A comedian and a smartass Bill Maher – said the entrepreneur and former presidential candidate Andrey Yan that he wasn’t “trying to be mean” when he asked the wild question about Young’s third party.
On Friday night’s episode of HBO Real Time with Bill Maherthe presenter spoke with guests Jan and the congressman from the Democratic Party of Michigan Alisa Slotkin. As the trio discussed recent bank failures and their impact on the economy, Maher asked Young to explain his “Party Forward” and told him, “I read your website and it’s a bunch of bullshit.”
Maher and Slotkin were unimpressed by Young’s explanation:
BILL MAGER: Speaking of the economy, I mean, your big thing when you ran was UBI. Yeah. Which is not a vowel problem. It sounds like it. ANDREY JAN: I always think about it. I know it’s a branding thing. It’s BILL MAHER: You know, universal basic income. is correct. Which we did. yeah During COVID. Good. So where are you now? I mean, I see your, I don’t understand your third party because I read your website and it’s a bunch of crap. I’m not trying to be mean. I’m just saying it’s not that specific. It’s not even mentioned. And why start a third party, which is a long shot anyway, if you’re not going to be bold and… what? ANDREW YAN: I’d like to dig into that. BILL MAHER: Please do it. ANDREW YAN: Yes. So I’ve determined that our current political system won’t fight poverty, climate change, or polarization unless you actually fix incentives. And this is what an American senator told me, and everyone should understand this. She said, “We’re at a point in American life where a problem costs us more not to solve than to solve it. Because when I lean forward to solve a problem, what happens? I get kicked off my base, my job security goes down, I get attacked.” Thus, we are in a no-compromise zone. So if you want to, say, reduce poverty in America, you have to fix our democratic system. This two-way system is not intended to provide solutions. BILL MAHER: Again, it’s… REP. SLOTKIN: I just have to say that I’m not 100% sure how different the party is. I mean you have to explain how it will change the whole system. But here’s the thing. If you have a senator running for Senate, if you have a senator who says that if you have a senator who says the incentives are wrong so I can’t do the right thing, that’s the problem, not the fact that we need another party.
Maher pushed Yang again later in the show when Yang remarked, “I’m for civilization,” and Maher responded, “For civilization. So you are for good things and against bad things. I knew I could find the specifics in your plan if I tried hard enough!”
Watch above via HBO Real Time with Bill Maher.