WATCH: Cenk Uygur Goes OFF on ‘Knuckleheads’ at Politico Over Anti-Semitic Bernie Sanders Smear
The Young Turks founder and host Cenk Uygur took Politico to the proverbial woodshed over a profile of Independent Vermont Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders that many saw as anti-Semitic, and which Uygur blasted in an epic 8-minute rant.
The profile in question has already been condemned by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sanders senior adviser David Sirota — among others — for its use of anti-Semitic tropes, such as a tweet calling Sanders “cheap” and an image of Sanders next to a tree with literal “Benjamins” for leaves.
On Sunday, Uygur posted a rant that dealt with the anti-Semitism, but also attacked the premise of the “smear.”
“So, this article has three massive problems with it,” Uygur said, and began by pointing out that “as far as anti-semitic tropes go, this is a really bad one.”
Uygur referenced the money tree, and that “the article talks about how he’s cheap, and has secret millions,” and pointed to another photo illustration from the piece showing Sanders holding three houses (none of which resemble Sanders’ actual houses) and asked “Wait a minute, I thought he was cheap, I don’t get it, if he’s cheap why does he have three houses?”
He pointed out that “it’s not just the writer, not just one editor, that’s on the cover of Politico, so everybody that is involved in Politico thought ‘Oh yeah, let’s smear the first Jewish candidate by calling him cheap and hoarding money secretly somewhere, and living a lavish lifestyle.”
“That’s actually the least problematic of the three terrible problems,” Uygur said. “It’s a huge problem, but let’s move on to number two.”
Uygur pointed out that there’s nothing secret about Sanders’ modest fortune, which the article pegs as “a net worth approaching at least $2 million,” whatever that means.
“The whole article, it’s littered with innuendo about, like, ‘Oh yeah, he talks about millionaires and billionaires controlling government, but now he’s a millionaire,'” Uygur said. “It’s a one smear after another after another after another.”
He said that rather than demonstrating any hypocrisy on Sanders’ part, or secret financial machinations, “there’s no point to it at all other than to just say that haha, he wrote a book and he now has over a million dollars.”
“No, you knuckleheads, so you think you cover politics, is that what you think? You think you know politics?” Uygur asked. “You don’t know anything. Bernie Sanders fights against millionaires and billionaires controlling our government, he doesn’t fight against them so that they don’t exist. Show me one sentence of Bernie Sanders ever saying there shouldn’t be any millionaires. He’s never said that, he’s not going to say that, that’s a preposterous thing to say.”
Uygur also decried a “progressive blockade” by the mainstream media, and said “I started my own company so I could respond to you jackasses.”
Watch the clip above, via TYT Network.
