# Ana Kasparian **Ana Kasparian** (born July 7, 1986, in Los Angeles) is the co-host and executive producer of [[The Young Turks]], the progressive online news show she joined in 2007. For most of that time she was one of the best-known faces of the online left. Since 2023 she has broken with much of it in public, over crime, homelessness, gender policy and the [[Democratic Party]] itself, without leaving the show and without becoming a supporter of [[Donald Trump]]. **Why she's on the map:** Kasparian is a test case for what happens when a left-wing media figure walks away from the left. The familiar route, the one her former colleague [[Dave Rubin]] took, ends inside pro-Trump media. Hers has not ended there. She took a seat on a panel show run by a conservative media company and sat down with [[Tucker Carlson]], but she stayed at The Young Turks, spoke against the [[Iran War 2026]], and became a fierce critic of [[Israel]]. Her path shows where the anti-establishment left and the anti-war right now overlap, and where critics say that overlap shades into [[Antisemitism]]. ## Background - Born Anahit Misak Kasparian to Armenian immigrant parents and raised in the San Fernando Valley. Her father's family survived the [[Armenian Genocide]]. - Studied at California State University, Northridge: a bachelor's degree in journalism (2007) and a master's in political science (2010). She began teaching journalism there in 2013. - Joined The Young Turks in 2007 as a fill-in producer and became co-host alongside founder [[Cenk Uygur]], and later the show's executive producer. ## The break with the left, 2023–2024 Kasparian's politics for her first fifteen years on air were those of the show: pro-[[Bernie Sanders]], hostile to corporate money, critical of Democratic leaders from the left. The shift came in stages. - **2023:** She began disputing progressive positions on air and online, including on medical transition for minors and on how California cities handle crime and homelessness. - **October 2024:** On fitness personality Jillian Michaels's podcast she said she had left the Democratic Party and described herself as "politically homeless." She has said the turning point was the hostile reaction she got from some on the left after she spoke publicly about being assaulted by a homeless man in 2022. - **December 2024:** She gave a long interview to [[Glenn Beck]] on [[Blaze TV]]. Days later, Young Turks contributor Mondale Robinson quit on air, saying the show's hosts had drifted toward the pro-Trump right. She did not become a Trump supporter, and she kept her job. That is the first place her story departs from Rubin's. ## The conservative podcast circuit, 2025 - **May 2025:** She joined *Her Take*, a weekly all-women panel show from Valuetainment, the media company of conservative podcaster Patrick Bet-David. Her co-panelists were Jillian Michaels, Lindy Li and Amy Dangerfield, and press coverage described the show as a more conservative answer to *The View*. - **June 2025:** On *Her Take* she was cast as the liberal on the panel. In one widely shared episode, pro-Trump commentator Adam Sosnick threw a tampon at her during an argument about the Israel–Iran conflict. - **July 25, 2025:** She was the guest on *The Tucker Carlson Show*, in an episode about the [[Jeffrey Epstein]] files, an Israeli strike on a church in Gaza, and political realignment. She told Carlson she still disagreed with him on abortion, and she praised the Trump voters who were demanding that the administration release the Epstein files. ## Israel, the Iran war and the antisemitism dispute, 2025–2026 By 2026 the issue that defined Kasparian was no longer "wokeness." It was Israel and war. - She has called Israel's campaign in the [[Gaza War]] a genocide and has made opposition to U.S. military support for Israel a constant theme. - **February 2026:** During an argument on X she answered an accusation of antisemitism with a post declaring that "the goyim are waking" up. Writers at *Commentary* and other critics called it an antisemitic trope. She refused to apologize and argued that the word is itself a slur aimed at non-Jews. - Advocacy groups including StopAntisemitism and the Combat Antisemitism Movement have campaigned against her. Her defenders answer that harsh criticism of Israeli policy is being relabeled as bigotry. - **July 2026:** She appeared on a podcast from [[The American Conservative]] about what the magazine called an emerging bipartisan anti-war movement, with the Iran war among the subjects. - **Fall 2026:** American Muslim advocacy groups booked her as a featured speaker. The Muslim Public Affairs Council announced her for its Los Angeles gala on October 10, and the Combat Antisemitism Movement, criticizing the invitations, reported that she keynoted a Chicago banquet for the Council on American-Islamic Relations on September 20. - **November 3, 2026:** She co-anchored The Young Turks' election-night broadcast for the [[2026 Midterm Elections]], which C-SPAN 2 carried live. ## The name problem Kasparian is an Armenian American who co-hosts a show named for the Young Turks, the Ottoman political movement whose leaders carried out the [[Armenian Genocide]]. Armenian American groups have protested her campus appearances over the name, and the show has refused to change it. In 2020 she said that critics of the name were directing harassment at her. The background is on the pages for [[The Young Turks]] and [[Cenk Uygur]]. ## Timeline | Date | Event | |------|-------| | 2007 | Joins The Young Turks as a fill-in producer; becomes co-host | | 2023 | Begins publicly disputing progressive positions | | Oct. 2024 | Says she has left the Democratic Party | | Dec. 2024 | Interview with Glenn Beck; a Young Turks contributor resigns on air in protest | | May 2025 | Joins *Her Take* at Valuetainment | | July 2025 | Guest on *The Tucker Carlson Show* | | Feb. 2026 | "Goyim" post draws accusations of antisemitism | | July 2026 | Anti-war podcast with *The American Conservative* | | Sept.–Oct. 2026 | Featured speaker for American Muslim advocacy groups | | Nov. 2026 | Co-anchors election night on C-SPAN 2 | ## How to read her trajectory The [[Horseshoe Theory]] page describes a common pipeline: a left-wing commentator declares independence, finds a bigger and better-funded audience on the right, and ends up as a right-wing commentator. Kasparian fits the first two steps. The third has not happened. Her common ground with the right runs through one faction of it, the anti-war and anti-Israel populists around Carlson, and she has opposed the Trump administration's war with Iran from that position. Whether that makes her proof of a left-right [[Realignment]] or one more example of the pipeline at an earlier stage is the open question. ## Connections - [[The Young Turks]] — the show she co-hosts and produces - [[Cenk Uygur]] — founder and co-host, who made a similar turn at the same time - [[Dave Rubin]] — the former colleague whose path to the right hers is measured against - [[Hasan Piker]] — another alumnus of the show, who went left instead - [[Tucker Carlson]] — her main point of contact with the anti-war right - [[Horseshoe Theory]] — the framework for left-right convergence