Misty Winston (49:37)
I'm the guest host, Misty Winston. Hey, Jimmy Dore is not here because he's on tour. So please go to jimmy dore.com you can find tickets for all of his shows there. He's in Rosemont, Illinois tonight and tomorrow he's going to be in Chicago Louisville, Fort Wayne, Indiana, several other cities coming up. So Again, go to Jimmy Dore.com for tickets there. And also, of course, the new special is out. Grab them by the. So while you're on the website, check that out as well. Share it with friends and family. We could all use some laughs. Things are pretty heavy these days, so please go and check that out. So, all right, our last story. This is a little bit lighter. We're going to make fun of Zoran Mandani. Want to do that? Let's do that. This is somebody that I called out from day one because I don't trust any politicians. I'm very anti electoral politics. I think progressives are incredibly transparent. I think this guy is incredible. He's AOC 2.0. He is AOC with a wiener. Let's just be clear. He. And it's so just readily, abundantly clear to me that he is a fraud and a phony. And Jimmy earlier this week covered where he walked back as a position on Palestine, which is exactly what Alexandria Ocasio Cortez did, too. I had a lot of people get mad at me because Alexandria Ocasio Cortez ran on Palestinian rights. It was something she was very vocal about. It was something she was very passionate about. It was on her website, all of the things, right? And I think it was maybe 36 hours after she watched her election and took office that Palestinian rights disappeared from her website and she suddenly had nothing else to say about it. And in fact, I think she did an interview with might have been CBS where she was directly confronted about it and asked about Palestine and Israel. And she, like, threw up her hands and was like, I don't really know about that. And I'm like, you have a degree in international relations and you ran on Palestinian rights, really? But that he's doing the exact same, walking the exact same path that she walked, where he blows a bunch of smoke up your ass and pretends to be progressive, pretends to stand for all these leftist ideals. And he's gonna fight the system and he's gonna fight the status quo, and he's not, and he was never going to. And now he's hanging out with Bernie Sanders and aoc and he's, you know, hanging out with Zionists on a regular basis. And he's walking back his position on Palestine. Well, he's also walking back another one of his positions, and he is now apologizing for calling the NYPD racist in 2020. And this is something that he was also very vocal about. He was Very critical of the nypd, who, by the way, is racist. I mean, it's, it's pretty clear just by the arrests and all of that stuff. I mean, you can argue that that's the whole thing, but this is not something that you should really have to walk back if it's something that you stand on. And he very clearly doesn't stand on anything. None of these people do. They are opportunists. He is an opportunist, opportunist. And he's going to say and do whatever happens to be politically advantageous in that moment. And this is just another example of that. So. Zoran Mandani, the Democratic nominee for mayor in New York City, said on Thursday that he intended to apologize for comments he made in 2020 calling the new York Police Department, quote, racist, anti queer and a major threat to public safety, end quote. The NYPD has long had issues, long had issues of police brutality, of racism, of corruption. I mean, this is not a like, shining example of institutional purity here. This is not, it's not really controversial. He said that the remarks, which he wrote in June 2020 and a social media post in support of the defund the police movement, were made after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis a month earlier. The comments were made, quote, at the height of frustration, he said in an interview with the New York Times, and were not reflective of his current campaign or, quote, my view of public safety and the fact that police will be critical partners in delivering public safety, end quote. Mr. Mandani's post from 2020 has been recirculated by his political opponents who have used his previous criticism of the police to portray him as weak on issues of public safety. Mr. Bondani, a new York State assemblyman, is far ahead of his three rivals, who include include Mayor Adams, a former police captain who has consistently placed fourth in recent polling, which makes me giggle. When he was asked if he should apologize to the city's police officers, he paused noticeably before answering. He then went on to explain how his views had changed. After he was asked again if he owed officers an apology, he said yes. Mr. Ramdani statements on Thursday came amid recent attempts to reach out to the police rank and file, an effort to address one of his biggest political vulnerabilities. His past criticism of the police has fed the skepticism and even hostility expressed by many police officers who are wary of the changes he plans to make to the department. But as Mr. Mamdani, a democratic socialist, really began his long shot bid to become the Democratic nominee for mayor last year, he abandoned some of his most provocative views, and they all do. In recent months, he has sought to downplay others. During the 30 minute interview Thursday, Mr. Momdownie reiterated his plan to keep the department department staffed at the budgeted level of 35,000, although the number of uniformed officers stands at 33, seven hundred and forty, according to department figures. Other candidates have said they would hire thousands more officers. Mr. Moundani has vowed to create a Department of Community Safety, which would dispatch mental health workers rather than the police to respond to 911 calls from people in crisis. He contends that it would free up more police officers to tackle violent crimes like strike shootings and robberies. And that is to me is a no brainer. How many times have we seen where somebody is in mental distress and they call the cops and the cops come and shoot them? I mean, that's happened numerous times. So having cops respond to those types of situation situations when they're very clearly not equipped to deal with them, they're not trained to deal with them, they're not good at like de escalation in the first place. It's a bad idea. So I don't have an issue with that