#LetYangSpeak Trends After Andrew Yang Says Microphone ‘Not On’ At Times During Democratic Debate
The second night of the 2020 presidential debates ended Thursday, and The New York Times reports that public reaction seemed to favor Kamala Harris, who confronted frontrunner Joe Biden for his track record on busing and segregation. But although Andrew Yang, the entrepreneur running on a proposal of universal basic income (UBI) of $1,000 a month, got a chance to introduce himself to America, he only received a meager 2 minutes and 50 seconds of speaking time compared to Biden’s 12 minutes and 53 seconds and Harris’ 11 minutes and 37 seconds.
Per The Hill, Yang claims that he attempted to jump into the conversation a few times and his mic was “not on.”
“There were also a few times, FYI, where I just started talking, being like, ‘Hey, I want to add something there,’ and my mic was not on,” Yang said to supporters after the event.
“And it’s this sort of thing where, it’s not like if you started talking, it takes over the [conversation]. It’s like I was talking, but nothing was happening. And it was like, ‘Oh f***.’ So that happened a bit too.”
Per The Washington Post, Yang was the only one to not interrupt someone else during the debate and the only candidate to not get interrupted. Given that this is Yang’s first time in front of America, fans are skeptical of his coverage and the revelations have caused #LetYangSpeak to begin trending on Twitter.
Andrew Yang was the only candidate not to interrupt (*mic?) or be interrupted during last night's #DemDebate2. Here's how everyone else behaved. Gillibrand interrupted 4 people, while frontrunners Sanders and Biden were unsurprisingly interrupted by almost everyone. #LetYangSpeak pic.twitter.com/IuBstDXwCZ
— Scott Santens (@scottsantens) June 28, 2019
As The Inquisitr previously reported, Yang has been repeatedly left off many MSNBC charts for presidential debate candidates. Despite meeting both the polling and fundraising thresholds for the first 2020 presidential debate, he was left off some charts that included other candidates — such as Bill de Blasio, Tim Ryan, and Eric Swalwell — that at the time only met the polling threshold. In addition, one graphic of the candidates set to appear in the debates excluded Yang while including one candidate who didn’t even qualify, Seth Moulton.
Isn't it kind of odd how @MSNBC went with 7 bars here instead of 8? Doesn't it look asymmetrically unappealing? Does it look to you like something is missing? That number 8 spot belongs to @AndrewYang with 1.1%.#YangGang #Yang2020 pic.twitter.com/HnOtnmBqDT
— Scott Santens (@scottsantens) June 26, 2019
Yang’s proposed UBI would be paid for by taxing technology companies like Amazon that he believes are gaining unfair benefit off of big tech advancement while harming communities. He also believes that the automation of jobs by such companies was the reason President Donald Trump was elected.
“I believe that the fundamental reason that Donald Trump is our president today is this: we automated away 4 million manufacturing jobs in South Carolina, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Missouri, Iowa, all the swing states he needed to win — and did win.”
