call it consistency. But what that really means is if you're on the left, you better say more and more left-wing things. If you're on the right, you better say more and more right-wing things. That's what drove some of the right-wing to become radicals in the first place. Now it's done it for the left-wing. So if you disagree with any portion of your audience, you lose some subscribers, the algorithm will bleed you dry, okay?So, oh, no, but wait a minute, I have to tell the truth. My audience wants to hear that Joe Biden is young, but he's not young. I have to tell him that he's old because I'm in the news business, right? Nope, nope, you pissed off some portion of your audience. Algorithm's gonna punish you, okay? But I have to say that insisting on the WNBA is not the right strategy. Nope, some portion of your audience wanted to hear things that aren't true, and you didn't super serve them. So the algorithm will punish you, right? So what does that do? That punishes truth, and it makes the country much more divided.And then so when we say let's do paid family leave, you can't unite the two sides because they hate each other so much. The right-wing goes, oh, I'm not gonna go with those libs, and oh, yeah, they're probably gonna wanna make me transgender, right? You're like, oh, yeah, yeah, do you want the moms to have time off after a baby or don't you, right? But the good news is most Republicans say, yeah. Even when I was on Patrick's show, they polled our audience. 75% of them said yes to paid family leave. So good news, right? So we gotta get past these things to get to, but the algorithms unfortunately have greatly exasperated the problem. So I am trying to find a way around that because that's what we do. And will we have a harder time raising money for Rebellion Pack when we don't take corporate back money? Yes. So my point is we have hurdles at Young Turks, we have hurdles at Rebellion Pack, but guess what? I was born with hurdles. I was born to get past the hurdles because I didn't have a choice. So that's what we're gonna do. We're gonna figure it out. And the good news is with 28 million subscribers and 30 billion lifetime views, we're built for this. And so we will go forward and we will win. And in fact, here, I'll end on the prediction that I told you earlier that everyone will say is impossible. In fact, I'll give you two for the price of one, okay? So we will win the Democratic primary in 2028. We will remake the Democratic party and we will win the general election and we will bring back this country, America and the Democratic party to what it was supposed to be, okay? And the second prediction is Young Turks is going to be the number one news network in the world, okay? So right now, oh no way. CNN has billions and billions of dollars in revenue and they have this enormous name recognition. 

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Cenk Uygur 01:22:41

They have this and they have that and they have all the fancy pants, right? You guys are a bunch of immigrant outsiders. You got a Turk and an Armenian. You know, you've got this ragtag group, Jews and Muslims and all these different folks. It'll never work.And how are you guys gonna do it? You're so small compared to them, at least in terms of revenue and money and stuff. it's inevitable because we are on the side of the crowd. We have the wisdom of the crowd on our side. We have the right policies. We're lucky. I mean, that's a big stroke of luck that most of our policies line up exactly with the American people.What the people want. Yeah, not every one of them, like I'm for much more gun control than the average American, right? But most of our policies are right down the center of American politics. And is TV going to win or online video going to win? Well, that jury's already in. So more people are coming in our direction. So if somebody thinks that they're going to do a news network that is going to be bigger than ours and better than ours in the future, I'd love to. I mean, I wouldn't love to see it, but I'd love to see you try. Right. I already saw CNN throws $300 million in the garbage trying. They lasted three weeks with their online video.Okay. $300 million they burned in a dumpster fire. The old guys can't figure it out if their life depended on it. What's the first thing they're going to do in an online studio? Put in prompters. Okay. I get why you use prompters. We sometimes if we have to read something and it's hard to remember, you use a prompter, right? But when you, when I'm doing a news show, Anna's doing a new show, et cetera, John, all of our hosts, when you look into the camera and you make mistakes and you act human and you connect with the audience, that's going to be the robot reading from a prompter any day time.Right. And they're going to come in their suits and eventually we're going to take the tie off. We're so populist. We're so authentic. Right. No, those guys have no chance. And there are people that are smaller than us and they might catch us. They have a better chance than the big guys do. Right. But they're going to have to, they've got 20 years to catch up. Right. We've got a 20 year lead. So let's see what happens. But, uh, I think the future is, let's see if I'm right one more time. I think the future is clear. Uh, I think we're going to be the number one news network and I think it'll make a big difference. 

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Mo Dhaliwal 01:25:05

All right. So we've got those two predictions then it's, you guys are taking the primaries and the Young Turks is the largest news network in the world. Yep. All right. We'll watch those predictions. Thanks for your time, Cenk. Much appreciated, man. Appreciate it, brother. All right. Well, hopefully we've given you a lot to think about. That was High Agency, like and subscribe and we will see you next time.