Cenk Uygur: Trump vs Harris, Progressive Politics, Communism & Capitalism

Communism makes no sense at all, totally opposed to human nature. It never works. It always evolves into dictatorship. It creates a power vacuum. When you say, "Hey, there's no structure of power here. We're all equal. It's a flat line," one guy usually gets up, because that's human nature, and goes, "I don't think so. I think if you're going to leave a power vacuum, I'm going to take that power vacuum." Corporatism hates competition. It wants monopoly and oligopoly power. Whereas capitalism loves competition and wants the free markets. When mainstream media has you hooked, you got no hope because you don't have the right information. You have propaganda, you have marketing. You don't have real news. When you're in the online world, it's chaotic. And don't get me wrong, it's got plenty of downsides, but within that chaos, the truth begins to emerge. Trump is a massive risk because of all the things we talked about earlier, but there is a percentage chance that he's such a wild card that he overturns the whole system, and that is why the establishment is a little scared of him.

You wrote a book. Yeah.

So that's an interesting distinction here. So you're actually, as far as I understand, pro-capitalism, which is an interesting place to be. That's the thing that probably makes you center-left and then still populist. You're full of beautiful contradictions, let's say this, which will be great to untangle. But what's the difference between corporatism and capitalism? Is there a difference? Yeah, so I really believe in capitalism. I don't think that there's really a second choice. Where it gets super interesting is the distinction between capitalism and socialism, because that's not at all as clear as people think it is. And people often say socialism and communism as synonyms when they're not synonyms. And so I view it as there's basically four distinct areas. It's obviously a spectrum. Everything is a spectrum. On one end, you have communism on the left and on the other end you have corporatism on the right. And I would argue that capitalism is in the middle. And so communism, we know, state owns all property. You're not allowed to have private property. So I will piss off a lot of people in this show. So I'm asking for their patience. Please hear me out and because, don't worry, I'm going to piss off the other side too.

Okay, so how do we fix it? So it's really interesting and nice that you have pro-capitalism and anti-corporatism. So how do we create a system where the free market can rule. Where capitalism can rule, we can have these vibrant flourishing of all these companies competing against each other and creating awesome stuff. So in the book, I call it democratic capitalism as opposed to Bernie's democratic socialism. We can get into that distinction in a minute. But so as Adam Smith said, and anyone who studies capitalism knows, you need the government to protect the market as well as the people. Why do we have cops? Because if we don't have cops, somebody's going to go, "Well, I like Lex's equipment. Why don't I just go into his house and take it?" So you need the cops to protect you, and that's the government. So people say, "Oh, I hate big government." Do you? It depends, right? If your house is getting robbed, all of a sudden you like the government. But you also need cops on Wall Street because if you allow insider trading, the powerful are going to rob you blind and the little guy's going to get screwed.

By the way, I was listening to Joe Biden from when he was like 30 years old, the speeches, he was eloquent as hell. It's fun to listen to actually. And he has a speech he gives or just maybe a conversation in Congress, I'm not sure where, where he talks about how corrupt the whole system is, and he's really honest and fun. And that Joe Biden was great, by the way, that guy. I mean, age sucks. People get older. But he was talking quite honestly about having to suck up to all these rich people and that he couldn't really suck up to the really rich people. They said, "Come back to us 10 years later when you're more integrated into the system." But he was really honest about it, and he's saying, "That's how it is. That's what we have to do. And that really sucks that that's what we have to do." So we did a video on our TikTok channel, then and now, of Joe Biden. This is when I was trying to push Biden out.

That's an interesting... I'm not taking that tangent at this moment. You mentioned mainstream media. What's the motivation for mainstream media to be corporatist also? So first of all, they're giant corporations. So, they're all multi-billion dollar corporations. In the old days, we had incredible number of media outlets. So, you go to San Francisco, there'd be at least two papers and there'd be a paperboy. I'm going all the way back, paperboy on each corner, and they're competing with one another. Literally, they'd be catty corner and one guy's going, "Oh, here are all this details." They're trying to get an audience. They're trying to get people interested. So, they're populist, they're interesting, they're mark breakers, they're challenging the government. Fast forward to now, or not now, but about a decade ago, five years ago, in that ballpark, now there's only six giant media corporations left.

So what would an amendment look like that helps prevent money being an influence in politics? So I started a group called Wolf-PAC.

