“The Young Turks” creator and podcast host Cenk Uygur is running for president in 2024. The 53-year-old Turkish-American political commentator and creator of the left-wing news program made the announcement Wednesday.
“Biden created 14 million jobs in his first three years. Trump created 6.4 million in his first three,” Uygur posted to X Wednesday. “Biden more than doubled him. Guess who has a 19-point lead on jobs? Trump. Because Biden has no ability to make his own case. Time for a new candidate.”
On his campaign web site, Cenkforamerica.com, Uygur said the 2024 election is the most important of our lifetimes. Citing statistics that show President Biden is trailing former president Donald Trump, he said policy was the way to win.
Specifically, his campaign cited support for paid family leave, higher wages, a public option for health insurance and an end to gerrymandering that manipulates electoral district boundaries to favor certain parties.
President Biden has a disapproval rating of 53.9% and an approval rating of 39.5%, according to the most recent polling reported on Fivethirtyeight.com. More than two dozen polls taken over the past three weeks show approval for the president is declining.
With just over a year until the General Election and mere months until the first Democratic primary of the season in South Carolina in February, Uygur’s candidacy is a long shot. Born in Turkey, he may also be ineligible. The U.S. Constitution says a president must be a natural-born citizen, be at least 35 years old and have been a resident of the United States for 14 years to declare their candidacy.
Uygur, who was born in Istanbul and immigrated to the U.S. in 1978, said he believes the Constitution’s natural born citizen clause allows his run for president, though he acknowledged that the Supreme Court may have to take up the issue.
“It should not have been me,” he said Wednesday.” It should have been somebody else, but it was not anyone else.”
Uygur’s presidential campaign is not his first run for public office. He ran for U.S. House California District 25 in 2020 but, with just 6.6% of the vote, did not make it past the primary.
Uygur joins fellow Democratic presidential hopeful and spiritual author Marianne Williamson, who is also running as a Democrat to win the party’s presidential nomination. Former Democratic candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., switched parties earlier this week to run as an Independent in the 2024 race.