The Joy Reid Show LIVE! Feat. Toure and NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani

Summary

Summary of "The Joy Reid Show LIVE! Feat. Toure and NYC Mayoral Candidate Zohran Mamdani" (June 20, 2025)

In this episode of The Joy Reid Show, host Joy-Ann Reid tackles pressing political and social issues, featuring insightful discussions with political figures Brad Lander and Zohran Mamdani. The episode delves into U.S. foreign policy, immigration enforcement, the NYC mayoral race, and high-profile legal cases, providing listeners with a comprehensive analysis of current events.

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1. Critique of Tucker Carlson’s Interview with Senator Ted Cruz

Joy Reid begins the show by dissecting a recent interview between Tucker Carlson and Texas Senator Ted Cruz. She criticizes Cruz for his apparent lack of knowledge about basic demographic data and his reliance on biblical interpretations to shape foreign policy.

• Population Ignorance:

  • [00:53] Joy Reid: Highlights Cruz's failure to know the U.S. population, stating, "Ted Cruz: I don't sit around memorizing population tables."
  • [00:53] Tucker Carlson: Questions Cruz, "You don't know the population of the country you seek to topple?"

• Biblical Support for Israel:

  • [03:00] Ted Cruz: Claims biblical commandment to support Israel, "Those who bless Israel will be blessed, and those who curse Israel will be cursed."
  • [03:49] Tucker Carlson: Challenges Cruz on the theological basis, "Where is that [scripture]?"

• Reid’s Analysis:

  • [04:05] Joy Reid: Argues that Cruz's biblical stance compromises his duty to represent U.S. interests, "Ted Cruz has said that his positions he takes as a United States Senator are not based on a political calculation about what's best for and in the interest of the United States."

2. U.S. Foreign Policy: Israel and Iran

Reid expands on the implications of Cruz’s stance, connecting it to broader U.S. foreign policy concerns regarding Israel and Iran.

• Influence of Evangelicals:

  • [10:15] Joy Reid: Discusses Netanyahu’s long-term lobbying efforts influencing U.S. presidents toward conflict with Iran.
  • [10:15] Donald Trump (quote): Warns about Iran's missile capabilities, which Reid questions for their validity and urgency.

• Historical Parallels:

  • [13:34] Tulsi Gabbard: Refutes claims about Iran's nuclear ambitions, aligning with intelligence assessments.
  • [14:19] Joy Reid: Emphasizes the lack of concrete evidence supporting imminent threats from Iran, "They [intelligence agencies] all say they're not trying to build a bomb."

• Policy Failures:

  • [22:59] Joy Reid: Compares the potential conflict with Iran to the failed Iraq War, highlighting ineffective policy decisions and unintended consequences.

3. Arrest of Brad Lander and Immigration Enforcement Practices

The conversation shifts to Brad Lander, NYC Comptroller and mayoral candidate, who shares his experience of being arrested while supporting an ICE detainee.

• Details of Arrest:

  • [23:00] Brad Lander: Recalls being detained for four hours while aiding Edgardo, an ICE detainee, "We are working on connecting his family with a lawyer and helping find him."

• Normalization of Family Separations:

  • [27:04] Joy Reid: Expresses alarm over the treatment of detainees and the normalization of family separations, "It's frightening to think that this is the country that we've become."

• Orwellian Tactics:

  • [28:38] Joy Reid: Describes immigration enforcement methods as authoritarian, "They just grab you... That's not normal, right? Like that is what happens in non-democracies."

4. NYC Mayoral Race: Interviews with Brad Lander and Zohran Mamdani

Reid conducts in-depth interviews with Brad Lander and Zohran Mamdani, focusing on their campaigns for NYC mayor and their platforms addressing key urban issues.

Brad Lander’s Platform:

• Affordable Housing and Tenant Protection:

  • [37:44] Brad Lander: "I'm running for mayor to deliver a safer and more affordable and better run New York City for every single New Yorker."

• Legal Support for Asylum Seekers:

  • [37:44] Brad Lander: Advocates for scaling up legal services, "cities and states could do is scale up legal service."

• Cross-Endorsement Strategy:

  • [31:24] Brad Lander: Explains the importance of cross-endorsing candidates to consolidate progressive votes against Andrew Cuomo, "We will have a majority of voters."

Zohran Mamdani’s Platform:

• Immigration Reform and Sanctuary City Policies:

  • [49:05] Zohran Mamdani: "We have sanctuary city laws. These are laws that have kept New Yorkers safe for decades."

• Public Safety and Police Accountability:

  • [54:47] Zohran Mamdani: Criticizes the NYPD’s role in immigration enforcement, "The NYPD works for New Yorkers. They are supposed to work for public safety, not to enforce the orders of Washington, D.C."

• Affordable Childcare and Housing:

  • [57:58] Zohran Mamdani: Proposes universal childcare and freezing rents for rent-stabilized tenants, "You could provide immediate relief in a manner that is incredible for so many people."

5. High-Profile Diddy Trial and Sex Trafficking Allegations

The show delves into the ongoing trial of rapper Diddy, focusing on serious allegations of sex trafficking and racketeering.

• Overview of Charges:

  • [41:38] Brad Lander: Details evidence of drug trafficking and coercion, "It's very similar to the government's case against R. Kelly."

• Kid Cudi’s Testimony:

  • [45:38] Brad Lander: Describes Kid Cudi’s involvement in Diddy's attempts to intimidate him, "Diddy jumps in the truck with a bodyguard. They're zooming up the street, chasing Cudi."

• Juror Reactions and Evidence:

  • [44:15] Brad Lander: Notes the emotional impact on jurors exposed to graphic evidence, "Some jurors looked in a way that made it seem like they were disgusted by what they saw."

6. Closing Remarks and Call to Action

Reid wraps up the episode by urging listeners to engage in the NYC mayoral race, emphasizing the importance of electing candidates who prioritize progressive values and effective governance over partisan and ideological motives.

• Encouraging Voter Participation:

  • [73:31] Joy Reid: "If you are a New York City voter, you need to look sharp and think about it, because this is a big choice."

• Promoting Progressive Candidates:

  • [61:24] Brad Lander: Emphasizes the need to balance progressive values with pragmatic policies, "We should be focusing on New York issues as sort of a media malpractice that we got so far down that road with Mamdani."

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Joy Reid:

  • "Ted Cruz has said that his positions he takes as a United States Senator are not based on a political calculation about what's best for and in the interest of the United States. It's based on his personal biblical understanding of, of Israel from the Bible." ([04:05])

  • "If we are saying we're going to war with a country that did not attack us because Iraq didn't attack us either... I think that's bananas." ([66:27])

• Brad Lander:

  • "I'm running for mayor to deliver a safer and more affordable and better run New York City for every single New Yorker, whether you're here since birth or since breakfast." ([37:44])

  • "We have sanctuary city laws. These are laws that have kept New Yorkers safe for decades." ([49:05])

• Zohran Mamdani:

  • "You know, we have sanctuary city laws that have kept New Yorkers safe for decades." ([49:05])

  • "The NYPD works for New Yorkers. They are supposed to work for public safety, not to enforce the orders of Washington, D.C." ([54:47])

• Tucker Carlson (Carlson's remarks were discussed extensively by Reid, but direct quotes attributed to him were included as per transcript):

  • "You don't know the population of the country you seek to topple? How many people living around 92 million." ([00:53])

Key Insights and Conclusions

• Intersection of Religion and Politics: The episode underscores the unsettling blend of personal religious beliefs with public policy, particularly in foreign affairs, as exemplified by Senator Cruz’s stance.

• Authoritarian Tendencies in Immigration Enforcement: The arrest of Brad Lander highlights systemic issues within immigration practices, drawing parallels to authoritarian regimes and raising concerns about civil liberties.

• Progressive Strategy in Local Elections: The interviews with Lander and Mamdani reveal a strategic approach by progressive candidates to unify their base and address critical urban issues like housing, public safety, and immigration reform.

• Accountability in High-Profile Legal Cases: The discussion on Diddy’s trial emphasizes the importance of holding powerful individuals accountable for criminal activities, reflecting broader societal demands for justice and transparency.

• Call for Informed Voter Engagement: Reid’s closing remarks reinforce the necessity for voters to be well-informed and proactive in supporting candidates who prioritize the community’s well-being over partisan agendas.

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This detailed summary encapsulates the core discussions, insights, and conclusions from the episode, providing a comprehensive overview for those who haven't listened while retaining the depth and engagement of the original content.