proposal. Mr. Maldani also said that he was bracing for President Trump to dispatch the National Guard to New York City. As we just talked about, quote, I think that it is inevitable that he will seek to deploy the National Guard in New York City. I think it's incumbent upon all of us to be prepared for that as opposed to treating it as simply a possibility. Until Thursday, Mr. Mandani had stopped short of an apology for his 2020 remarks, saying only that in. Only that his past statements were, quote, out of step with his current position. His Valenturs day to apologize drew mixed responses from police union leaders. Louis Turco, head of the Lieutenants Union, which endorsed Mr. Adams, called Mr. Mandani's comments, quote, a good step, noting he made noting he made them on the anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks. Quote, we all make mistakes, we all get caught up. But that's when you grow up and you say, I was wrong and I apologize and we move on. The 2020 comments. Comments were demeaning and derogatory, said Lt. Turco, who has stated that he would not meet with Mr. Mamdani until he had apologized. Quote, you want to say the policies are racist or the policies are, are transphobic, that's one thing, but not the membership, he said. I'm pleased that he recognized that his words had a negative effect on the men and women of the nypd, and he's recognizing that and he wants to apologize for it. Scott Monroe, president of the detectives union, was not swayed by Mr. Mandani's comments, which he characterized as disgusting and pathetic. Quote, he can apologize all he wants because this is an election year right now. I don't think he's capable of keeping police officers safe. In New York City over the summer, 13 law enforcement unions endorsed Mr. Adams through the Police Benevolent Associate Association. The city's largest law enforcement union has yet to endorse any mayoral candidate. Patrick Hendry, president of the union, which supported President Trump during the 2020 campaign, said that Mr. Mandani's words of support were important but needed to be backed up with action. Quote, we need elected leaders who not only support cops on the campaign trail, but who will work with us every single day to improve our safety, quality of life and compensation as we protect New York City. In the interview, Mr. Ramdani said he was worried that President Trump and his allies had already used the killing of Charlie Kirk on Wednesday as an excuse to go after critics and activists on the left, which he absolutely has. That video that he put out is crazy to me that he lists a bunch of political violence that's taken place over the course of the years and it's only political violence towards right wing people and he doesn't at all mention anything else. And it's a very clearly one sided, divisive. That's a wild position to take as the president. He's very clearly trying to ramp up the chaos and violence instead of trying to tamper it down, which is interesting. Quote, this is quite, quite a terrifying time in our country, Mr. Mondani said, adding that leaders should be focusing on their, quote, shared humanity and not the intensification of a hostile atmosphere. Since Mr. Kirk's fatal shooting in Utah, Mr. Mandani said he has received new threats on his own life. Of course, he said he is frightened for his staff and the people close to him, including the security officials assigned to guard him. During the interview, which took place after at the Times, a security official stood sentry, looking out across the newsroom. The threats won't change how I campaign, he said. It won't change how I move through the city that I love. So this is par for the course. And this is why I don't deal with electoral politics, because here's what happens. Even if you are legitimate, even if you genuinely go into politics and you run for office and you have the best of intentions and you genuinely want to change Things, and you want to help people, people, and you want to do all the right things. That's not how the system works. So one of two things will happen. If you happen to somehow sneak past with your idealism and your good intentions and all of that stuff, and you get elected, one of two things will happen. They will either force you to assimilate to the corruption, you have to acquiesce to the corruption, or they will find a way to push you out a la Dennis Kucinich. They just gerrymandered him out of his own district, his own party gerrymandered him out of his own district. So that's how that works. You cannot vote your way out of this stuff. You cannot count on somebody like Zorhan Momdani, who's very clearly a political opportunist, who is running for office for his own stuff. He is AOC all over again. And we're going to keep seeing these people pop up, and it's frustrating to me and on both sides, by both sides. I hate the sides thing. It's not left and right, but you're going to see it on both sides. And they're going to continue to push these people at you, and a not insignificant portion of the population will fall for it over and over and over again. The new shiny object, every election cycle will rope a whole bunch of people in, and they're just going to keep you on the hamster wheel of electoral politics. The system is broken. The entire electoral system is broken, front to back, top to bottom. It is irredeemed, redeemable, and voting means precisely, Dick. And I don't know if that could be any clearer than it is right now. And yet we still have people. There's still people who, like, got burned by Bernie Sanders, got burned by aoc, who are now supporting this jackal. It's mind blowing to me that I just wonder how many times this happens to a person before your sense of skeptic criticism kicks in. It's a wild thing. And I realize people are desperate and they really want to believe that somebody's coming to save us, but nobody's coming to save us, unfortunately. So there you have it. Zorhan Momdani is walking back yet another one of his positions that he was very strongly running on and talking about and held so dear. And he's going to continue to do that. And he's just going to keep hanging out. He's. Next thing you know, he's going to be calling Nancy Pelosi mommy, but Mama Bear and walking through the park with Chuck Schumer taking pictures for a photo op, and he's just gonna be another. He already is another aoc. So there you go. Zorhan. Momdani is not coming to save you guys. I hate to tell you.
