Gray: “Biden can be ten times better than Trump… I’m not voting for him”
Briahna Joy Gray, 38, is an American political commentator on Rising from The Hill, a former corporate lawyer, and political consultant who served as the National Press Secretary for Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign. She is also a contributing editor for Current Affairs and was a senior politics editor for The Intercept.
Gray currently hosts a podcast on the social media site Callin, a branch of Rumble, backed by the right-wing billionaire entrepreneur David Sacks. Other “left-wing” commentators featured on the site backed by Sacks’ $12 million funding effort are Glenn Greenwald and Jimmy Dore, who are both well-known fake leftists.
In 2020 after Bernie Sanders dropped out of the Democratic primary and endorsed Joe Biden, Gray refused to do the same.
In response, Sanders distanced himself from her saying that “She is my former press secretary — not on the payroll.”
In a statement on X, formally known as Twitter, Gray wrote:
With the utmost respect for Bernie Sanders, who is an incredible human being & a genuine inspiration, I don’t endorse Joe Biden. I supported Bernie Sanders because he backed ideas like #MedicareForAll, cancelling ALL student debt, & a wealth tax. Biden supports none of those. — Briahna Joy Gray (@briebriejoy) April 13, 2020
Gray also made another outlandish Tweet explaining why she would not support Biden:
Issues Bernie (generously) never raised about Biden: - Credible sexual assault allegations - A pattern of unwanted touching - Burisma - Lying ab[ou]t civil rights record Issues which are relevant to Biden’s electability argument — (his only real appeal) — Briahna Joy Gray (@briebriejoy) Apr 12, 2020
Already, she sounds like a rabid right-wing conspiracy theorist. It is unclear why she is even still relevant to some on the left of the political spectrum.
Tara Reade, the only woman who accused Biden of sexual misconduct presented no evidence. Every other woman who has worked with Biden in the past said no such harassment occurred. Former friends and acquaintances of Reade have described her as “manipulative,” “deceitful,” “very clever,” “a liar,” and a con artist who took advantage of their goodwill to extract money.
In May of 2023, Reade defected to Russia and appeared on Russian media alongside a convicted Russian agent. Read claims she defected to Russia after she alleged Biden raped her because she felt her life was in danger in the United States. In that interview, Reade defended Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and praised Russia.
Bottom line: Biden has no history of sexual misconduct or any serious allegations by any other woman. At this time, Reade has presented no concrete evidence that she was assaulted. She also has a shaky background that hurts her credibility. To call her allegations “credible” is disingenuous.
With respect to the allegations of unwanted touching, Biden appears to be a touchy guy, which can make people uncomfortable. He has said he did not recall making people feel uncomfortable and that was never his intention. This is not a defense of Biden — he should be more aware of how he makes women feel. Biden himself made note of his behavior during a March 16, 2019 speech in Dover, Del., in which he said he was a “tactile politician.”
“I always have been, and that gets me in trouble as well, because I think I can feel and taste what is going on,” he told the crowd.
Admittedly a strange joke from Biden but Trump was credibly accused by multiple women at the time of sexual assault, so it does not make sense to let Trump win the 2020 election over this. Not to mention a judge recently said Trump raped E. Jean Carroll.
With regard to Burisma — it is a well-known right-wing conspiracy theory. It is also known as the Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory, which is a series of unfounded allegations that Biden, while he was still vice president, withheld a loan guarantee to pressure Ukraine into firing prosecutor general Viktor Shokin to prevent a corruption investigation of Ukrainian gas company Burisma and to protect his son, Hunter Biden, who was on the Burisma board.
In reality, Biden leveraged $1B in aid to Ukraine to oust a corrupt prosecutor, not to help his son. With regard to Biden lying about his civil rights record — it is true that in the past, Biden has overstated his activism. He has also sometimes conflated actions taken as a college student and said they took place when he was in high school.
Overall, The Washington Post said he was worthy of at least Two Pinocchios with regard to overstating his activism. The Washington Post defines Two Pinocchios as “Significant omissions and/or exaggerations. Some factual errors may be involved but not necessarily. A politician can create a false, misleading impression by playing with words and using legalistic language that means little to ordinary people. (Similar to ‘half true.’)”
Biden should not overstate things or lie, obviously— but the choice was between Biden and Trump at that point. Gray knows that Trump made 30,573 false or misleading claims over his 4 short years as president. It is not sound to let Trump win because Biden has exaggerated some of his past activism. Gray does not care about political outcomes — she appears to be an ideologue in a way that allows her to disregard the real-world consequences of elections.
