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The Donald Trump v Zohran Mamdani Show
00:33:01
How long can the US president and next mayor of New York continue to get on?
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- [00:00]
Podcast Host
This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.
- [00:06]
Asma Khalid
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Sarah
One of the most surprising scenes we've seen in the Oval Office in the last few weeks and months was when the new mayor of New York, Zora Mamdani, came to meet Donald Trump. These are two men who have been trading insults for weeks during the election campaign for the New York mayor. And now suddenly they're all smiles, handshakes, warm body language, looking the best of friends. What is going on here? Have they discovered that they actually like each other? Is there political benefit for Donald Trump in being nice to Mamdani or Mamdani getting on with Donald Trump? What does it tell us about how Zora Mamdani might actually govern New York? Welcome to americast.
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Asma Khalid
Americast americast from BBC News.
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Anthony
When Donald Trump calls, they say, yes.
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Nick Reisman
Sir, right away, sir. Happy to lick your boot, sir. We are the sickest country in the world.
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Asma Khalid
Oh, dear. Are you worried that billionaires are going to go hungry?
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Sarah
Of course.
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Anthony
The president supports peaceful protests.
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Asma Khalid
What a stupid question.
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Donald Trump
Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?
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Sarah
Hello, it's Sarah here in the BBC's Washington bureau.
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Anthony
And it's Anthony right next to Sarah here in Washington.
- [02:26]
Sarah
And Anthony, we've got a guest with us today, which is really good news. I'm really intrigued to speak to him because it's a political reporter called Nick Reisman. He's there. And Albany bureau chief, which means he's an expert in New York State politics, not just what happens in New York City. And we're going to be talking to him shortly to talk about what's at stake for Zoram Mandani, the new mayor of New York. Well, will be the mayor on the 1st of January, and what the coming year is going to be like for him. But let's remind everybody, I mean, I'm sure our amerracasters do remember the rather dramatic win Mandani had on 4 November when he became the mayor of New York. But what was almost as surprising as that was the meeting he had with Donald, Donald Trump in the Oval Office. And we're just gonna talk a little bit more about that and the consequences of it because we know our listeners are interested. We mentioned it the other day, but we didn't get into in depth why it was that the pair of them, who had basically spent an election campaign really heavily criticizing each other, sounded like they were best friends. Let's have a listen to what happened inside the Oval Office when they met.
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Asma Khalid
Are you affirming that you think President Trump is a fascist?
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Zoran Mamdani
I've spoken about.
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Donald Trump
That's okay. You can just say okay. Okay. It's eas. It's easier than explaining it. I don't mind.
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Nick Reisman
Would you feel comfortable living in New York City under a mom daddy administration?
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Donald Trump
Yeah, I would. I really would. Especially after the meeting. Absolutely.
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Nick Reisman
What makes you comfortable?
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Donald Trump
We agree on a lot more than I would have thought. I think he's. I want him to do a great job.
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Sarah
Why did you fly here? Aren't trains greener?
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Zoran Mamdani
I'll use every form of transit, and I want to make sure that they're all affordable in New York City. And that's why making buses fast and free is a centerpiece of our campaign.
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Sarah
Where's the bus?
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Donald Trump
Well, but. I know, but if he flew, that's a lot quicker, too, you know, I mean, he's working very hard. I'll tell you, the press has eaten this thing up. You know, I've had a lot of meetings with the heads of major countries. Nobody cared this meeting that you people have gone crazy. You know, outside, you have hundreds of people waiting. This is just a small little group. For some reason, the press has found this to be a very interesting meeting. The biggest people in the world, they come over from countries. Nobody cares. But they did care about this meeting, and it was a great meeting. Go ahead.
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Sarah
Yeah. Mr. President, the press really did care about that meeting. Maybe that's why Donald Trump cared about that meeting, because it was Getting a lot of press attention. But were you surprised that they got on as well as they did?
