Mamdani in, Kennedy Center Destroyed | The Joy Reid Show LIVE!

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Joy Reid Show LIVE! – "Mamdani In, Kennedy Center Destroyed"

Host: Joy-Ann Reid
Air Date: January 3, 2026
Notable Guests: Wajahat Ali, Tameka Mallory, Rick Wilson
Theme: A historic New York City mayoral inauguration and the ongoing transformation of media, politics, and culture in America.

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Episode Overview

This episode reflects on the dawn of 2026, celebrating a landmark political moment in New York City: the inauguration of Zoran Kwame Mamdani, the city’s first Muslim and South Asian mayor. Joy Reid and her guests discuss the significance of Mamdani's victory, the multicultural diversity on display at the ceremony, the shift in American politics towards new, bold progressivism, and a critical look at both old and new media ecosystems.

The second half pivots to a critique of sensationalist "new media" reporting, specifically the viral right-wing narrative of a Minnesota Somali daycare fraud scandal, and concludes with the show's signature blend of political commentary, hope for progress, and community engagement.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. A New Era in New York City: Zoran Mamdani's Inauguration

• Historic Inauguration Ceremony (07:44 – 11:53)
  • Zoran Mamdani, a 34-year-old Muslim, African-born, South Asian, and democratic socialist, is sworn in as Mayor of NYC—an outcome once deemed impossible.
  • Ceremony features three faiths—Quran, Bible, and Hebrew Bible for the mayor, public advocate, and comptroller, respectively.
  • “I was elected as a democratic socialist, and I will govern as a democratic socialist.” —Zoran Mamdani (18:05)
• Diverse, Multicultural, and Multifaith Leadership (15:02 – 17:00)
  • Mark Levine’s trilingual address and Jumani Williams’ emotional speech underscore the ecumenism and hopefulness of the event.
  • Emotional moment: "Little black boy, you were worth it. And you always were. And without any titles, you were enough." —Jumani Williams (15:38)
  • Emphasis on hope, bold vision, and unapologetic social justice.

2. Symbolism and Significance

• Mamdani’s story parallels Obama’s, signaling a turning point away from centrist establishment politics.
• "He showed us another way possible. He showed us a vision of what America could be. Now, whether or not he delivers on it, who knows? But he said he will try." —Wajahat Ali, reflecting on Mamdani’s boldness (22:20)
• The choice to use Arturo Schomburg’s historic Quran draws a direct line from Black and immigrant empowerment to current leadership. (25:00)

3. The Ecumenism and Inspiration of the Ceremony (27:53 – 36:44)

• Diverse musical, poetic, and religious performances symbolize the inclusive America "that terrifies MAGA," as Wajahat Ali puts it (27:55).
• Mandy Patinkin (Jewish advocate for Palestinians) sings with Bronx schoolchildren; poet Cornelius Eady, labor anthem by Lucy Dacus; performances by public figures from various communities.

4. Vision for Governance and Community Engagement

• Mamdani’s administration promises:
  • To transform City Hall culture from a “culture of no to a culture of how.”
  • To "answer to all New Yorkers, not any billionaire or oligarch."
  • An all-female transition team and a new Department of Community Safety led by grassroots leaders (41:21).
• “He already started the transition team … and in this situation, that’s not what I’ve experienced. I’ve been working on the Violence Prevention and Department of Community Safety platform, and we’re deep in.” –Tameka Mallory (41:21)

5. Shift in Political Culture and Power Use

• Joy and panelists call for Democrats to wield power boldly, as Republicans do (“fight and flex for the people, not the 1%” – Wajahat Ali, 46:44).
• The show highlights the need for progressives to stop being "timid, milquetoast centrists" and instead embrace hope, imagination, and bold narrative change.

6. Mainstream & New Media: Crisis and Transformation (56:55 – 63:16)

• CBS News, under new oligarchic ownership, is criticized for loss of credibility, transparency, and public trust, especially under Bari Weiss and Tony Dokoupil.
  • “You all do cater to people like your new bosses…the oligarchs…and they have an agenda.” —Joy Reid (61:06)
  • Guests lament the legacy media "wearing the costume" of journalism while serving oligarchic interests.
• New media and independent outlets are increasingly trusted, with mainstream media seen as out of touch.

7. Disinformation and Weaponized Outrage: The Minnesota Daycare Fraud Scandal (66:33 – 91:48)

• Viral videos from “journalist” Nick Shirley (a 23-year-old YouTuber) trigger a moral panic over Somali daycare fraud in Minnesota.
  • His methods are debunked on-air: “provocation over accuracy, outrage over evidence, selective framing, weaponizing confusion…” (80:40)
  • Republican officials collaborated with Shirley for political gain; the major convicted ringleader was a white woman (Amy Block), not Somali immigrants (83:00).
  • This manufactured outrage is likened to the tactics pioneered by Project Veritas and is labeled by Rick Wilson as “a MAGA distraction campaign.” (89:34)
  • “If there is a fraud here, Joy, the fraud that was in, was in Minnesota was already discovered. It was in the process of being prosecuted. But the real fraud that's being executed now is a, a MAGA distraction campaign run by this kid, Nick Shirley.” —Rick Wilson (89:34)

8. Broader Cultural and Political Battles

• The show explores Trump’s tarnishing of American cultural symbols, the destruction and “goldification” of the White House and Kennedy Center, and his longing for cultural approval.
  • "Our country is being reimagined as a 1980s casino and not the beacon of democracy... he's just irretrievably vulgar." —Rick Wilson (100:06)
• Urgent calls for Democrats to use power with "ruthlessness," reverse Trump's legacy, and restore the institutions he damaged.
• “When Republicans get power, they use it. Democrats…make them all disappear.” —Joy Reid (115:08)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the inauguration’s resonance:
  "There was not a dry eye in the house. That was one of the most powerful moments of the day." —Joy Reid on Jumani Williams’ speech (16:29)
• On Mamdani’s reform agenda:
  "We will answer to all New Yorkers, not to any billionaire or oligarch…" —Zoran Mamdani (18:05)
• On Democratic change:
  “The old establishment days are over. Your time is up. The clock is ticking … We're here for reformation.” —Wajahat Ali (25:15)
• On media trust:
  "They have an agenda to force Americans to wrap their arms around the Israeli government when people can see what they're doing. They don't trust you guys for a reason." —Joy Reid (61:06)
• On Republican tactics and the fraud narrative:
  “He’s a hustler... He's made a video that is going to get him a lot of YouTube views and a lot of traffic. He's going to make a lot of money from it. And he will not learn a lesson from this.” —Rick Wilson on Nick Shirley (90:41)

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Segment Timestamps

• INTRO & New Media Talk: 00:04 – 07:38
• Zoran Mamdani Inaugural Coverage: 07:44 – 17:00
  • Swearing-in (07:44 – 11:53)
  • Public Advocate speech/emotional moments (15:26 – 16:27)
  • Mamdani’s platform statement (18:01)
• Analysis & Reactions with Wajahat Ali & Tameka Mallory: 19:12 – 54:30
  • Broader significance, coalition-building (20:25 – 36:44)
  • Governance, transition team, policy outlook (41:21 – 46:34)
• Media Critique & CBS Segment: 56:55 – 63:16
• Somali Daycare Fraud Sensationalism Dissected: 66:33 – 91:48
  • Debunking the narrative, right-wing YouTubers, media complicity, Rick Wilson’s analysis (89:34 – 91:48)
• Trump, White House/Kennedy Center, Oligarchy: 99:00 – 103:50
• Democratic Power & Midterms Discussion: 106:07 – 110:57
• Episode Wrap-up, Upcoming Episodes, and Polls: 116:15 – End

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Conclusion & Takeaways

The episode captures a powerful inflection point in American politics—the rise of a new, diverse, unapologetically progressive generation of leaders exemplified by Zoran Mamdani’s mayoralty in NYC. Reid, Ali, Mallory, and Wilson stress both the importance of this shift and its fragility in the face of entrenched interests, media disinformation, and reactionary backlash. Ultimately, the show urges boldness, hope, and collective action, encouraging its audience to reject cynicism and demand a democracy that works for everyone.

Final note:
“Take these wins. We don’t have many of them… Things are going to get far worse before they get better. But this is a brave and bold new day.” —Wajahat Ali (24:45)

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Transcript

[Joy Reid]

Okay, Music. You know what time it is. Hello, everybody. Happy New Year and welcome to the Joy Reid Show. 2026 edition. Jason, can I get a round of applause for 2026? 2025 wasn't shit, by the way, if you hovered over to the substack. That is the title of the substack post. 2025 wasn't 2026. Do better. We demand that you do better. Welcome, everybody, and thank you for watching the Joy Reid show. Welcome to 2026. We hope that it will cast 2025 into the ether of memory and we will never have to think about 2025 again. But you can think about it one more time by just reading that substack post. It's pinned on my substack, joyandread.com but we welcome everyone who is watching on YouTube. The chat is already spicy. Let me tell you how spicy the YouTube chatters are. They jump in, like, way before the show. Already going off. They're already going in. They've already got things to say. So welcome everybody who's watching YouTube. Also, our friends on Substack, we love all our substackers as well. You guys are always stalwart, and we always want to big you guys up as well. As well as everybody who's listening on wherever you get your podcast, Anywhere you get your podcast. If you're just listening on audio and you're just listening to that. Thank you very much for listening there as well. We appreciate each and every one of you, especially our Team TJRS members. Thank you all for being on Team tjrs. If you have not done that yet, here's what you can do. You can subscribe. It's free. Go ahead and subscribe here on YouTube. Also on Substack, we're getting close to 200,000 subscribers on Substack. We have passed 384,000 subscribers on the YouTube channel. We're also growing fast on Spotify and all the places that the podcast exists. So we are growing. This new media thing is growing. And tonight on the show, I want to focus on a bit on new media, which is having a lot of real challenges as opposed to, you know, new me. I mean, I'm sorry, old media, old media as. Which is having a lot of challenges as opposed to new media, which is really growing. Which is why we kind of call New Year's Day post Don Lemon Day, because didn't everybody, like, let us know in the chat. Did y' all watch one of the mainstream channels New Year's Eve special or did you just like, wig out with Don Lemon. I'm sure you guys were like with the Lemonheads on New Year's, right? Like, the new media is taking over in a very big way. Oh, look, look. South Africa checking in. Moffat, Mokale, thank you very much. We appreciate you listening in South Africa. We do have a little South Africa contingent. We have family down there, and we also have interviewed some key South Africa guests. And so we've got an Africa contingent. Big up to them, big up to our folks in Europe, on the European continent. Big up to our folks all over the world, of course, in the US Of A as well. So let us know how you watch New Year's. Winnie, can we get a poll on whether people watched old media? Did you watch the new version of CN with their new people getting tipsy on New Year's or did you get down with Don on New Year's? Let us know and we'll do a little poll on that and I promise I will come back and tell you the poll results. I forgot to do that the other day. And the team was like, you're supposed to say the poll results at the end. Lady, what are you doing? We got Singapore weighing in. Happy New Year in Singapore. Chait Yantel, 347. Thank you very much. We appreciate you. We appreciate you all over the world, whether whatever continent you're on, we absolutely love and adore you. So here's something that's happening. We wanted to start off our year. One of the notes, Jason and I, we, we got to ask, we like to ask you guys in the, in the chat what you want, what you like. One of the things that was said yesterday when we live streamed the Zorhan Mamdani swearing in, which I'm going to get to in a minute, one of the things people said is too much Trump. We don't want to hear about it. Yeah, we hate him. But, you know, I said, we're the baby monitor. We got to watch Rosemary's Baby because we don't know what Rosemary's Baby is going to do. So we got to watch them. But we decided that in the year of our Lord 2026, we're going to kick off with our first video tonight being of something that isn't about him, that it's about peace. Do you know? Pe. Across this great country call themselves the Walking Monks. They're among a group of 19 Buddhist monks plus a rescue dog named Aloka, who are silently walking through the country to raise compassion, love and peace awareness nationwide. Exceptionally beautiful. Let me read you a little bit from their press release. Rooted in both spiritual devotion and civic purpose, the Walk for Peace seeks to remind Americans that peace is not a destination, it is a practice. As the nation faces challenges of division, mental health crises, and conflict both at home and abroad, this pilgrimage offers a simple yet profound message. Peace begins at the heart of each person and extends outward to families. We figured that'd be a great way to start the year of our Lord 2026, which we believe is going to be a much better year than, than that crap year 2025. Now, by the way, of course, as I mentioned, this isn't the first time that we've seen y', all, though. This is our first official show of 2026. Yesterday, the joy Reid show simulcast the inaugural event of the year. While Trump was partying with Bebe the Butcher and entertaining his Mar A Lago guests with caviar, a speed painter who, I promise you, created a giant white Jesus. And then they auctioned it off. Plus Vanilla Ice serenading Manosphere fan Barron, who hung out with his parents on New Year's. Plus Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem dancing to the 90s black appropriation classic Ice Ice Baby.

[Rick Wilson]

Did you know how much they got.

[Wajahat Ali]

For their little white Jesus portrait?

[Joy Reid]

How much?

[Wajahat Ali]

I don't know. I'm asking you.

[Joy Reid]

Oh, I don't know. I think it was a couple million. Like, they auctioned it off for like a couple million, you know, and so, and I actually cut the video of it and I even speeded it up so you wouldn't have to hear Trump in his natural voice. But then I said, we were, you know, Winnie and I were sitting here talking about, do we really want to see it? We're like, do we really need to see that? You can picture it, right? It was just a bunch of debauched rich people, all white, hanging out with no spices. By the way, when all the, when all the, when all the MAGA whites get together, there's not a spice in the room. The spicy whites are here on the Joy Reid show in our audience. The spicy rights are here hanging out with us, right? They're not there. These were the unseasoned, the great unseasoned. We're sitting there dancing to Ice Ice Baby dancing awkwardly. Stephen Miller did this thing, this kind of awkward thing. And Kristi Noem tried to look cool, trying to hold her face on while she danced, keep her face on. So while that was happening in Mar A Lago, two Democratic socialists and a righteous liberal Democrat were being sworn in. In what used to be the capital of the United States. You know, New York City used to be the capital United States. In New York City, in the financial capital of the United States, two democratic socialists plus a liberal Democrat were sworn in into office. Zorhan Mamdani, in an Obama like moment with Obama like freezing cold outside, was sworn in just after midnight in a spectacular, beautiful decommissioned subway stop near City hall in New York City. We have a clip of that. It's a two, Jason. Three, two, one.

