Cenk Uygur Discusses How Libertarians And Progressives Can Work Together

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Being Libertarian’s Charles Peralo interviewed Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks in the debut edition of Being Libertarian Presents. Uygur discussed everything from heated policy issues to giving his opinions about the candidates for President.

When asked to comment about his altercation with Alex Jones during TYT’s coverage of the Republican National Convention, Uygur responded by labeling Jones a “living, breathing troll,” and dismissed him as nothing more than an over-the-top conspiracy theorist.

The interview then quickly swung towards topics of interest to libertarians. Uygur called libertarians “principled and honest,” and noted that he prefers them greatly to Republicans, but also said that he believes they’re idealistic and remind him “a little bit of the communists.” Uygur did note that he agrees with Johnson “about fifty percent of the time,” and mentioned stopping interventionism and ending the “insane” War on Drugs.

Upon delving into further policy discussion, he stated some of his views that clash highly with liberals: being pro-Uber, and believing some certain regulations are definitely unnecessary.

Moving towards a discussion about the presidential candidates, he declared himself to have been “a Sanders guy,” and when discussing the other candidates, he asserted that the only thing Trump has going for him is that he’s an “idiot savant drawing attention to himself,” that Jill Stein is “too far left” for him and “out there,” and that “if you think Jill is out there, her VP pick is really out there.” In terms of the presidential debates, he said “Johnson should definitely be in the debates, and Jill Stein is polling well enough that she should be in the debates as well,” and said that Johnson and Weld would “change the equation” of the election if they were included.

In addressing the question that our fans wanted him to answer, which dealt with his controversial opinions about the Armenian Genocide, Uygur responded by lamenting the ignorance he had acted upon when writing and speaking on the topic in past years, stating that he “wrote some ill-advised things when [he] was younger about [the Armenian Genocide], because I grew up Turkish and only heard the Turkish side of the story […] I certainly was not an expert on it and to this day I am nowhere near an expert on it.”

In his closing thoughts, he reiterated that he doesn’t fully agree with Gary Johnson, saying that his main issue with Gary is on the issue of money in politics.

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