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Anthony
I was surprised at first because there had been so much attention, so much hype leading into this. Fox News was running a chiron that was Trump against socialism. And it was being billed by Republicans in Congress again as Donald Trump taking on this almost comic book villain who was going to make New York City, in their view, totally unlivable. People were gonna be streaming out of the city. Millionaires were not gonna wanna live there. And then to have this kind of flip around like that did catch me a little bit off guard. Although when you think about it more, it does kind of make sense. I mean, they both are outer borough New Yorkers. They both have a lot in common. Even though they come from different backgrounds, growing up in New York City, they probably know some of the same sites, know some of the same places, know some of the same people, maybe even. And for Donald Trump, politics first and foremost is personal. And Zohrand came in there and did treat Donald Trump with respect. He searched for common ground, common shared kind of footing to operate off of. And I think Donald Trump reacted positively to that. So, you know, I was shocked at first, but then it started to kind of make sense in a weird sort of way.
- [06:09]
Sarah
And we heard Donald Trump there saying they shared some of the same policies. And you were saying they probably share some experiences growing up, maybe know some of the same people. They also share some of the same voters, don't they? I mean, it might sound completely bizarre, but there are quite a number of people who voted for Donald Trump in 2024 and one year later voted for Zora Mandani to their mayor, even though, you know, one's a MAGA right wing politician, the other calls himself a democratic socialist.
- [06:37]
Anthony
Yeah, Mamdani actually stressed that, saying that some of the people he talked to on the street who were his supporters were also Trump supporters. I think Donald Trump liked that as well. Donald Trump wants to be popular in New York. I mean, as much as it's this bastion of liberalism and that's where he's from. I mean, he lives in Florida now, but he's from New York. He is a New Yorker. He wants to make it there. His whole professional career, up until when he went into national politics, was becoming a dominant force politically, culturally and so forth in New York City. So this was an opportunity to connect with someone who did that, who was popular in New York, who won a mayoral election with more than 50% of the vote. And I think Donald Trump respects that.
- [07:23]
Sarah
When he said they could work together on some things. I mean, the reason that they've got some voters who support them both, I assume, is largely around affordability. It's about. I mean, New York's one of the least affordable cities in the US So whilst this is the biggest issue in. In politics across the country, even more so in New York, where the price of accommodation is so high, but people are still struggling with the price of utilities and groceries and all the other things that people are worried about. Can they find common ground on how to fix the affordability crisis? Or if we got just a situation where they both identified the same problem, but they have very different answers?
- [07:59]
Anthony
Yeah, I think that may be where friction comes back, because Mamdani has already called for higher taxes on the wealthy in New York City to pay for a lot of these programs, to pay for the free buses that he wants to provide, to pay for the grocery stores that he would build in communities that don't have access to reasonably priced goods, to pay for subsidized housing and things like that. And Donald Trump obviously personally believes in lowering taxes on the wealthy, but also it's kind of a core tenant of the entire Republican Party, so it'd be difficult for him to break with that. So I think we may run into a wall at some point there. And when we talk to our guests, we can ask about the practicality of even doing that for Mamdani, because it's New York State, not New York City, that will set tax rates. But, yeah, it's something that we've touched on in previous episodes when we talked about Mamdani and Trump, and that is that they both, stylistically, are very similar. They both have the same sort of outsider message. They both have this kind of, we're going to rail against the elites who are trying to keep us down. So, again, going back to your original question about whether I was surprised. I mean, we did. We had hints of that. It just seemed like there was so much hype and so much drama leading up to this that there would be no way that Trump would be as accommodating, as welcoming, as friendly. I mean, so gracious when Mamdani was in there. I mean, those pictures of Trump sitting at the Resolute desk with Mamdani over his shoulder, kind of like almost like an aide and just beaming. The Cheshire cat grinned from ear to ear as Mamdani was talking. It made for just a visual of that alone, even without knowing what they were saying was astounding.
- [09:51]
Sarah
Yeah. And Trump patting Mamdani on the arm and all of that kind of thing. The one thing for all. So we've identified the reasons why they might be able to get on. What surprised me a bit was they've been very useful political foils for each other. Mandani spent a lot of his campaign attacking Donald Trump, and famously, on the night that he won, he said during. During his speech, donald Trump, I know you're watching.