Transcript

[Joy Reid]

Got it. We are live. Okay, I think we are live. We are live. There we go. All right, everybody, welcome tgif. Woo. A little bit of technical difficulties. The Gremlins were trying to get us. But we are live, finally. Thank you all for your pace. Welcome to the Joy Reid show. We have kicked all the Gremlins out of the studio and we are now live. We have a big show for you guys tonight. We've got Zorhan Mamdani who is running for mayor of New York City. We've also got our friend Torre who will be joining us live tonight. But first we got to get into this because this has been a big thing that you have seen all over the interwebs. You've seen it everywhere. And I want to play a clip for you. This is Tucker Carlson. Tucker Carlson, formerly a Fox filleting, the senator from Texas, Rafael Ted Cruz. Take a listen.

[Ted Cruz]

I don't know the population at all. No, I don't know the population.

[Tucker Carlson]

You don't know the population of the country you seek to topple? How many people living around 92 million.

[Joy Reid]

Okay, yeah.

[Tucker Carlson]

How could you not know that?

[Ted Cruz]

I, I don't sit around memorizing population tables.

[Tucker Carlson]

Well, it's kind of relevant because you're calling for the overthrow of the government.

[Ted Cruz]

Why is it relevant whether It's. Well, because 90 million or 80 million or 100 million.

[Brad Lander]

Why?

[Tucker Carlson]

Because if you don't know anything about the country.

[Ted Cruz]

I didn't say I don't know anything about.

[Tucker Carlson]

Okay. What's the ethnic mix of Iran?

[Ted Cruz]

They are Persians and predominantly Shia.

[Tucker Carlson]

Okay, you don't know anything about Iran. So.

[Zorhan Mamdani]

Okay.

[Ted Cruz]

I am not the Tucker Carlson expert on Iran.

[Tucker Carlson]

You're a senator who's calling people in the government.

[Joy Reid]

It's like his. They're going, you don't know anything about Iran. I mean, it's typical Tucker. But the bottom line is what this revealed is the disingenuousness of Ted Cruz. Now, I watched the entire, entire nearly two hour interview and I gotta tell you, not only did Ted Cruz not know anything about Iran, that is actually factually true, but he also revealed that he doesn't mind and said he doesn't particularly care if our allies, including Israel, spy on us. Tucker revealed, had him reveal. I'm sure he didn't want to reveal that. He essentially does not designate between apac, which is an organization that gives him a lot of money and a lot of politicians, including some Democrats, a lot of money. He really doesn't designate that they are actually lobbying for a foreign government. He says that they are not, but then he kind of says that they are. He said a lot of things that I think are quite embarrassing and humiliating for Ted Cruz himself. I think it's clear that interview was a disaster. He should fire someone in his const teams because of it. Okay. But I want to play for you guys. What I think is the most underrated clip from that interview, the one that I actually found more, even more alarming than his ignorance about the country that he apparently would actually like us to go to war with. Here is another clip from that interview. And this is Ted Cruz talking about Israel and the Bible. Take a listen.

[Ted Cruz]

Growing up in Sunday school, I was taught from the Bible, those who bless Israel will be blessed, and those who curse Israel will be cursed. And from my perspective, I want to be on the blessing side of things.

[Tucker Carlson]

Of those who bless the government of Israel.

[Ted Cruz]

Those who bless Israel is what it says. It doesn't say the government of. It says the nation of Israel. So that's in the Bible. As a Christian, I believe that.

[Tucker Carlson]

Where is that?

[Ted Cruz]

I can find it to you. I don't have the Scripture off the tip of mine. You pull out the phone and use the.

[Tucker Carlson]

It's in Genesis, but. So you're quoting a Bible phrase. You don't have context for it and you don't know where in the Bible it is. But that's like your theology. I'm confused. What does that even mean? Tucker, I'm a Christian. I want to know what you're talking about.

[Ted Cruz]

Where does my support for Israel come from? Number one, because biblically, we are commanded to support Israel. But number two.

[Tucker Carlson]

Hold on, hold on. You're a senator and now you're throwing out theology. And I am a Christian and I am allowed to weigh in on this. We are commanded as Christians to support the government of Israel.

[Ted Cruz]

We are commanded to support Israel. And we're.

[Tucker Carlson]

What does that mean? Israel?

[Ted Cruz]

We're told those who bless Israel will be blessed.

[Tucker Carlson]

But what. Hold on. Define Israel.

[Joy Reid]

This is important.

[Tucker Carlson]

Are you kidding? This is a majority Christian country.

[Ted Cruz]

Define Israel. Do you not know what Israel is? That would be the country you've asked, like, 49 questions about.

[Tucker Carlson]

So that's what Genesis. That's what God is talking about.

[Ted Cruz]

Israel, the nation of Israel.

[Joy Reid]

Yes.

[Tucker Carlson]

And he's. So is that the current borders, the current leadership? He's talking about the political entity called Israel.

[Ted Cruz]

He's talking about the nation of Israel. Yet nations exist. And he's discussing a nation. A nation was. The people of Israel is the nation. They're the descendants of Abraham.

[Tucker Carlson]

Genesis, is that the same as the country run by Benjamin Netanyahu right now?

[Joy Reid]

Yes, it is.

[Ted Cruz]

And by the way, it's not run by Benjamin Netanyahu as a dictator. It's a Democrat country that elected.

[Tucker Carlson]

He's the prime minister.

[Ted Cruz]

But just like America is the country run by Donald Trump. No, actually the American people elected Donald Trump. The same principle.

[Tucker Carlson]

This is silly. I'm talking about the political entity of modern Israel.

[Torre]

Yes.

[Ted Cruz]

And that is.

[Tucker Carlson]

I believe that's what got God was talking about in Genesis.

[Ted Cruz]

I do. But.

[Tucker Carlson]

But that country's existed since when?

[Ted Cruz]

For thousands of years now. There was a time when it didn't exist and then it was recreated just over seven years.

[Tucker Carlson]

But I'm saying I think most people understand that line in Genesis to refer to the Jewish people, God's chosen people.

[Ted Cruz]

That's not what it says.

[Tucker Carlson]

Okay, Israel. But you don't even know where in the Bible it is.

[Joy Reid]

So everything about that was weird. Okay, so you have. And I just want you guys to just unpack with me for a moment. Ted Cruz has said that his positions he takes as a United States Senator are not based on a political calculation about what's best for and in the interest of the United States. It's based on his personal biblical understanding of, of Israel from the Bible. And he believes that the current nation of Israel, which was created in 1948, the. The actual political entity known as Israel is literally the same as in the Bible and that they're the same thing. And that therefore the United States is commanded to support Israel no matter what it does. So even if the things they're doing go against what we're asking for. So if they spy on us, we have to be cool with it because they're the Israel of the Bible. Does that make sense to you if you just think about it? Because in the Bible, in Genesis, right? Or if you go to the early. The Pentateuch, if you want to call it the first five books of the Bible, that whole region is Canaan. And Abraham, who goes to Canaan, and God commands him to take his family, his ox and his ass, and all the things that they say, take it all and take it to Canaan. Canaan is now where Palestine is and where, you know, Syria, but that whole area is Canaan, the land of Canaan. Do we consider that area to be the land of Canaan today? Because that's what it was in the Bible. Or Mesopotamia, you know, which is the old. The area where Iran was earlier. That, that's Originally, where Abraham came from, the land of Ur. And a lot of archaeologists believe that the land of Ur is Iran. So do we operate, if we're, if we're saying we're operating from a biblical point of view, that we should treat Iran as the land of Ur today and that it is exactly the same country that it was in the Bible? That would not make sense. If someone were to tell you that we are going to treat that entire region as if it is still Canaan, Mesopotamia, the land of Ur and all of that, you would think they were insane. But Ted Cruz is saying that, and he's saying that is the way that he understands what to do. I will note for you that in 2014, when he came into office, he says, he came in and he says this in the interview with the goal of being the strongest supporter of Israel in the United States Senate. And then Tucker goes back and forth with him about like, is that your primary interest or is your primary interest to represent the people of Texas? And then he pushes back and sort of calls Tucker an anti Semite and does sorts of all sorts of other things. But the bottom line is he himself is saying that this is his biblical understanding. I want to note that Ted Cruz, whose name is Rafael, is the son of a man who's also named Rafael Cruz. And Rafael Cruz is still a very active political actor in the state of Texas. He's 85 years old. He recently testified in Texas that he would like to have anti communist lessons taught in public schools in order to ensure that the United States was taught to kids as a Christian country. He immigrated from Cuba in the 1950s. And in this, there's. There's an article I'm reading in the Texas Tribune right now that says in the decade since immigrating, Ted Cruz, the father, Rafael Cruz, the father, has been a leading advocate for Christian Dominionism, which argues that the Bible commands Christians to have dominion over all parts of society in order to bring about the apocalypse. That's Ted Cruz's father. And so Ted Cruz is acting as if maybe he's similar to the dad, in which he is maybe acting as a dominionist and saying that our foreign policy. Think about this for a moment, that our foreign policy needs to be based, I guess, on this dominionist idea that you have to bless Israel in order to bring about the apocalypse. And I say all this to say that Bibi Netanyahu, who. I have seen no evidence that he is a super religious man, but he knows how to talk to evangelicals like Ted Cruz, because Ted Cruz opposed, so he says, the Iraq war. He opposed any re intervention in Iraq in, during the Obama era. He opposed that. But he's very seemingly open to a war with Iran. Now, let me show you the number of times that Bibi Netanyahu, who has been in power for more than 15 years as the prime minister of Israel, off and on. Here he is since the 90s, since the Clinton administration, trying to use these evangelical arguments and these threats from Iran arguments to get president after president after president to go to war with Iran. Here's CNN's compilation.