[Tameka Mallory]

Good evening everyone, and happy New Year.

[Joy Reid]

To all of you. And I can't think of a better way to usher in 2026 than to be amongst family and friends and to inaugurate the man who will bring about a new era of progress, promise and prosperity for New York City. Zoran, I am so proud of what you have accomplished. And I'm filled with joy about what we will accomplish for our beloved city.

[Tameka Mallory]

Over the coming years.

[Joy Reid]

And so with that, let us begin. Please repeat after me. Raise your right hand. I. I, Zoran Kwame Mandani.

[Wajahat Ali]

Zoran Kwame Mamdani.

[Joy Reid]

Do solemnly swear.

[Wajahat Ali]

Do solemnly swear.

[Joy Reid]

That I will support the Constitution of the United States.

[Wajahat Ali]

That I will support the Constitution of the United States.

[Joy Reid]

The Constitution of the state of New York.

[Wajahat Ali]

Constitution of the State of New York.

[Tameka Mallory]

And the charter of the city of New York.

[Wajahat Ali]

And the charter of the City of New York.

[Joy Reid]

And that I will faithfully discharge and.

[Wajahat Ali]

That I will faithfully discharge the duties.

[Joy Reid]

Of the duties of the office of.

[Wajahat Ali]

The office of the Mayor of the.

[Tameka Mallory]

City of New York.

[Wajahat Ali]

The Mayor of the City of New York.

[Joy Reid]

According to the best of my ability.

[Wajahat Ali]

According to the best of my ability.

[Joy Reid]

So help me God.

[Wajahat Ali]

So help me God.

[Joy Reid]

Congratulations, Mr. Mayor. And of course, fabulous, fabulous.

[Tameka Mallory]

After that we can talk to the.

[Joy Reid]

Waffle because what happens after that is he officially signs the paperwork to make him the mayor of New York. Of course, that's the great Letitia James, the fearless Attorney General of New York. And Rama Duaji, who is the now first lady of New York City. And when I tell you the Internet was aflutter about those boots she had on, thereby a company called Mista, and people were freaking out, being like, does she buy $600 boots? No, I think she was gifted the boots. Okay, calm down. She's going to be a fashion queen. She's in New York City. Expect her to be at the Met gala. Get over it in advance because she's about to be a very popular and famous because she's beautiful and she's going to probably be getting fits that, you know, Mrs. Trump would like to get. You know, Trump is really mad that, you know, his wife doesn't get the love from like Vogue and stuff. I'll bet you this lady gonna get the love. I'm just making that prediction that's gonna.

[Wajahat Ali]

Piss Trump off even more.

[Joy Reid]

Good. And I hope Melania too. Melania got $40 million from Jeff Bezos. Get over it, lady. You can afford to buy you some Mr. Boots cash. So I don't wanna hear it and we don't care, but I think she's about to be an important figure. She's also a very quiet. There was a cute moment where he talked about taking her out on their first date during his speech. It was really fabulous. But so that happened, right? And people are saying, well, why is this mayoral election getting so much attention? We have some guests that are gonna explain why. But he is an Obama like figure. This is an incredibly unlikely story. This young, 34 year old Muslim, former state, former city council member. He's an African, born in Africa, he's South Asian, he's Muslim, he's a democratic socialist. And people were like, that can't work. He can't get elected. Just like Obama wasn't supposed to get elected, but he did. And it was also just as cold, according to our team who were there. So that happened. And then he was officially sworn in, of course, by Bernie Sanders to the public. By the way, this was the official. Then the unofficial sort of public swearing in happened at City Hall. They walked outside of City hall. And this is a three. Here's Bernie Sanders swearing in it.

[Rick Wilson]

Please repeat after me. Ay Zoran. Kwame Mamdani.

[Wajahat Ali]

Aye Zahran. Kwame Mamdani.

[Rick Wilson]

Do solemnly swear.

[Wajahat Ali]

Do solemnly swear.

[Rick Wilson]

That I will support the Constitution of the United States. States.

[Wajahat Ali]

That I will support the Constitution of the United States.

[Rick Wilson]

The Constitution of the State of New York.

[Wajahat Ali]

The constitution of the State of New York.

[Rick Wilson]

And the charter of the City of New York.

[Wajahat Ali]

And the charter of the City of New York.

[Rick Wilson]

And that I will faithfully discharge the.

[Wajahat Ali]

Duties and that I will faithfully discharge.

[Rick Wilson]

The duties of the office of the Mayor of the City of New York.

[Wajahat Ali]

Of the office of the Mayor of the City of New York.

[Rick Wilson]

According to the best of my ability.

[Wajahat Ali]

According to the best of my ability.

[Joy Reid]

So help me God.

[Wajahat Ali]

So help me God.

[Joy Reid]

Beautiful moment. It's like I said yesterday during our live that Bernie didn't win the presidency, but he won the war. Because this is his regime, his wing of the. Not the Democratic Party. Because he's not a Democrat, but his political wing was ascended, at least in New York. That makes Zorhan Mamdani the first Asian mayor of New York, the first Muslim mayor of New York, the youngest in like, 100 years, and the first mayor originating from Queens. So all of that happened, and people care a lot about it because it's just this incredible, unlikely story. Now, an update for the folks in the chat who were asking yesterday, because we were going back and forth over whether we saw Chuck Schumer on the dais and whether we saw Hakeem Jeffries on the dais. They were hard to see, but Chuck Schumer was there. We had our team because we like to be accurate. So we went and confirmed that Chuck Schumer did attend, despite never endorsing Mamdani. He didn't get to speak either, because he didn't endorse him. Hakeem Jeffries apparently had other plans, which is weird. Despite him, late in the game endorsing Mamdani last year, he was not there. So that's very interesting. Now, he wasn't the only person, Zorhan Mamdani, who were sworn in. There were two other new officers that are going to lead New York City who were also sworn in. One of them was the new comptroller, a man named Mark Levine, who did his speech in three languages.

[Wajahat Ali]

Here's a How remarkable is it that on these steps today we have three swearings in. One by a leader using a Quran, one by a leader using a Christian.

[Rick Wilson]

Bible, and one by a leader using.

[Wajahat Ali]

A Chumash or Hebrew Bible. I am proud, proud to live in a city where this is possible. Now, for those of you who do not know Spanish, Hebrew or Greek, welcome. Thank you.

[Rick Wilson]

And please download duolingo.

[Wajahat Ali]

Now, I know what you're all thinking. What the heck is a comptroller? Excellent question. This job is about ensuring that people who have spent their lives working for this city can retire with dignity. It's about ensuring that our budget reflects our values, that our government inspires the trust of its people. Our comptroller also understands the consequences for working class families when they are excluded from our economic system. I have seen this in my own neighborhood of Washington Heights, where far too.

[Rick Wilson]

Many families for far too long have.

[Wajahat Ali]

Been held back from achieving their dreams, blocked from banks and forced to rely instead on pawn shops and loan sharks. Back in the 1990s, I found a community credit union uptown to change this. This financial cooperative, owned by the community, has lent out over $100 million in small loans. In the neighborhood with a 98% repayment rate.

[Joy Reid]

I love that guy. And that is what we mean by spicy white. We love him. He's great. Okay, so now, the other person who was inaugurated besides Orhan Mamdani was the new public advocate, and his name is Jumani Williams. You may know him if you're familiar with New York activism. He's a longtime New York activist, and he delivered deeply moving remarks that had people in tears. Here's Jumani Williams.

[Wajahat Ali]

Gotta take a second to say something to so many young people who are.

[Joy Reid]

Out there, but I'm gonna say it.

[Wajahat Ali]

To one person who's waited 49 years to hear it.

[Joy Reid]

Little black boy, you were worth it.

[Wajahat Ali]

And you always were. And without any titles, you were enough.

[Joy Reid]

You were always enough.

[Wajahat Ali]

And you deserve to accept love and.

[Joy Reid]

You deserve to be protected.

[Wajahat Ali]

And I'm honored to be here to.

[Joy Reid]

Help create a city that's worthy of that for you.

[Rick Wilson]

And I'm so proud of you.

[Joy Reid]

So just hold on. We're gonna be all right. We're gonna be all right.

[Rick Wilson]

So proud of you.

[Joy Reid]

Oh, that. There was a lot. There was not a dry eye in the house. That was one of the most powerful moments of the day. And I say that to say that a lot of the, you know, stories that are circulating about the inaugural just focus on Zorhan Mamdani, as well they should. He's an historic figure. But this was not just his inaugural. This was the public inaugural for all three of these very important pieces of the puzzle of running the city, of ensuring fairness and ensuring that Zorhan Mamdani's platform can actually get done. And so these are the people. This is the team, this multiracial, multicultural team. Zorhan Mandani also had an all female team that are going to be his transition team, which is pretty freaking amazing, too. They're really very overtly representing all of New York. Right. Let me give you a comment. I'm looking at the comments from YouTube, but I also want to look at the comments from internal. Mark. This is one of our internal team members comment saying, Mark Levine, Spanish was a million times better than Blomito. Remember, Blombito and Bloomberg are trying to speak Spanish. That is facts. He actually used to be a Spanish teacher. He used to teach bilingual. I think he was a math teacher, Mark Levine. And he used to teach multilingually. So he is extremely multilingual. He speaks three languages, at least three. And team tjrs, Team TJRS was in the house. Neither Wangi and Winnie, they were there braving the freezing cold to be there in person. So allow that, to allow you guys to be there for this amazing, amazing historical, historical moment. Let me let you listen to a bit of what Mamdani himself had to say after he took the oath of office.

[Wajahat Ali]

We will transform the culture of City hall from one of no to one of how. We will answer to all New Yorkers, not to any billionaire or oligarch who thinks they can buy our democracy. We will govern without shame and insecurity, making no apology for what we believe. I was elected as a democratic socialist, and I will govern as a democratic socialist.

[Joy Reid]

You see how we love. This is why we love New York, right? I mean, he served. He definitely did. By the way, in that video, you can see Bernie Sanders finally put a hat on and gloves because we're a little worried about Uncle Bernie, because Bernie was out there. He looked cold. It was really cold out there. But that was a beautiful speech. And then after the whole, there was a block party that was a part of that whole event where people were allowed to come in huge block parties so people could really celebrate this new mayor and this new team. And then Mamdani served hot chocolate to the workers who braved the freezing temperatures to meet.

[Wajahat Ali]

But a lot of people think we are.

[Joy Reid]

So this is what we have in New York, a compassionate, really positive force for the people of New York. And this is a brand new day. And I think it's an important day. And it's also incredibly, incredibly historic. And to join me now, join me now to talk about this. And we're going to have another guest join us pretty soon. But let's start with our friend, our good friend. I'm very excited to have him be the first Official guest of 2026, our friend, Wajahat Ali of the Left Hook on Substack. Waj, listen, I'm just going to let you cook because yesterday, I think, was a very tearful moment for a lot of folks. Neeta Khan, who's one of our team members, we really, she, she, she went out of her way to be there in person, even though she was actually here with us on New Year's. And then she like, gangstered it all the way to drive to New York to make sure that she was there, just to be there as a Muslim woman. But for you, talk about how it felt to see Zorhan Mamdani be officially inaugurated as the mayor of New York.

[Wajahat Ali]

As Salamu Alaikum War rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu Yashabab I'm here as a representative of Khalif Mamdani to welcome you to Islam and for you to embrace Sharia and halal food. I kid. I kid because I can and I want to be petty first and foremost. Happy New Year to you, Joy. Thank you so much for inviting me to your party. I felt like one of the cool kids. I'm so sorry I couldn't make it because I have 800 kids here. But it is. It is a brand new day, a brand new year, same old villains. But to see a Muslim man, an Asian man, a South Asian man, a democratic socialist, who ascended to become the 112th mayor of one of the great cities in the world, in New York City, despite and in spite of the entirety of the broligarchy and the democratic establishment and the pro Israel lobby, throw everything and a Bill Clinton at him and he still won, Joy. He still won. He gathered around a multicultural coalition. He name dropped every single borough, talked about Latinos, the Muslims, lgbtq. He didn't throw the undocumented under the bus. He didn't throw women under the bus. He didn't throw Muslims under the bus. He didn't throw hijabis under the bus. He did not go timid. He was not a milquetoast centrist. He did not mock the woke like Elisa Slotkin. He did not platform Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon like Gavin Newsom did. He did not try to verbal fellatio the billionaires and say that they're part of the big tent like Newsom. Right. He didn't do any of that. He was proud, unapologetic. He said, you elected me as a Democratic socialist, I'm going to run as a Democratic Socialist. And he showed us another way possible. He showed us a vision of what America could be. Now, whether or not he delivers on it, who knows? But he said he will try. Yeah, I'm sure you talked about that opening statement of his, right, where he talked, he's going to be bold, he's going to be unapologetic, and at least he's going to fight. And you sit there and you go, why the hell did our previous Democratic leaders not talk like this? Why were they willing to sell us this miserly vision of a future where we should be content with crumbs, where we should apologize for existing, where we should be ashamed for liking immigrants and for being woke? Right where they're so terrified of their own shadow because their shadow's black and instead they want to bear hug Chet, who wears a maga hat and drinks real coffee in a real diner in the Rust Belt and literally says, I think you're a pedophile. I want to kill you. And they're like, chet, please come to us. Joy Ann and pro Palestinian activists. Ew, you're gross. Right? And Mamdani said, nah, f that. And he had Bernie Sanders there and he had AOC there, and little Chuck Schumer, that little gremlin was. I think he was there, but he wasn't on the stage. Chuck Schumer, who still hasn't embraced him. Gillibrand still hasn't embraced him. Hakeem Jeffries with the tepid embrace. And meanwhile, if I may cook for a little bit longer, it was Donald Trump who has publicly embraced Mamnani before the Democratic establishment has. So the fact that I saw this as a son of Muslim Pakistani immigrants, I never thought I'd see this in my life. A Muslim son of Asian immigrants born in Africa, proudly Muslim, who did not throw anyone under the bus, who eats with his hands, who released in the last week an ad in Arabic, despite them literally mocking him, ridiculing him, smearing him with the worst Islamophobic campaign that I've seen since the war on terror. And to see this man come out of nowhere, folks, this is why I think it's even more impressive in a way than the Barack Obama victory, which was very impressive. And you and I lived through it. We saw how powerful that was because he was an assemblyman. He came out of nowhere. I interviewed Mamdani 10 months ago. He was a distant number two. And back then, Joy, he goes, win or lose, I'm going to stand up for the Palestinian people. I'm going to call out Israel. I'm going to call it the billionaires. I'm going to call it the broligarchy. I'm not going to sell out. Win or lose, I'm going to go ten toes down. I'm going to go on the message of affordability. I'm not going to throw the woke under the bus. I'm not going to pass the lake and Riley act like the Democrats helped pass. I'm not going to cave like these centrist Democrats did. And voila, look at healthcare. It's going to spike because Obamacare subsidies have expired. I'm going to be bold. I'm going to be a fighter. I'm going to be unapologetic. And he won. And he won. And this is why, I think, why NIDA went. Your fantastic producer also invited me. It is important for people of color for Muslims, for children of immigrants. To see that man with that message ascend to become the mayor of one of the great cities of New York because it shows you a different vision of what America could be.