- [10:14]
Anthony
I have four words for you.
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Zoran Mamdani
Turn the volume up.
- [10:23]
Sarah
Combative message. Donald Trump's been very, very critical of him. Calls him a communist all the time. They're useful to each other as each other's opposite. So, you know, to characterize them as particularly dangerous or evil is politically and electorally useful. So that's what surprised me a bit. And then, of course, it wasn't long after Mumdani left the Oval Office. He gave another interview on Sunday to Meet the Press on NBC, where he did agree that he does actually still think that Donald Trump is a fascist.
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Asma Khalid
You were about to answer, then President Trump sort of jumped in and he said, quote, that's okay. You can just say, yes. It's easier than explaining it. So, Mr. Mayor, elect, just to be very clear, do you think that President Trump is a fascist?
- [11:09]
Zoran Mamdani
And after President Trump said that, I said, yes. And so you do. And that's something that I've said in the past. I say it today. And I think what I appreciated about the conversation that I had with the president was that we were not shy about the places of disagreement, about the politics that has brought us to this moment. And we also wanted to focus on what it could look like to deliver on a shared analysis of an effective.
- [11:29]
Anthony
And I think that cuts to one of the. One of the critical issues here, which is, oh, yeah, we can agree on making housing more affordable and maybe improving transit. We disagree on the fact that you're a fascist. I mean, that seems like a pretty big disagreement. And if he sticks with this, then it's going to be, I think, a source of real conflict between the two men. And I think what may drive them back into their kind of opposite corners to start lobbing bombs at each other.
- [11:56]
Sarah
Yeah, it's very difficult to be meeting and saying, here's my friend the fascist, and I'm my friend the communist, who's standing beside me right here, which is something they've tossed around a lot. Where does it leave Republicans who really, really welcomed Mandani's election because they thought, here we've got a figurehead of somebody who we can paint as being unacceptably far left, Democratic socialist, by admission, Communist. They'll call him and say, this shows how far to the left the Democratic Party have gone. And use that in the midterm elections coming up next year to say, the Democrats have swung to the left. These chummy meetings make it much, much harder, don't they, for them to say, this guy is just unacceptable in American politics.
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Anthony
Yeah, I think that's a very real challenge for the Republicans. They were building an entire midterm election strategy around making Mamdani the face of the Democratic Party, that he was going to be the communist villain, and all of his horrible socialist policies would wreck New York City. And they'd be able to point to it and say, see, the city is going to hell in a handbasket. And this is what Democrats want to do for the entire country. And this just gives a visual that undercuts that pretty significantly. Elise Stefanik, the House Republican from New York who's running for governor against Kathy Hochul, the incumbent Democrat, she had been building up her campaign to try to link Hochul to Mamdani. Hochul had endorsed Mamdani shortly before the election, one of the few real prominent New York Democrats to do so. And she was going to make her pay a political price for that. And there were some indications even that that might have been a useful traction. There were, as we discussed in the aftermath of those November elections, that their New York suburbs, Long island, some of those elections actually went better for Republicans. And it may have been because of the perceived threat of Mamdani. But now Mamdani and Trump are best friends. I mean, where do you go from there?
- [14:04]
Sarah
There's a lot of challenges ahead for Mandani, who made big promises, not all of them. It's within his power to fulfill either. He's going to have to work with the governor over how they're going to raise funds to pay for some of the things, like the fast and free buses that he promised. How much does he need? The President, he had threatened to withhold federal funds from New York if Mamdani was elected. And he could always go back to threatening that. Are they necessary? Is that a huge part of New York finances? Does it matter?
