Andrew Yang On MSNBC Exclusion: ‘This Will Look Even Worse After I Win’
Throughout Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang’s campaign, he has been repeatedly left off of debate graphics from various mainstream media outlets. In particular, MSNBC has omitted him so many times — as well as mistakenly referred to him as “John Yang” — that many of his supporters are relatively convinced that it’s not an accident.
Over the weekend, Yang addressed yet another instance of exclusion by the network and commented about how his treatment could affect the network.
“This will look even worse after I win,” he tweeted.
Political consultant Charles T. White also addressed the omission and didn’t hold back.
“These graphics are LIES. For five years, I built these types of graphics for network news. My team NEVER pulled this dirty trick, these lies of omission. It’s a despicable practice, particularly with political candidates. This propaganda must stop, NOW.”
Yang supporter and universal basic income (UBI) advocate Scott Santens has a Twitter thread with various instances of mainstream media excluding Yang — mostly MSNBC examples — that he continues to update to this day. The constant omissions have caused a great deal of backlash from Yang’s supporters, many of whom believe there is a concerted effort to minimize Yang’s campaign coverage or cover him negatively, mirroring the complaints of many Bernie Sanders supporters.
Pretty sure we should be on this graphic. @msnbc pic.twitter.com/7kbj2TzuHW
— Andrew Yang????? (@AndrewYang) October 19, 2019
“Hey @nytimes, how can you possibly have watched the debate last night and not MENTION @AndrewYang once!?” Yang’s campaign manager, Zach Graumann, wrote in response to a New York Times post-debate article that didn’t mention the 44-year-old serial entrepreneur. “Your co-host, @CNN, called us a winner. This is insane.”
Despite the purported bias, Yang’s campaign has been steadily growing. He raised an impressive $10 million during the third quarter, more than triple the $2.8 million raised during the second quarter, and recently conducted a successful 10-hour marathon of questions across Quora, Periscope, Twitter, and Reddit.
During the Reddit portion, he was asked how he plans to reach untapped demographics such as black voters, older voters, and voters in the Bible Belt, and suggested that he would be using both traditional and non-traditional strategies to do so.
“Please trust that we will put the resources to work where we think we will get the most bang for our buck, and that the goal is to win,” he said.
Yang is currently 7th in the polls with 2.2 percent support and set to take to the debate stage in November. Per a recent Emerson poll, Yang hit 5 percent in Iowa behind Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Pete Buttigieg.