[Rick Wilson]

Right.

[Wajahat Ali]

There's a Statue of Liberty that was welcoming all the immigrants, a refuge for everyone. The Statue of Liberty, by the way, was based upon an English Muslim peasant woman. The French sculptor originally made it for Egypt and Suez Canal. They rejected it. So that's why he gave it to us. So the fact that the Statue of Liberty is based on an Egyptian peasant, Muslim woman, and the fact that Zoran Mamdani is a Muslim man, he's the mayor of New York, I think it's one of those things, Joy, like you said, I was listening to your intro. We should embrace it. We should take these wins. We don't have many of them. Things are going to get far worse before they get better. But this is a brave and bold new day. And I think what it signals is the old establishment days are over. Your time is up. The clock is ticking. Schumer and Mamdani and the broligarchy. And the majority is here. And the majority ain't going to be content with scraps or restoration. We're here for reformation. Sorry for my TED Talk rant.

[Joy Reid]

No, listen, we love a watch. TED Talk. Like, that's how we bring you here because we want to let you cook. And by the way, you said that you were being petty, but I have to tell you, you might be coming in second in the petty wars. I see that Quran behind you. That's. You are letting them know it. I know that's going to make sense. Fox seed, which we always love when we get together. We know how they do. But Dean Obidalla might have. Might have trumped you because Dean said he's changing his middle name to Allah Akbar. So I'm just like saying. All I'm saying is that you could go bigger. I want to get you to also comment on the fact that speaking of the Quran, which is the beautiful Quran you have behind you, Zoran Madani was sworn in. He was the first New York City mayor to be sworn in using a Quran. So you had a. As you heard our new comptroller say, you had a Hebrew Bible, you had a Christian Bible, and you had a Quran all used on the same day. Do you use an historic one borrowed from the library that used to belong to Arturo Schomburg, a black writer who sold his collection of 4,000 books to the New York Public Library in 1926. And this was a Puerto Rican born black man who was born to the parents of German and Afro Caribbean people and who used his scholarship to change the narrative of black Americans from just being servants to actually having a great history. And so I wanna talk to you a little about the ecumenism of this inaugural of these three men, two of whom are democratic socialists and one of whom is a liberal Democrat. And you had Mandy Patinkin, you killed my father. You know, you prepare to die, right? From, of course, a Princess Bride. A Jewish man, a Jewish man who's a huge advocate for the Palestinian people, who sang Somewhere over the Rainbow, which is the first part where I almost cried because he sang it with these beautiful kids from I think was PS 29 in the Bronx. You had poet Cornelius Eady performing a beautiful poem called Proof that Javier Munoz, who is. Who was the understudy who played Hamilton in Hamilton in the play, performing the national anthem. He had Lucy Dacus performing this incredible anthem, Bread and Roses, which is a labor anthem. And of course, DJ moma and Bubblicious closed it out. So you could not have had a more New York or more diverse inaugural. Your thoughts?

[Wajahat Ali]

And that's the America that terrifies Maga. That's the America that terrifies white nationalists. That's the America that terrifies Stephen Miller. That's the America that terrifies Russell Vaught. And that's the America that we've always fought for. The people who were sidelined, the people who were seen as best we could be sidekicks, the Haji babas, right? We want to stretch and expand this country and to become what it professes to be, what it sells itself to be for the rest of the world, right? It's always been a fight. It's been one battle after another. And there are people with an expansive vision of America, and then there are those with the restrictive vision of America, the misers, who I would say joy, hate this country. They hate these traditions, American traditions. They hate the Founding Fathers, they hate the Constitution. I believe the Stephen Millers and the Donald Trumps of the world are the real traitors to America because it's right there in the Constitution, in part written by Thomas Jefferson. Religious liberties, the establishment clause. Thomas Jefferson, as a law student, read his first crown and bought it in England. And that helped him, in part, inspire this idea of religious tolerance, right? Separation of church and state, but also that, hey, America is a home for everyone. He mentioned the. He used the word Muhammadan to talk about Muslims. I have like eight kids here in the Background. So I apologize. They're having a great time. You can hear them. And it was Keith Ellison, the first Muslim to ever be elected to Congress, who actually took his oath on the Quran. But it was specifically Thomas Jefferson's Quran, which is in the Library of Congress. Right. So this is.

[Joy Reid]

Yes.

[Wajahat Ali]

This isn't even something new. Right. So all these people say, how dare he go back and read the Constitution. You traitors. You traitors to the Constitution. You traitors to religious freedoms. You traitors to the concept of diversity. It seems that Stephen Miller is the one who hates America the most. Why don't you go to Hungary? You seem to love Viktor Orban. Why don't you guys go back? Why don't you guys go to Russia? Because you hate America. Because what I saw, what you just described was American as apple pie and biryani. You had all these different ethnicities, all these different religions, all these different people coming together. New York, is that, if you will, that salad bowl of America. Nine million people. And that's the dream of America. That's why your parents and my parents came here.

[Joy Reid]

Ha.

[Wajahat Ali]

Maybe me with my brown skin and my black skin and my religion as a foreigner can come to this country. And maybe you know what they're selling me? That I could pull myself up from the bootstraps and it doesn't matter what my religion is or my caste is or my skin color is, maybe I can make it. That is the dream that brought millions of immigrants to this country. And immigrants made this country great again. We commit fewer crimes. The people who are foreign born commit fewer crimes than the ones who are born here. They're an economic boon to this country. They're more entrepreneurial and they do something that Donald Trump doesn't do. They pay their taxes. So you know, to see this. And then you saw today, I don't know if you saw the news today that Israel's foreign minister. Israel won't stop. The villains won't stop. Right. Israel's foreign minister accuses Zoran Mamdani of being an anti Semite, pouring the gasoline on the fire of anti Semitism because he revoked all of Turkish delights. Oh, I'm sorry. Eric Adams, Executive orders. That was a deep cut for those who. Those who know.

[Rick Wilson]

Who.

[Wajahat Ali]

Those who know. And one of them was this nonsense IHRA definition of antisemitism that they deliberately have used to punish, enthrald and suppress all legitimate criticism of Israel. Right. Anyone who then criticizes Israel, they're saying, aha, you're being anti Semitic. And even One of the chief architects of that definition of the IHRA definition of antisemitism has says, you are now abusing and using this definition to attack, you know, legitimate critiques. That's not why I defined it the way I did. So you see the billionaires go after him. You saw Debbie Wasserman Schultz go after him. You still haven't seen the warm embrace by Gillibrand. You saw David Sachs, the czar of AI for Donald Trump, also part of the South African PayPal garchy, lose his mind. Right? All of them, the world's worst people are having a meltdown. And I believe, Joy, we should all sit there. I don't have chai with me right now, but drink your tea with the pinky up like this.

[Joy Reid]

A thousand percent. A thousand percent. Let him cook. We love it. And I wanna let y' all know that if you do go to Monticello and you wanna visit Thomas Jefferson's estate and see his slave quarters, which you can see, you can also view his Quran. Joining me now and joining this conversation is our friend Tameka Mallory, who leads the amazing activist group Until Freedom. My sister. My sister. I did this for Waj. I wanna do it for you. Please, just. I wanna. Let's just let you cook. Talk about what it means to you as an activist, as a sister who's been in these streets fighting for right to see these three amazing leaders inaugurated yesterday, including, I know. Who's your homie? Jumani Williams.

[Tameka Mallory]

Oh, you know, Jamani broke me down. I cried and cried and cried and cried and cried. I watched the video of Jumani last night as I was breaking it up to post it on my socials. And the other thing that happened, and I text with Tish James, our Attorney General in New York, because I could hear her in the background. This was obviously something that I didn't hear live in the audience, but in the recording, you can hear her behind Jumani screaming, it's okay. We gonna be all right. That's all right, brother. Keep talk to him. Jumani. And I texted today and said that whole thing coming together, it has inspired me so much, and I need it. I mean, I'm getting ready to cry now. Just trying, just. Just. Just being filled with something that gives us the hope, as Jumani said, to push forward. You know, we do not believe in any way, shape or form that everything is going to be fixed and that everything, you know, that we have ever desired will happen under one. But what we do know is that something good has to come out of the difficulties that we're facing during this time that we're living through as people who are conscious, we know that it can't all be bad. If you have faith in God as we do, we know that there must be another side. And so I am really, really committed to the idea that this is a moment that we can begin to shift and push this thing in the right direction. And that what happens in New York happens everywhere. So if we can do it, the rest of the nation, and then of course, the rest of the world can do it as well. I haven't been in a space where people are speaking to my higher self in a long time, where folks are caught. I mean, political space where people are calling us to think outside of these boxes that we all live in, that we just feel like we can't do this, we can't do that. You can't say this. You can't go here. You can't, you can't, you can't, you can't. And Donald Trump has shown us that there's a lot of stuff you can do.

[Wajahat Ali]

Exactly, exactly.

[Tameka Mallory]

You know, in the words of my 3 year old granddaughter, we can do it. You can do it.

[Joy Reid]

And by the way, no one believes you have a granddaughter, but it's true. You just a young and beautiful. Listen, you must be called something other than grandma. You gma. What are you? Are you tt?

[Tameka Mallory]

I am. I'm just grandma. You know, I think that grandmas are needed. You know, we need to get back to some grandmas. We did Gigi so good that at this point, you know, some of our young people, I work in the violence prevention world. Yeah, I see so many of our young people who need the foundation that we grew up under, you know, they need that. And so I decided to stick with grandma. I think it's a blessing to age and to have a child who says, this is my grandmother. I love it.

[Joy Reid]

Well, we were talking, you know, wise and I have been talking about just the historic Mamdani piece of it because it definitely felt like the obama, you know, 2009 inaugural. And first of all, with the cold, because it was really bloody cold and I wasn't experiencing it. Our team experienced it. But there was also this incredible ecumenism. I mean, when you had the imam was doing the blessing and you had behind him somebody who was clearly kojing or a Baptist saying, help yourself now. All right, take your time, brother. Take your time. Take your time. The cop, the cop. I mean, I'll let you start with this watch. To me, that was one of My favorite moments, because it said, this is New York, and New York is what America should be. And before people think, well, that's just liberal New York. Ah, this is the city that used to have Giuliani as Mayor Bloomberg. So this is not a liberal city. This is the financial capital of the worldwide. Yeah.

[Wajahat Ali]

I mean, well, three things. First and foremost, black don't crack. Tamika could be 20 years old. She could be 75. We don't know. We don't know. Joy could be 93 or 40. Who knows? But hate does age you, and hate does make you crack. Look at Caroline Levitt. That's number one. Number two, you know, speaking about God, you know, I'm a Muslim. I know we all. I know many people don't believe in God, but I know faith plays an important, important part in all of our lives. I do think there's something really remarkable about seeing Imam Khalid Latif. One degree of Muslim separation. I do know him and his family really well. Right? Because what religion does is it asks you. It says, every religion says you have to have faith in a higher power, but you also, it compels hope in hopeless situations, right? And hope is an action. It's a verb. It's optimism with a plan. And there's a great saying in Islam, which also is in Christianity and Judaism, right? Even if you see the day of judgment around the corner, you plant a seed. So our faith compels us to plant a seed, right? And hope is contagious. And hope is just like courage. And when we saw those religious leaders come together and speak with a religious language, right? To uplift everyone, that, to me, is the best of religion. And when I see Mamdani and what he did, and speaking as a Muslim, I saw him go all in 10, toes down as a Muslim, as a New Yorker, as an immigrant, as a democratic socialist. But he didn't leave anyone out. He didn't throw anyone under the bus. And I know, folks, those who are bitter about religion, those who are cynical about religion, I get it. I feel you. I understand you. But I'm talking about how you're supposed to be the prophetic model. And the prophetic model is you lift everyone up, everybody up, right? The poor, the sick, the weak, the sinner, especially the sinner. The prophets used to say, I got you, right? I'll bring you with me, right? And so what Mamdani said was, okay, undocumented immigrants, I'm gonna take you with me. All right? The gay folks partying in the gay club at 2am at night, at the day of the election, I'm gonna come there and I'm gonna rally votes for you too, because I'll be your mayor. Muslim hijabis. You've been mocked, You've been ridiculed. Guess what? I'm gonna do a press conference talking about Islamophobia with you by my side. I'm not gonna throw anyone under the bus. And the third point I want to make is what Tamika also said as I was talking to Danielle, my co host, about this is. For so long, Democratic establishment has told us the following. Don't dream too big. Don't hope too much. Affordable health care. Oh, no, no, no. Immigration reform. Not now. You want to actually defend Ilhan Omer? She wears a hijab. What will Chet think? No, Ilhan, you go to the side. Black people, you go ahead and vote for us, but ease up on the woke stuff, right? And they told us to be happy with crumbs, be happy with piecemeal type of, you know, restoration. And they even truncated. If you think about it, Joy, look how sick it is. They truncated our imagination. Imagination is boundless, right? But they said you are not even allowed to imagine an America where you had paid paternal leave, paid family leave. You can't even imagine America where you have Medicare for All. You cannot even imagine in America where you have increased wages. And what Mamdani says is, hey, man, let's shoot for the moon. At least we'll fall on the stars. And meanwhile, everyone else is like, well, should we tax the billionaires? And a point that Tamika made about Republicans, I think is really important, folks. Republicans are like, we don't give a shit. We have power. We're going to do whatever the f. We want. Tax cuts for the rich. We're going to do it. The greatest wealth transfer in history. It's going to happen this year. We're gonna do it. Go against Roe v. Wade, even though we lied and said we wouldn't, we're gonna do it. Send mass armed agents to terrorize Americans. What the f are you gonna do about it, huh? Nothing. And so this type of bold spirit, a bold imagination, a bold narrative, and then a fighter willing to fight for that narrative. Joy, I feel that is prophetic. I feel that it's truly Muslim. I feel that's truly Christian. I feel like it's following the models of our ancestors, the men and women who sacrificed so much. The MLKs, the Harriet Tubmans, right? The people who told us, you can and you should dream and you deserve the best Sorry for my rant.

