Your rich Uncle Bernie endorsed a candidate and unendorsed him within, essentially, the same 24 hours.

Never seen that before.

The interesting guy: Democratic House of Representatives hopeful Cenk Uygur (pronounced like “Jank”).

Cenk heads up The Young Turks, which has stayed afloat for several years — I respect his commitment.

Cenk’s an interesting guy, and he’s ready and willing to debate; though — as can be seen on YouTube — he at times takes his opponents’ words, changes them, then refutes them. You say tomatoes are sweeter than onions? He replies, “You just said tomatoes are robotic and onions are 8 feet tall. Now let me prove you wrong.”

See what I just did there to what he does, about what he does? That’s what he does. Enjoy the infinite loop.

Respectfully, Mr. Uyger seems impeded by partisanship to the point of being unwilling to consider ideas. The bottom line, in all situations, it appears, is “Democrats good, Republicans bad.”

And more pertinently, he offered this while talking about RedState…

Warning: If you’re someone who finds difficult the Jedi Mind Trick attempt of putting the word “right” after every debatable point, buckle up.

Here we go:

“The conservative websites and newspapers — they’ll be like, ‘Oh, you’re a fake journalist? Awesome.’ Right? … I mean, RedState’s trash on top of trash. Everybody knows that they’re hacks, they’re not reporting. Hilarious, right? … So there’s different layers, right? A lot of people in the media take right-wing blogs seriously. Okay, I can’t help your insanity. All they ever do is trash on top of trash. They make up stories out of whole cloth non-stop, right?”

I can also confirm that Cenk has asserted certain kinds of bestiality should be legal.

I don’t mean that as any kind of attack; I’m only pointing out a potential reason why Bernie removed his stamp of approval.

But it started out great — on Thursday, Sanders had the following to say about the Turk-ey:

“For many years Cenk has been one of the outstanding progressive journalists in our country. I’m endorsing Cenk because I know he will serve ordinary people, not powerful special interests. He is a voice that we desperately need in Congress.”

Here’s @BernieSanders’ statement: “I’m endorsing Cenk because I know he will serve ordinary people.” pic.twitter.com/HNGpuaAwz8

— Kevin Robillard (@Robillard) December 12, 2019

Cenk gobbled it up:

.@BernieSanders is a legend. He has stood his ground against corporate interests corrupting our politics for over 40 years. He has fought for progressives all of his life.

He has been right on all of the issues and now the whole country has moved in his direction. https://t.co/7LGLmovjZb

— Cenk Uygur (@cenkuygur) December 13, 2019

However, as reported by wholecloth hacks The Daily Caller, in 2013, Uygur went out on a limb for animal rights:

“Here comes the controversial part I shouldn’t say. I believe that if I were the benevolent dictator of the world, I would legalize bestiality where you are giving, you are pleasuring the animal.”

Furthermore, videos on the web feature him making remarks about women and sex that some may find offensive.

In lieu of posting them here, you can listen at your own risk via this link.

Anyway, Bernie has released Cenk back into the wild.

Take a ganders:

.@cenkuygur has been a longtime fighter against corruption. However, our movement is bigger than any one person. I hear my supporters who were frustrated and understand their concerns. Cenk today said he is rejecting all endorsements for his campaign and I retract my endorsement.

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) December 13, 2019

It’s not the first chink in Cenk’s armor — in 2017, Uygur parted ways with PAC Justice Democrats in light of blog posts he’d written in the early 2000’s.

At the time of his being let go, Justice Democrats Executive Director (and now-former AOC chief of staff) Saikat Chakrabarti laid it out:

“The words and conduct in Mr. Uygur and Mr. Koller’s posts degrade what it means to be a Justice Democrat. We do not feel that Mr. Uygur is fit to lead or participate in an organization that truly believes women’s issues and the issues of black and brown people are all of our issues.”

In his defense, Cenk explained that the long-ago posts “do not reflect who [he is] today.”

And to be clear, personally, I’m not much for judging people by what they thought or said two decades ago; and I’m unsubscribed from the outrage machine in almost every case.

No matter, Bernie apparently saw the endorsement as a fowl idea.

But all’s well that ends well — Cenk’s still in the running for March’s special election.

He’ll find out whether his goose gets cooked, just like a whole lot of birds next November — the month Trump wins the election. Right?

-ALEX

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