Cenk Uygur, lawyer, media host, and CEO of the progressive news and commentary show The Young Turks said Gray was in the “fake left.”
Back in June 2020, Gray argued that Fox News is “more inclined to have a leftist on than MSNBC and CNN.” She also praised Tucker Carlson for the “anti-establishment viewpoint” he offers. Uygur plainly rejected Gray and anyone who suggests Carlson is a better ally to progressives than CNN and MSNBC.
“Briahna Joy Gray, unfortunately, is one of the people that are now in the fake left,” Uygur said, grouping her in with Jimmy Dore, Glenn Greenwald, and Dave Rubin.
Uygur went on to say:
“To be fair to Dave Rubin, he started this whole thing. The fake left saying, ‘Oh, you know, it’s just, I’m a classical liberal. I’m a progressive. But it turns out the right wing is right about everything.’ Okay? So that’s the shtick that they do, and they go on Tucker’s show, and they dance for him. So it’s disgusting. They’re not the real left, and here’s how you can tell: they never disagree with Tucker.”
He also said Fox News is “wall-to-wall propaganda” and that when they book guests from the left it is “just a trick to get you to believe that the whole country agrees that Tucker Carlson is the most reasonable person in America.”
Uygur said he shares Gray’s hate for centrist or corporate Democrats, “but this enabling the right wing is unacceptable.” He argued that Carlson uses rhetoric to appear populist when “All he wants to do is trick you into complying with the corporate agenda by pretending to be progressive on some issues.” “Tucker Carlson doesn’t agree with us at all,” Uygur said. “He uses the fact that most of the country agrees with progressives as a tool to sheep-herd them into right-wing talking points.”
“For Briahna Joy Gray and all the fake left to help him pretend that he’s on our side while he actually agrees with the corporate agenda is disgusting,” he added.
Just recently, Gray was at it again — encouraging people to vote third party in the 2024 presidential race rather than for the Democratic candidate.
Gray went on the progressive podcast Krystal, Kyle, and Friends to talk for nearly two hours with media hosts Kyle Kulinski and his wife, Krystal Ball.
Their main topic of discussion was the idea of voting for the Green Party candidate instead of the Democrat in the general presidential election.
Kulinski is located in New York and is voting for Marianne Williamson in the Democratic presidential primary. It appears that his plan is to vote for Cornel West in the general presidential election because he is in a safe blue state. He did say, however, that he would vote for Biden if he was in a swing state.
Ball is located in Virginia and will vote for Biden a second time. Gray is also located in New York and plans to vote for Cornel West — she is advocating for people to support the Green Party nationally. Gray acknowledged that it would be a harder decision to vote for the Green Party in a swing state.
In the interview, Gray says she is concerned that the Democratic Party will continue to move closer to the right of the political spectrum if everyone “votes blue no matter who.”
This is a common argument from many Green Party voters — if you keep voting for the Democratic Party then it sends a message to the party that everything is alright and that we will keep voting for the Democrats regardless of how far right on the political spectrum they go.
The glaring issue with this argument is that Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 presidential election and many within the Democratic establishment blamed Jill Stein and Green Party voters. Yet, in 2020, the Democratic establishment did not back a further left-leaning, progressive candidate. It does not matter what messages the progressive left sends the Democratic establishment at this moment in time — they generally support the centrist Democrats— such as Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton.
At this moment in time, there is no example of progressives teaching the Democratic Party a lesson by not voting for them and the party changing their tune in response. This is partly due to the fact that it is very easy for wealthy donors and corporations to outspend and beat progressives in the primary races.
It is also due to the fact that the average voter does not pay as much attention to policy and will vote for their side most of the time regardless. Although progressive policies are very popular, the percentage of people who identify as staunch progressives is relatively low compared to the entire electorate.
One’s symbolic ideology is the ideological label one uses to describe oneself. While one’s operational ideology is the ideological label that appropriately describes one’s policy positions. So, data shows most Americans are liberal, even progressive, in terms of their operational ideology.
A 2023 Gallup survey analyzed Americans' symbolic ideology and found that 18% of Americans call themselves liberal, while only 8% say they are very liberal.
Many of these Americans are not voting on policy anyway, so it does not make a huge difference. One possible way to push the Democratic establishment further to the left of the political spectrum would be to have strong organized labor power.
It is also true that simply having progressives run against establishment candidates in the primary can help push the establishment candidate further to the left of the political spectrum. Many argue that Sanders running against Biden in the 2020 presidential primary pushed Biden further to the left of the political spectrum.
Kulinski goes over those policies people believe Biden would not have implemented without Sanders in the race.
