Journalist and pundit Cenk Uygur, founder of The Young Turks, announced on Wednesday night that he is entering the 2024 Democratic presidential primary in a challenge to incumbent President Joe Biden. Uygur’s longshot bid now faces a number of hurdles within the Democratic Party, primarily the fact that Uygur’s status as a naturalized citizen renders him constitutionally ineligible for the office.
“Yes, I’m running against Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination,” read Uygur’s Wednesday announcement on X. “Joe Biden is down 24 points on the economy. He has no ability to make up that kind of ground on the most important issue. We need a new candidate now!”
Yes, I'm running against Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination. Joe Biden is down 24 points on the economy. He has no ability to make up that kind of ground on the most important issue. We need a new candidate now! https://t.co/JdRkmvU9Cy
— Cenk Uygur (@cenkuygur) October 12, 2023
“It should not have been me, it should have been somebody else, but unfortunately, it was not anyone else,” Uygur continued during Wednesday’s episode of The Young Turks. “There’s only four months left. We must change course. He has at best a 10% chance of winning. I’m running as a proxy. I am running to win. But I am also running as a proxy for any other candidate.”
Uygur’s hope is to reach a critical mass of support that will force the Democratic National Committee to select anyone other than Biden as the nominee.
(RELATED: The PBD Podcast with Cenk Uygur)
However, as X’s community notes quickly pointed out, Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 of the United States Constitution explicitly prevents Uygur from becoming president. According to the text:
No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.
Given the questionable legality of his candidacy, Uygur’s announcement was met primarily with mocking online commentary.
Uygur, who was born in Istanbul, Turkey, and emigrated to the United States as a child in 1978, has argued that the text of the Constitution does not actually prevent him from taking office—and he’s willing to argue that case before the Supreme Court.
Citing the 1964 SCOTUS case Schnieder v. Rusk, which ruled that Fifth Amendment protections must be evenly applied to both native and naturalized citizens, Uygur declared that “forbidding naturalized citizens from being president or vice president is a form of discrimination that limits their options and treats them as second class citizens.”
“Winning this case in the Supreme Court is going to get rid of the albatross around the neck of 25 million Americans who are naturalized citizens,” he continued.
Winning this case in the Supreme Court is going to get rid of the albtatross around the neck of 25 million Americans who are naturalized citizens. The Supreme Court has already said we have the same exact rights. https://t.co/JdRkmvU9Cy
— Cenk Uygur (@cenkuygur) October 12, 2023
Two months before launching his campaign, Uygur argued the case for allowing naturalized citizens to become president during an appearance on the PBD Podcast…but at the time, he claimed that he would not be running.
Uygur’s entry into the presidential race came two days after fellow candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. left the Democratic Party and launched a third-party race as an Independent. Within the Democratic Party, Biden also faces a challenge from self-help writer Marianne Williamson, who previously ran for the party’s nomination in 2020.
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