Cenk Uygur
TeNi I---
Demographics
Gender Male
Birth Name Cenk Kadir Uygur
Birthplace Istanbul, Turkey
Birth Date March 21, 1970
Ethnicity West Asian
Overview Turkish, some Levantine Arab, Kurdish
Nationality American, Turkish
Career Political commentator, media host, attorney, politician
Color Season Dark Autumn
Notes and Motifs
Je social critic
Co-creator of The Young Turks, a populist sociopolitical news and commentary program
Candidate in both the special election as well as the regularly scheduled election for California's 25th congressional district
Some considered his candidacy controversial due to his past comments about women and minority groups, including the LGBTQ+ community, religious Jews, and Muslims, which some found offensive but which he said were taken out of context by the media
He lost both elections, placing fourth overall and second among Democrats after receiving six and seven percent of the vote, respectively
Announced his candidacy in the 2024 Democratic presidential primaries in October 2023 to pressure President Biden to withdraw, despite not being a natural-born U.S. citizen as required, claiming that the courts could overturn the requirement
Suspended his Presidential campaign on March 6, 2024
Raised in a secular Muslim household, but became more religious during college, but later became agnostic, and is now a "stone-cold atheist," although he still identifies as a cultural Muslim
Popular political commentator and Twitch streamer Hasan Piker is his nephew
TeNi I--- Unseelie
Uygur: "Be true to your audience, or you will lose money."
Uygur: "You can't win a congressional seat unless you have money. Even if you do, it's tick-tock, tick-tock until someone with more money beats you."
Uygur: "The reason people like the Young Turks is because we say things you're not allowed to say in Washington that are obviously true."
Uygur: "I think our politicians are bought by the highest bidder and that until we clean up our election system, then we cannot make progress on any of the issues. That's what drives me - we must restore our democracy."
Uygur: "In politics, name recognition matters a lot."
Uygur: "I'm a huge optimist."
Uygur: "You know you're a bigot when you can't take out the word 'Muslim' from a sentence you stated and replace it with 'Jew' and still have it be socially acceptable."
Uygur: "I'm interested in producing more TV shows."
Uygur: "If I'm off the teleprompter, management doesn't get to see what I'm going to say."
Uygur: "I have always believed in the marketplace of ideas."
Uygur: "I was a liberal Republican growing up in New Jersey. That doesn't exist anymore. If you're a Republican, you have to think that tax cuts for the rich are awesome, torture is awesome, moral war is awesome."
Uygur: "I made $70,000 in the 1990s, when I was a corporate lawyer. I didn't see that salary again until I was on MSNBC."
Uygur: "I am not in the camp of 'Russia has to be our enemy, and they have to be that way forever,' and I think sometimes we fight about from the past."
Uygur: "How could anyone ever build a company if they didn't have investments? It doesn't make any sense."
Uygur: "If I get something wrong on air, I get 1,000 emails correcting me instantly, and most of our story suggestions come from viewers."
Uygur: "I don't really trust politicians, and our job is to call them out. It's old-school journalism."
Uygur: "When's the last time CNN broke an important story or really made the government angry? I literally can't remember. That's because they're built to be inoffensive. They do the opposite of watchdog journalism. They simply pass on the government's message to their audience."
Uygur: "Why do millennials like Bernie Sanders so much? I love that this is a mystery to Washington. It's the authenticity, stupid."
Uygur: "I don't have to do something I'm not comfortable with just to be on television."
Uygur: "Like Diogenes, when millennials went on their pursuit to find the one honest man in politics, it was obvious that man was Bernie Sanders."
Uygur: "When you lose power, then all of a sudden, the press are lions. When you have power, the press are lambs."
Uygur: "Unfortunately, a lot of the mainstream media television is so fake, so plastic, that it's really turned off the younger generation."
Uygur: "When I was at MSNBC, I had issues with the Obama administration. I got told by the person who runs MSNBC... that Washington was not happy with my tone."
Uygur: "Do you see Fox News go after Republican officials all the time? No, you almost never see that. You see them do that to Trump administration officials almost never."
Uygur: "There are a lot of things wrong with the country, and that doesn't mean America sucks. It means we should improve it."
Uygur: "The establishment thinks we're the bad guys, and we're the radicals, but what they don't realize is we're actually the last line of defense. After us, it's the pitchforks."
Uygur: "I'm an early, middle, and late supporter of Bernie Sanders."
Uygur: "I want to steer the national conversation in the right direction, from my point of view. I want to get under Robert Gibbs' skin and Rahm Emanuel's skin and Barack Obama's skin."
Uygur: "Imagine a progressive president fighting to fix the insane economic inequality in the country or to end the senseless drug war or, best of all, battling to get money out of politics. Wouldn't that be wonderful?"
Uygur: "I've criticized myself over the years."
Uygur: "Obviously, the genes of women are flawed. They are poorly designed creatures who do not want to have sex nearly as often as needed for the human race to get along peaceably and fruitfully."
Uygur: "I know that a lot of people love to say that polls are wrong or don't matter, and from time to time they are - it depends on who they are polling."
Uygur: "Success is about persistence. You can only afford to be persistent in something you deeply enjoy."
Uygur: "I think defeating Fox - and more importantly, getting the rest of the media to understand they do not do legitimate news - is very important. I hope to do that through pointing out their hypocrisy, propaganda, and general foolishness. But I also plan to beat them in the ratings and make them fear me."
Uygur: "I was always kind of a loudmouth to the point where I annoyed my teachers and friends."
Uygur: "I think Rachel Maddow has done a brilliant job in becoming more and more independent. And I think she does a fantastic progressive show, and she did it by accruing power, by getting better and better ratings."
Uygur: "The right-wing wants to destroy all the media and replace it with their propaganda."
Uygur: "The Republicans love alpha-males, and they're sick of the corruption, too. Not that Trump will do anything about it. But at least he's not bought. And he throws in just the right amount of racism to appeal to the Republican base."
Uygur: "You think that the CNN hosts can aggressively challenge government officials? I don't think so. It doesn't look that way at all. And of course, when you get to Fox News, they're a whole different animal: they're purely propaganda."
Uygur: "The right wing has an ecosystem that is funded by billionaires who want tax cuts."
Uygur: "Millennials are much more informed than they get credit for, and many are more politically knowledgeable than older generations."
Uygur: "I've defended the Clintons longer than I've been a liberal, but I don't have any nostalgia for that."
Uygur: "I look forward to fighting Nancy Pelosi, and I look forward to defeating Nancy Pelosi in getting the Green New Deal passed."