[Joy Reid]

No, absolutely. Tamika, I'm gonna give you the last word on this, because that is the big question. We have a big thinker, a big dreamer. He's got incredible people. My son Lennon, your friend, you know him very well. He's got good people around him. What do you want to see him do? He's got 100 days. Usually got 100 days to really do the biggest things. What do you think he can do, and what do you think he should do to make those big dreams come true?

[Tameka Mallory]

Well, he's already started the transition team that he pulled together, I can tell you. Generally, a transition team is very. It's semi ceremonial, right? Because, you know, it's. It's allowing people to give some ideas and thoughts, and then it kind of goes so quickly that it's over. And in this situation, that's not what I've experienced. I've been working on the Violence Prevention and Department of Community Safety platform, and we're deep in. We're working as volunteers and seriously crafting for him our ideas of how the community can be at the forefront of leading safety for our community. And he has sat in the meetings. In fact, the last meeting we were in with him, a group of us, Erica Ford, who you know well, our dear sister, and the names go on of those who are gurus on the violence prevention side here in New York. We went into a meeting, we sat down with him. We were prepared. We had documents and slides and all the things, and we had all the voices and people who could speak to different angles of the grassroots work, the hospital response, and, you know, and all the different areas of what it takes to. To create a holistic approach to violence prevention. And when we sat down, he started with his remarks and said everything that we were getting ready to say. He knew already because he had done his research. The people working around him got into. First of all, they were calling us every day before the meeting, preparing themselves, getting him prepared for what is it? And he was an assemblyman here in New York, so he is not separated from the. The realities of our politics and our community work. He knows what's going on. So when he said all the things, a joke was made from one of the brothers at the table, our brother K. Bane, who works in Brooklyn. He said, well, thanks. Now we just need hundreds of millions of dollars, you know, to get this done. So let's, you know, let's go. Let's skip down the slides and get to the money, right? Because then that's where. Where it comes in. He wants to make a. A major investment in a Department of Community Safety because he sees that the community should be, as I said, at the forefront of that fight, and not just nypd, in which I. He knows that that also must be secured as well. That's what we want. There are some people here who may say, well, let's abolish the nypd. We're not there yet. I hope that we get to a world one day for where we don't need big militarized police forces in our community, but we're not there. And what I think Zorhan Mamdani, Mayor Mamdani, is showing us is that he gets the balance, that he's not going to invest so much in policing and not also investing in community. He also, I think, today announced a department that is going to focus on listening to the community. Who does that, who has a department within their office, that their job is to listen to people, to get the direct information from constituents. That's the type of stuff that we see here. So will he get free buses done? Will he be able to get the. The. The rent decrease and stabilization done? I'm not. I don't know. But what he said yesterday in the inauguration is very important, that he will never be accused of not trying, and we as a community will never be accused of not to trying. Standing with him, which is Jamani's point public advocate in his speech where he said, we've got to call ourselves also into the room, that this is not a government versus people, but we have to work together. And he has to. And Zorhan has to make sure that the doors are open for us to be able to do that. And I am 100% sure that at least that will happen. How we will be able to get to him delivering on all the pieces. It is something that we will all have to make sure that we're invested in as a community.

[Joy Reid]

Absolutely. And I think the importance of having the three of them, the comptroller, the guy, the money guy. Right. The public advocate. Jumani. Because I also think Mark Levine is a huge part of that. Right. Like we got a trio who can work in tandem, who share the same goals. You don't have one in there that's a neoliberal that wants to try to pull. Pull everyone to the right or to the center. You actually have people. And look, we may not like the Orange man, but he has instructed us on something I think that's very important, that Waj got to maybe what people need to do with power, when you're a liberal or a progressive, is just do the thing and ask for permission later. Because apparently that's how America works. Tamika. Apparently you don't have to have the permission or the Constitution on your side.

[Tameka Mallory]

Just do everything. And if anybody deserves that type of action, it would be the people who have been waiting for far too long for real change and for some relief. So if we're going to break the rules, break it for the right reasons.

[Rick Wilson]

That's right.

[Tameka Mallory]

Continuing to uplift those who've already been exalted above and beyond in the 1, the less than 1% of our society.

[Wajahat Ali]

Fight and flex for the people, not the 1%. Fight and Flex for the people. Don't be a timid, milquetoast centrist loser like Schumer and these cowards who are afraid of their own shadow. And one thing I will say, I will stress. I know you got to run, Joy, but Mehdi and I have always talked about this. Republicans, when they get power, I give them credit. They don't give a shit. They're like, we know this is unpopular. We don't care. We're going to do it. Stop us, Mother Effort. Stop us. And Democrats are like, boo, I have power. I'm sorry. Forgive me. I'm going to go now. Bear hug. Liz Cheney. I'm tired of it. I think Americans are tired of it. I want a fighter. I want a fighter who fights for the people. And that's what you saw yesterday. You saw Zoran Mamdani say, even if I fail, I will always try and fight. And that's, that's what we always said, Joy. Right. We're, we're realists. We're pragmatists. We're not eye in the sky. It's like, you know, and they're young.

[Tameka Mallory]

And they're young and they are young. And that to me. And they come out of a grassroots.

[Joy Reid]

Yes, that's right.

[Tameka Mallory]

That those things are. I mean, we're, you know, again, we're hopeful, but we're not stupid. And it angers me when people speak about those of us who are considered to be progressives or whatever label they want to put on us. They say, oh, well, you just don't know. No, we actually do know. We're watching folks in Washington, D.C. make decisions for it for their own benefit. We now want someone to make decisions for our benefit, the people's benefit. And hey, listen, when, when, when I got the call last night that Zoran had gone back to the day of Eric Adams indictment and and, and revoked all of the EOs. I said to myself, it's spicy out here. That's what we like.

[Joy Reid]

Listen. And by the way, because remember, this is the young man who was a co. Co founder of Students for Justice for Palestine. When he was in college, he went back and his first executive order revoked all orders issued by former mayor Eric Adams after his indictment on federal corruption charges. As Tamika just said, including two that supported Israel. As Waj pointed out before you popped on Tameka, Israel is now accusing him. Some Israeli officials accuse him of anti Semitism. But what those orders did was prevent people from doing things like divestment campaigns. How can you do an executive order that says, I can't choose to not shop with companies that benefit the Israeli government if I want to. So if you want to do bds, it used to be effectively illegal in New York. They could punish you for saying, I want divestment and I want to not spend money with companies that are benefiting the Israeli state. How is that the First Amendment? So go ahead. But he did.

[Tameka Mallory]

But he did. Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. He did keep the department of Anti. Department against Anti Semitism. I don't know exactly the name and I think that's good. He. That is showing you that he is not unaware of the issue.

[Joy Reid]

That's right.

[Tameka Mallory]

And he's willing to address the issues.

[Joy Reid]

That's right.

[Tameka Mallory]

But we do not have to. We do not have to prevent people from having the right to, to do what they want with their resources. The right to say, speak against Israel. How dare you try to force us that we cannot speak as, as Americans, as citizens, as New Yorkers. It's absolutely absurd to me. And I'm glad that he's not all in the weeds of out there. You know, he's not doing the Eric Adams thing of neck popping of, you know, telling you all at the podium about it. It's just cool.

[Wajahat Ali]

Especially, especially as our money is going to fund an ongoing genocide, an occupation and an apartheid. And yesterday on cnbc, I don't know if you saw Joy. Israeli cybersecurity billionaire Shlomo Kramer said, quote, it's time to limit the First Amendment. That's an exact quote. And furthermore, he said, quote, we need to control all the social platforms and take control of what they are saying. And you saw Larry Ellison and David Ellison take control of CBS and you saw Larry Ellison take control of TikTok.

[Joy Reid]

TikTok. That's right. And that is the plan. Tameka Mallory, thank you. And let Everybody know where they can.

[Tameka Mallory]

Support you, my sister, please, until freedom.com it is the year of all years. We've got to get the midterm elections together. We need folks to support us like you have never done before. I know everybody is feeling a little tight, but this is going to help us being able to win, win, win in November. So go to untilfreedom.com give $5, sign up for the $10 a month subscription that you can just be invested and know that your money is going to good work. And you can check our resume. We got receipts to show the work that we do across the country. Let me just say we're going to be working heavily on addressing the needs of black men and helping to get black men organized and bringing them along. As you said, my son and attorney Angelo Pinto and other brothers that we work around, they're very passionate about this. And so when we look at the midterms, we're going to be focused on going into communities and working alongside our brothers.

[Joy Reid]

Amen. I don't know if anybody's watching. Welcome to Dairy. But in welcome to Dairy Lodge, what you have are these young kids who are trying and these military people who are trying to figure out how to put a cage around the demonic clown. How to put a cage around the demonic clown like they're trying to do in the prequel to it. And the cage that you can put around this particular demonic clown is called the House and the Senate. That's right. Somebody at Hakeem Jeffries watch and tell him his place should have been with the people of New York yesterday. And so who. And I have to pronounce it right because he didn't get up there and say, I'm Zoran Mamdani. He said Zoran Mamdani. So we don't go with him because I love that he did not Anglicize his name. Tell up people where they can support you because you are one of the people really helping to cage this demonic clown. And you know, they were using the indigenous spiritual system to encase the demonic clown in. Welcome to Derry, my friend. Where can people.

[Wajahat Ali]

And the thing is, I know all of your pop culture references because I saw that miniseries. It was quite good. It is our job to cage and quarantine the demons of white supremacy and greed, which are the two persistent sins of America. And it's up to us. And this is a generational moment, folks. And I'll just end on this, if I may, is our faith compels hope even in hopeless times. And I know people Might feel hopeless, but the story's still being written. I haven't seen the end sign. And if the story's still being written, that means there's a plot twist and amazing things can happen. And we believe that God is great and loving all the time. And, yes, there are pharaohs, There are pharaohs of the past, and there's pharaohs in the present, but there's always a Moses also. And so it's gonna be up to the rest of us to do our part. And it's gonna take a collective, a group, a multicultural coalition. Everyone has a role to play. And I just want to say this is a good fight, folks. This is an honorable fight. This is a fight for our future, for our children, for Tamika's grandbabies. I only got kids. I don't have grandbabies yet. Right. We're going against the 1%. The Pharaohs, the billionaires, the white supremacists. They're playing for all the marbles. We have the numbers, and we have the better story. And we have faith and we have hope. And I have a simple platform called the left hook. It's the left hook. I'm gonna bring on joy next week or the week after, whenever she has time. There's no paywalls there, and I try to bring on tooth tellers. And hopefully Tamika can come on as well. You can find me there.

[Tameka Mallory]

Yes, I would love to.

[Joy Reid]

Supporting all the good people who are fighting to cage the demons.

[Tameka Mallory]

Thank you very much.

[Joy Reid]

And Tamika, y' all happy? Have a blessed rest of your evening. Thank you, sir.

[Tameka Mallory]

Happy New Year, love.

[Wajahat Ali]

Happy New Year.

[Joy Reid]

Happy New Year. Happy New Year.

[Tameka Mallory]

Love you, Joy.

[Joy Reid]

Love you, girl. Love you right back. This is the portion of the show where I tell you that we are brought to you tonight by Strawberry Me. Now, you know. You know that feeling, right? When a new year starts and you tell yourself, okay, self, this is the year that work is going to be great. And then like, two weeks later, you're already burned out, like, again. Yeah, we've all been there. If work left you drained in the year of our Lord 2025, which was a draining year, today's sponsor, Strawberry Me, can help you change that. Strawberry is career coaching that gets to the real source of your burnout. Whether that means too much on your plate. Hello, no boundaries. Hello. A tough manager. Or just feeling totally disconnected from the work that you do, a coach can help you figure out what's draining you. Build habits that protect your energy. Redesign your day to day so that it feels actually sustainable and help to create a plan so that burnout doesn't come back by March, which is not good. It's not therapy. But honestly, it is like therapy for your career. And here is the good part. You can get matched with a coach who fits your personality and your goals in just minutes. Sessions are flexible, private, and made for real people with real jobs, not the fantasy version of you that always has it together. So if you're listening to this thinking, yeah, you know, I am burned out, let this be the year that you give your New Year's reset. So go to Strawberry me Joy and try your first coaching session for 50% off. That is strawberry me Joy. Okay, so now we've seen the media lose a lot of credibility. The mainstream media right now particularly. We've been focused lately on the newly minted CBS Evening News, which is courtesy of a group of oligarchs. And they have selected Bari Weiss, who's been put in charge by the new oligarch owners, the Ellisons. She selected Tony Ducopel, who was mainly known among lots of progressive people for calling Ta Nehisi Coates a terrorist, for writing a book that wasn't bigging up Israel, and for telling the truth about the Palestinians and what they're going through. He is now sitting in the Walter Cronkite chair as the new anchor of CBS Evening News. And he the other day issued a really kind of odd sort of statement that he did in print and also did a video saying, please give me a chance and give me your trust, because nobody trusts us here.

