Andrew Yang STUNS Democrats with take on Trump, Mamdani Oval Office meeting

My next guest ran for president in the Democratic primary in 2020. Then he ran for New York City mayor in 2021, where he was the front-runner for much of that race. And then he decided to leave the Democratic Party, and here he is explaining that decision.

Why leave the Democratic Party?

I mean, you ran for president and mayor as a Democrat.

I've been a Democrat for 26 years, Anderson. Polarization is at record high levels in the United States. Political stress is approaching civil war levels. And the question is, how can we bring the temperature of the country down?

Let's bring in Andrew Yang. He's currently an independent and the Noble Mobile CEO. Andrew, it was very great to have you in studio. So thanks for coming on.

Thanks for having me.

It's great to have you, especially considering you are a front runner for New York City Mayor. We see this incoming Mamdani administration, and I saw some clips of you saying that he needs to curate relationships with big businesses, keep them here. He needs to assuage the concerns of Jewish voters. And likewise, he also needs to, you said, keep Tisch. That's the NYPD commissioner. He said he's going to do that. I'm curious if you think he's doing those things, and what you make of the Oval Office meeting.

I was thrilled at the tenor of this Oval Office meeting, because one of the major pitfalls, potentially, for a mayor like Mohdani was getting crosswise with this administration, having resources pulled, having ICE officials down downtown and other parts of the city.

And so the fact that Zoran and Donald Trump seem to be on the same page, so many New Yorkers today are breathing a huge sigh of relief. I hope it holds up.

Yeah, it was very interesting to watch, no doubt. I spent a lot of time yesterday listening to a moment that put you on the map. And it was your interview with Joe Rogan, and it was fascinating. This was six years ago,

before I was even thinking about AI, and you had a word of warning of what AI could do to the country. I wanna replay those remarks. This is six years ago, Andrew Yang.

I saw that we're pouring water into a bathtub that has a giant hole ripped in the bottom, and that for every five, 10, 50 jobs that my entrepreneurs are going to create, we're going to lose 5, 10, 50,000 jobs. Bain says you're looking at between 20 and 30% of jobs subject to automation by 2030, which is pretty soon.

It's like 11 years from now.

That's frightening. That was six years ago. Do you think we're still on pace to lose 30% of jobs to AI?

It's more certain than ever, unfortunately, Kaylee. And you can see right now, big companies are scaling back, hiring recent college graduates. You have entire customer service departments being replaced by AI. It's starting to show up in the numbers.

And unfortunately, that's going to speed up in the coming months. I wish I was wrong back in 2019, but I fear I was right.

And President Trump, he has some interesting ideas to make things more affordable. You know, you talked about so-called freedom dividends. President Trump had an idea for tariff dividends. We brought in all this revenue. He tweeted out that $2,000 he wants to give back

to the American people in tariff revenue. Healthcare payments he wants to give directly to the American people and not to insurance companies.

Are those proposals you like? Yeah, I do. Anything that puts buying power into the hands of the average American family is a huge win. By the way, that money is going to go right into local businesses, into keeping the economy robust. One of the things I used to say was that capitalism works a lot better when people have money to spend.

And I think it's a great idea, regardless of what the source of the money is. You could say, in my case, it was an AI tax. In Trump's case, it's a tariff tax. But for a family, it would be an enormous win.

So do you think that there are, I know you're not a Democrat anymore, but this seems like a proposal that maybe you could get some Democrats on board with.

Well, they should get on board with it. Hey, how would you feel about getting a little bit of stimulus-style money coming to your household? Everyone would say, yes, please. And Democrats, in theory, should be all for anything that helps the working class of this country.

Yeah. There's one other topic I want to get to before we get to a really noble venture you're on as you try to get Americans phone-free. I was very interested in the remarks you made to Anderson Cooper about bringing down the rhetoric. And notably, you made those remarks before two assassination attempts of President Trump.

You made those remarks long before the assassination of my friend Charlie Kirk. And I want to play a moment from the former House speaker. She was pressed on calling President Trump the worst thing on planet Earth, and she actually doubled down on those comments.

Let's listen. You said recently in an interview, you said that President Trump is a vile creature, the worst thing on the face of the Earth. Do you think he's different now

than he was in his first term, in terms of his abilities, his leadership?

By the way, I said that as a

euphemism.

I could have done much worse.

You could have done worse.

You could have said worse.

Yeah.

I mean, is that the way?

It's not the way, Kayleigh. We saw it with the shutdown, where at this point, politics has become more about scoring points and looking like you're fighting the enemy, in this case, the other party, than in getting things done and improving Americans' lives. That's why I became an independent and co-founded Forward.

Yep. Well, this headline was so interesting to me. It's The New Yorker. Andrew Yang goes off the grid. Well, we found you. You're back on the grid.

The subtitle to that is, the former presidential candidate, once endorsed by Elon Musk, has been hosting phone-free parties, but can his guests actually stop looking at their screens? Tell us about Noble Mobile, phone-free, I need to do that.

Yes, don't we all? So Kayleigh, it figured out Americans are becoming sadder for a couple of reasons. Number one, we're not saving enough money. And number two, we're staring too much at our phones. And Noble Mobile helps on both counts. We cut your wireless bills in half. And you get even more money back if you

don't use as much screen time. So we're like the little angel on your shoulder saying, hey, do you really need to do doomscroll that extra 20 minutes? You'll actually get more money if you put your phone down,

look up, maybe even touch grass. That's fascinating. I need to do that. You know, my kids, it's always a struggle. I can't put down my phone. Does your bill go up if you use your phone too much?

No, no. We have a maximum of $50 for unlimited, which frankly, I hit a lot of the time. But then if you use your phone less, it can be as low as $30. The average American right now is spending $83 wireless and people who know me know I love just trying to get money into Americans hands and this is a very powerful way to do so via Noble Mobile.

That's great well thank goodness the bill doesn't go up because my bill would

be like through the roof. Same, same, you know that we just want to like help be like through the roof. Same, same, you know that we just want to like help

people not surprise them in a bad way. I love it thank you so much for this very