When Politico published a story on Bernie Sanders that many see as anti-Semitic, it brought out Cenk Uygur’s inner feistiness. Enough so, in fact, that he blasted Politico in an eight-minute rant.
Bernie Sander's upward trajectory is the product of years of middle-class striving, replete with credit card debt, real estate upgrades and an array of investment funds and retirement accounts https://t.co/ypFGj9o6ss
— POLITICO (@politico) May 25, 2019
And Uygur isn’t the only one enraged by the story, which apparently used a number of anti-Semitic tropes that portrayed the Independent Senator from Vermont as “cheap.” That particular insult was used in a tweet to promote the story and it showed Sanders standing next to a tree with leaves made out of money. The story has upset a number of notable people, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and David Sirota, Sanders’ senior adviser, Mediaite reports.
Uygur followed suit in his video.
“So this article has three massive problems with it,” he said, adding that “as far as anti-Semitic tropes go, this is a really bad one.”
He pointed out the money tree, noting that “the article talks about how he’s cheap and has secret millions” and mentioned another illustration from the story showing Sanders holding up three houses. He wondered:
“Wait a minute, I thought he was cheap. I don’t get it; if he’s cheap, why does he have three houses?”
He singled out those responsible for this one-sided story, adding “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.'”
But, he noted, that’s not all.
“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 notes that Sanders, whose net worth is roughly $2 million, hasn’t exactly kept his modest fortune secret.
“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,” he said. “It’s one smear after another after another after another.”
Uygur noted the article attempts to smear Sanders as a hypocrite but falls pretty short. He added, “there’s no point to it other than to just say that haha, he wrote a book and now he has over a million dollars.”
“No, you knuckleheads, so you think you cover politics, is that what you think?” Uygur said. “You think you know politics? 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 blamed the mainstream media’s “progressive blockade,” adding “I started my own company so I could respond to you jackasses.”
All I can say is go get ’em Cenk!
Featured image courtesy of the video above
