On Monday evening, Myles Toe, a 26-year-old comedian, and several friends were lingering outside of The Stand, a comedy club near Union Square, in hopes of getting a glimpse of Dave Chappelle, who was performing that night.
Instead, he and several of his friends recognized Andrew Yang outside. They immediately began joking with the mayoral candidate, who had come to support and watch Chappelle, an ardent supporter of his presidential run. Toe asked Yang if he would be willing to be in a video with his friend and fellow comedian Lawrence Reese, who does man-on-the-street interviews that he shares on the internet.
Yang said yes.
"I was really surprised he said that," Toe told Gothamist.
What they captured was a controversial video featuring Yang appearing to laugh at their misogynistic jokes. The video went viral, drawing sharp condemnation from several of Yang's Democratic rivals, including Scott Stringer, Maya Wiley, Kathryn Garcia and Eric Adams, along with their supporters, and leaving his campaign scrambling to explain his actions for the third time this week.
In the video, Reese begins by making a reference to Timberland boots, "Can a man keep his Timbs on?" After Yang expresses confusion, Reese adds, "Yeah, while he's f--king bitches?"
Yang replies, "I think it's purely up to your partner right?" He then puts his hand on Reese's shoulder.
Reese continues by asking, "“Do you choke bitches, Andrew Yang?” Yang laughs and then walks away, making a cut sign with his hand.
At a press conference in front of Brooklyn's Borough Hall on Thursday, Yang was asked about the incident.
"I think most New Yorkers know I try to be friendly with people. In this case someone wanted a video and I thought I'd be friendly. But then I know, he said something that was plainly inappropriate that I didn't find funny at all. And so I walked away and ended the interaction as quickly as possible," he said.
Yang added: "You're in a posture where you're trying to be friendly to someone and then you're shocked and surprised that all of a sudden it goes in that direction, so I reacted to the interaction as quickly as possible."
With the mayoral campaign season swinging into high gear, other candidates seized on the video and blasted Yang’s response. The most vocal response came from Wiley who held a press conference with a dozen supporters on Thursday, including several women who described their own experience with gender-based violence and sexual assault.
“What should strike all of us is that he engaged in this locker room talk in the first place. That he did not shut it down. That as soon as this man threw the B-word out there, game over,” said Wiley, suggesting that Yang should have made clear he would not engage in a conversation that diminishes women or the use language that degrades them.
She added: “It’s time for it to stop, it’s time for us to call it out, and it’s time for us ask every last one of our residents to say, no.”
When asked if she was exploiting Yang’s gaffe to score political points, Wiley did not back down.
“Men do this all the time, all the time,” she said. “People are free to vote for whomever they want, but by God I don’t care what anyone says about why I am doing it, I know why."
Two women, including former MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry, shared stories of surviving sexual violence during the press conference.
City Comptroller Stringer issued a statement from a group of female elected officials, including State Senator Alessandra Biaggi, Assemblymembers Linda Rosenthal, Nily Rozic, Carmen De La Rosa, and Catalina Cruz, accusing Yang of not standing up to misogyny.
"It isn’t just 'locker room talk.' Language like this perpetuates real violence against women," they said. "And laughing at it is the latest in a long list of troubling evidence about Yang's character that follows countless reports of toxic masculinity, misogyny, and bro-culture that have defined his past campaigns and companies."
Yang's former employees and campaign staffers on his presidential campaign have complained of a "toxic" "bro" work culture.
"To put it plainly — this is disqualifying for someone who is seeking to be mayor of New York," the women lawmakers said.
Garcia issued a statement, saying, “It’s entirely too common that men feel uncomfortable handling these situations properly. As a society, we need to get to a place where all men stand up and call these comments out right away."
"Women in leadership matters because we know what it feels like to be on the other end of these types of remarks,” she added.
Not all the women in the race opted to weigh in. A spokeswoman for Dianne Morales’ campaign declined to comment.
Adams, the Brooklyn borough president who is trailing Yang in several polls, was asked about the video during an appearance on Fox 5 on Thursday night.
“Unacceptable. We are continually seeing why Andrew Yang is not fit to be the mayor of this city," he said.
The moment comes on the heels of two missteps earlier this week by Yang. On Sunday, he drew criticism after suggesting in a tweet that the city should ramp up its enforcement of unlicensed street vendors. Yang later said he regretted those remarks.
Then on Tuesday, Black Lives Matter activists heckled and accused him of using them as a political photo-op after he joined them in a bike ride and vigil for Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old unarmed Black man who was killed recently by a Minneapolis policewoman.
Toe said he and his friends did not intend for the video to embarrass or damage Yang. Reese, the comedian in the video, also confirmed the story.
A friend helped them edit it, adding subtitles and text, and Reese uploaded on the video on his Instagram page, but purposely did not tag Yang. Then on Wednesday, Charlamagne tha God, one of the hosts of a popular radio show called The Breakfast Club, somehow shared a screen-grabbed version on his Instagram account.
Toe, who said he does not follow politics, said he did not regret posting the video and said he felt it made Yang more relatable in his eyes.
"Yang was in the streets with us. Five Black kids," he said. "To hang with us in the streets was the coolest thing ever."
He added: "It was just a human to human moment."
Additional reporting from Gwynne Hogan