- [14:32]
Anthony
I think the relations with Albany, the New York State Capitol, and Hochul is going to be more important for what he wants. But, yeah, Donald Trump could really hurt New York City if he wanted to put the squeeze on it. We already saw some signs of that in the run up to November's election, where Trump had cut off funding temporarily to this transit tunnel between New Jersey and New York City that is really needed. There's other government funds that are coming in for other projects in New York City that Trump could make very difficult to obtain, and that would cause very real problems for Mamdani. So it's not. You don't necessarily need Trump as an ally, but you would hate to have him as an enemy who is really working against everything you're trying to do.
- [15:16]
Sarah
And there's a threat also of him sending the National Guard into New York, as he has in Washington, Los Angeles, Chicago and other cities. Now. They've been received differently in different places, especially when they've been backing up immigration raids. I do wonder, given some of what you saw happening in Chicago, whether it wouldn't actually be helpful for Mamdani. I'm sure he doesn't want the National Guard in there, but in New York, of all places, that's unlikely to endear people to the Republicans. Is it?
- [15:46]
Anthony
Yeah, it may come with a price. I don't think it would. Well, it might help Mamdani in that it gives him more of a political cudgel to beat Trump with. I don't think it'll help Mamdani in that it reduces crime, because actually, crime in New York City is fairly low by historic standards right now. It's certainly different than Chicago, where there were some very real crime and gun violence problems in some of the less affluent areas of the city, or Memphis, where they have, as you mentioned, welcomed having National Guard troops, Tennessee National Guard troops, come in and try to clean up the city. It seems like there's two different ways of handling that National Guard situation if you're a Democrat. One is you dig in and fight, like we've seen in Portland. Another one is where you try to convince, politely convince Trump otherwise. And the mayor of San Francisco, actually, it looked like Trump was going to send in the National Guard. And this San Francisco mayor got on the phone with Trump, kind of sweet talked him, told him about all the good things that San Francisco is doing, and Trump actually backed down from that without a whole lot of drama. So that might be the path that Mamdani is feeling out and is going to try to pursue that. You know, you don't start crying fascism and warning of how awful it'll be if the dictator in Washington, D.C. sends the troops into your city, but rather does it behind the scenes quietly, and then talks Trump back from such a dramatic move and maybe highlights the political risks for Trump as well if he did it.
- [17:16]
Sarah
This is a perfect moment to bring in our guest because we're joined now by Nick reisman. He is POLITICO's Albany bureau chief and he's the co author of Politico's New York Playbook. Nick Reisman, thank you for joining us. Hello.
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Nick Reisman
Thanks for having me.
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Anthony
What is it about New Yorkers, outsider New Yorkers who seem to be able to catch fire and make these kind of changes? Is there a certain pugilistic, certain kind of combative nature to them that gives them the ability to win as outsiders? I don't know.
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Nick Reisman
I mean, Frank Sinatra has a whole song about it, about how you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. But, I mean, I think there's something to that. Look, New York City, a lot of New Yorkers, I'm originally from just outside of the city, they have a real kind of almost egocentric view of the world. There's that old New Yorker magazine cover of New Yorker's View of the World, and it stops just at the Hudson river going into New Jersey. People think and have kind of an outsized expectation for New York really mattering on the national stage and on the global stage. And in some respects, it really does. Like, New York City is the financial capital of the United States. It's the financial capital of the globe in some respects. And it's also the media capital of the US as well. Like all the newspapers and major television stations are based in New York City. So automatically, when you're mayor of New York or if you're a very prominent, let's say, real estate developer in New York, you're going to get an outsized amount of attention just by virtue of the fact that, that you're in the Big Apple.
- [18:51]
Sarah
We were mentioning earlier, Anthony was mentioning that taxing the rich and the most wealthy New Yorkers is probably not something that Donald Trump's gonna get on side with. Probably won't include him now he's resident in Florida. Possible other members of the family. There may be property taxes that he would have to pay. Once Mamdani starts actually trying to implement his agenda, is there any possibility that this bromance can carry on, or do you think they're gonna fall out?
