The RFK Jr. spoiler wannabe candidacy has now moved from an extreme longshot primary bid to third party, joining Cornel West and a possible bid from Trump surrogates No Labels as people who want to upset the general election apple cart. Marianne Williamson is all by her lonesome as a primary challenger to Joe Biden, so you have to figure that there’’s some sure bet longer than long shot who wants to throw his hat in the ring. Yeah, somebody like this guy:
Cenk Uygur is a YouTube personality who has hosted progressive-leaning TV on outlets like MSNBC and the long gone Current TV, where he succeeded Keith Olbermann as “chief news officer” after Olbermann’s departure (Keith has had very negative things to say about Current TV and its co-owner Joel Hyatt on his podcast, he also sued Current TV and settled the case out of court). He had started a network of media channels on YouTube under the banner of The Young Turks in 2005, with a sister network with several contributors called “Rebel HQ”.
Uygur’s only political experience was in a 2020 congressional special election where he ran as a Democrat to replace Rep. Katie Hill. He pulled 5.9% in the primary, which was enough to place fourth, and 6.6% in the general election. He has never held political office, and is a former Republican, though he currently identifies as a progressive with most of his views roughly aligning with Bernie Sanders.
There are several problems with Uygur as a candidate, the most prominent being that in the odd event of him winning the presidency, he would be unable to serve due to the fact that he was born in Turkey. Uygur has made the odd claim that he would challenge the “natural born citizen” requirement all the way to the Supreme Court and win since the case is "a slam dunk", though there’s no indication that the current Supreme Court would rule in his favor. Say what you will about RFK Jr. — and I say a lot, almost none of it good — but there are no legal barriers to RFK Jr. serving as president.
He has also had allegations that he retaliated against union organizers at his business, and he has made highly sexist comments early in his career that he has since disavowed, such as claiming that “women are genetically inferior to men because they don’t want to have sex often enough”. Currently, he claims that Joe Biden can’t win, and without foundation claims that Biden “has at best a 10 percent chance of winning”.
I’ve pretty much done away with Uygur and his Young Turks as part of my YouTube viewing rotation, partially because of one of the contributors (also an MSNBC/Current TV alumnus) on sister network Rebel HQ fawningly and repeatedly promoting one of the most successful con artists on YouTube, a fake activist who is one of the pioneers of one of the most obnoxious YouTube grifts; I wrote a diary on this in 2022. Much like the object of David Shuster’s online affection (think 1972 Donny Osmond to Shuster’s “Tiger Beat”), this whole candidacy thing is a self promoting grift dressed up as civic engagement.
My cat (aka Her Serene Majesty) has about as much chance of attaining the presidency as Cenk Uygur, but she’s not claiming to do anything except con me into giving her more Meow Mix or belly rubs. Cenk just needs to go away.