Former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang has said he was frozen out of Kamala Harris’s political operation after publicly urging Joe Biden to withdraw from the 2024 race – a move he now claims her team viewed as an act of “disrespect”.
Yang, who had left the party in 2021 to become an independent, has made the allegation in excerpts from his forthcoming memoir, Hey Yang, Where’s My Thousand Bucks?, shared with The Times.
Despite shifting his support from Biden to Harris, he alleges that Harris’s aides barred him from engaging with the campaign after he called on Biden to step aside following his debate with Donald Trump.
This, he said, was “so dumb”.
“I was kind of glad, to be honest, because if they’d asked me to do something, I would have felt honor-bound to comply, but I don’t know how convincing I would have been.”
Yang, who competed in the 2020 Democratic primary, said his alleged blacklisting was part of a wider pattern in which party leaders punished dissent and closed ranks around Biden despite growing concerns about his viability.
The book also reflects on the broader political climate in America, claiming that once Biden was out of the race, Harris and her team neglected to protect a vital part of the voter base required to win a presidential election – men without college degrees – even though Yang notes that “about two thirds of Americans don’t have a college degree”.
He said that amid a blind spot on this issue in the Harris camp, Trump was finding success by combining “three previously separate modes of communication: politics, pro wrestling, and comedy” which Yang writes, “simply reach more people across more platforms”.
In particular, Yang believes Donald Trump's campaign struck a rich vein with the apparent adoption of wrestling-type self-aggrandizing hype – a style he suggests has reshaped modern methods and expectations of political campaigning.
“Trump projects messianic vibes: I’m great, I’m the best, I am one of one,” he writes in the memoir.
“I watched a lot of pro wrestling as a kid, and the wrestlers were often very self-centered and braggadocious in their communication: ‘I’m the best damn champion there ever was.’
He adds: “Pro wrestlers literally talk in the third person in order to emphasize how great they are. And they come complete with nicknames like ‘The Great One’ or ‘The Showstopper’ that they bestow upon themselves.”
He said this energy and confidence appeals to men, with wrestling among the most consistently highest-rated TV shows, but was something the "Democrats have never understood … or had any response to".
The excerpts from the book also indicate Yang is mulling a 2028 bid for the Oval Office, as he says “the odds of my running again are high”.
Harris’s team has not publicly responded to Yang’s account.
The Latest: FBI executes search warrant at Fulton County elections office near Atlanta
Joe Biden finally comments on Minnesota ICE shootings
Trump’s immigration crackdown leads to sharp decline in US population growth
What to know about Gregory Bovino, the commander of Trump's immigration crackdown
Why US going to war with Iran would be a big mistake
ICE has been ordered not to engage with Minnesota protestors: report