- [19:20]
Nick Reisman
Well, it's also important to keep in mind here that the words mercurial, temperamental, they apply to Donald Trump. And in some respects, you know, I was talking to a few New York Republicans in the aftermath of this meeting, and they were telling me, look, Donald Trump may very well wake up tomorrow morning and decide to put on truth social how Zoran Mamdani is a loser and a communist because he saw Mamdani say something mean about him on TV and he reacted and all of this is over. So this may very well be something of a snapshot in time. All of that said, though, Trump and Mamdani do have a shared outlook on economic populism. Trump even kind of floated the idea of raising taxes on very wealthy individuals nationally. This was something obviously that was going to be anathema to Republicans, and it was quickly dropped. But I think Trump and Mamdani kind of shared similar instinct when it comes to this economic populism. The rubber is going to meet the road at some point in all of this. Obviously, Republicans do not want to see tax increases. Mamdani knows that it is actually quite popular in New York City and New York State for that matter, to raise taxes on rich people and very large corporations. But that's going to be a tension point for Mamdani going forward.
- [20:41]
Anthony
I think the.
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Nick Reisman
The bigger issue is probably going to be on something like crime and public safety going forward, not so much taxes, any kind of issue surrounding economic populism. There is kind of a shared understanding that blue collar New Yorkers in particular are struggling to live in a very expensive city, one that, quite frankly, Donald Trump helped build in the 1980s. And in many respects, what we're seeing now, this deep unrest over how expensive it is to live in New York City produced Zoran Mandani's victory just less than three weeks ago.
- [21:22]
Anthony
Yeah, I guess if Donald Trump can turn on Marjorie Taylor Greene, as we've discussed over the past week, he can turn on anyone.
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Nick Reisman
Mamdani is no permanent friends, no permanent allies, right?
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Anthony
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Now, we talked about the dynamic between Mamdani and Trump, but it seems like the real dynamic that may determine whether Mamdani can pursue these policies and get them implemented and have the money to get them implemented, is his relationship with Kathy Hochul, the governor there in Albany, where you are, does it seem like they have a warm relations? And is Hochul gonna cooperate with Mamdani in order to get the taxes necessary to give these free bus rides to everyone to make housing more affordable, all of these programs that he is promising low, or the. The childcare for all New Yorkers from the age of, what, 1 to 3, or something like that?
- [22:16]
Nick Reisman
The tax question is going to be a major one for her. She has previously said that she doesn't want to see any taxes go up, especially on rich people, especially on these corporations. But in the last couple of weeks, since Mamdani's election, she has started to hedge a little bit. And she said, well, you know, there's a lot of uncertainty coming from the federal government. We just don't know what Congress is going to do next year that could wind up financially harming New York State and New York City. So she has kind of played her cards a little close to the vest there. It makes me think that at very least when she submits her budget proposal in the next four weeks or so, that we'll probably see some tax increase proposals in there. Again, it's politically popular to do. And Mamdani obviously has a lot of the wind at his back, too. So that's a very long way of saying, I think Hochul is going to try and work with Mamdani where she can. She needs Mamdani voters when she is running next year. And she is going to have to kind of thread this very delicate political needle.
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Sarah
Now, Kathy Hogle may be facing a challenge in that election next year for the governorship from Elise Stefanik, the Republican congresswoman close to Donald Trump, who was going to be his ambassador to the United Nations. So she was going to be moving to New York. And then there were anxieties over the by election that that would create in her seat in the very slim majority that the Republicans had in the House of Representatives. So instead she set her sights on Governor of New York. She was unhappy about the chummy loving between Mamdani and Donald Trump because she had been wanting to paint Mamdani as a dangerous communist and tie Kathy Hochul to him because she had quite backed him early on in the race, much earlier than a lot of other Democratic leaders had. What are her chances, do you reckon? And have they been torpedoed in any way by Donald Trump's embrace of Mount Dani?