[Donald Trump]

The deadline for attaining this goal is getting extremely close. And Iran, by the way, is also outpacing Iraq in the development of ballistic missile systems that they hope will reach the eastern seaboard of the United States within 15 years. By next spring at most, by next summer, at current enrichment rates, they will have finished the medium enrichment and move on to the final stage. From there. It's only a few months, possibly a few weeks, before they get enough enriched uranium for the first bomb. The foremost sponsor of global terrorism could be weeks away from having enough enriched uranium for an entire arsenal of nuclear weapons. That would place a militant Islamic terror regime weeks away from having the fissile material for an entire arsenal of nuclear bombs. If not stopped, Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in a very short time. It could be a year. It could be within a few months, less than a year.

[Joy Reid]

Okay, so they've been like two weeks away from getting a bomb since 1996. It's giving Iraq war lead up. Because what you've now seen is that evangelical Republicans are now willing to place our foreign policy in the hands of Bibi Netanyahu, both because maybe the lobby is telling him, I don't know, because he seems open to the idea that maybe this country's spying on us. But no matter. The Bible says we have to support Israel no matter what. And that is his policy. That makes no sense. But now it appears that after more than 20 years of trying to find an American president who could be suckered into going to war against Iran, which is a country something like three times the population of Iraq. And we couldn't beat Iraq in a war that we had no business waging, now we are on the brink of war with Iran for no reason I can understand other than that Donald Trump believes Bibi Netanyahu when he says that any minute now Iran is going to get the bomb. Here is Donald Trump then, this was today, refuting his own director of National Intelligence that he put in Tulsi Gabbard he said she should be the Director of National Intelligence, meaning she is over all 16 national intelligence agencies. All 16 of them. Those 16 agencies have come to the conclusion that Iran is not looking to build a bomb. And by the way, they made a deal during the Obama administration to confine their enrichment to civilian use. But Donald Trump didn't like that deal because the black guy did it. And he's like, I have to get rid of it. I'm going to negotiate. I'll negotiate myself. Okay? They got rid of that deal, meaning Iran was free to enrich again. And all of our national intelligence estimates, all 16 of them, agree they're not trying to build a bomb. They want civilian enrichment. And yet, here's Donald Trump today. Twenty years ago, you were skeptical of.

[Tucker Carlson]

A Republican administration that attacked the Middle east country on the idea of questionable intelligence of weapons of mass destruction. How is this moment different with Iran?

[Tulsi Gabbard]

Well, there were no weapons of mass destruction.

[Joy Reid]

I can move on.

[Tulsi Gabbard]

And that was somewhat pre nuclear. You know, it was. There was a nuclear age, but nothing like it is today. And it looked like I'm right about the material that they've gathered already. It's a tremendous amount of material. And I think within a matter of weeks or certainly within a matter of months, they were going to be able to have a nuclear weapon. We can't let that happen. I was very much opposed to Iraq. I was. I said it loud and clear. But I was a civilian. But I guess I got a lot of publicity. But I was very much opposed to the Iraq war. And I actually did say, don't go in, don't go in, don't go in. But I said, if you're going to go in, keep the oil. But they didn't do that.

[Tucker Carlson]

What intelligence do you have that Iran.

[Joy Reid]

Is building a nuclear weapon?

[Tucker Carlson]

Your intelligence community and said they have.

[Joy Reid]

No evidence that they are at this point.

[Tulsi Gabbard]

Well, then my intelligence community is wrong. Who in the intelligence community said that?

[Tucker Carlson]

Your Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard.

[Tulsi Gabbard]

She's wrong.

[Joy Reid]

Okay, okay, so he doesn't believe Tulsi Gabbard. I mean, but by the way, Tulsi Gabbard's really not qualified to be the Director of National Intelligence. So maybe you shouldn't believe her. But it's not just her. It is the agencies that she's supposed to be supervising. They all say, no, this is not happening. And the last thing I will throw in here is we need to start asking ourselves real questions. I'm not a fan of Tucker Carlson. I think that is very clear. We know that we're not fans of each other, but in this case, I think he exposed something that's really important. The casual ways in which people who want to have war with Iran talk about the idea that we're going to use big bunker buster bombs to bomb this country that has not attacked us, that Israel started a war with, that did not start a war with Israel. But because Ben wants to have a war with Iran but doesn't want to do it on his own, he wants us to join the war with Iran. We need to help because we're the ones with the big 3000 pound bunker buster bombs that we're not even sure could end their nuclear program because it's buried so deep underground, which would theoretically mean an invasion of Iran. And I'm sorry, why would we go to war with Iran? Because Ted Cruz and the other evangelical Handmaid's Tale senators believe that they have been commanded in the Bible to support the ageless ancient nation of Israel, which is actually, in their view, the exact same thing as the 1948 created country. That doesn't even make sense. And if we're going right back down this road that we went down with Iraq, where we're going to go to war with a country that did not attack us because Iraq didn't attack us either. But there was these perm, these permutations were made to convince the American people that they needed to go to war with this country. I will finally note that if you think about this is a terrible regime, let's just be clear the way that they treat the women in that country, the Iranian revolution that threw out the Shah, who was the king, we forced on them, threw them out. This Iranian revolution ended the rights of women in the country. We know that it's a terrible regime, but it isn't our business to remove, isn't our place to remove every negative and noxious regime on earth. If that regime has not attacked us, and they have not, and those who say, well, if they get the bomb, then they will attack the United States. Show me the evidence of that, because I haven't seen it and our intelligence agencies haven't seen it. And I will finally note that the west has been very aggressive about telling countries who are not part of the west that they cannot have the bomb. When only one country ever in the history of the United of the world has ever dropped the bomb on another country, and that would be the United States. We dropped bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. No other country has used nuclear weapons, but us. But the west keeps telling countries in the Global south that they may not I. Some of the countries that we have told that to. South Africa used to have nuclear weapons. They had nuclear weapons while they were a white supremacist apartheid nation. The moment they switched over to a Mandela led nation, they got rid of their nukes coming to Europe. Ukraine have nuclear weapons. In fact, a big cache of the Soviet Union's nuclear arsenal was located in Ukraine. But when they broke away from the Soviet Union and became independent, they gave up their nukes. The west tried to force India and Pakistan away from getting nukes, but they got them. And then the two of them have essentially had mutually Assured destruction, which has prevented honestly a nuclear war between those two countries or a war at all, because they both know they've got them. The west tried to dissuade North Korea from getting them. You see where I'm going? The reason Iran wants nuclear weapons is because they live in a region with a nuclear power and an expansionist nuclear power at that, namely Israel. Because Bibi Netanyahu and his very far right wing administration and regime has been extremely aggressive, extremely aggressive about expanding the physical borders of Israel into Syria, Golan Heights, into parts of Lebanon, into Gaza and into the West Bank. And if you're in the neighborhood, if you're Saudi Arabia or Iran, it isn't crazy that you want nukes too because you would then be less susceptible to aggression from a nuclear armed country. Everybody wants nukes because the countries with nukes, they're fearful of their aggression. Russia is a nuclear power, very aggressive. China, very aggressive. And if you live in the neighborhood with countries that are aggressive militarily, yeah, you want nukes, they all want them. But there's been no evidence presented to the American people that Iran is attempting to A, get nuclear weapons or B, threaten us with them. And Bibi Netanyahu, desiring that we get involved with him in a war with Iran, it has nothing to do with us. Even Tucker Carlson can see how crazy that is. Even Tucker Carlson, who was for the Iraq war, and he admits it in this same interview with Ted Cruz, that he favored the Iraq war, that he stumped for the Iraq war when people like me were deeply against it. Even he is like, wait a minute, what is our interest in getting involved in what would be a deadly war, a dangerous war, far worse, far worse than the war in Iraq, which we had to leave without winning. Iraq has gone right back to being not just in the control of people that we don't Necessarily like, but in control of the Shia. The Shia, which is the majority in Iran because Iraq had a Sunni minority ruling them the way South Africa had a white minority ruling them. And then we knocked off Saddam Hussein and now the Shia from Iran, same religion, are in control of Iraq. Our wars don't tend to go well. Our aggression in the region does not tend to go well. And it frightens me and I think should frighten you that United States senators are making policy based on their understanding of the Bible. That is not what we elect United States senators to do. We elect United States senators to govern on behalf of the people of their state and to govern on behalf of the United States, not on behalf of their particular peculiar dominionist interpretation of scripture. And while again, not a fan of Tucker Carlson, I will give him credit that this interview was incredibly revelatory. If you have time, I would highly recommend watching the full two hours because the things that Ted Cruz reveals in that interview are actually frightening. And he is not alone. And by the way, there are Democrats who agree with him and who would very quickly and very easily go to war against Iran for no other reason than that they believe that this is a way to be supportive of Israel. That is not the way we should be making our policies. All right, so we have a lot more coming up, but I wanted to make sure that I went through that. We're gonna keep going. So we are waiting for our guests to come on. Going to be talking to T tonight. There is a ton talk to him about because there are all of these trials. Apparently lots more allegations. It's like the whole hip hop world from my for my youth is coming apart at the seams. We're going to talk about that. We are waiting for Zoharan Mamdani. He has events tonight. We are also waiting for Brad Lander to come on because they're both campaigning. There is a very important mayoral race coming up next week, I believe in New York City. And who have we got? We got Brad Lander. Okay, let's. Let's tee him up. Brad Lander. Before we bring in Brad Lander, let me play for you guys this video of Brad Lander getting arrested by ICE at a detention facility where he was going to try to support a detainee who actually had shown up for his hearing. Do we have that video? Okay, here we go. Brad Lander.

