NEW YORK — Andrew Yang laughed along with a man who asked him if he choked women in a video posted Wednesday evening on Twitter, landing the front-running New York mayoral candidate in very hot water Thursday.
The video, which was posted by @carsoncapp on Twitter, depicts Yang with an unidentified man who first asks him if it’s OK for a man to keep his Timberland boots on while he’s having sex.
An uncomfortable-looking Yang responds, “I think it’s purely up to your partner, right?”
He’s then asked, “Do you choke b----es, Andrew Yang?”
Yang can then be seen laughing along with the man and others off-camera and signals to the person filming to cut off the video.
The clip ends with the text: “Andrew Yang for Mayor of New York.”
The video was soon removed from @carsoncapp’s Twitter feed, but it has not been removed from YouTube.
It didn’t take long for the video to spark a backlash on social media and in the city’s political circles.
Maya Wiley, who served as Mayor Bill de Blasio’s legal counsel before launching her own mayoral bid, slammed Yang for his reaction in the video.
“Every woman deserves respect in language & in action. It’s simply unacceptable to engage with this disgusting behavior,” she wrote on Twitter. “The ONLY answer to either of these questions is ‘HELL NO and do not ever call a woman that word.’”
The @carsoncapp Twitter account includes a blue cap icon next to the user’s handle, a symbol often associated with the Yang Gang, the former presidential candidate’s band of loyal supporters.
The tweet was removed around noon Thursday, and @carsoncapp, who said he is 17 years old, noted that he removed the offending tweet after getting a call from Team Yang.
“I deleted the tweet as I was contacted by some of Yang’s campaign staff requesting that I take it down,” he wrote. “While I still believe the video is harmless, the media clearly spun it in a very different manner, so I figured it would just be best to do what was asked of me.”
A day after the video was posted, Yang took questions about his caught-on-tape reaction.
”I think most New Yorkers know that I try and be friendly to people. And in this case, someone wanted a video, and I thought I’d be friendly. But then he said something that was plainly inappropriate that I didn’t find funny at all,” he said. “So I walked away and ended the interaction as quickly as possible. And I obviously don’t think that’s appropriate.”
When asked about his laughter, Yang contended again that he was trying to be “friendly.”
“Again, you’re in a posture where you’re trying to be friendly to someone, and then you’re shocked and surprised that all of a sudden it goes in that direction,” he said. “And so I reacted to ending the reaction as quickly as possible.”