- [24:14]
Nick Reisman
It definitely did not make it easier for Elise Stefanik to run in what is a very, very Democratic dominated state. A Republican hasn't won in New York statewide for about 24 years now. So this is going to be a real, real uphill climb. I think it's fair to say, at least at this point, that it's going to be a long shot for Elise Stefanik to unseat Kathy Hochul from the governor's office. You have to remember that Stefanik has really kind of tied her career to Donald Trump. Originally, she started off as this moderate Republican representing a very large rural House seat in upstate New York. And subsequent to Trump winning, she was a little uneasy with this idea of Donald Trump. And as her base in upstate New York became much more Trumpified, much more magified. She very quickly shifted into a pro Trump posture, and she ardently defended him during his first impeachment trial. And she has subsequently emerged as this major ally of Donald Trump's in Congress. The problem with that is if you were running statewide in New York and trying to win votes in the suburbs and in New York City, the vast majority of New Yorkers do not approve of Donald Trump. And it is a vehement disapproval of Donald Trump. He has lost New York State three times in all three elections. He is broadly unpopular here. So she has to try and find a way of separating herself from Trump. Now, the way to have done it is probably to not disagree with him on Zora Hamdani, in the sense that Trump was asked point blank. You know, Elise Stefanik is calling the mayor elect a jihadist. Do you agree with that? And Trump said he disagreed.
- [26:09]
Asma Khalid
Do you think you're standing next to.
- [26:10]
Anthony
A jihadist right now in the Oval Office?
- [26:12]
Donald Trump
No, I don't. But she's out there campaigning and, you know, you say things sometimes in a campaign.
- [26:20]
Asma Khalid
Isn't that sort of difficult?
- [26:21]
Donald Trump
She's a very capable person, but you'd really have to ask her about that. But I don't particularly. I think I met with a. I met with a man who's a very rational person. I met with a man who wants to see, really wants to see New York be great again.
- [26:36]
Nick Reisman
And I can say, again, so Stefanik is now finding herself on the other side of charged and quite frankly, divisive rhetoric from Donald Trump, which is an interesting place to be. This is going to be a tough challenge for Stefanik, and it kind of has highlighted the limitations of tying your career, your political career to somebody like the president, just because he is so unpredictable and mercurial. You just don't know ultimately where it's going to land. And sometimes it can help, but also you can get crosswise with him. And as you mentioned, just ask Marjorie Taylor Greene.
- [27:14]
Anthony
And we were talking about the November election results in New York and in Long island in particular, where Republicans actually did pretty well. And one of the theories behind that was that it was a pushback against Mamdani, that there was some concern outside of New York City proper that he might be going too far, that he might be a threat to New York prosperity. So, I mean, there's a reason why Stefanik put her finger on this and said, oh, oh, you know, here's my ticket to the Governor's mansion. If I can just make him into the villain and tie Hochul to him, then that's gonna work. Did Trump just blow all that up?
- [27:48]
Nick Reisman
Temporarily, yes, it would seem that he did. All of this is kind of predicated, though, on how Mamdani is going to be with governing and whether Kathy Hochul sticks by him. If there is a major, major problem with a very early Mamdani administration. But you mentioned Long island and the suburbs. You've got a number of moderate Democrats who have these swing House seats on Long Island. Democrat Laura Gillen and Tom Suozzi who are going to be facing most likely competitive reelection challenges from Republicans. And they have greatly, significantly distanced themselves from Zoran Mamdani. They did not endorse his mayoral campaign. They clearly seem to think that he is a political liability going forward. The Democratic leader in the House, Hakeem Jeffries, who represents Brooklyn, only begrudgingly wound up endorsing Zoran Mamdani at the very end. And Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, another Brooklyn Democrat, he also has stayed very clear of Mamdani politically as well. So this is all to say that Democrats know that this could very well still rebound on them. And they are very worried that moderate voters, suburban voters, are concerned about increasing taxes, are concerned about crime in New York City. And so they are taking a very, very cautious approach, kind of approaching him with oven mitts on at this point, just because their voters, and we've seen in polling their voters do not like Zoran Mamdani. He has a high disapproval rating in the New York City suburbs. And that is really a bellwether for New York State and really for the rest of the country, for that matter.