[Brad Lander]

I will let go when you show.

[Joy Reid]

Me that you New York City mayoral candidate Brad Lander arrested by federal agents outside an immigration courtroom. He linked arms with a defendant. Agents were detaining and refused to let go, demanding to see a warrant. Hours later, authorities released Lander. Charges were dropped. And who currently serves as New York City Comptroller, denies assaulting officers, saying he acted non violently. Brad Lander, Comptroller of New York. Thank you so much for being here, Joy.

[Torre]

Thank you. It's an honor to be on with you.

[Joy Reid]

Thank you so much. I want to start by asking you about that arrest. What happened after that? Were you detained for any period of time and do you know what happened with the man who you were actually there trying to help?

[Torre]

Yeah, so I was detained for about four hours. I sat in an interview room. Think of like a law and order interview room. And they didn't really tell me much of anything. They just held me for about four hours. I will say on the wall of the interview room, you know, where you usually have like the posters that are like, wash your hands, you know, before you go back to work or pay the minimum wage, was a sign that said, are you a parent who is detained and separated from your children? In English and Spanish, we have normalized family separation to the point where there's a standard issue wall poster for it. But I got out after about four hours and, you know, I was able to go back to my family and sleep in my bed. And I have a good lawyer and I know I'll have due process. They didn't bring charges, but they say the case remains under review. Meanwhile, Edgardo, who's the individual that was detained at the same time as me, remains in ICE custody. We are working on connecting his family with a lawyer and helping find him. But most people that are taken like this do not have lawyers. The no one helps their families find them. They really are effectively being disappeared as though they were non persons.

[Joy Reid]

It is frightening. You know, I keep on reposting on my social media that quote from Anne Frank, terrible things are happening outside in which he talks about people disappearing. And it is frightening to think that this is the country that we've become where people disappear because. But the other thing that seems to be normalized is arresting elected officials. You now the third dominant elected official to be arrested, obviously in California. And Newark, New Jersey, the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, the senior senator from California. This has become a thing that the Trump regime does. What do you make of that?

[Torre]

Well, look, Pam Bondi has told us what to make of it. U.S. attorney General. She announced that they are trying to, quote, liberate Democratic cities from their electorate. Elected officials. I mean, that is like an Orwellian speak For like authoritarianism, the federal government is going to come arrest democratic elected officials. I think with the idea of both stoking conflict. They want to like provoke in the hopes of then like conflict will escalate. And they can use that as an excuse to send in the National Guard like they did in Los Angeles, but also just to stoke fear in everyone. If they can do that to 55 year old white men with US passports who are elected officials, who are they not going to do it to and just send very clear signals to frighten and terrorize.

[Joy Reid]

And the thing is that all three of these arrests had to do with migration and detainment. And it does feel like there is a very. We called it Orwellian, the former ambassador to the United States from South Africa calls it white supremacist or supremacist push that it is about stoking fear and violence all specifically around attempting to remove seemingly as many non white migrants as they can. Am I reading that wrong in your view?

[Torre]

No, I think you're reading it just totally right. I mean even just the way they do the removals, I mean in a normal courtroom room if the defendant is, you know, convicted, then the bailiff comes over and gets you from the table. But here what happens is the judge, quote, unquote dismisses your case. You've been stripped of status today. I went back today. I was in immigration court again this morning and I witnessed a family separation. Like it was a couple that came up, they moved just to strip him of status. She's eight months pregnant and they're sitting at the table and I mean. Yeah. And then you, the judge is like, okay, case dismissed. And then the people are like looking around because they don't quite understand what has happened and they walk out of the door of the courtroom and then in the elevator lobby is a gang of people in masks and not uniforms who descend on you in a very aggressive and violent way, grab, grab the individual without saying anything. I mean they don't say, you know, Mr. So and so you're being detained under this authority. They just grab you. It's so. Yes, it is. They are really. That's not normal, right? Like that is what happens in non democracies. That is not a real justice system. And I think they're doing it very visibly, like they want to push this idea forward that they are in control and neither, you know, democratic officials nor the rule of law is going to get in their way.

[Joy Reid]

And you, I read in the Guardian and you can tell me if this is accurate, that you actually talked to two of the masked men who grabbed you, and one was Pakistani, a Pakistani immigrant. And the other. And this one hits close to home, was Guyanese. Indo. Guyanese. So it looks like they're using immigrants to detain other immigrants. It kind of reminds me of the enslavement system, where they would sometimes use other enslaved Africans as overseers. That's what it feels like.

[Torre]

Yeah. I mean, you know, my first thought was, like, welcome to New York City, where even the ICE agents are immigrants. But, yes, I mean, look, these guys were ICE agents under Biden. And I'm not saying that was a good system, but it's like, that's. That's how it works. I mean, people aren't. They're not born brown shirts, right? Like, you sign up for a job like that, and then an authoritarian becomes the leader. And step by step, you get an assignment to go. A thing. I mean, one thing. I don't know if I've said this in public before, but, like, as the first guy was sitting with me, you know, I don't have my phone. He has his, and he's like, okay, this is blowing up on the Internet. And then he says, my wife wants me to quit my job, but I don't know how I'll pay my mortgage. Like, you know, it's wrong to grab and separate families and whisk people away without due process. And I'm sure some people get off on it, but I think plenty of people are good folks themselves in immigrant families and then get swept up in unacceptable behavior. I really do feel like we are making a choice right now about whether we will be, you know, between decency and indecency. And that is why it's important to.

[Joy Reid]

Stand up and Amen. I mean, and the thing that's happening is that, you know, people are being masked, and people are like, well, why are they covering their faces? That might be one of the reasons why you have to go back to your community. You have to go back to your people, go back to your neighborhood, and you're one of the people disappearing people. There's probably a little shame, you know, tied up in that. I'll take that one. I won't make you respond to it. There are a bunch of people running for mayor. You are one of them. I'll give the names. Adrian Adams, Andrew Cuomo, Brad Lander. Yourself, Zelenor Myri, Jessica Ramos, Scott Stringer, Michael Blake, and Whitney Tilson. I've counted at least three people who you all are cross endorsing each other seemingly to block out Andrew Cuomo. Is that correct that you all are sort of cross endorsing? Because I know you have cross endorsed Mr. Mamdani. Is that the goal, to block out Andrew Cuomo? Because I know this is a, it's sort of a winner take all. Everyone's in the primary top three win.

[Brad Lander]

Yes.

