‘They’re Not the Real Left’: Cenk Uygur Slams ‘Fake’ Progressives Cozying Up to Tucker Carlson
The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur tore into “fake” progressives who praise Tucker Carlson and appear on his Fox News show.
Uygur dished on cable news in an interview with Mediaite’s Aidan McLaughlin for The Interview podcast.
Uygur, the founder and CEO of TYT Network, is eminently familiar with the cable news world. He hosted a show on MSNBC back in 2011, but he left the network after six months, claiming they objected to his unabashedly progressive commentary. The Young Turks host told McLaughlin he has since been “literally banned” from MSNBC and CNN.
Uygur argued progressives more broadly have been shut out of cable news, saying “That’s not even a question. That’s just a factual issue.” He said networks are far more comfortable with “corporate Democrats” and conservatives.
“All of cable news is filled with all those guys,” Uygur said, while “progressives are banned everywhere.”
Others on the left have made that same case. McLaughlin noted that Briahna Joy Gray, the former Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign press secretary, went a step further.
Gray recently argued that Fox News is “more inclined to have a leftist on than MSNBC and CNN.” She also praised Tucker Carlson for the “anti-establishment viewpoint” he offers.
Uygur he flatly rejected Gray and others who suggest Carlson is a better ally to progressives than CNN and MSNBC.
“Briahna Joy Gray, unfortunately, is one of the people that are now in the fake left,” said Uygur, grouping her in with Jimmy Dore, Glenn Greenwald, and Dave Rubin, who originally hosted a show on TYT Network:
To be fair to Dave Rubin, he started this whole thing. The fake left saying, ‘Oh, you know, it’s just, I’m a classical liberal. I’m a progressive. But it turns out the right wing is right about everything.’ Okay? So that’s the shtick that they do, and they go on Tucker’s show, and they dance for him. So it’s disgusting. They’re not the real left, and here’s how you can tell: they never disagree with Tucker.
Uygur said the producers of Tucker Carlson Tonight have reached out to him “a couple of times” because they both agree on an anti-war position.
“They’re more open to the idea of having left-wingers on Fox News, which is, yes, definitely ironic,” he said. “But it comes with a price: you’re not allowed to disagree.”
Dismissing Fox News as “wall-to-wall propaganda,” Uygur said booking guests from the left is “just a trick to get you to believe that the whole country agrees that Tucker Carlson is the most reasonable person in America.”
Uygur noted he shares Gray’s loathing for centrist Democrats, “but this enabling the right wing is unacceptable.” He argued that Carlson uses rhetoric to appear populist when “All he wants to do is trick you into complying with the corporate agenda by pretending to be progressive on some issues.”
“Tucker Carlson doesn’t agree with us at all,” Uygur said. “He uses the fact that most of the country agrees with progressives as a tool to sheep-herd them into right wing talking points.”
“For Briahna Joy Gray and all the fake left to help him pretend that he’s on our side while he actually agrees with the corporate agenda is disgusting.”
Watch above, and listen to the full podcast here.