What in general is your view on meritocracy? So I love meritocracy. I wish that we lived in a meritocracy and I want to drive towards living in a meritocracy. So that's why I don't like equality of results. So now people that are on the left will get super mad at that and go, what do you mean? Well, okay, brother, let's say you're at work and you got one guy who's working his ass off. Another guy, that's going, I don't care. I'm not going to do it. Well, the guy who works super hard has to pick up the slack. Now he's working twice as hard and now you want the same results? You want the same salary as that guy? No brother. No. He's working twice, four times, 10 times harder than you. That's not fair. Fairness matters. We were in the suburbs of Jersey, but we wound up in Freehold eventually, and we lived across a farm, which is... In central Jersey, it happens. And it was called Fair Chance Farm. I was like, how did I get, this is amazing, right? And I love that. That's the essence of America, and that's what I want to go back to. So we've got to create that opportunity, not just because it's the moral thing to do, but because it's also the economically smart thing to do. If you enable all those great people that are in lower income classes and middle income classes, you're going to get a much better economy, a much stronger democracy. So that's the direction we go.

So you think this woke mind virus that the right refers to is a problem, but not a big problem? No. So the right wing drives me crazy. So look, guys, your instincts of populism is correct. Your instincts of anti-corruption is correct, right? And I love you for it. And so in a lot of ways, the right-wing voters figured out the whole system's screwed before left-wing voters did. I shouldn't say left-wing voters, because progressives and left-wing have been saying it for not only decades, but maybe centuries. But democratic voters. A lot of democratic voters, some of them actually like this current system, a lot of them have been tricked into liking this current system. And the left should be fighting against corruption harder than the right. But right now, unfortunately that's not the case.

Basically, a presidential candidate who's a populist, who in part runs on getting money out of politics. Okay. Well, then let's talk about Donald Trump. So, to me, the two biggest criticisms of Trump is the fake election scheme. Out of that whole 2020 election, the fake election scheme is the thing that really bothers me. Then the second thing across a larger timescale is the counterproductive division that he's created in let's say our public discourse. What are your top five criticisms of Trump? Okay, so number one, I have the same exact thing as you. The fake electors scheme is unacceptable, totally disqualifying. So, the fake electors scheme was a literal coup attempt. So, he doesn't win the election. For folks who don't know, I need to explain why it's a coup attempt because you just throw out words and then people get triggered by the words and then they go into their separate corners. So, the January 6th rioters, they were not going to keep the building. That was not a coup attempt. It's not like, "Oh, the MAGA guys have the building. I guess they win, right?" No, that was never going to happen. So, what was the point of the January 6th riot? It was to delay the proceedings. Why did it matter that they were going to delay the proceedings?

Let's talk about the saga of Joe Biden. So over the past year, over the past few months. Can you just rewind. Maybe tell the story of Joe Biden as you see from the election perspective? Yeah. So about a year ago, I am looking at the polling. And first of all, I have eyes and ears. So whenever I see Biden, I'm like, this is a disaster. And then I go and talk to real people. And when I say real people, I mean not in politics. That's not their job. Because people involved in politics or media have a certain perspective, and it's colored by all of the exchanges in mainstream media, social media, et cetera. Real people aren't on Twitter having political fights. They're not watching CNN religiously, et cetera. Whenever I was at a barbecue, " You guys all Democrats?" In some barbecues. "Yeah." What do you guys think of Joe Biden? Almost in unison, "Too old." Every real person said too old. So I look at what real people are saying. That's why I thought Trump was going to win in 2016.

I got to ask you, because I also love Bernie, still got it. I love Bernie. I always have. I think he might still do it, but I enjoyed his conversations with Tom Hartman. He's a genuine one, like Bernie. Even if you disagree with him, that's a genuine human being. Yep.

All right, so big question. Who wins this election, Kamala or Trump? And what's Kamala's path to victory? And if you can steel, man, what's Trump's path to victory? There's not enough information yet. Since I make a lot of predictions on air and then brag about it unbearably, people are always, they'll stop me in the streets and they'll be like, "Predict this. Predict my marriage." "Brother, I don't know anything about your marriage. How can I possibly predict something without having any information?" In the case of this campaign, right now I got Kamala Harris at 55% chance of winning, which is not bad. Doesn't mean she's going to win by 55 because then that would be a 10 point margin. That's not going to happen. But I say around 51 to 55, but it's nowhere near over because of a lot of things. One, the Democrats are still seen as more establishment and people hate the establishment. Two, if war breaks out in the Middle East, which is now unfortunately bordering on likely, if that war breaks out, all bets are off.

Speaking of risks, when they debate, when Kamala and Trump debate, what do you think that's going to look like? Who do you think is going to win? Oh, that's not close. Kamala Harris will win unless she falls apart. Unless she goes back to the bad era. That's risk number three.