[Torre]

And ranked choice is a sort of, you know, confusing system. If you haven't been in it before, it's not that confusing to rank. You get five choices and you pick your first, your favorite first, and you go down to five. And you don't have to put people on you wouldn't want to be responsible for. Because Andrew Cuomo has so much name recognition, he's likely to place first. But most New Yorkers do not want to go back to a corrupt, abusive, you know, avatar of the failed past. If we can put enough of the voters together of other candidates, we will have a majority of voters. And yeah, four years ago when Eric Adams was elected, the second and third place finishers were Maya Wiley and Catherine Garcia. They were one and two on my ballot. And if they had just been one and two, you know, if most of, if almost all, if the vast majority of their, each of their voters had ranked the other one, then we wouldn't have had Eric Adams in this whole horrible timeline of selling out our city to Donald Trump for his pardon. So, yes, I thought it was important. So Zoram Hamdani and I have cross endorsed each other. Now. It's a positive thing. Also, you know, I think he is a person of decency and integrity. He's inspiring people with the campaign about a New York that people could afford. So, you know, I'm proud to be cross endorsing him and encouraging people to rank him, me first and him second. The Working Families Party also has a slate that has him, me, Zellner, Myre and Adrian Adams. But under no circumstances should any of your viewers rank Andrew Cuomo, who was a corrupt and abusive governor. He is running a criminal, corrupt and abusive and utterly uninspiring campaign. And when we say he would be a corrupt and abusive mayor, we mean he will keep sexual harass, sexually harassing people at City Hall. We mean, you know, it won't be a city that hires a great schools chancellor to build great schools for your kids. So, yeah, there's a lot on the line right now. And that choice between decency and indecency is being made at a lot of levels.

[Joy Reid]

And the thing is that name ID is such a powerful force in elections that it really does take like a group effort to defeat somebody who's got a name, right, or that has the national party's endorsement. We just saw in new lot of energy behind Ras Baraka, but the, you know, endorsed party approved, sort of moderate getting the nomination. And then the question is, can that person inspire the base to come out and it becomes an issue. I want to get your comment on the fact that Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil has now been released from an immigration jail. He was in custody for 104 days in the United States of America without trial. His release.

[Torre]

What do you think of that for engaging in nonviolent peaceful protest? You know, I mean, and, and at a moment when there's all this like speaking of those masks on those ICE agents, right, there's all these people angry about protesters who wore masks. What Mahmoud did was not wear a mask. Like that's why he was out there, you know, in his own name saying things in a non violent way. You don't have to agree with every single thing he said to recognize that nobody ought to spend three months in jail, including the birth of their son. So I hope they have one amazing baby shower, you know, but yeah, delighted that Mahmoud Khalil is out. But unfortunately at the same time that he's out, I watched three people get taken in today. And just in the time, the hour or so that I was at that immigration court this morning.

[Joy Reid]

I mean, and we are waiting for the audience. And thank you all for being here. I want to thank also those of you who have joined as members. So thank you, Gail, thank you all of you have joined as members and that are watching this live right now. We really truly appreciate you. I do want to. We are waiting for Zoharan Mamdani to come on. I know you all are campaigning, you guys are, are out there doing events and everything. So I'd appreciate you jumping on because I know it's been a really, really crazy time for you. What would be the most important thing to do differently from Eric Adams if you were to become the mayor?

[Torre]

Yeah, I mean there's a lot. Because of course the basic concerns of New York City residents, you know, beyond this particular issue of standing up for our immigrant neighbors, I mean this is a mayor who's failed to make housing more affordable and protect tenants, who's raised the rents on rent stabilized tenants 10% over the last three years. Who has failed to take an approach that gets mentally ill homeless folks off the subways and streets and into supportive housing. Who's cut our schools and library budget. So, you know, I'm running for mayor to deliver a safer and more affordable and better run New York City for every single New Yorker, whether you're here since birth or since breakfast. On this issue of asylum seekers specifically, I mean, it's not just. I mean, Eric Adams is on the side of the ICE agents and Donald Trump for his own pardon. Honestly, before his pardon, it seemed that was the way he was even before. But he's helping Tom Homan trying to put ICE on Rikers island and has done absolutely nothing for the families I'm talking about. And Governor Hochul helped come and get me released yesterday and announced $50 million more for legal services for folks facing deportation. And I'm pleading with Eric Adams and the City Council to add over $100 million to the city budget. I mean, I was honored to stand with Edgardo on Tuesday. But you know what? It would have been way better for Edgardo was to have a lawyer rather than to have me. And he doesn't have any right to it, but we could have paid to get him one and, you know, register his appeal. So I think that's the single biggest issue here. I think what New York City could do and cities and states around the country could do is scale up legal service. I. In two of the hearings I was in this morning, the people did have lawyers, and they did have appeals filed, and their cases were not dismissed and they were not stripped of status. So, for one thing cities and states could do is is do everything we can to make sure folks facing deportation have a lawyer.

[Joy Reid]

Brad Lander, I want to thank you very much and wish you the best of luck in this mayoral race. I think that it is sort of an abc. Anybody but Cuomo. I think a lot of people are feeling that as long as somebody that has a progressive mindset and is a good human being and actually cares about the fact that this is a city of immigrants, literally the city of immigrants, where the Statue of Liberty is, should not be a city where people are being disappeared off the streets as if it is, you know, Anne Frank's Germany in the 1930s. It is terrifying to think that New York City would descend to that. So I want to thank you so much for what you did for Edgardo and what you're continuing to do, and for also cross endorsing Mr. Mamdani. I hope one of y' all wins. Honestly, we're rooting for the two of you.

[Torre]

Thank you, Joy. I really appreciate it. It's an honor to be on with you. He and I were actually campaigning together earlier today. We'll be at National Action Network with Reverend Sharpton together tomorrow. But still, say say hello to him.

[Joy Reid]

Please say hi to my big brother, Reverend Al. When you get to National Action Network, tell him I said, hey, thank you so much.

[Torre]

And you say hello to Zoran when he comes.

[Joy Reid]

I will do that. I will do that. Okay, we got a deal. Thank you very much. All right, y' all. So that's it. If you are a New York City voter, you need to look sharp and think about it, because this is a big choice. And don't go with name id. Andrew Cuomo was the. Was the governor of the state. And do you really want him to be the mayor? Are you sure about that? All right, let's, let's, let's see if is. Do we have Terray ready? Terry is ready. Okay. We're going to bring to Ray in. Terry is actually a New York City resident, so we can actually ask him. I want to big up Regina, who is a member, a new member of Team tjrs. Thank you so much. I want to shout out all of our members. We love all y' all. Thank you very much. You get the little emoji. When you become a member, you get the emoji, and that means you get, like cartoony, which is fabulous. All right, Terray, is Terry in the house? Let's bring him on. Let's bring him on. All right, Terry. What's up, my friend?

[Brad Lander]

Hi, Joy.

[Joy Reid]

Hey, friend. Have you cast your ballot yet for the New York City mayor? It's great to have you. It's great to have you. Have you voted yet?

[Brad Lander]

Absolutely have. Yes. My wife and I went and voted yesterday.

[Joy Reid]

Okay. Do you care to reveal who you prefer?

[Brad Lander]

Absolutely. I voted for Zoran, number one. Mike Blake, number two. Don't remember, don't remember, don't remember. But it wasn't Andrew Cuomo. He was not ranked at all.

[Joy Reid]

At all. At all. Thank you so much. Well, we appreciate that. And we're. And again, I'm letting everybody know, just as a show note, we had to shift some things around because we started a little late. We had a little technical issue. So we're waiting for Zoran Mamdani. We're gonna bring him on when he comes on. But we. I'm so excited to talk to you, Terry. There's so much to talk about. You know, people want me to ask you about the little internal. You know, we both used to work at a certain work, and there's a little drama that you might have created out there on these Internet streets, on these social media streets. Do you have any comment about that particular drama?

[Brad Lander]

I. I didn't create it. I think I ended it.

[Joy Reid]

You said there's an ether be out there waiting for you.

[Brad Lander]

You know what I mean? It just, just something that had to be done. Somebody had to say something.

[Joy Reid]

Oh, Terry. To Ray. To Ray. Gay, little bit gangster. But we brought you on because you have been covering. First of all, I love your substack. It is, it is called Culture Fries. If you guys are not subscribed to Culture Fries, you must subscribe to it because it is like, oh, Lord. In addition to subscribing to all of terre socials, it will keep you hopping. You have been covering this Diddy trial because we're taking a little turn here. Thank you very much, Citizen Morgan, for joining and becoming a Team TJRS member. You've been covering this Diddy trial and it is wild. It is wild. And I'm thankful you are covering it so I don't have to pay attention to it every day. Talk to me about what you think your takeaways are at this point of this insane trial.

[Brad Lander]

I mean, the number one thing that I'm thinking about right now is he's not going home. There's no chance of that. We have. The government has proven sex trafficking as far as interstate transportation to engage in prostitution. Whether or not you like him, whether or not you think he's a good or bad guy, you can't get beyond. They were flying people around consistently in order to engage in prostitution in New York, in Miami, in la, they had a special agent on the stand going, look, here's where Bad Boy Entertainment paid for Paul to fly from New York to la. And here's a text from Diddy saying, can't wait till you get here so we can part. I mean like it's just. And the drug trafficking stuff in terms of give drugs to another person and like that all that stuff is. So the smaller things are done. The bigger questions was there a criminal enterprise that is racketeering a group of people who worked for and with him to facilitate and conceal what was going on with the freak offs, I. E. Sex trafficking. Because the core of it. Did you sex traffic, Cassie?

