Cenk Uygur is RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT...what?

Dozens of you writing to me saying, David, Cenk Uygur, your friend Cenk Uygur is running for president. What he was born in Turkey. Is he even eligible to be president of the United States? What is this all about? Let's discuss it. I interviewed my friend Cenk Uygur a couple of weeks ago. He expressed significant disgust at Joe Biden being the Democratic nominee. Cenk believes Joe Biden cannot win, which I disagree with. I think he can win. He won in 2020 when many people said he couldn't win. And Cenk believes that running Joe Biden is a very bad idea. And Cenk's latest decision is that he is going to run for president. Cenk's idea is if he can get himself up to 20 or 25 percent support in the Democratic primary, people will realize that Biden can't win. And then the Democratic Party will push Biden out and select Josh Shapiro or Andy Beshear or someone else to replace Joe Biden. Now, I have everybody should do whatever they thinks is best for the political movement they support. I don't think this is going to work the way Cenk thinks. And he's welcome back on the show anytime. I think there's two layers to this strategy and then legality of Cenk even running. I am not a lawyer, to be very clear. I'm just giving my opinion based on legal opinions I've read. Number one, the strategy is Cenk gets himself to 20 to 25 percent. Then the Democratic Party will get rid of Joe Biden. I don't know how Cenk will get 20 percent support in a Democratic primary against incumbent Joe Biden. When Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., with a life legacy in the Kennedy name, only ever got up to 20 percent. And much of it was on the back of Republican voters, not Democratic voters. Up to 10 percent did R.F.K., Jr. and now ended up bailing out of the Democratic primary altogether and he's running as an independent. So Cenk is saying I can get more support than R.F.K., Jr. and R.F.K., Jr. had a bunch of support from Republicans. I don't know that Democrats are necessarily going to be saying, yeah, I'm going to go to Cenk from Joe Biden, especially when I don't believe Cenk is eligible to be president. Now, I'm also not eligible. Cenk and I are not eligible for the same reason. We were both born in other countries to non-citizens of the United States. When Cenk was born in Turkey, he was born to two parents who were not American citizens. When I was born in Argentina, I was born to two parents who were not at the time American citizens. Now, what is the argument legally that Cenk is making for why he can be president? It's a case called Schneider v. Rusk from 1964. Now, in Schneider v. Rusk, the Supreme Court dealt with is it constitutional to revoke someone's citizenship if they are a naturalized citizen, if they reside in their country of origin? And what this relates to was that there was a different standard. If you were a natural born American citizen and you went and lived in, say, Turkey, there was no mechanism through which your American citizenship could be removed. Contrast that with if you were born in Turkey at the time, came to the U.S. and became a citizen and then moved back to Turkey permanently, you could have your citizenship removed. This case, Schneider v. Rusk, had the Supreme Court finding that that was unconstitutional, that there shouldn't be different provisions with regard to the revoke of having citizenship revoked based on being natural born citizen or a naturalized citizen. What Cenk is arguing, if I understand correctly, is that that case finds that any separate treatment of a natural born citizen versus a naturalized citizen would by default be unconstitutional. Therefore, if you can't treat naturalized citizens differently when it comes to they move elsewhere and you take their citizenship, you also can't deprive them of the right to run for president. The problem with this is that the provisions are different. There is a specific provision in the Constitution which says no person except a natural born citizen or a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of the Constitution shall be eligible to the office of the president. So naturalized citizens are not eligible to run for president. Schneider v. Rusk did not challenge that. It didn't change that. It didn't deal with it whatsoever. It does not allow for a naturalized citizen to run for president because it just doesn't address that issue. Now, what I do think Cenk believes is he could challenge the presidency rule in the Constitution on the basis of this case, even though the case doesn't say anything about it. He could use that case, go to the Supreme Court and say, I actually am eligible. The legal reviews of Schneider v. Rusk that I found disagree with that. And my instinct is that if there were something to that legal argument, maybe Arnold Schwarzenegger would have explored it and we would have seen a serious challenge to this before. So great. In so many different ways, friend of mine, I don't see him getting the 20 percent support he thinks that he would be able to get in order to push Biden out. And I don't see him making any progress on determining that he is legally able to run for president. Same thing applies to me. I'm not eligible to run for president. I don't believe Cenk is. I don't believe Arnold is. Let me know your thoughts. We'll do a follow up if there's interest in this story.