[Wajahat Ali]

That is a lot has changed since the first person sat in this chair. But for me, the biggest difference is people do not trust us like they used to. And it's not just us. It's all of legacy movies, media. And I get it. I get it because I've been hearing about it from just about everybody for more than 20 years as I've traveled America on this assignment or that. My mom's neighbors in West Virginia, my own neighbors in New York City. Thousands and thousands of conversations in between. Sometimes people want to talk to me about our coverage of NAFTA or the Iraq war. Other times it's all about Hillary Clinton's emails or Russia Gates or more recently, COVID lockdowns, Hunter Biden's laptop or the president's fitness for office. The point is, on too many stories, the press has missed the story because we've taken into account the perspective of advocates and not the average American. Or we put too much weight in the analysis of academics or elites and not enough on you. And I know this because at certain points, I have been you. I have felt this way too. I felt like what I was seeing and hearing on the news didn't reflect what I was seeing and hearing in my own life and that the most urgent questions simply weren't being asked. So here's my promise to you today. And every time you see me in this chair, you come first. Not advertisers, not politicians, not corporate interests. And yes, that does include the corporate owners of cbs. I report for you, which means I tell you what I know, when I know it and how I know it, and when I get it wrong, I'll tell you that too. It also means I'm going to talk to everybody and hold everyone in public life to the very same standard. After all, I became a journalist to talk to people. I love talking to people about what works in this country, what doesn't. And not only what should change, but the good ideas that should never change. I think telling the truth is one of them. I'm Tony decopal, the anchor of the CBS Evening News. Hold me to it.

[Joy Reid]

First of all, who talk about nafta like, when's the last time you had somebody complain, you know what? I would probably trust CBS News if they had to been doing that damn coverage of nafta. CBS News has actually been one of the most integral of the networks in terms of the way that they have done the news business before. Barry Weiss came along and canceled a 60 minute segment because the administration wouldn't give a comment on the record, even though they were asked for comment about sending people without any adjudication to a gulag in El Salvador. She canceled that. And you're opening. And Tony decola's a nice guy. I used to work with him at MSM, at the artist formerly known as MSNBC. She's Ms. Now Now. Nice guy. But what you're saying that because some people in your mama neighborhood in West Virginia are still mad about NAFTA coverage and the coverage of her emails. Excuse me, what? You know who else doesn't trust you though, by the way? Because you know one of the reasons people don't trust you and don't trust the mainstream media is because you all do cater to people like your new bosses who are the oligarchs who've taken over not just CBS News but also TikTok and have made it clear that they have an agenda. Barry Weiss, making it clear they have an agenda. They have an agenda to end dei. This is her stated Agenda. They have an agenda to force Americans to wrap their arms around the Israeli government when people can see what they're doing. They don't trust you guys for a reason and because you're withholding information like that 60 minute segment that people actually need and want to hear because it's their money that's being used to do it. And I'll tell you who else doesn't trust you guys. Connie Chung and the other former legends of CBS News like to watch CBS right now.

[Tameka Mallory]

We don't, I mean, I can't.

[Joy Reid]

The paradigm has completely changed in news and we have so much opinion that the truth doesn't hold value anymore. And what we end up doing is trying to, we as consumers trying to find the truth. We can't find good old fashioned facts. And it's distresses me so terribly. CBS is a whole different organization that I had worked for. CBS has now been taken over thanks to greedy owners. Sherry Redstone partnering with David Ellison, Larry Ellison's son. And their greed has caused the venerable CBS to actually disassemble to, to crash into crumbles.

[Tameka Mallory]

And then they've hired this.

[Joy Reid]

I don't know what to call Barry Weiss. I don't, you know, I, I just don't know.

[Rick Wilson]

Yeah, but she's, you know, we'll see.

[Joy Reid]

It's not a big we'll see as if, well, she could possibly restore.

[Wajahat Ali]

She was there the other day when.

[Joy Reid]

Trump goes on 60 Minutes.

[Rick Wilson]

I thought it was, it was a decent interview.

[Wajahat Ali]

It was.

[Rick Wilson]

Okay.

[Joy Reid]

You're talking about Nora o' Donnell's interview? Yes, well, part of, part of my concern, by the way. And I, I, I find it very, if I were you, I'd find it very difficult to watch the administration of CBS News wear the costume of CBS News, getting to cosplay, to pretend that nothing is different. Even though the very premise of their acquisition of the network was in fact at the discretion and blessing of the President. Who was the interview subject in that video that we're describing. That's right. And so just the very basic premise of that feels very hard to stomach. If you care about anything resembling adversarial, if you care about serious news.

[Wajahat Ali]

Yeah.

[Joy Reid]

When I worked at CBS was owned by William Paley and he actually made it a point of allowing the news division to be autonomous and not have to worry about the bottom line. He had a president by the name of Frank Stanton who went before Congress time and time again to defend the fourth estate. Now we have a complete dismantling of that kind of social responsibility. That we are watchdogs. It's our job to report information that is not fed to us, that is not fed to us by the regime. Connie Chung, that was Maury Povich sitting there with her. They are a wonderful, wonderful couple, a news legendary couple. And the interviewer was Pablo Torre, who is one of these new media voices that is becoming a more trustworthy source of information than mainstream media for a reason. And the idea that you can, as they said, wear the costume of CBS News, but yet be answerable to the President of the United States and these oligarchs who have a specific bent they want on the news is really sort of sad. But yeah, Tony Dicopola is right that people don't trust the mainstream media and it's not because of nafta. Let me give you all an example of one of the new things that's happening, the new hand wringing in the biz is whether the media should have listened to Trump's racist rants against Somalis and spent more time, spent more time while he was attacking their community in Minnesota studying this scandal over a daycare fraud scandal. It's a definite scandal that in truth does run into the hundreds of millions of dollars. Not that there haven't been plenty of other scandals that have cost this country hundreds of millions of dollars. Rick Scott, and whose company defrauded Medicaid, Medicare and Tricare, but he's now a senator and was a two term governor of Florida. We won't go there. But there's been a lot of fraud in this country. This country's ripe with fraud. That's a very true thing. But you would think because Donald Trump hates Somalis, that the real fraud in this country is this particular Somali community. Because 70 members of that 80,000 member community, 20,000, some of whom were children, are the real culprits for fraud. Even though Donald Trump himself is convicted of major hundreds of millions of dollars worth of fraud through his company and formerly through his fake Trump University. But the real fraud, though, by the fraudster felon president now dictating the news values and standards of the great CBS News, where William Paley used to run it and where Walter Cronkite used to be the anchorman, he runs that network. Now, effectively he has a pocket veto over them. All he has to do is have his regime members not give on the record response and the story poof goes away because Bari Wise says it's not fair, needs more reporting. So the new thing that's cooking now in social media and this idea that maybe the mainstream media has missed the story of this Minnesota fraud because they were trying to be too woke. And so maybe Trump is right that maybe all the Somalis in the country need to be accosted by ICE arrest and deported despite them being here for reasons you'll see in this clip.

[Wajahat Ali]

This is all I know. I was only three years old when.

[Joy Reid]

I came and this is my home. And this has got to stop.

[Tameka Mallory]

I'm not scared.

[Joy Reid]

So I'm citizen, I'm happy. I'm United States. I brought up America. I'm happy. So why? Why you ask me? Some guys asking me, give me basmati, give me green card. Why? Why you ask me? Almost every, every Somali person living here is a citizen.

[Tameka Mallory]

There's more than 100,000 Somalis in Minnesota. Roughly 84,000 reside in the metro.

[Joy Reid]

The journey from Somalia started decades ago.

[Nick Shirley]

My family immigrated here to Minneapolis, to Minnesota in 1993. As my father says, we came to a cold place, but we found people with warm hearts.

[Joy Reid]

My parents wanted to provide us a.

[Wajahat Ali]

Good opportunity for us to, you know.

[Joy Reid]

Chase after that American dream. Right?

[Tameka Mallory]

Many fleeing from civil war, crossing continents.

[Joy Reid]

For a chance to build something, a chance for their children. For Sumayya Mahamud, her parents struggle paved.

[Tameka Mallory]

The way for her to shine. Despite the rhetoric, she's grateful to be Somali and American.

[Joy Reid]

One thing they taught me was resilience and not letting you know other people's perception of you limit what you can do, do for yourself. I was born in Kenya and then I grew up here, started kindergarten, K through 12, all the way up to college here in Minnesota. So that's local station wcco. Thank you for that report. And so these are Americans. This is what America is. Not just the Zorhan Mamdani and The the group, Mr. Levine and Jumani Williams. That's America. This is America. Right? But the new story is, nope, all those Somalis are crooks. Here's one of the videos that has been really running rampant on social media. We won't play all of it. We'll play a little bit of it. This is a local Fox story.

[Rick Wilson]

Aim to work.

[Wajahat Ali]

The daycare centers need to sign up low income families that qualify for child care assistance funding. These surveillance videos are from a case prosecuted by Hennepin County. They show parents checking their kids into a center, only to leave with them a few minutes later. Sometimes no children would show up, but either way, the center would bill the state for a full day of child care. This video from that same case shows a man handing out Envelopes of what are believed to be kickback payments to parents who are in on the fraud.

[Rick Wilson]

Where was the money going?

[Wajahat Ali]

I don't know exactly where it went.

[Joy Reid]

So those investigations of alleged daycare fraud date back years. This isn't something that happened, let's just say just during the Biden administration. And it isn't just Somalis and it isn't just in this community, but this has now become the they're eating cats and dogs of the Somali community. The way they're eating cats and dogs became a way to go after Haitians in Ohio and J.D. vance's State of Ohio. But the person who really kicked off the frenzy over Somali people in Minnesota supposedly being big time fraudsters, the whole community to port them all was a, a young 23 year old YouTuber named Nick Shirley. Let's play a little bit of his viral video.

[Nick Shirley]

In Minnesota, massive fraud is taking place within the government and the Somali population here. This building alone, Quality Learning center is a daycare. Yet they spelled learning wrong and they said learning this. This daycare alone in 2025 has received $1.9 million from the government. And the strange things about these child care centers is there's no one here right now. It's midday on a weekday. If you were to try to go inside, it's completely closed and the windows are all blacked out. No one's working midday. Children should be in here. And this place is licensed for 99 children. And this is the outside. There's no windows, no nothing. And like I said, they literally spelled the word wrong on their sign. This is open and blatant fraud taking place here inside of Minnesota. The government is complicit with this. And this is just one of the hundreds of child daycare centers here inside of Minneapolis being ran by the Somali population. It's sad that it's happening here in Minnesota and it stinks that it's happening and it's being labeled on the Somali population. However, that's just the facts of what's happening here inside of Minnesota. 1.9.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah. Yeah. So that is of course, the Medicaid reimbursements that you can collect if you're running something against your center. Now, first of all, here's one of the challenges with that. A CNN reporter confronted that guy, Nick Shirley, and he asked him, why is it that you went to the back of that building and tried to pull on the door and why would the door even be open if there's a daycare center inside? Should you just be able to walk into a daycare center. And should there be windows where adults who aren't the parents of the children should be able to look into the daycare center? Wouldn't it make sense in an environment in the United States where you have school shootings and kidnappings and pedophiles and all sorts of other reasons, do you think the door should be unlocked? Also, why did you go on a day that the business is closed? These are things that in normal journalism you wouldn't do. But he did it. And by the way, he's not the only person who believes that daycare centers, again, places where there are children should leave their doors unlocked so that random men can come by and Karen style inspect them. Here's a random guy being interviewed by a local station about but his attempt to do a Nick Shirley style investigation of them. State of Minnesota, especially in Minneapolis. Explain to me what's going on with the daycares.

[Wajahat Ali]

So one of the things that I've noticed is there's an exceptional number of child care centers that are set up mostly in Minneapolis, but also in St. Paul. And I said, wow, this, I mean, how many kids are there in the Twin Cities? Some of them are by my own office.

[Joy Reid]

And I would watch.

[Wajahat Ali]

And I said, well, there aren't any kids there. And I go to another one, there aren't any kids there. And I'd see just some guys, some Somali guys outside smoking cigarettes. So I stopped at one of them and I said, hey, I'm just wondering, I've got a grandson who's looking for child care. And I wonder if this might be a good facility.

[Rick Wilson]

And they said, no, we're all full.

[Wajahat Ali]

We're all full. And they had the door open and I looked and there were no kids.

[Joy Reid]

There was like a couch and a.

[Rick Wilson]

Table with a couple chairs.

[Wajahat Ali]

And I said, well, are the kids out back playing or what kind of place is this? And the guy said, you go, you go. And he almost pushed me out the door. And then he followed me down the street to my car. And that's when I said, wait a minute, there's something going on here. And that's got to be maybe five years ago. This fraud is so massive, when the.

[Rick Wilson]

Dust settles on this, it's going to.

[Wajahat Ali]

Be found to be the largest fraud.

[Joy Reid]

In the history of the country and probably the world.

[Wajahat Ali]

It's that big. The ones that I've, that I've gotten data on.

[Joy Reid]

But let's, let's, let's ask a couple questions. Why do people, why are, Would you walk up to A daycare center and check to see if the door was unlocked and see if there were children inside. Is that a normal thing to do? That doesn't seem like a normal thing to do to me.

[Wajahat Ali]

So I guess they think that children should basically be allowed to be shot whenever a stranger walks into a door.