[Joy Reid]

Right.

[Brad Lander]

I think they have made that case. A lot of people who are smarter than me and know the law more than me keep saying, I don't think so. I think if you talk to a bunch of lawyers who are paying attention to this, you're going to get like 70, 30, 80, 20 saying they haven't made the racketeering case. I think you see, you know, people working for Diddy setting up the freak offs, the record business, allowing him to control Cassie, locking her into a situation she couldn't get out of. You see his assistant trying to conceal the crimes and like help him get out of things when, you know, bribe to get the tape, pay people off. It's very similar to the government's case against R. Kelly. I would think that they might be able to get racketeering and would be able to get sex trafficking recassy. And the other thing about it, Joy, is the folks of the jury have seen freak off tapes and they have seen smidgens of them. One clip was at least about an hour that the government chose. Obviously the government is going to choose the worst parts, right? So we didn't see that at all. So we can't even factor that into our judgment of how is the government doing? How is the defense doing? Like there's this whole X that we don't see. But we know that some of the jurors looked in a way that made it seem like they were disgusted by what they saw.

[Joy Reid]

Why is his mother there? I mean, like, I mean, I guess his mother's there to support him. But the idea that your mom is watching this evidence to me is so horrifying that I'm kind of shocked that she said. Is she sitting through this stuff?

[Brad Lander]

Janice, as far as I know, has been many, many, many days as far as I know. We haven't seen seen her as much lately. She was a stalwart early on. I think she kept going longer than the teenage daughters and after some of the Cassie really gross stuff, the teenage daughters stopped coming. He probably should have known we're gonna get into some really disgusting stuff here and told them not to come. But they have to live with that memory of sitting there. Dad is sitting right there and somebody is saying he did these horrendous things to her. But you know, maybe he was thinking of himself and trying to get himself out of the problem. We continue to see the older boys going, I appreciate the family supporting, but you know, it's, it's, it's a very rough road for him.

[Joy Reid]

Let's talk about Kid Cudi. Kid Cudi gave some testimony. You did a post about it. His testimony was. To me, it's seemed like it was, it was important because it somehow showed that Diddy was not just doing the freak outs for his own amusement, but that he was aggressing other potential suitors of Cassie. Is that accurate?

[Brad Lander]

Yes. The. The coercion, the force aspect that goes along with sex trafficking. You see that when she starts to kind of go out with kid Cudi, Cassie, and he basically does, like, a movie Rambo sort of scene to, like, get her back. I mean, like, it's a mc. Cudi calls him a super. A Marvel supervillain, and the whole courtroom cracks up. But it's not funny. Cudi is with Cassie, and then Diddy goes into Cudi's home, and Cudi finds out from Capricorn, Diddy's assistant, who calls Cassie at the hotel and says, hey, you know, Diddy's in Cudi's house. And Cudi's there, and he hears the speakerphone and he's like, what, in my house? And he starts going to his house. He gets to his house and he see in his car and he sees, oh, there's Diddy in the truck with a bodyguard. He must have thought, this looks bad because he zooms up the street. Diddy's truck. He. Diddy jumps in the truck with a bodyguard. They're zooming up the street, chasing Cudi. I mean, like, it's a movie scene. This is insane. You are chasing this man with guns. The next day, somebody arsoned his car after Diddy had said, I'm going to arson his car. And this is one of the predicate crimes for racketeering. So, I mean, you know, there's bribery, there's witness tampering. We've heard sex trafficking. We've heard drug trafficking. We've heard all sorts of physical violence against multiple women. I don't think we've heard of any violence toward a man. But multiple stories of violence for women.

[Joy Reid]

Is the print. Is it. Is it true? Because it's getting to be where it's hard to tell what's real and what's, like, AI fake stuff on YouTube, on Twitter, on YouTube, on everywhere. That Prince, you know, wait, there was some sort of Prince tape? Is that real?

[Brad Lander]

I don't recall that in my intake of information. This is a lot of information, right? And we get it in these sort of piecemeal ways. And I'm watching the reporters who are in the room who are on TikTok, and I'm reading NBC's courtroom reporter and ABC's court reporter and the Daily Mail, and you can kind of piece together the story from the three, because the NBC reporter didn't fully understand what they wrote. But the Daily Mail added another sentence that allowed me to Understand? Oh, that's what they were saying. And that observation seemed strange until I saw it also on TikTok through the reporters there. So, you know, you got to sort of piece the story together. There's definitely. I read a lot of Matthew Lee, Inner City News. Is it interstate? Inner City Press, who does extraordinary work. He's sitting in the courtroom. He's telling you, this is exactly the testimony that is happening. It's the most extraordinary. So I love his work.

[Joy Reid]

Can you hold on for me? Do you have time? Because we want to bring Zoharan Mamdani in. I want to get him because he has, like, 10 minutes. We want to try to grab all we can. Can you hold for a minute? Yes. Okay. Hold on for a second. Absolutely. Let's bring in Zoharan Mamdani, candidate for New York City mayor, with one of your potential constituents. You're here with Mr. Mamdani. Thank you so much for being here.

[Zorhan Mamdani]

I'm so glad to be here. I'm so sorry for the delay in getting on. This is such a pleasure.

[Joy Reid]

It is all good.

[Brad Lander]

I'm gonna let her do the interview, sir. But I already voted. I voted for you. My wife voted for you. We're really excited to see what you do with the city.

[Zorhan Mamdani]

Thank you so much. That means the world.

[Joy Reid]

And by the way, I'm glad that I have ture on with you, because I understand my wonderful producing staff here has told me that you might have bars, Mr. Mamdani, that you might have been a rapper back in the day. And Ta' Ray, of course, is a hip hop journalist. And. And that you might have been. You might be the same person that was Young Cardamom and that you might have been inspired by the Wu Tang Clan. Is this true?

[Zorhan Mamdani]

Wu Tang is very heavy. I would say they are at a far higher plane than I ever was. But I was at one point, like many a New Yorker, an aspiring rapper who had also realized very quickly that maybe my path lay elsewhere. And thus began my career.

[Brad Lander]

Wait, can we hear a bar?

[Joy Reid]

That's what I want to know. Give us something.

[Zorhan Mamdani]

That's for the general. That's for the general, not for the primary.

[Joy Reid]

Okay, so here's the thing, everybody. New York City, if you want to hear Zoran Mamdani's bars, you have to let him get through the primary, because in that general, baby, he said he's going to show out. So we're going to. We're going to lock him into that promise. I do want to ask you, because we did speak with Brad Lander earlier, and he and you are cross endorsed each other. You yourself are an immigrant. You came from Uganda as a five year old. You grew up in Queens, one of the homes of hip hop. But you are running in a city that has really in many ways turned against immigrants because of the current mayor. Talk about how you would deal differently with the Trump administration, the Trump regime, as we call them, on immigration, if you were mayor, you know, I would.

[Zorhan Mamdani]

Be the first immigrant mayor of this city in generations, and I would be proud to be that, but even prouder for what I would actually do. This is a city of immigrants. We've said for so long 40% of New Yorkers were born outside of this country. And yet what we've seen in the current mayoral administration and even in Andrew Cuomo's campaign is an insufficient readiness to actually take on Donald Trump and protect New Yorkers. Because, and this is what it kind of what it comes down to so often we use all these modifiers before the term, but ultimately, each and every person is a New Yorker. They all deserve the same protections. And what we've seen is one of the things we should be proudest of in New York City are our sanctuary city laws. These are laws that have kept New Yorkers safe for decades, been defended by Republicans and Democrats alike for that time period until the demagoguery of this current mayor. I would proudly stand up for those laws and I would also start to provide legal representation for immigrants in detention proceedings, because that's the kind of city intervention that, that actually keeps families together. It has an 11 fold increase in success of keeping a family together than if we were to just leave those immigrants to face those court hearings alone.

[Joy Reid]

The other thing that's happening, of course, is that New York City, and I would say Columbia University specifically, but the city itself has not been open to something that's also a tradition in New York City and that is protest. I mean, if you live, if y' all lived in New York City and Terra, I think, can back me up on this. There's a protest every day. There's somebody marching somewhere. They're closing the streets because these people are marching against Venezuela. They're marching here, they're marching there. There's lots of protests in New York City. It's part of the cultural life of the city. But Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil was arrested for protesting. And protesting for Palestinians has become all but illegal in the United States. And they're coming down on universities that allow people to protest for Palestinians. He was locked up for 104 days. Mahmoud Khalil, he's just been released from Immigration jail. What are your thoughts on his release and on the attitude of the administration?

