Unembarrassable Andrew Yang

New York City is a place where, if you shot Donald Trump in the middle of Fifth Avenue, a smirking successor to the O. J. Simpson jury would declare you not guilty, then you’d get a candy bar named after you, then the city would hold a parade in your honor down the very same street where the fateful incident occurred.

Yet Andrew Yang, the curious fellow who has until recently been winning the race to be the city’s next mayor (assuming there is anything left after Bill de Blasio departs this urban dumpster fire with a Frank Drebin–like cry of “Nothing to see here!”) is attempting to follow a Trumpian path to power. Yang is a TV creation. There is nothing on his résumé worth mentioning except his performances during the useless series of dull promotional videos known as the Democratic Party presidential debates of 2019–20. If Trump owed his outsized presence in the American mind to his hit show The Apprentice, and built a brand as a business success who brutally excised failure from the boardroom, Yang is a sort of NPR or C-SPAN version of Trump — he built his wonkish reputation around the trick of looking like a smart person.

About the Author

Kyle Smith

Kyle Smith is the film critic for the Wall Street Journal.

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New York City is a place where, if you shot Donald Trump in the middle of Fifth Avenue, a smirking successor to the O. J. Simpson jury would declare you not guilty, then you’d get a candy bar named after you, then the city would hold a parade in your honor down the very same street where the fateful incident occurred.

Yet Andrew Yang, the curious fellow who has until recently been winning the race to be the city’s next mayor (assuming there is anything left after Bill de Blasio departs this urban dumpster fire with a Frank Drebin–like cry of “Nothing to see here!”) is attempting to follow a Trumpian path to power. Yang is a TV creation. There is nothing on his résumé worth mentioning except his performances during the useless series of dull promotional videos known as the Democratic Party presidential debates of 2019–20. If Trump owed his outsized presence in the American mind to his hit show The Apprentice, and built a brand as a business success who brutally excised failure from the boardroom, Yang is a sort of NPR or C-SPAN version of Trump — he built his wonkish reputation around the trick of looking like a smart person.