Is Andrew Yang Facist-Adjacent, or Fascist-Adjacent-Adjacent?
That seems to be the point of this rather silly article at Politico.
Yang told Dave Rubin — whose podcast The Rubin Report has
interviewed white nationalists, white supremacists, conspiracy
theorists, anti-Islamic activists and anti-feminist media personalities —
that he “came of age during the first Clinton term” and considered
himself a Democrat.
And:
Yang also made appearances on The Ben Shapiro Show, The Joe Rogan Experience, and Tucker Carlson Tonight
to promote his candidacy. By then these shows had built a reputation as
highly critical of progressive policies and “woke” culture — a
viewpoint that had built them a collective, nationwide audience of
millions.
At a guess, Yang probably also appeared on Rachel Maddow and El Chapo Trap House as well. An unknown candidate like him has to find a way to get his message out somehow.
This used to be called "guilt by association", but of course here it's not guilt by associating with someone objectionable, but by being interviewed by someone who once interviewed someone objectionable. Mike Wallace interviewed a lot of bad people on 60 Minutes, does that mean we can't associate with Mike Wallace? Well, yeah, he's dead, but when he was alive?
They go on to point out some of the non-progressive things he said on those shows. This part made me chuckle a bit:
As he and Rubin discussed automation, Yang said, "If you take these
people who are working in fast-food restaurants — and these jobs get
automated away — and in my mind they should be automated away. Trying to
preserve these jobs is not where we should be going."
I'm sure he meant to say that they will be automated away, not that they should be. That's a business decision with quite a few variables and of course saying those jobs should go comes off heartless which is why we get this silly back-pedal:
He told POLITICO that he would only support automating those positions if the affected workers had better job alternatives.
If the affected workers had better job alternatives, they'd presumably be working at them, right?