- [29:36]
Sarah
You mentioned Hakeem Jeffries there, the senior Democrat in the House of Representatives. And there has been an interesting bit of news on that and Hamdani this week, hasn't there, where, as you said, Jeffries was very slow to back him. One of those in the party slightly suspicious of his left wing politics. And yet here we had a situation where a fellow member of the Democratic Socialists of America, so someone you would think would have Maudani support, a fellow traveler and his wing of politics, wanted to launch a primary challenge against Hakeem Jeffries to run for that seat for the Democrats in November. Imam Domini is not backing that. He's basically stepping in to try and save Hakeem Jeffries from that primary challenge, which suggests maybe he's going to operate as a slightly more mainstream Democrat than many people, possibly including Jeffries himself, might have anticipated.
- [30:27]
Nick Reisman
Yeah, this is a really important Storyline Following Mamdani going forward politically, the Democratic Socialists of America America, the dsa. That's the organization that Mamdani and some of his allies have sprung from over the last couple of years. Probably their best known member up until this point was Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, who won an upset election in the middle of Trump's first term. But the dsa, the Democratic Socialists, operate in a very decentralized fashion and Mamdani now is kind of finding himself in a very unusual position for a DSA member. For someone like himself who is kind of set up as this, as this power broker, I don't think this is a job he really wants to do. He does not want to tell people, oh, do not primary Hakeem Jeffries run this primary campaign instead for another member. He in some respects will not be able to control every primary against every sitting Democratic member of the House of Representatives from New York, but he's going to have to at least try to intervene in at least a few of these cases to put some of his political capital on the line in order to stop it. Yes, Hakeem Jeffries is deeply skeptical of Zoran Mamdani. There's a real concern about these kind of far left Democrats who are moving into predominantly black neighborhoods of Brooklyn, in Queens and elsewhere. They're seen as gentrifiers in some respects by a number of these longtime politicians who worry that they're going to be crowding out lower income community members. The DSA typically has this image of being something of a more upper income bougie, if you will, kind of political culture. But obviously Zoran Mamdani is going to need somebody like Hakeem Jeffries. He wants Hakeem Jeffries to be the speaker of the House of Representatives if Democrats take control of that chamber next year. He wants Jeffries on his side for all of those federal aid reasons. He wants Jeffries heft in Congress. So he doesn't want to see a backbench 25 year old member of the New York City Council take on Hakeem Jeffries and have this messy primary in his own backyard. It would be a bad story for him and it would also be a distracting story as he's trying to start to govern in 2026.
- [32:55]
Anthony
Mamdani clearly a gifted politician also, maybe a practical one as well when it comes to governing, but we're going to have to keep an eye. This is obviously a story that's not going to go away, one that will develop even more once Mamdani actually becomes the mayor. Nick, thanks so much for coming on. We really appreciated you sharing your insight. And you got to come back again when we get into next year and start rating how he's doing. Absolutely.
- [33:18]
Nick Reisman
Thanks for having me.
- [33:19]
Sarah
That's it from us as well for now and for this week. Have a great weekend.
- [33:23]
Anthony
Bye bye bye.
- [33:28]
Podcast Host
Thank you for listening to another episode. It is you, the Ameracaster, that makes AmericasT the community that it now is. If you like what you've heard, please do subscribe to this podcast on BBC Sounds or wherever you get your podcasts. We always want to hear your feedback as well. We look at every single bit of correspondence that we get so you can send us an email americastbc.co.uk the WhatsApp is 443-301-239480 and you can get involved in the AmericasT Discord server. The link to that is in the description. Until next time, bye bye.
- [34:15]
Asma Khalid
America is changing and so is the world.
- [34:19]
Sarah
But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.
- [34:27]
Asma Khalid
I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. i'm.
- [34:30]
Nick Reisman
Tristan Redman in London, and this is the Global story.
- [34:34]
Asma Khalid
Every weekday we'll bring you a story from this intersection where the world and America meet.
- [34:40]
Sarah
Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.