CNN "CNN Newsroom" - Transcript: Yang Demands Apology From MSNBC
Interview
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CABRERA: The impeachment election is upon us, but if November of 2020 becomes a referendum on whether President Trump deserves to be impeached and removed, who wins politically?
Andrew Yang joins us now from the campaign trail in Sioux City, Iowa. Thanks so much for being here.
ANDREW YANG (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It's great to be here. Thanks for having me on, Ana.
CABRERA: Let me ask you, even after everything that came out this week, you've said the impeachment proceedings are probably not going to work for the Democrats.
Earlier today, I spoke with Democrat, Andrew Gillum, who lost a down- to-the-wire race for Florida governor in 2018. He's now a CNN political commentator and he disagrees with you. Listen to this.
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ANDREW GILLUM, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I find, you know, Mr. Yang's comments a little bit unfortunate. And I'm glad to see that Democrats are quite frankly standing on the side of the constitution and are gearing up to hold this president accountable.
And I have to tell you, I don't think by the time we get around to October of next year that the conversation is going to be about impeachment or removal.
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CABRERA: Why is Andrew Gillum wrong?
YANG: I am onboard with impeachment. I think that Democrats are right to move forward. But, Ana, we have to face facts that not a single Republican has crossed party lines to support these impeachment proceedings and we need literally dozens of Republican senators to join the Democrats in the Senate if impeachment is going to be successful.
So we have to be realistic about what the prospects are. To me, my focus as a candidate is solving the problems that got Donald Trump elected in the first place and helping move the country forward. When we're talking about Donald Trump, we are losing, and that includes in the context of impeaching Donald Trump.
We need a new positive vision that Americans can see themselves in, a new way forward.
CABRERA: You are with us tonight but I'd be remiss if I did not mention that you are also invited on MSNBC this weekend and you turned down that invitation, and instead took to Twitter to slam the network, a decision that could be seen as risky during a democratic primary.
We're showing one of those tweets here which reads in part, was asked to appear on MSNBC this weekend and told them that I'd be happy to after they apologize on air. What exactly do you want an apology for?
YANG: Well, Ana, Americans tuned in to the debate earlier this week and they saw that I got called on less than any other candidate including candidates that I'm polling higher than. And the questions I did get had virtually nothing to do with the core ideas of my campaign.
And if this were an isolated incident that would be one thing. But if you go back over the last number of months, MSNBC has literally omitted me from over a dozen fundraising and polling graphics which is not about me. It's about the 300,000 plus Americans who donated to and support my campaign and the millions of Americans who know we need to rewrite the rules of the 21st century economy to work for us.
Think about those people donating $10, $20 of their hard-earned money to put a candidate on the stage and then have MSNBC virtually ignore me for 32 minutes. Or when they tune in to MSNBC to see how we're doing in the polls. It's like I don't exist.
And you can go through the records. You can see they've done it to me over and over again. And I'm not the kind of guy who takes offense easily. But at this point, you have to call it like you see it.
CABRERA: Do you think there's a specific reason you're not getting the coverage you feel is fair on a network so popular with the left?
YANG: It's a bit of a mystery to me, Ana. And I hope that when they come clean and acknowledge that they have been suppressing and ignoring me and my campaign for months, maybe they'll actually share with us what the rationale is.
All I know is that I'm fighting for the American people. I'm here in Iowa. There are -- I'm going to say hundreds. I actually lost track. Hundreds of Iowans right behind me, as you can see, who know we need to actually work on solving the problems that got Donald Trump elected.
[20:50:08] I have no idea why MSNBC does not want to have this conversation.
CABRERA: So far, there are six candidates who have qualified for the next democratic debate in December which will air here on CNN. You're not one of them who's qualified so far. You've yet to miss a debate. But the bar keeps getting higher to qualify.
Do you have any concerns about missing this one?
YANG: You know, Ana, you can see right now we've already blown past the donor threshold. I'm one poll away from qualifying for the December debate. So we'll be on that stage in December.
And I want to give a shout-out to you and your colleagues at CNN, where I said to Wolf Blitzer, just yesterday, I missed having you all moderate the debate, because you called it right up the middle. You gave a substantive questions. We have real conversations and exchanges about automation in the 21st century economy.
So really, just full credit to CNN for your professionalism and journalistic integrity.
CABRERA: I want to ask you about Michael Bloomberg's $37 million ad buy. Senator Sanders blasted him and accused him of trying to buy the election. How do you see it?
YANG: You know, it's going to be really fascinating seeing how the Bloomberg campaign unfolds. I don't think it's possible to replace thousands of face-to-face interactions in Iowa and across the country with ad buys. I just don't see it. I think that he's going to find that spending money in advertising. It's like pushing on a string where you get lower and lower returns as you spend more and more money.
And you can't buy passion. If you have to put people against money, I will take people every day of the week.
CABRERA: Andrew Yang, I appreciate you joining us tonight. Thank you and good luck on the campaign trail.
YANG: Thank you, Ana. Appreciate you having me on. Thank you from the Yang gang. Thank you. We'll see you soon.
CABRERA: OK. There's that passion.
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