RFK Jr. You said some positive things for a while about RFK Jr. and I think you said you would even consider voting for him given the slate of people. This was at the time when Biden was still in. What do you think about him? What do you think about RFK Jr. as a candidate, as a person? He's been on the show, right? Yeah. Yeah, so he was on our show. People loved that interview, you could check it out anytime.

Terrible things have happened in that time period. Some of the worst things that have ever happened in history. But overall life expectancy is higher, incomes are higher, health is better, et cetera. So hope is not misplaced. It's real. It's empirical. So now we talked about how you could get money out of politics, and that's a legitimate hope, but media is another place where we have huge hope. So of all the corporate robots, the most important robot is media. So when mainstream media has you hooked in at the back of your neck, you're going to believe all these fairy tales about how politicians are nice people and they're trying to do the right thing, and donor money doesn't have any influence on them. So once you unplug from the matrix, well then you begin to see, oh yeah, hey, look, he took the donor money, did what the donors wanted, he took the donor money, did what the donors want, 98% of the time. So then you see clearly. So now what's happening at large, mainstream media is losing their power. And now online media, swarming, swarming, swarming, swarming. And so this goes back to why I started the Young Turks. So let me touch on that here and then we can come back to it if you want. So in 1998, I write an email to my friends and I say, "Online video is going to be television." And unsurprisingly, and they say, "You're nuts. That's never going to happen." At that point, we're still doing AOL dial-ups, like... Online video barely exists and television's mammoth. I say, "Guys, it's just a matter of logic." For me, there's so many ironies, I'm known for yelling online sometimes, but in reality, I'm obsessed with logic. So when you have gatekeepers, gatekeepers pick based on what they want, what the powerful want, in that case, advertisers, politicians, et cetera, they're never going to design programming as good as wisdom of the crowd.

But Lex, look at all the people who are the biggest now, because we've now had a couple of decades at this, and I mean as an industry. So I would argue you're huge and you don't do that. You don't do the conspiracy theories. You don't do the drama at all. Rogan is huge. Yeah, maybe there's drama, but he's genuine. I got a lot of issues with some of his policies. I've mixed opinions on Joe in a lot of different ways, but I don't doubt that he's genuine and people can sense that. And he's huge. We're genuine, we're huge. So this is the market beginning to work. So speaking of Joe, let me ask you about this.

Okay, beautiful. One of the controversial things you've done, in the nineties as a student at UPenn, you publicly denied the Armenian Genocide, which is the mass murder of over a million Armenians in 1915 and '16 in the Ottoman Empire. You have since then publicly and clearly changed your mind on this. Tell me the process you went through to change your mind. So when you're a kid, you're taught a whole bunch of things. That's the software that we talked about earlier. So cultural software is media, family, friends, social media, et cetera. And so growing up in any tribe, whether it's a religious tribe or an ethnic tribe, you are going to get indoctrinated into that tribe's way of thinking. So you take a Turkish person who's super progressive, loves Bernie, believes with all their heart and peace, and you tell them something about Kurds and they'll say, "Oh no, not those guys. They're terrible and evil and we have to do what we do to them." You see, that's the tribe taking over.

I mean, there's some of that [inaudible 03:43:23], some of the conspiracy theories. Do you think there's some value to the conspiracy theories that come from the right, but actually more so come from the anti-establishment? For me, there's a lot that raise a bit of a question. A lot of them could probably be explained by corporatism and the military industrial complex. But there's also a lot of them could be explained by creepiness and shadiness in human nature. Epstein is an example of that. There's a lot of ways to explain Epstein, including the basic creepiness of human nature. ... including the basic creepiness of human nature. But there could be bigger explanations underlying it.

What is the best way to achieve stability and peace in Israel and Palestine in the current situation and in the next five, 10 years? If people wanted to get to peace, it's relatively straightforward. There's already a deal that was negotiated. The Saudis agreed to it, and they're an important player in this game. The Palestinians and the Israelis have initially agreed to it. Even Hamas has kind of agreed to it. That deal exists and is just waiting on the shelf to get done.

We talked a lot about hope in this conversation. Zooming out, what gives you hope about the future of this whole thing? Of humanity, not just the United States. Of us humans on Earth. Why am I center left and not center right? It gets to that question. You look at the polling, not just here in America, but in almost any country, and it almost always breaks out to two-thirds to one-third. Two-thirds of the people say, "Let's be empathetic. Let's share. Let's do equality, justice. Let's be fair." One-third goes, "No. Me, me, me, me, me, me, me." That's just the nature of humanity.