Andrew Yang hasn’t shown the best decision-making skills about his media appearances, and CNN’s Jim Acosta has certainly noticed. The anchor grilled the former presidential and New York City mayoral candidate on Saturday over his decision to appear on Tucker Carlson’s show in an effort to reach a new audience for his fledgling new political party.
Months ago Yang famously appeared on comedian Ziwe’s talk show, where he struggled to name a Jay-Z song and also inexplicably named the Times Square MTA stop his favorite. Those answers didn’t sit very well with New Yorkers, most of whom didn’t vote for him. But that was nothing like when he chatted with Tucker Carlson during his daytime talk show. On Saturday, as The Daily Beast noted. Jim Acosta confronted him about the appearance, taking particular umbrage with how said nothing to challenge the host as he praised, of all people, the Unabomber.
Here's the clip @Acosta asks @AndrewYang why he didn't call out "bad person" White Nationalist Icon @tuckerCarlson for praising Unibomber Ted Kaczynski – @CNN – https://t.co/amCrKr2Unw pic.twitter.com/YtiIm87xe3
— Chris Sampson (@sampsonlive) October 9, 2021
“Tucker Carlson… I mean, let’s just say he’s a bad person,” Acosta said. “And he represents so much of what is wrong in television news these days. You know this all too well; he spouts off white nationalist talking points. So why would you even go on his show?”
https://twitter.com/brooklynmutt/status/1446970377482252290
Acosta was more direct with his second question: Why didn’t Yang “go after” the Fox host when “he’s citing the Unabomber and just talking about crazy stuff?”
As The Daily Beast noted, Yang did his best to defend himself, saying he was attempting to reach more people for his political party.
“As you know, Tucker commands a massive audience, and if you wanted to try and build a unifying popular movement that does call attention to the fact that our system’s not working, really, for anyone, you have to, again, reach out,” Yang continued.
“And that’s what I was doing on that show. I mean, the goal is to have Republicans who are discontent to channel their discontent in a positive way. And right now, in my view, it’s not going in a positive direction. I’d like to help change that.”
He doubled down on that sentiment afterward on Twitter.
I don’t hate other Americans. I love them. 👍🇺🇸 @Fwd_Party
— Andrew Yang🧢⬆️🇺🇸 (@AndrewYang) October 10, 2021
We’ll see if trying to embrace everyone works for Yang, but it’s clear that not everyone is buying it.
[via The Daily Beast]