“By the time you get to the general election, it’s robot A versus robot B, and they’ve robbed you of all your choices,” he said. “It’s actually the same way it works in China and Iran.”
“The Chinese have a Politburo like the Soviets used to, and they vote within themselves — this very small group — and give you two options that both serve the Politburo, and then they have fake elections,” he explained. “Iran does the same thing. The mullahs vote internally, give you two fake options that both serve the ayatollah and the mullahs, and then people have a fake election.”
“Here in America, the donors select who is going to win the primaries by giving them all the money. Once you’ve got $5 million in a primary, good night, Irene.”
“In fact, in America, the person with more money wins the election 95% of the time,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re a Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, nothing matters. Nineteen out of 20 times, the person with more money wins — because we legalized bribery. So by the time you get to the general election, every good choice is eliminated.”
“But not in the primaries,” he said. “And that’s why, generally speaking, mainstream media hates primaries. They don’t like talking about primaries because in primaries, you have a little bit of real choice left,” Cenk said. “So go vote in the primaries and vote out all the incumbents.”
“Independent media is why I have a lot of hope,” he said. “Step one is defeating the incumbents. But there’s another step: media. That’s as important as anything else in politics.”
“Mainstream media says they are the only objective ones, when it’s the exact opposite. In fact, claiming they’re the only objective ones is part of their propaganda,” he said. “But meanwhile, people are going: Okay, wait. I went online and I listened to Shawn Ryan, and I listened to Tucker, and I listened to Dave Smith, and Cenk and Ana on The Young Turks, and Breaking Points, and I got a variety of opinions. They don’t agree on a lot of stuff, but there are facts that they share.”
“And now, under-50-year-olds, if they even turn on TV, look at it like, ‘What is this BS? This is nothing but lies. The campaign contributions don’t affect the politicians? What kind of BS is this?’ It’s a play, man.”
Cenk said that when he worked at MSNBC, they forced him to use a teleprompter and read pre-approved scripts.
“I was a host at 6 o’clock on MSNBC, 14 years ago. They make everybody use a prompter,” he said. “I call them news actors, not news anchors.”
“On Young Turks, we don’t use prompters. We have our outline prepared. We’re going to show you the videos. We’re going to prove our case. We’ve got the quotes. I don’t need a prompter,” he said. And they said, ‘No, no, just put it in the prompter.’ At first, I thought they were just uncomfortable: Is he going to be able to handle it?”
“No. They want you on the prompter because they want to pre-approve your script,” he said. “If I write a script that criticizes one of the sponsors –I don’t know they’re a sponsor, and I didn’t care– but they give me a call: Take that out.”
“Oh, that’s why you wanted it in the prompter.”
“I remember I wrote an op-ed, sent it to Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal. Sometimes they published my op-eds back in the day. I get a note back: ‘This doesn’t fit our narrative.’ Uh, yeah, I wrote it, you didn’t.”
“The good news is they can’t have everyone under 50 unsee it,” he continued. “So now the news is out. Mainstream media is garbage. It’s nothing but propaganda. They don’t cover the news. They cover up the news. Go watch online, and you’ll start to see things that are true.”
He added that obviously not everyone online is perfect, but “online, we’re incentivized to tell people things that are true.”
“Now people are forced to use their own minds,” he said. “So in this world, their propaganda runs into our brick wall. Before, our message ran into their brick wall.”
“Already in 2024, online media was more important than mainstream media. In 2028, it’s going to be more important. And by that time, it won’t be under 50, it will be under 55.”
“Older folks vote a lot, so the TV brain lock is important, but you can talk to your family members. Get them off that drug. Every time you turn on TV, you are voluntarily allowing someone to fill your head with lies,” he said.