Gray acts as if there is no difference between a centrist or corporate Democrat and a Republican. Does she not understand that electing Trump had real-world consequences that would not have occurred under a Clinton administration?
For instance, anti-Semitic hate crimes in the United States increased 86% in the first quarter of 2017 (post-Trump election) compared with the same time period in 2016 (pre-Trump election). Similarly, there was a 91% increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes in the first half of 2017, compared with the same time period in 2016 (pre-election).
These trends continued throughout Trump’s presidency, with annual hate crimes around 20% higher during his administration.
Not to mention the fact that Trump was able to appoint three GOP Supreme Court justices, who would later vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. Now, rather than fighting for campaign finance reform or access to healthcare, many on the left are fighting to gain back the abortion rights that have been lost.
In four short years, Trump was able to reverse decades worth of progress. Despite the fact that Clinton tended to be pro-corporate and was not a proponent of progressive policies — none of this would have happened if she were elected president.
Gray made another common argument that third-party voters tend to deploy. She argued that everyone should vote for the Green Party so it can win at least 5% of the vote in the general presidential election and be eligible to receive federal matching funds for the next election. She argued these funds would allow the third party to have a better chance of winning or gaining traction in the next election.
The Federal Election Commission (FEC) writes with regard to federal matching funds:
“Minor party candidates and new party candidates may become eligible for partial public funding of their general election campaigns. A minor party candidate is the nominee of a party whose candidate received between five and 25 percent of the total popular vote in the preceding presidential election. The amount of public funding to which a minor party candidate is entitled is based on the ratio of the party’s popular vote in the preceding presidential election to the average popular vote of the two major party candidates in that election. A new party candidate receives partial public funding after the election if he or she receives five percent or more of the vote. The entitlement is based on the ratio of the new party candidate’s popular vote in the current election to the average popular vote of the two major party candidates in the election.”
The problem with this strategy is that there is only one example of this occurring. In 1996, independent Ross Perot had won nearly 19% of the vote for president, making the Reform Party eligible for public funds in 2000.
In 2000, the FEC approved 12.6 million dollars in funds from the Treasury Department to be sent to Pat Buchanan, the new Reform Party candidate.
Although Buchanan spent that money on his campaign, he only won 0.91% of the vote in the 2000 presidential election.
Being eligible for federal matching funds does not guarantee that a party will continue to gain popularity or grow. In the Reform Party’s case — it went from almost 19% in the general election to 0.91%.
One could argue it is only one example and a third party could gain traction in the future, but the issue with the Green Party is that there is no structure. The Green Party does not hold local or state races — they simply have someone run for president every four years.
Without local state support, the Green Party will never succeed. It makes more sense for the party to run in House races first to build a strong foundation of support.
It is also relevant that at this current moment, federal matching funds are small and insignificant compared to the millions of dollars wealthy individuals and corporations donate to presidential races.
At one point during the segment, Kulinski makes the case for why the Biden administration has been surprising in a good way.
“I expected nothing of [Biden] Briahna. This is the guy that brought us the Iraq war, the PATRIOT Act, and NAFTA. He is like the poster child of the conservative Democrat and the neoliberal,” Kulinski said. “But then he gets in office and does all of these things which shocked me. He massively reduced the drone war by over 90%… He pulled out of Afghanistan. The Supreme Court overturned the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and the Democrats slipped into the IRA a provision that redefines carbon as a pollutant, which then allows the EPA to start protecting the environment again. If we didn't get that and yes, that was brought to us by Democrats, we would be beyond fucked on the issue of climate change. We still are but we would be even more fucked if the EPA couldn't do basic EPA stuff,” he added.
Gray appeared to blankly stare as Kulinski made his points about the positive things that have come from the Biden administration.
“We have project labor agreements for hundreds of thousands of construction workers — that came to us from Biden. 15$ minimum wage for federal contractors and employees — that’s from Biden. Gun reform with red flag laws and closing the boyfriend loophole — those are definitely good things. Ketanji Brown Jackson on the Court, a George Floyd executive order to create a registry of abusive cops. We have the PATCH Act, which is healthcare for veterans exposed to toxic burn pits, which every single Republican voted against. [Biden] added 800,000 manufacturing jobs,” he continued.
“I didn’t expect any of these things. So when I talk about Biden the way I do is because none of these things were on the menu and we got them. So now when I look at the fact it’s either gonna be Trump or Biden — a standard generic Republican or standard generic Democrat — the way I feel now versus the way I felt in the past is like: ‘Oh, this is definitely way better.’ If you asked me in 2019 or 2020…I would be like maybe a Democrat is a little bit better than a Republican. Now I’m looking at it like it is not even close…All I care about is the policy…and all these things are very good," he added.