[Zorhan Mamdani]

You know, I am overjoyed at the fact that Mahmoud Khalil has been released. This has been a long time coming. His detention was pronounced unlawful by the courts quite a significant time ago. And yet still, still he continued to languish in that ICE detention facility in Louisiana. And we have to remember that he was arrested for no crime at all. They couldn't actually even tell us what it was. And they arrested him in his apartment building lobby. They took him from his pregnant wife, Noor, and he wasn't able to witness the birth of his firstborn child, Dean. And the first Father's Day that either of them had was one where they were separated. And what has pained me has been the weaponization of the very real crisis of antisemitism as a justification to target the First Amendment rights of Americans across this country. And it is disgusting. It has to be opposed. And I am thankful that Mahmoud is released and also aware of the fact that there is still so much work to be done. Because as tempting as.

[Joy Reid]

I'm sorry.

[Zorhan Mamdani]

Here I am in New York City, so you can hear the sounds. As tempting as it is to think that repression is only coming from D.C. it's also being echoed by institutions in New York City like Columbia University, like NYU Langone. And we deserve a mayor who will be able to not only call feminism what it is, but be able to look it in the eye and not see a reflection of themselves.

[Joy Reid]

Joy, can I ask, why do you suppose that protesting. Yeah, please. No, go ahead, jump in.

[Brad Lander]

You know, as a New Yorker, I think a lot about the nypd. And I am more concerned for my safety and my children's safety with them than with the criminals. What do you plan or think you can do to make the city a little safer from them?

[Zorhan Mamdani]

You know, right now, what we see is an NYPD that too often is assisting ICE agents in their enforcement of the Trump administration's orders. We had the NYPD arrest a pastor for peacefully observing the arrests of a migrant at Federal Plaza. That will come to an end under my administration. The NYPD works for New Yorkers. They are supposed to work for public safety, not to enforce the orders of Washington, D.C. and ultimately, even when I'm speaking to police officers themselves, what I hear is a frustration of the fact that we continue to. To ask them to do every single job that we could imagine, respond to nearly every single Failure of the social safety net. We're asking the same people who signed up to tackle serious crimes to also be mental health professionals and social workers. And when you bring these things up, oftentimes you're framed as if you were critical of policing, when in fact, you're actually listening to police officers who will tell you that they're leaving the force because they can't handle the forced overtime, because they don't know when they're going to go home. And the reason they have that overtime is because they're being asked to work triples, doing all kinds of shifts, including patrolling the subways, when really the. The stated reason for that is to respond to the mental health crisis. And I think it's. It's that awareness of moving backwards from public safety. And also to your point, we have to have a ccrb, a civilian Complaint Review board that can issue the recommendations and have them actually listen to. There are far too many times when an officer has been found violating the law, and then the police commissioner will just shrug that recommendation off and treat it as advisory, when in fact it should be binding.

[Joy Reid]

Can I ask you this? Because New York City is supposed to be a sanctuary city. If you're the mayor, will ICE agents still be able to literally wait around in immigration for pro maga judges to declare people who are lost in the country to be essentially illegal and refute their asylum requests and then hand them over? Is that something that even should be legal in a sanctuary city?

[Zorhan Mamdani]

I think it's horrific. I think it's disgusting. And I think we're watching the separation of families in real time, and we're seeing these judges and these agents who are often masked and in unmarked cars making a mockery of the justice system of this country. And what I will do as the next mayor is use every single tool at my disposal to protect New Yorkers. And those New Yorkers also include asylum seekers. They also include migrants. They also include immigrants because, you know, so many of us across this country were rightfully shocked by the case of Kilmar, a man who was taken from Maryland to El Salvador. Now, if the municipality in which Kilmar was living in, in Maryland had sanctuary city policies, he would have never been able to have been taken to El Salvador. So what these policies ensure is that we do not have so many more of these kinds of stories that we can actually keep our people where they belong, which is their home.

[Joy Reid]

Let me ask you about affordability, because this is another thing you've talked a lot about, making New York a place where people can actually afford to live, which is a huge issue for how do you do that?

[Zorhan Mamdani]

You know, this is the most expensive city in the United States of America. It's also the wealthiest city and the wealthiest country in the history of the world. And one in four New Yorkers are living in poverty. And too often we've had city government and politicians pretend as if we're just spectators to this crisis. The way that you deliver affordability here is that you use the tools at your disposal. The city can freeze the rent for more than 2 million rent stabilized tenants in a city of 8 1/2 million people. You could provide immediate relief in a manner that is incredible for so many people, where they could know that the rent they're paying today is the rent they're going to pay next year. You could make the slowest buses in the country fast and free. And that might not seem like a lot, but $2.90 is now out of reach of one in five New Yorkers. And finally, after housing, the most expensive cost in New York City is child care, about $25,000 a year, if not more, for so many families. And we've seen with universal pre k the ability for city government to start to take some of that responsibility itself, take that burden off working families. I would deliver universal childcare for children from the ages of six weeks to five years. And these things together are all part of an economic agenda that will actually make the city affordable.

[Joy Reid]

I wonder what you think about Zohrani.

[Brad Lander]

Policy that's going on because we've legalized it, so we're not arresting people, children, but we have way more stores selling marijuana then there could actually be demand. And many of them are selling illegally, which puts the legal effort into Jeff. So what do you want to do around that issue?

[Zorhan Mamdani]

You know, I think there's a difference between legalizing marijuana, which I was in support of and which I voted for, and then having a proliferation of stores that are often not actually in alignment with the law itself. And so much of the spirit of this legislation was to ensure that the very New Yorkers who are incarcerated for possession of this drug would then be able to have a head start in creating a business out of this. And yet what the proliferation of these stores has done is also make a mockery of that intent. And we need to have a mayor that doesn't just bring a focus on affordability, but also a focus on competence, because so much of the rollout of legislation is up to an executive's interest and willingness to actually do so. I'm going to be that executive as I build a team of the best and the brightest. And the last thing I'll just say is the reason that I'm outside, the reason that we hear all these sounds is because I'm walking the entire length of Manhattan right now just to meet everyone where they are. One of the most New York City things we say is we outside. So we deserve a mayor who's also outside, one that you can yell at, one that you can talk to, one that you can see, because that's what I'm trying to be.

[Joy Reid]

I love it. Zorhan Mamdani, thank you so much. Good luck. He outside, y' all. So please vote, everybody. Thank you very much. And we're gonna get bars from him if he gets that nomination. So if he gets to.

[Zorhan Mamdani]

Come on, let's. That's a promise.

[Joy Reid]

Okay, look, he's. He's going to start rehearsing Terray. My. I love this. Terray and I are. He's my co host. We're keeping Terry around. What do you think? Does he have a shot to beat Andrew Cuomo?

[Brad Lander]

As far as I know, he's leading in the polls. So if, you know, if progressive New Yorkers go out and rank him number one, and a lot of the progressives said to each other, don't rank Cuomo, I absolutely think, you know, it's interesting because a lot of this race has come down to policy toward Israel, which is kind of bizarre, but that became a big issue in Mamdani's race, that he is supportive of Palestine, that he is willing to hold Israel accountable and just say it should be a country of equal rights. That is not an aggressive statement. That is a basic statement of like, just a human expression. But this was taken by many Jewish New Yorkers who are understandably sensitive at this moment in history as an attack. So I know that there are Jewish New Yorkers who are saying, I'm voting for Cuomo as part of my. A response to my fear and anxiety. Again, understandable as a Jewish person, as a Jewish New Yorker, they feel protected by him. Some of them. And some of the progressives who are pro Palestinian are like, this is our guy. And even why this is a huge part of the New York mayoral race, I don't know, partly because there are a lot of Jewish people in this. In this city. A lot of pro Palestinian people in this city. But we should be focusing on New York issues as sort of a media malpractice that we got so far down that road with Mamdani. And Israel and Palestine, when that doesn't really have any impact on New York City.

[Joy Reid]

And you know what's so wild? Because we started this show tonight talking about the Tucker v. Ted Cruz, you know, mauling. I mean, I mean, he mauled him. But the thing is, I think you, you've brought us right back to that point that you've got a United States senator whose main fiduciary duty, his only duty, is to represent the citizens of Texas and to represent their interests in Washington. That's his job. But he's on this whole rabbit hole of how he says that essentially God commanded him to support Israel. I'm not sure that is why we're electing members of Congress or the United States Senate. But you've got this whole sort of evangelical branch of the same thing of saying, no, I've got to make sure that this foreign country is put first. To me, it is so bizarre for a party that calls itself America first, but as you said, even in the microcosm of New York City, you have people who are saying, that issue is more important to me than, I don't know, can I afford to live here?

