# Jimmy Dore Jimmy Dore (b. July 26, 1965, in Chicago) is a stand-up comedian turned political commentator. His YouTube program, *The Jimmy Dore Show*, has well over a million subscribers. He spent a decade on [[The Young Turks]] network, left in April 2019 to run the show as his own business, and has since become one of the clearest cases of a left-populist broadcaster whose guests, targets and audience overlap with the populist right. ## From comedy to The Young Turks Dore worked the Chicago and Los Angeles comedy circuits for years and turned to political material in the mid-2000s; Comedy Central aired his special *Citizen Jimmy* in 2008. His show began in 2009 on KPFK, the Pacifica radio station in Los Angeles, and ran online through The Young Turks, where he worked alongside [[Cenk Uygur]] and [[Ana Kasparian]]. He announced his departure from the network in April 2019 and now distributes the show through [[YouTube]], [[Rumble]] and podcast feeds. ## Force the Vote Dore's biggest moment of influence on the left came in late 2020. With Democrats holding a thin House majority, he proposed that progressive members refuse to re-elect [[Nancy Pelosi]] as speaker unless she scheduled a floor vote on Medicare for All. [[Briahna Joy Gray]], Cornel West and other left commentators backed the idea. [[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]] rejected it, no member of her bloc withheld a vote, and Pelosi was re-elected in January 2021. The campaign failed, but it split the online left for months. Dore turned on Ocasio-Cortez and other progressive Democrats as frauds who provided cover for party leaders, and he has treated the [[Democratic Party]] as his main target ever since. ## The company he keeps Several positions since then put him at odds with most of the left and in step with the populist right: - **COVID-19.** He promoted misleading claims about vaccine safety and effectiveness and gave airtime to ivermectin as a treatment. The fact-checking group Science Feedback rated a January 2022 segment, which claimed COVID deaths were far lower than reported, as inaccurate. - **Syria.** He argued that the 2017 chemical attack at Khan Sheikhun was probably staged by opponents of [[Bashar al-Assad]]. International investigators attributed the attack to the Syrian government. - **Left-right antiwar politics.** He was a featured speaker at the Rage Against the War Machine rally in Washington on Feb. 19, 2023, organized jointly by the [[Libertarian Party]] and the People's Party to oppose U.S. aid to [[Ukraine]]. [[Ron Paul]], [[Tulsi Gabbard]] and [[Max Blumenthal]] also spoke. Several established peace groups stayed away because of the organizers. His 2026 episodes show where that leaves him. Guests have included Republican Sen. [[Ron Johnson]] on COVID, the retired colonel Douglas Macgregor on the [[Iran War 2026]], [[Glenn Greenwald]], [[Max Blumenthal]] and [[Briahna Joy Gray]]. He has taken [[Candace Owens]]'s side in her feud with [[Turning Point USA]], and one April episode called the [[WHCD Shooting]] a set-up. He has also been a steady critic of the Iran war and of U.S. support for [[Israel]]. ## Why it's on the map Dore is one of the wiki's standing examples in the [[Horseshoe Theory]] debate. One reading is that his anti-war, anti-corporate views never changed and only the labels did. The other reading is that an independent show lives on its audience, and that an audience built on distrust of Democrats, public-health agencies and the press rewards a host for following that distrust wherever it leads. Both readings are discussed under [[Heterodox Media]]. ## Connections - [[Heterodox Media]] · [[Horseshoe Theory]] · [[The Young Turks]] · [[Cenk Uygur]] · [[Ana Kasparian]] - [[Briahna Joy Gray]] · [[Max Blumenthal]] · [[The Grayzone]] · [[Glenn Greenwald]] - [[Callin]] · [[Rumble]] · [[YouTube]]