“So do you [Briahna] agree that Biden is better than what we expected on the left?” Kulinski asked. “[Biden] has not surpassed my [expectations.] I don't know, I don't know what you want me to say,” Gray responded.
“But he is not better than what you thought?” Kulinski responded.
“No, he’s not better than what I thought,” Gray said.
“Really?” Kulinski yelled.
Gray’s statement is laughable. Biden surpassed most progressives' expectations. One can argue that the bar is too low but it is almost impossible to argue that he did not surpass the expectations of most progressives.
Ball then goes on to explain that before the Biden administration bosses could bust unions with impunity. But now due to Biden's appointees, if bosses are caught union busting then they are forced to recognize the union and start bargaining with them.
“That’s the biggest shift we’ve had in labor relations in our lifetime,” Ball said.
Biden is the one who told corporations and wealthy donors that “nothing would fundamentally change” if he was elected president. So this major change in labor relations is very much a good surprise from the Biden administration.
Gray does not seem to care about real-life policy outcomes — she wants everything or nothing at all. Gray then angrily responds to Ball and Kulinski:
“This is literally just a vote blue no matter who conversation — a lesser of two evils… Biden can be ten times better than Trump, let's concede that for the sake of argument — I’m not voting for him. And millions of other people feel the same way. Cause it has absolutely nothing to do with that. I don’t know how else to express this to you guys. Kyle, it’s not that there is a disinterest or a failure to recognize what are meaningful changes but there is a realization that acknowledging gains when the possibility of what someone could be doing to help the population that elected them. When there is a huge gap there it can be papered up by championing someone’s accomplishments… people are reluctant to give credit precisely because they think it will end the conversation about how much further people should be pushed.”
“So it feels akin to saying, Jeff Bezos was walking down the street and he gave [$5] to a homeless person,” she says.
“Oh my god,” Kulinski responds.
Gray then goes on to argue that his framing of the student debt issue is a problem.
Kulinski then angrily explains that he did not expect Biden to appeal the student debt case or do the Higher Education Act. He also says some people on the left of the political spectrum are ignoring the positive things Biden has done with student debt.
Kulinski concedes what Biden is doing on student debt is not perfect and he would prefer he wipe out all the debt through executive order.
There are mixed legal views on this topic but it seems that the president could technically sign an executive order to cancel all federal student loan debt but it could be easily challenged and struck down in Court.
“It’s like Biden derangement syndrome among some people on the left and it’s like Democrat derangement syndrome among some of you on the left. The fact that we can’t all agree very quickly that we’re obviously Democrats — they’re ten times better than Republicans — they’re 100 times better than Republicans. And even if you are somebody who is a purist and is on the left — you can acknowledge a [win] in the instances you get it while still pushing for more,” Kulinski adds.
Kulinski’s take on this issue is much more reasonable than Gray’s. Maybe Gray is unable to acknowledge those wins that occurred under Biden because then it would be totally irrational to vote for the Green Party for president given that the party has not accomplished even a faction of what the Biden administration has.
Kulinski then asks Gray if it is Biden versus Trump in 2024, does she prefer Biden? “Honestly, I don’t care,” Gray responds.
It is hard to see how Gray is having a good faith real argument. It almost seems as if she is a right-wing plant designed to stoke chaos within the political left.
Not to mention a Green Party voter should care if Trump becomes president since he has a fascist plan to take total control of all independent regulatory agencies, including the FEC.
The FEC is the agency Gray wants the federal matching funds for the Green Party to be approved by. Does Gray really believe that Trump, who is a classic authoritarian, would continue to publically fund third parties to run against him? Trump already tried to overthrow the government once and steal the 2020 election. If Trump wins again — it may be the last real presidential election in the United States.
Gray ultimately claimed to be sympathetic to the accelerationist political argument, which purports that political circumstances must get worse in order to achieve revolutionary progressive change. That is why, in her mind, a second Trump presidency is not enough of a threat to take seriously. That is why Gray says even if Biden is ten times better than Trump — she would still vote for the third party.
Gray seems to not understand that elections have real-life consequences. It is unclear if she really believes what she says or if she has become a right-wing plant with the goal of helping Trump win again. It is inconceivable that any true progressive who truly cares about long-term goals and the population could take this stance.
Gray seems perfectly fine with allowing Trump to win again and end democracy altogether or she does not understand what is at stake in the 2024 election.
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