[Joy Reid]

And by the way, if you walk. If I did own a daycare center, I used to work, you know, I worked at the Curiosity Shop when I was a kid. It was housed at our church, at the United Church of Montbello. And there was a daycare center there. And first of all, yeah, the back door was definitely closed. So was the front door. No one was allowed to walk into our daycare center. The daycare center windows, and we're talking about in the 80s, were covered with artwork to make sure that no one could look inside the daycare center because there were little kids in there. And the people who were running the daycare center were all women. And the other employees were myself and another 16 year old. If that door had been unlocked and people. And you're talking about in the 80s, this is before the major mass shooting era. If people could have just walked into that daycare center to what, inspect? To make sure their kids in there, that there's no Medicare fraud, Medicaid fraud. Why would you even do that? Why would a stranger be able to walk in? Why would Nick Shirley, a 23 year old person with no kids, be able to walk into a daycare center to see if there are kids in there? Does that even make sense to anyone? It didn't make sense to cnn, so they questioned him and said weird. Okay, so who is Nick Shirley? He started out as a vlogger. He's been making shock value videos for years, starting with pranks while wading into political exposes, per npr. He's from Utah. He vlogged consistently throughout high school, amassing some 7,000 followers before graduating in 2020, per a profile on NBC affiliate KSLTV. Some people might not know he is, but one day they will. That profile reads one of his earliest stunts was flying to New York city at age 16 without telling his parents. They escalated from there. This is from npr. Sneaking into influencer Jake Paul's wedding, tricking tiktokers into auditioning for fake Justin Bieber music videos, riding a bike over a ramp that was lit on fire. He also filmed himself in the crowd outside the US Capitol on January 6th. He then took a hiatus in December 2021, saying he was going to take a two year break from YouTube to serve on a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Santiago, Chile. He returned back to YouTube in 2023 with a video interviewing undocumented immigrants at the US Mexico border in Arizona. From there, he then took on a slightly political turn, very political turn with man on the street style interviews focused on topics including illegal immigration, the 2024 election, President Trump's deployment of federal troops to blue cities and the ensuing protests against them. His two most viewed videos are from this period, filmed in from the El salvadoran megaprison where 60 Minutes went and they had their story buried and deportees who are alleged to be gang members, and another in Rio de Janeiro entitled I Infiltrated Rio, Brazil's most dangerous gang. His YouTube channel has 1.29 million subscribers and the inscription on it reads here to entertain and bring the truth to all. Nick Shirley became the Vice President, United States, JD Vance's favorite journalist and the right's favorite so called journalist by lying about Ukraine, doing a video that was ultimately debunked by a former alt right youtuber turned debunker named Cowan Robertson. And in that debunking video, listen to him claim that this video he did about Ukraine was actually not journalism, it was Sapphire here's that really came to.

[Nick Shirley]

Ukraine and made this video. And I'm talking about this right now because the Vice President has literally just said that this guy is the best journalist in the world. But that doesn't quite add up because when I confronted Nick about what he did here in Kiev, he said what he was doing wasn't journalism, it was satire. And his entire reporting started to fall apart. Look at this. So here's the caption you put up. $175 billion goes a long way. This is the capital of Ukraine. What was the idea of the original tweet? To show that what is happening in Ukraine and to show that people are still living a somewhat normal life in certain areas, such as Kiev. Well, I think what you were doing is to try and show that there maybe isn't a war in Ukraine. You are basically trying to ride this sort of Tim Pool grifter type wave saying, you know, pulling silly faces, smirking at the people of this country, saying this is where your tax dollars are going. You cannot avoid that. That's what you are doing. Why can't you admit that? Because I do not believe that by, I do not believe by making satire on the Internet commits a crime by any means. Okay, this is a huge revelation. So you were actually doing satire in that post. So it was satire. Is there anything wrong with satire? Okay, so you're telling me now that this was a joke and it's satire, and this wasn't your actual reporting. This wasn't you being a journalist? What do you mean?

[Rick Wilson]

Well, you were.

[Nick Shirley]

You were being satirical, right? You were joking. You're saying that this tweet was satire. The original report that you put out on TikTok, Instagram and Twitter was satire. That was the first video I put out. And if you continue to follow me and watch the videos, I will be coming out. You will very much see. No, I've seen the backtracking. But why didn't you make it clear that it was satire? Isn't that very obvious that it's clear that it's satire? And just to recap on what Nick actually did here, he came to the Capitol. He pointed at some luxury cars, some cafes, people living their normal lives, and insinuated that there's no war or that it's exaggerated or that your American tax dollars are going on people's luxury cars in this country. And when this video went viral, I contacted his fixers. I found the exact people that brought him into this country, and they told me they showed him a bombed children's hospital. They took him to various aftermaths of missile strikes, of missile attacks, and he decided not to include it in any of his TikToks, in any of his reporting in Ukraine. Because Nick came to Ukraine to make propaganda, to be provocative, to be a MAGA influencer. And that's fine. There's plenty of people like that on YouTube and TikTok. But when you come to a country, a country where people are being bombed every single day, there are air raid sirens going off as I'm speaking right now. Then it crosses a line. And Nick has a very specific talent. He shows up somewhere, films a couple of streets, and announces he's cracked the whole story. No data, no depth, just vibes. And then we jump to Minneapolis. It's the same tactic. Drop in film, selectively inflame, provoke, declare victory, go viral, get retweets from the f. Ing president. And I've just seen this clip of Nick being confronted by cnn. The point of it is not whether or not I came at the right time, time of their operation hours. The point is, blacked outdoors, they can't give you any information. You call that number. No one answers.

[Joy Reid]

Every daycare is locked.

[Nick Shirley]

And so, okay, you bring up a fair point, and it's pretty much exactly the same as my interview with him back here in Ukraine. And the reason I confronted Nick is because I know how a lot of these people work, how they think. When I was very young, I had right wing views and surrounded myself with people just like Nick. And I saw exactly how they operate and exactly the kind of tactics they use. It's how I confronted Phidias and it's why I confronted Nick. But just to give you a full overview of how these people operate and to understand the tactics, it's basically provocation over accuracy. It's outrage over evidence. It's selective framing, weaponizing, confusion. And then when you're challenged, claiming persecution, which is exactly what Nick did. When I confronted him, he said I was putting his family at risk. For you to say that is very dangerous for my life and for the life of my family, I think the people that are actually in danger right now, the people whose lives are in danger, are the people in this country from the Russians who are sharing your video. So good luck with that. So, yeah, while Nick's trending right now for being the best journalist in the world, I think it's pretty important to look back at his roots and remember what he did here in Ukraine. But yeah, if you want to watch, leave that.

[Joy Reid]

Let's leave it there. And thank you very much to that young man for doing that, because that is what. And that guy used to do that. So he knows what this tactic is about. So when you're seeing mainstream media begin to say that because of this video from Nick Shirley, they ought to maybe look a little bit more into this. Recall that he's not a journalist, he's a 23 year old who's seeking attention online. One more thing, this guy was invited to the White House for in this October 9th Antifa Expose Conference that the White House put on, where they brought a bunch of influencers like Nick Shirley into the White House to do what was supposed to be a serious roundtable on terrorism here. That is a little.

[Wajahat Ali]

Yeah.

[Nick Shirley]

My name's Nick Shirley. I'm 23 years old. I'm 100% independent YouTube journalist. And over the past year or so, I've been able to go to 15 countries. I've hung out with people in the gangs of Brazil and the favelas and the prisons of Secat. But yet the most dangerous places I have been have been here in the United States, unfortunately. And I've had the opportunity to show people about the protest antifa here in the United States. And there's nothing organic about what they are doing here in the United States I've watched people be busting from.

[Joy Reid]

Let's leave that. We won't let him lie. But that is what he's doing, getting himself invited to the White House by creating this influencer sort of substream, the slipstream of disinformation. And now he's using that same tactic in Minnesota to whip up hatred against Somalis. But the weird thing about his journalism is that it's leaving out a really important main character. Here she is. Her name is Amy Block. Do we have. Let's see Amy Block. Let's see the other one. I think this is B10. Let's see if we can pull that up. Amy Block. Oh, okay. Well, Amy, you don't have B9. Can we see B9? How about the one after that? B9 or B10? Actually, I can see it right there. That's it. Okay. There's the other character who is not being discussed in this story. There's been a lot of heat on the 70 Somalis who are supposedly running this hundred some odd million dollar fraud ring. But that lady was not just indicted, but convicted of fraud and of running the Minnesota fraud, in which in many cases she was using Somalis as marks to do the fraud. She is now. Now you can go to 10, which is B10, which is she is now on the hook because she is now guilty in a $250 million pandemic fraud scheme in which her nonprofit. Her nonprofit, she had a child nutrition program in which she was defrauding the United States. Amy Brock and Salem took advantage of the COVID 19 pandemic to carry out a massive fraud scheme that stole money meant to feed children, said Acting U.S. attorney Lisa Kirkpatrick. The defendants falsely claimed to have served 91 million meals for which they fraudulently received nearly $250 million in federal funds. That money did not go to feed kids. Instead, it was used to fund their lavish lifestyles. Today's verdict sends a message to the community that fraud against the government will not be tolerated. That is an official statement from the U.S. attorney in the District of Minnesota. I will also note, and these are not necessarily all one, they're parts of the same sort of major fraud schemes. But that's the woman who's actually been at the highest level, convicted of doing fraud in the state of Minnesota. It also turns out that the Minnesota House speaker, a Republican named Lisa DeMuth, admits that the Republican caucus worked with Nick Shirley to facilitate him making those videos. And she happens to be running for governor. And because the Republican Party of Minnesota admits they worked with Nick Shirley to create these provocative videos in which sometimes he arrived at daycare centers or when they were closed, other times tried to open the doors or look in the windows and they were blacked out because it's a daycare center. The Department of Health and Human Services announced on last Tuesday that they are freezing the child care payments to the entire state of Minnesota. Amend this ongoing investigation of alleged Medicaid fraud, which equates to $185 million a year. According to a Fox station YouTuber Nick Shirley claimed to have uncovered all of this fraud. But during a virtual press conference, Minnesota House Speaker Lisa DeMuth confirmed that the Republican caucus collaborated with him to make these videos. I think we need more monks. Let me let you guys know right now that the Joy Reid show is brought to you by Zbiotics. Never say never. When you are really planning to enjoy celebrations, don't start with the clinking of glasses. They start with Zebiotics Pre Alcohol, a.

[Wajahat Ali]

Probiotic you take before your first drink.

[Joy Reid]

So you can enjoy the night and wake up ready. Zebiotics Free alcohol. The science behind your next great morning. So this year I am focusing on making just these small shifts that make a huge difference. And one of them is having effortless moments of entertainment, right? Enjoying a free drink, trying to live my life. My simple trick for doing that and staying balanced is taking Zebiotics Pre Alcohol before I start my fun. Pre Alcohol is a great way to support your goals and to keep your social life and your wellness goals aligned. So let's face it, you know, after a night of drinks, when we get in that menopause age, you know, we don't bounce back like we used to bounce back. And so it's time to make choices that are better for your body. And pre Alcohol is a great way to do that. It's a great way to make sure that your body is ready for the moment. And Zebiotics is a pre alcohol probiotic drink. It is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic. It was invented by PhD scientists to tackle rough mornings after drinking. How it works is that when you drink, alcohol gets converted into a toxic byproduct in your gut and it's a buildup of this byproduct, not dehydration. That's actually what causes your rough days after drinking. So pre alcohol produces an enzyme that breaks down this byproduct and makes your body able to adjust. So just remember, you can make pre alcohol a part of your regimen. Make that your first drink of the night and then enjoy. Drink responsibly and you'll feel better and feel your best tomorrow. This is a way to make a good life even better. So give it a try. So I'm going to give you guys an opportunity to do it. If you want to give this a try to sort of energize your body and make sure that you don't wake up feeling, you know, poorly after you're just enjoying a night out, go to zbiotics.com joy you can get 15% off your first order when you use Joy at checkout. That's a little code plus it is backed by 100% money back guarantee. So there is no risk. Subscriptions are also available if you want one for maximum consistency. So just head to zbiotics.com joy use the code joy at checkout for 15% off. All right. I want to talk a little bit about this Nick Shirley stuff with our next wonderful guest. Our friend Rick Wilson, co founder of the Lincoln Project, joins us. And Rick, thank you for being here. You're one of the best communicators that used to be on that side and that's now with the good guys. What do you make of this? I call it a scam that is running and its impact on Minnesota.

[Rick Wilson]

If there is a fraud here, Joy, the fraud that was in, was in Minnesota was already discovered. It was in the process of being prosecuted. But the real fraud that's being executed now is a, a MAGA distraction campaign run by this kid, Nick Shirley. And, and you know, he's taken a very, as, as you pointed out and as the, as the other commentator that you ran the tape of pointed out, he's taken a very well known method and he's very selectively edited together something that looks damning. And then it, it gets fed into this maga, what I call the hate machine in maga, and turned into a scandal. And the reason they need this so desperately right now, Donald Trump is in trouble politically. His polling is in the gutter. The Epstein files is getting worse every day. He is unhealthy. MAGA is in a civil war. They're falling apart. So this entire thing has been, has been created to give MAGA something to cling to while the rest of their world burns down around them. And look, the kid is a, the kid is a, you know, he's a hustler.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah.

[Rick Wilson]

He's made a video that is going to get him a lot of YouTube views and a lot of traffic. He's going to make a lot of money from It. And he will not learn a lesson from this. He will go out and do this again. He will try to find another way to make this into a. And it's got everything they love. It's a, It. What they perceive as liberal programs, what they perceive as programs that help minority kids, what they perceive as programs that help that are run by immigrants. The whole thing is this like gumbo of evil that they really love. And I, I think the guy's despicable and I think he is, I think he is. He's despicable, but he's also predictable. And you're going to see more of this kind of garbage because this is what their ecosystem needs right now to offset all the disasters around them.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah. And I mean, Project Veritas, which I know we both heard of back in the day, they sort of, sort of started this kind of trend of doing this sort of faux gotcha, gotcha journalism to try to get, you know, and it's always, almost often it targets women, immigrants or people of color. The people MAGA hates anyway.

[Rick Wilson]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, and you know, look, they've been desperate to get this sort of, they've been desperate to sort of merge something else to get their anti immigrant base whipped up again, too, because Trump has had to pull back the National Guard stuff from the cities. The ICE raids are profoundly unpopular around the country. The, the, the, the, they have not, in fact, deported millions of criminals because there aren't millions of criminal. They spend a lot of their time, I think, right now trying to find ways to change the subject. And this is just one more example of that.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah. And the other thing they would love to change the subject from is the, the truth and the facts of Donald Trump being an insurrectionist, a criminal himself, but also insurrectionist. Let's play a little bit of the. They have now released the depositions.

