With Meghna Chakrabarti 2020 Democratic hopeful and tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang makes the case for why he should be the next president of the United States. Guest Andrew Yang, candidate for the 2020 presidential nomination. Tech entrepreneur. Founder of Venture for America, a nonprofit that matches top college grads with startups in economically challenged U.S. cities in order to generate job growth. (@AndrewYang) Interview Highlights On why he wants to be the next president of the United States "It was Donald Trump's victory in 2016, where I'd spent the previous six years running a nonprofit, Venture for America, that I'd founded that helped create thousands of jobs in places like Detroit, St. Louis, Cleveland, Birmingham, New Orleans. And I was stunned by what I saw in the rest of the country where automation had decimated communities, had eliminated 4 million manufacturing jobs in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. And then Donald Trump won in 2016, which to me was a giant red flag. It was a, 'Stop what you're doing. We just elected a narcissist, reality TV star as our president.' And tens of millions of Americans were desperate enough to think that that was the right move. And to me, it was clear that this is the manifestation of this economic transformation that we're in the midst of, that, for whatever reason, our politicians are not discussing — the elimination of these 4 million manufacturing jobs will now migrate to retail. And people who are listening to this are seeing Main Street stores close around them every single day. Call centers, fast food and then eventually hit truck driving, and being a trucker is the most common job in 29 states. There are 3 1/2 million truck drivers in the U.S. "And so I had no intention of running for president at any point. My wife laughs about it because in some ways I make a lousy politician. But Trump wins. I say, 'OK, this is a straight automation story — that we're in the third inning of the fourth industrial revolution. No one's talking about it. We're scapegoating immigrants for problems that immigrants have next to nothing to do with.' When you're in that position, you say, 'Well, how can I, on wake up America to the fact that this is a huge transformation we're in the midst of?' Then we need to start addressing and start solving the problems in the right timeframe, given that we're five to 10 years away from robot trucks hitting the highways."

"I want to point out that I am one of the only candidates that he has not touched on Twitter. And the reason for that is that he's a bully and he knows I'm better at the internet than he is." Andrew Yang on President Trump

On Yang's nonprofit Venture for America — a kind of "entrepreneurial Teach for America," which would get the brightest minds to go to economically depressed communities and create startups there Yang said he would create 100,000 jobs by 2025. So far, VFA has created 3,500 jobs "I'm incredibly proud of all the work that Venture for America does and continues to do. ... If anything, my work with Venture for America verified just how badly the economy is doing in terms of job creation and new business formation, and that we need to face facts. That, right now, we pretend that the internet is this giant catalyst for entrepreneurship. Meanwhile, Amazon is closing 30% of America's stores and malls, and being a retail clerk is one of the most common jobs in the country. The average retail worker is a 39-year-old woman making between $9 and $11 an hour. So my work with Venture for America pushed me in a direction that says we need to think much much bigger about the solutions. On why Yang believes he can make his visions and ideas a reality in Washington "I'm one of only two candidates in the field that 10% or more of Donald Trump voters said that they would support. Which means if I'm the Democratic nominee, we will win this election. Hands down. And then after we win and I'm the president, the Democrats will be so pumped that they made the right choice — I mean, it's a bit of a bet, obviously — but they'll be so pumped to have beaten Donald Trump, that getting money into the hands of families and children and making our communities stronger, healthier, mentally healthier through the 'Freedom Dividend' will be the first order of business. "But here's the kicker. Then the Republicans will look up and say, 'Wait a minute. Am I against the dividend?' The only state with a dividend right now is Alaska, which is a deep red, conservative state. It was passed by a Republican governor. And Republican people in Congress will say this is a huge win for rural areas, for red states on the interior that have gotten blasted by the automation of the manufacturing jobs. And we don't need 80 percent of Congress to pass the dividend we just need a majority. "The reason why Republicans and Trump voters and independents and libertarians are drawn to my campaign is that they see that I'm just a problem solver. I don't have any particular alignment, which means I'll be able to get things done in Washington that others cannot."

"The reason why Republicans and Trump voters and independents and libertarians are drawn to my campaign is that they see that I'm just a problem solver." Andrew Yang

On how Yang thinks he matches up with President Trump "I want to point out that I am one of the only candidates that he has not touched on Twitter. And the reason for that is that he's a bully and he knows I'm better at the internet than he is. A lot of the people online that create memes and whatnot have converted to the 'Yang Gang.' So he hasn't touched me because he knows I'm not the candidate he wants to mess with. "Humor is the best antidote, because the problem is that he seems like a bully, and then if you stand up and say, 'That's divisive,' and it's not very effective. So the nickname that we've come up with, that we think he will use for me, is 'Comrade Yang,' because it's a little racist — it makes me seem like a communist or something like that. And Americans can see through very, very quickly that the 'Freedom Dividend' is simply capitalism where income doesn't start at zero. It's good for us, it's good for markets, it's good for consumers and businesses. So that's where we think he's going to go. "But I truly am his kryptonite. He even said in a rally in West Virginia a number of months ago, he said he can't wait to run against the Democrats. The only thing he's worried about is that some new figure comes out of nowhere, and I'm that figure. He runs most effectively against people that are part of the D.C. establishment, and I am not." On how Yang's universal basic income (UBI) idea — the "Freedom Dividend" — would work "The form of UBI that he is proposing for the United States is a set of guaranteed payments of $1,000 per month, or $12,000 per year, to all U.S. citizens over the age of 18," per Yang's campaign website. Yang points out that this idea is not "Andrew Yang, crazy futurist." Everyone from Thomas Paine, to Martin Luther King Jr., to Milton Friedman, to the U.S. House of Representatives in the '70s has sought after this policy. "This is baked into America's DNA. It's inevitable, and we need to get with the program and pass it so that we can actually start focusing on the real problems of this age, instead of having 78 percent of Americans living paycheck to paycheck and almost half can't afford an unexpected $500 bill, which ends up spreading this mindset of scarcity that makes it very very difficult for us to come together and solve bigger problems like climate change. Studies have shown that if you can't pay your bills, it has the effect of occupying your mental bandwidth to a point that it decreases your functional IQ by 13 points, or one standard deviation. "So if people listening to this have the sneaking feeling that America is getting less rational, less reasonable, less optimistic, even more xenophobic, we are, because if you introduce pervasive financial insecurity into a society, those are all of the things that happen. And the way to reverse this is by getting the boot off of our throats and passing a freedom dividend, or a negative income tax, or a universal basic income — whatever you want to call it. But this is the flagship proposal behind my campaign, and one reason why we're doing so well is that it becomes very obvious as soon as you start to dig in and reflect on it."

"Americans can see through very, very quickly that the 'Freedom Dividend' is simply capitalism where income doesn't start at zero." Andrew Yang on his universal basic income plan