[Rick Wilson]

Oh, yeah.

[Joy Reid]

Oh, the depth that John Smith did. And listen, look, this is my future attorney general. So look, I am a fan. Let's play a little bit of these Jack Smith depositions.

[Rick Wilson]

Yeah, that's great.

[Wajahat Ali]

I guess taking a step back and looking at the fact that President Trump pardoned these folks, these 77 individuals who were previously working to overturn the election, the 2020 election. What message does that send to folks living in the country, particularly as it relates to election integrity in future elections. You know, I just, I don't understand why you would pardon people who assaulted law enforcement. I think it sends lots of messages. One of the messages is to law enforcement, the people who defended the Capitol that day, in my view, are heroes. And I think pardoning people who assaulted them is wrong.

[Joy Reid]

Amen to that. Jack Smith is a hero, too. He attempted to prosecute Donald Trump for stealing classified documents. And for that insurrection. What do you make of the fact that we're now hearing his voice, which we had not really heard, because he's a. He has a mean face, which I like.

[Rick Wilson]

Right. But he's very soft spoken, right?

[Joy Reid]

Very. I was a little surprised.

[Rick Wilson]

Yeah. I mean, I'd never heard him speak before. You know, I saw the one interview that Andrew Weissman did with him, but he was very meticulous in his, in his, in his recollection and his depiction of why they were going to bring these cases against Trump. And you could see that this thing was a setup by Jim Jordan and James Comer in the House, you know, that circus of, of. Of runaway monkeys. Right. Those, those idiots in the House thought they were going to roll this guy in a deposition, and instead he flipped the script so immediately that you could see them just like these guys. These guys, you know, if. If that lawyer had had a lump of coal in his ass, a diamond would have popped out because he knew, he knew Smith almost immediately had him on the ropes.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah.

[Rick Wilson]

And, you know, the several, Several things they tried, like. Well, would you have done this because you were told by the evil Merrick Garland, come on, folks, nobody's buying that.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah, everybody's buying that. The lump of soft soap, you know, when you're soft and you have to throw it out because it's all mush. Merrick Garland. Let's play a clip two of Jack Smith, please.

[Wajahat Ali]

Jason, sit here. Right now. I can't remember specific conversations. I do remember that we knew that a sort of First Amendment defense would be part of the case. And I think when I mentioned to you earlier about how to frame the case, we want to make clear that this was not about trying to interfere with anyone's First Amendment rights, that this was a fraud. And as you know, under some Supreme Court precedent, fraud is not protected by the First Amendment. And so, in my mind, it was important to make that clear in the indictment. And that's why when we litigated this issue before the district court, we prevailed. But the President's statements that he believed the election was rife with fraud, those.

[Rick Wilson]

Certainly are statements that are protected by.

[Wajahat Ali]

The First Amendment, correct?

[Rick Wilson]

Absolutely.

[Joy Reid]

Absolutely not.

[Wajahat Ali]

If they are made to target a lawful government function, and they are made with knowing falsity.

[Joy Reid]

No, they're not.

[Wajahat Ali]

That was my point about fraud. Not being protected by the First Amendment. I mean, there's a long list of disputed elections.

[Nick Shirley]

I mean, the election of 1800, 1960.

[Wajahat Ali]

Year, 2000, where candidates believe they were wronged by the, you know, because they lost. And there's a long history of candidates speaking out about. They believe there's been fraud, there's been other, you know, problems with the integrity of the election process. And I think you would agree that those types of statements are sort of at the core of the First Amendment rights of a, Of a presidential candidate. Right. There is no historical analog for what President Trump did in this case. As we said in the indictment, he was free to say that he thought.

[Joy Reid]

He won the election.

[Wajahat Ali]

He was even free to say, falsely that he won the election.

[Joy Reid]

But what he was not free to.

[Wajahat Ali]

Do was violate federal law and use knowing, knowingly false statements about election fraud to target a lawful government function that.

[Joy Reid]

Will you join me, Rick, in this moment of ecumenism, to demand that the next President of the United States, should they be a Democrat, vow to make that man Attorney General of the United States?

[Rick Wilson]

You know, I don't think we would have the lump of soft soap, as you said, sitting on his ass forever in a case like, like this if Jack Smith had been in that office.

[Joy Reid]

Come on.

[Rick Wilson]

I mean, he's a, he's a, he's clearly a man. You know, one thing that, the joy that I love about watching this play out, I watched the whole thing because, you know, we're nerds here. My wife is like, literally, like the biggest C Span fan in the world. You know, we, we, we have this expectation that the Attorney General will be a fierce defender of the law. And Merrick Garland was not that guy, and Bill Barr was not that guy. And, and, you know, you watch Jack Smith, and you know that Jack Smith would be that guy.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah. And Andrew Weissman said this to me because I asked him when I was at the Artist Formerly known as MSNBC, Ms. Now she calls herself now. I asked him, did Merrick Garden need to have Jack Smith? I mean, did he even need a special counsel? And Weissman was like, no. Merrick Garland could have literally caused those. He dragged his ass for 18 months while trying begging Trump to give back the classified documents. Dude, those classified documents are in his bathroom. Go get them.

[Rick Wilson]

I gotta tell you, I've told this to a lot of people. Tom Nichols and I are both guys who used to have access to all kinds of secret material when we worked in the government. And we both were, we were on a show one time we were like, if we kept top secret documents in our houses.

[Joy Reid]

Come on.

[Rick Wilson]

We would be giving you this interview from prison.

[Joy Reid]

One.

[Rick Wilson]

Just one document.

[Joy Reid]

Literally one.

[Rick Wilson]

But he had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds in a bathroom, literally.

[Joy Reid]

And so bathroom, by the way. I mean, at least make it. I mean. And what do you. I gotta ask you, as somebody who worked in the federal government, your thoughts on the goldification of the White House and on the Kennedy Center? We are seeing artist after artist after artist canceling, including the Christmas and New Year shows that we're supposed to. To be at the Kennedy center because Trump slapped his name on the Kennedy center and then attacked the Kennedy family as they were burying Caroline Kennedy's daughter. Thoughts?

[Rick Wilson]

Unbelievably vulgar covers the whole thing. Saddam Hussein's ghost hires Liberace's decorator. And it's like, spray more glitter on it. It doesn't work that way, you know, And I was. I was like most Americans really heartbroken watching the East Wing be torn off the White House.

[Joy Reid]

It broke my heart.

[Rick Wilson]

And, and the. And every day he's got us. You know, there's a Southern phrase, most people don't hear it very much. Gradu. My grandmother used to put too much gradu on that thing. There's so much graduate, there's so much gold leaf, there's so many stick on things from temu, so many stupid signs, so many things with his name on it. Our country is being reimagined as a 1980s casino and not, as, you know, the beacon of democracy in the world these days. And he's just irretrievably vulgar. And so you're going to see everything he does like that. And look, I'm proud of the people that. And a lot of these artists, folks, musicians, like, they don't make a ton of money, most of them. So these are probably were important shows for them. But a lot of these folks have said, I'm not going to be a part of this.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah.

[Rick Wilson]

And that's an honorable decision to make.

[Joy Reid]

Absolutely. Amen. And I hope it continues. Let them have Kid Rock. It's embarrassing to me.

[Rick Wilson]

The Kid Rock residency, residency at the.

[Joy Reid]

Kennedy center, because that's all he can get. And I think you and I agree that, you know, Donald Trump is just this big bucket of need. What he really wants, to be honest, is for Robert De Niro to be his friend. What he really wants is for George Clooney to be his friend. He wants the liberals that he claims to despise to revere him. You could See that in the way he kissed Mamdani's ass. Because Mamdani is a celebrity and is a celebrity young, and he wants his approval, and that's what he craves. He wanted the Kennedy center and wants his name on it because he's jealous of the Kennedys. He wishes he was JFK.

[Rick Wilson]

Absolutely right.

[Joy Reid]

It's why he kidnapped RFK Jr and has, as one of the family members said, he has him on a leash. Because he wants a Kennedy on a leash.

[Rick Wilson]

As Lisa G. Just said in the comments, he hates, but he loves. Yes, he would love to be considered a Kennedy with the charisma and the presence and the. And the. And the rhetoric and the. And the vision and the hair.

[Wajahat Ali]

But he will.

[Rick Wilson]

And the hair, but he will never be that.

[Joy Reid]

No.

[Rick Wilson]

And he would love to be inside and, you know, he would love for the New York Times to say things like, donald Trump did such a great job. He'll do anything to get them to say that except do a great job.

[Joy Reid]

And what he's doing instead, though, is he's getting his oligarch friends to buy all the media and make them say it and make them be nice. You know, I do call him Charlie X from that old Star Trek episode. Oh, yeah. When you. Laughs at him. Gets their face disappeared. Because he's demanding. What he wants is. There's an old African saying that a child will burn down the village when he can't feel its warmth. And he's never felt the warmth of the American people. He's not beloved, and that's really bothering him. And that's why he's physically rotting in front of us.

[Rick Wilson]

You know, and look, there are people in America who. Who are in this Trump cult. It's smaller than it used to be.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah.

[Rick Wilson]

Get smaller every day. But folks, you should all understand, they don't love Trump because they think he's a great guy. They love Trump because they think he'll hurt people that they don't like. They love Trump because they think he will punish black people and punish immigrants and punish women, because that's what they really, really want in the heart of hearts. And. And. And that guy has never felt love in his life. He doesn't love anybody, and he's never been loved by anybody. I mean, it stems back all the way to his parents, who hated the guy.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah.

[Rick Wilson]

I mean, they hated him.

[Joy Reid]

They treated all their kids.

[Rick Wilson]

I mean, it was clear, right?

[Joy Reid]

And he.

[Rick Wilson]

And he passed that along with all these, you know, dysfunctional idiots that he's managed to squeeze out from various women that they know he hates them.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah.

[Rick Wilson]

And they're playing the same. Like they're playing the same flight path that Trump played with them. And it's going to be, you know, unfortunately, when Trump kicks off, we're not going to be rid of him immediately. They will haunt us for a while. And all the damage he's done as he's dying, I mean, right in front of us. You know those pictures from Mar A Lago, I mean, I was told one time when Hillary's ankles looked swollen that it was she was immediately going to die.

[Joy Reid]

Correct.

[Rick Wilson]

You know, by Mike Cernovich and all those more and Jack Posobic and all those morons. But Donald Trump is limping. He's dragging a leg. He stands like he's a centaur leaning over all the time. He is an unhealthy guy. We saw that piece of reporting this week. He's like, yes, when I was with somebody said, yes, when I was with him, he ate a Big Mac and a filet o fish and a Quarter Pounder. I'm like, do more.

[Joy Reid]

Donald, when he's mainlining aspirin, apparently he's taking more aspirin than Bayer itself to try to stay alive. It's pathetic watching him. He's been described as a make a wish kid president. He's doing all the things that he really always wanted to do, including becoming a billionaire, which he could not accomplish through his own merit. This supposed meritocracy are men and very surgically enhanced women getting things they never could have gotten through their own ability. There's no way Pete Hegset would have ever become defense secretary in a normal world. There's no way Kristi Noem, poor thing, with all that surgery of faces fallen off. There's no way that no one would have put her in charge of Homeland Security ever. There's no way that R.F. kennedy Jr. He's the worst of the Kennedys. No one have ever given him real responsibility. But these people, J.D. vance, who was basically the. He's a hand puppet of Peter Thiel. But these mediocrities are able to fire the really talented people just because they're a woman or they're gay or they're black or they're Latino, try to push away everyone who actually is good at.

[Rick Wilson]

Stuff or because they tell them in their in government, no, you can't do that. That's illegal.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah, yeah.

[Rick Wilson]

You know, it is. It is truly joy. I think it's the exact opposite of a meritocracy. It's a CACA stock racy, as they say. It's. It's government by the worst possible people. And they're the worst people. They really are the worst damn people.

[Joy Reid]

Let me get your. As a. Before I let you go, your. It's way too early to do midterm predictions, obviously, but you used to do this for a living and you're good at looking ahead in terms of politics and good at messaging. Democrats should literally just call you because they're bad at it. Some of them are good. No, some of the.

[Rick Wilson]

Some call me, some of them call you.

[Joy Reid]

But some of the progressives are actually good at it. The Mamdani side, that, that wing is good. But what do you think Democrats should be thinking about ahead of these midterms in kinds of, the kinds of candidates they want? They can't all be Mandanis, obviously, that works. New York, I think we learned Guy.

[Rick Wilson]

We learned a really interesting lesson in November and, and since then, by the way, we, we had Abigail Spamberger, who is a center candidate.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah.

[Rick Wilson]

We had Mick Sher, who is a center left candidate. We had Mondami, who's a progressive candidate. We had those folks in Georgia who were running for public Service commission. Statewide race folks.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah.

[Rick Wilson]

We had folks even in Florida local races. And now the mayor of Miami. They've all run on affordability. They've all run on economic, the economic pain that has been caused to Americans. And so you don't have to have, you know, look, you don't get them on DAMI or an Obama every day or Reagan every day. You don't get, I mean, the, the super gifted communicators are one in a thousand. Yeah, but you've got a great message right now. And the other thing that's happening is the numbers for the Republicans and for Trump are going down and down and down. They have not had a good election night in a long time. They thought, oh, the Tennessee race is a really massive win. Well, they should have won that race by about 30 points. They won it by eight.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah.

[Rick Wilson]

And that pattern is going to iterate out across the country. And again, I don't like making midterm predictions based off any single race. But we are seeing a combination of forces. Trump's number is declining. It's, I mean, it's rock bottom now in most areas of the economic stuff. Republicans are taking the radiation hit from it. They can't defend it. Trump's not going to get better between now and next November. He's continued to sabotage the economy, which is also screwing these Republican candidates. And you know, a lot of them are quitting. They're leaving. And why wouldn't they? They know they're going to be in the minority. They know the Democrats are going to. And you know what, folks? Don't expect them to. I don't expect the Democrats to start going to impeach Trump on day one, but I do want them to go after these son of a. Like Christy Noem and Corey Windowski and Pete Hegseth and Stephen Miller and Susie Wiles and all these other people.

[Joy Reid]

Yes.

[Rick Wilson]

Who are running this corruption and this evil and this abuse of power. And they're going to. Republicans don't want to be around for that because then they have to go and lay in front of the railroad tracks for Trump every single day again in an area that they know they can't defend.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah. Who's worse, Susie Wiles or Marco Rubio? Morally, Marco, that's why I like you, because you have. That is the right answer. That man is a moral rot. You know, there's a great thing.

[Rick Wilson]

Look, you know, I know Marco. I've known Marco for a long time. And, and Marco absolutely knows better. He absolutely started. Marco's the guy driving this war in Venezuela, folks, because he wants to be.

[Joy Reid]

President and he's Venezuela president ever.

[Tameka Mallory]

I don't know.

[Joy Reid]

Tell that fool it's never going to happen, buddy.

[Rick Wilson]

He thinks if Venezuela falls, then Cuba falls, that he is seen as the great liberator from communism or whatever.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah.

[Rick Wilson]

It's never gonna work.

[Joy Reid]

Latinos in Miami hate you, buddy. You never. Florida.

[Rick Wilson]

Yeah. And by the way, just so, just so everybody goes back to that, the discussion about the primaries. There's a Democratic mayor of Miami now.

[Joy Reid]

He's not even Latina.

[Rick Wilson]

It's not even Latina. And you, you folks, this is a little bit of obscure. The Suarez machine, this Republican powerhouse machine down there that has won every race for every, you know, decades. Wildly. Yeah. It's been 30 years.

[Tameka Mallory]

Yeah.

[Rick Wilson]

Wildly corrupt. And people were like, now we're done, we're done.

[Joy Reid]

Yep. So yeah, goes Miami. Rick Wilson let everybody know. As if they don't where they can find.

[Rick Wilson]

Hey, folks, you can find me on social media around at the Rick Wilson on threads primarily these days, Blue sky. I go on Twitter just to throw a grenade or two and then leave again. And on my sub stack against all enemies, you can catch me at the Lincoln Project podcast and on Elephant in the Room podcast. Those are my two big ones right now. And happy to, happy to talk to folks anytime. Thanks so much for Having me, joy.

[Joy Reid]

Thank you so much. I hope that we can get together one day, Rick, and stand together. As the dynamite is wrapped around the new hideous ballroom and it is leveled to the ground.

[Rick Wilson]

I bring my own jackhammer to tear up that patio where the Rose Garden used to be.

[Joy Reid]

You and me both, brother.

[Wajahat Ali]

All right, my friend.

[Rick Wilson]

Thanks for having me. Happy New Year.

[Joy Reid]

Happy New Year. Happy New Year. And see, that's what makes the New Year happy. Just thinking about. I'm telling you, Steve, Schmidt and I agreed on this. We are. We're almost one issue voters. And our vote, our one issue is take everything Donald Trump thinks he's building during this hideous regime and destroy it. I want the ballroom leveled to the ground, and I want them to go get out the old architectural drawings of the East Wing the way it was before and put it back exactly the way it should be. I really do believe that's what they should have done with the World Trade Center. Jason, I don't know if you believe. Agree with me, but I think they should have put the World Trade center back exactly how it was.

[Wajahat Ali]

I agree.

[Joy Reid]

I know. With different structural.

[Rick Wilson]

Yeah, yeah.

[Wajahat Ali]

Different structure. Make it look a little more. Technically, it was kind of ugly, but.

[Rick Wilson]

You know, the Clin may want to live.

[Joy Reid]

No matter. Yeah, no matter. It's just. It's the principle. And in. In terms of the East Wing. Right. And you and I both been to the East Wing. We went to some of those White House Christmas parties that the media were invited to. Put it back identical to the way it was. Chip off all that Timu gold that he has put all over, trying to make it look like a Saudi royal family's home. Or Mar A Lago. Whatever. He's ruined Mar A Lago, too, which used to be a beautiful mansion. Put it back exactly where it was. Erase his memory, make him disappear. Chip his hideous name off of the Kennedy Center. It is not called the Trump Kennedy Center. No one who sees that on the COVID should walk through those doors. Every artist should refuse to perform there. Literally. Somebody said they're gonna help me get that jackhammer to that tacky patio. Jackhammer that and put back the Jackie Kennedy Garden, that beautiful Jackie Kennedy Garden. Put it back exactly. Go get the photos, the historical photo, and recreate it exactly the way it was. Make him disappear. I want Donald Trump to go into his. His reward, his great reward down below, knowing that everything he created is gone. Everything. Put it all back the way it was and make it so that there never was a Donald Trump. Remove it and then Put Jack Smith right in that Justice Department and just. And let him cook.

[Wajahat Ali]

We can subtract him from like, from history the same way he's doing black history.

[Joy Reid]

Fire everyone that Pamela Jo hired in that Justice Department. Make them all unemployed and everyone that Kristi Noem has deported. Offer them a return. Yes. I said Timu Gold. I said what? I said forever, forever blessed. I said what I said it's Timu Gold. Donald Trump on his way to his hideous New Year's party, which we blissfully did not show you because we were like, we're not even going to show his face this first episode. He stopped off at a marble shop to buy some he hideous, ugly marble for his ugly, hideous $300 million ballroom that you are going to pay for.

[Wajahat Ali]

Did he find a person to build that thing?

[Joy Reid]

I don't know. Because he's fighting with the architect. Because they're like that ugly. I'm not doing it. And he probably is not paying. Even the people who jackhammered the original one. Get rid of it. Make him disappear. Erase everything he created. Take his name off every building. Sell all of his buildings to pay restitution to the state of New York. Take Trump Tower. Take it all and strip his name off everything. Make it so he never existed. Make him disappear. Disappear his memory. You can't find Hitler anything in Germany. You can't find anything called Hitler. Even his family. There's no Hitlers. You can't even find him. He had to have some nieces and nephews. He don't have nobody. You don't find the name Hitler in Germany. Do him like Hitler in Germany. Make him disapprekin peer, that is. I am a one issue voter. Make everything. Reverse all his executive orders. Reverse all his executive orders. Get rid of Pete Hegseth and everyone he's put into the Pentagon. Lay off every single person he's hired. Fire them. And we need a ruthlessness. As we started this show in the Democratic Party, that's similar to the ruthlessness on the right. When Republicans get power, they use it. Democrats, whoever the. If it's Gavin, President Gavin, President Pritzker. We did a poll the other day which one we wanted. Whichever one it is or whoever's the new president, make them all disappear.

[Rick Wilson]

50, 50.

[Joy Reid]

It was 50 50. We did a poll saying who would you guys prefer, Pritzker or Newsom? And it was 5050 between Pritzker. It wasn't 5050 because there was a third option of some of we don't know yet or like a third person. Which one got the most? I don't know. We're going to have to ask who got that first poll. But I'm trying to see if we can go back and thank all the people who threw a little coin in the till. I want to thank you all very much for doing that.

[Wajahat Ali]

Sorry. Yes, There's a few comments. I said that people want to see what your sweater says, your jersey.

[Joy Reid]

My sweater says, I'm a reader. Intelligent, informed, compassionate, faithful, and joyful. That is my I'm a reader sweatshirt. You can buy it at shop.joyunread.com youm can get at the shop. And this is comfy. It's very snuggly. It's very cushy and mushy and really great. Really great to wear. I'm gonna. I'm gonna go rogue and say if you guys want to get that, if you want to get this sweatshirt or if you want to get anything at the shop, we're gonna try to put together a little discount code. We'll come up with a discount code. I'm going rogue. We'll do a discount code. What should we do, Jason? 15 off.

[Wajahat Ali]

Sean's gonna kill you.

[Joy Reid]

Sean's gonna get me. Don't. Don't tell Sean, y'. All. Don't tell Sean. We're gonna do 15 off, and we'll do it for the next 24 hours. How about this? Joy 2026. Joy, what is it?

[Wajahat Ali]

Joy 2026.

[Joy Reid]

Okay, so if you do Joy 2026, we're gonna give you all 15 off as we're gonna do.

[Wajahat Ali]

What are we doing? 24 hours or.

[Joy Reid]

Let's do 24 hours until the next show until showtime tomorrow night.

[Wajahat Ali]

So I have a show tomorrow night until.

[Joy Reid]

I mean, Wednesday night. Wednesday night.

[Wajahat Ali]

48 hours.

[Joy Reid]

48 hours. We're gonna do 48 hours. The next thing I want to let you guys know is we have a really special show coming up on January 6th. On January 5th, let's do both. On January 5th, we are going to talk with some of The Heroes from January 6th. The January 6th Heroes. We're going to be joined by some of our favorite police heroes from January 20, January 6, 2021. The guys who fought for our freedom. We want them to tell their story and how they feel about the anniversary that's coming up, which is going to be commemorated. Hold on. I'm letting. I'm telling on myself. I'm telling on myself that we're doing this 15% off code so that I can let people know.

[Wajahat Ali]

Oh, yeah, Because Sean's going to get you.

[Joy Reid]

Yeah, John's gonna get me. Don't tell. Don't tell her. But I'm doing it right now. I went rogue. I went rogue there. It's gonna be commemorated by some of the January 6th insurrectionists. They're gonna plan some sort of commemoration of themselves, which is disgusting and despicable. Despicable.

[Wajahat Ali]

Hold on. One disclaimer.

[Joy Reid]

Yes.

[Wajahat Ali]

Don't put in a code just yet, guys. We gotta let Shawn.

[Joy Reid]

It has to be set up. Yeah, Sean actually has to set it up. So give everything until. Yeah, put it in your cart and come back to the cart at 9 o' clock because we're going to give her an hour to set it up. Because I did this code without checking in with the boss lady, our wonderful assistant who does all the things. So I didn't tell her I was doing it. So it's 50% off. Put it in your card, hold on to it and don't hit send until 9pm Eastern Standard Time so you can get your 15% off. We are on the 5th going to. Yes, there's a fabulous blanket. Honey, the blanket is fabulous and it's big and soft and wonderful. Order the biggest size. The biggest size. What is the best one? So yes, there is a blanket. And we're going to interview some of the January 6th heroes on January 5th. Oh, listen, if Phyllis, please take a picture of yourself in your sweatshirt and your mug and post it to your social media and hashtag wearing Joy so we can make you a star. We can show your fabulous face in the next show. So please do that and we will look for your photo at your. At the hashtag. And then on the 6th of January, on Tuesday the 6th, we will be showing you our wonderful, fun, really fun sit down with Zorhan Mamdani himself. Let's show a little picture, a little still. Jason, this is D1. If you can pull that up. This is just a still so you can see just how it looked. We, we met up with him at one of our favorite restaurants in the city. Ooh, it might not want to load it. May want you guys to. To stay teased. I mean, I want to show it to you. Yes, we met up with him at a wonderful eatery in New York City. We'll tell you about that restaurant so you guys can go there yourselves and enjoy their delicious jollof rice and enjoy the delicious food. It's so delicious. And now I want to get to our moment of joy. Oh, you want to pull? Okay, pull it up. Yeah. See if you can pull it up. Jason's going to try to pull it up so you guys can see the little preview. It was a. It's a cute little restaurant. It's fabulous. Of course it's in Harlem. We had to be in Harlem where we could. It doesn't want to do the photo. Ooh, that's not nice. Okay, well, we won't show you that. We'll just show you our moment of joy instead. It's also Mamdani related and hopefully this moment of joy will load. Now I'm a little bit concerned. Let's see if it loads. All right, there it is. And it's a surprise. I didn't tell our teammates that they were our moment of joy. Nida, Wangie and Winnie are our moment of joy. There they are, freezing their little arses off, but happy as three little clams at the Momdani inaugural. They went for the historic inaugural. They were our team on the ground. Don't tell anybody. We don't have correspondence because not only do we have correspondence, but they are cute and adorable as hell.

[Rick Wilson]

They were great.

[Wajahat Ali]

I know they were cold. They were freezing their buns off out there. But they did such a great job, guys. Thank you.

[Joy Reid]

Thank you so much to our incredible team on the ground. Winnie, Nida and the Wand, who are normally watching this chat and administering the chat. Doing the poll.

[Wajahat Ali]

Doing it right now.

[Joy Reid]

Not normally.

[Wajahat Ali]

That was yesterday. They're doing it right now.

[Joy Reid]

What's the reason? What's the result of the poll? Can I get the poll before we go? Where's the poll? Where's the poll? We did a poll today. I can't find it. I can't find it. I can't find it. All right. I'm not good. I'm not good at finding the poll. I had it uploaded a little while ago, but now I can't find it. Somebody whisper in my ear or say the poll. Just say the poll in my ear or text it to me in Slack so I can tell y' all the results of the poll, but I don't think we have it. Nevermind. We'll take the poll on Wednesday. How about that? Our moment of joy is Winnie Wanch and Nida. Thank you all for watching the Joy Reid show. We'll tell you the poll later on. And I think the poll was like 98% to zero that people watched Don Lemon and not mainstream media. It was like at least 90%.

[Wajahat Ali]

He said the media won. Was that new media one, Troy?

[Joy Reid]

New media. And what was the percentage There it goes. On screen. You got it? I don't see it. I don't see it. New Media One. Okay. New Media One. Most people watch new media on New Year's. They did not watch. I see it there. They did not watch mainstream media. As well you should. Thank you all for watching. Please hit like and subscribe. Please hit share. Let a friend know. Let an enemy know just to make them mad. And we we will see you on Wednesday, same bat time, same bat channel on the Joy Reid show for our January 6th pre commemoration. It's also a moral Monday, so we'll also have that. And then Tuesday will be our Mamdani interview. It is very cute. You're going to love it. And in the meantime, have a fabulous weekend. We love you all. Thank you all for your support. New Media loves and appreciates you and so does Team tjrs. Don't forget, put that stuff in your cart. Hold on to it till 9pm so we can get that code set up so you can get your 15% off. We love you guys and have a wonderful evening and we'll see you on the next the Joy Read Show. Bye. Bye. Okay.