[Brad Lander]

You know, I think that we have seen a lot of really tragic things happen to Jewish people in the last few months. Right. And we condemn that. And we certainly don't want any individuals to be hurt for political reasons. Right? That's not. That's not right. I think that Israel's behavior in the Middle east has made Jewish people in America and perhaps the rest of the world, world less safe because they are destroying the image of Israel. Right. And like creating a reason for people to be angry at Israel and the. Whatever moral superiority that the world felt toward them in the decades after the Holocaust. You are now committing a genocide. So how can. I mean, how can the world support you? You know, we were talking today on TikTok about Aaron Parnass, who is so overtly pro Israel in his coverage, and we see a wide. A large wave of people on Tick Tock criticizing him for that. And he said to TikTok, I am pro Israel and pro Palestine. I am just anti Hamas. And I'm like, you can't be both. I don't know where the condemnation of genocide was in that thought pattern, but you can't be bothered because if you're pro Palestinian, you believe there's a genocide going on, and the genocide is created by the colonial settler oppressor. How can you believe that and be pro Israel? You can't. Or you be a Mosque.

[Joy Reid]

And the issue too is the reaction of the right and some Democrats too. Let me just be honest, because I think Joe Biden is in this camp too. To the idea that people are repelled by starving children who are being bombed at school. If it does not repel you to see children who are at school being bombed and flattened by bombs, by our bombs that we're paying for, or people starving to death when food is literally right outside, but the nation is the occupying power with the food in. If that does not repel you, then I'm not sure I want to be friends with you. And the reality is the fact that young people are protesting that. And by the way, the protesters against this, I mean, it's the, the IRC has argued it's a genocide. It's been argued in international court that it's an apparent genocide that includes young Jewish people, young black people, young Muslims. It is a cross section of young Americans and older Americans who are saying this is wrong and we don't want any part of it. The fact that protesting that has all but been made illegal.

[Brad Lander]

Yes.

[Joy Reid]

While we're also saying, yeah, we're going to go to war because Bibi Netanyahu wants us to, I find that insane, personally.

[Brad Lander]

No, it is insane. And we have allowed the discourse to be shaped around somehow criticism of Israel as anti Semitic. I have tremendous criticism for the government of Israel. None of that is anti Semitic. It's about the military policy that you take toward the Palestinian people. It is not anti Semitic. And the attempt to cow us and make us be silent over the note. No, I reject that entirely going forward. And a lot of people, we really should rethink that. We have to condemn Hamas because under international law, an oppressed people has a right to fight back. And we can condemn the things that they have done because they don't want to see individual people killed. But what did you think they were going to do? What did you think? Oppressing a group of people and basically putting them in an open air prison. What do you think they were going to do? The most peaceful and secure thing Israel can do to guarantee its safety and peace in the future is to allow Palestine to have peace, allow them to be a country, and then you and the other countries in the Middle east will live in peace. But that's.

[Joy Reid]

And that should be the goal. The goal should be what the United nations called for and which the Palestinians are calling for, which is a two state solution. I think no one disagrees that that is the actual solution. And I don't Think a war with Iran is getting us there, Terry? I think that is bananas. If we're going to war and we're doing the whole rock war thing again, but now we're going to do it in Iran. Crazy. And I hope that this is not something that happens to Ray, my friend. I so appreciate you over time and co hosting with a sister. I appreciate you so much. And y' all, please. Thank you. Subscribe to Culture Fries huh?

[Brad Lander]

Congratulations. Thank you.

[Joy Reid]

We did it. Look, we here, we outside. Well, we inside. Technically we're inside.

[Brad Lander]

But you know, can I ask you like what. Just one question. Can you just tell us what is the difference between this show and the readout? Like what are we getting now that we weren't getting before?

[Joy Reid]

Well, first of all, a lot less commercial for one thing. Right. And the thing is I feel like, and you, I think you probably, probably got to agree because as for those of you who don't know, Tere and I both simultaneously worked at MSNBC back in the days when he was on the cycle and when I had a dayside show called the Read Report, a very short lived day side show called the Reader for I was actually Thereay's lead in. And so we both have worked in corporate media and in various sort of ways. But the difference in doing it on your own is that there is a liberation, there's a freedom. Because you don't have to worry about kind of the oversight right over the things that you can feel comfortable saying. I mean, I can tell you in corporate media you're not going to hear about a genocide in Gaza.

[Brad Lander]

It's just had. Would never happen on CNN or msnbc.

[Joy Reid]

No, because there is a real, I would say almost a prohibition about talking about Palestinians the way that we just did. And I don't know what that's about, but there is a, there is a, a hesitation to really approach the issue of Palestinians in a real way. Because I think there is a sympathy, is an empathy for Israel which I think is perfectly as you said. I understand why people have an empathy, but understand Israel is a country, not a people. There are actually more Jewish people in the United States than in Israel. It's, it's, it's pretty even. It's about 7 million point what? 7.4 million, 7.5 million. But there are still more people here. This is not a people. And there are Jewish people all over the world. They are a diaspora like black people are. There are black people all over the world. There are Africans all over the world. There are Jewish people All over the world. This is not the sum total of these people. This is a country. And, and I think that, you know, and I hate that it's Tucker Carlson. Honestly, Terry, that, that sort of forced this conversation. But he said, and I think he's right, that we as Americans get to criticize this country. Country without being immediately written off as somehow anti Semitic for criticizing a nation. This is a nation state with a government. And when this government does things we disagree with, as Americans, we ought to have the right to disagree with that and we ought to have a right to protest that country. If you're saying that just protesting that country means you get deported, means you get arrested, that you can't even speak against a foreign country, I don't know how. That's America. That's my thought.

[Brad Lander]

No, it's not. It's not. It's not. Well, beautifully said. Congratulations. I'll come back anytime. Please have me back. I'm so proud of you. Look at this. Joy Reed, your own show again. We outside you and now I love it. Whatever I want, you can keep it. You always seem to keep it real and not be constrained by the corporate media shackles. So I'm like, okay, who is the who Who? What else is there for Joy? What more of your heart can you give us?

[Joy Reid]

I honestly, that's probably why I don't work in corporate media anymore. But yes, I mean, look, I tried to keep it real. I'm not a good enough actress to not keep it real. So you're getting what you always got, which is. I just kind of say what I think. And also, you know what the idea. And you do this too, Terry, which is what I so respect about you as a journalist. It. We're not just saying our feelings. You actually have to do a little work to actually kind of understand the issues that you're talking about. It's not just opinion, it's also fact. And you're trying to give analysis. And that is the difference between just sort of yapping about things which you can watch, which is fun. You know, I think the five, it's like they just chat, you know, it's fine. They're giving their opinion. And I think there are shows that do that and you can enjoy that and it's fun. But you know what, we're trying to give people a little bit of a foundation. So when you're having those conversations with your Trumpy uncle or with your MAGA relatives, at least you are kind of fact based, right? We're trying to give people a Little bit. Some facts to go with.

[Brad Lander]

Okay, okay, okay. I love it. I see. I feel like the logo, it's giving me Schoolhouse Rock. Was that purposeful?

[Joy Reid]

It's giving Schoolhouse Rock. But no, it's also just giving fun like we are. We're literally about fun, joy and fact. And I feel like that logo was giving and I have to tell you, it's also giving a little bit of 90s theme song, 90s sitcom, you know what I mean? It was trying to give a little bit of 90s a little bit because I'm a nice girl. I mean, what can I.

[Brad Lander]

Hey, hey, here we go.

[Joy Reid]

Terry, my friend, we are wrapping it up. This is the end of the show. You have been a joy to have around and we're going to do this often. Terray and Joy, I feel like it's a thing people want. We're going to do more of it, my friend. And everybody please subscribe to Culture Fries on Substack. It is the bomb. Also subscribe or also make sure you like share this show but also go to and follow Terray on Tick Tock on ig all the places that he is because he is just as much fun and phenomenal on those platforms as he is here today. Thank you, my friend.

[Brad Lander]

Thank you, Joy. Love you.

[Joy Reid]

Love you. Bye. All right, you guys, that is it. That is the show. Thank you all for hanging with us. Thank you all for staying a little overtime. We appreciate Terry for jumping in as our co hostess with the. Our co host with the mostest. We want to thank Zorhan Mandani for coming through and thank you for making that work. Brad Lander, thank you so much for coming through as well. And obviously, Terry, this has been a fun show, guys. And if you guys are in the chat, hey, hello to everybody in the chat. DL Hamilton, Brittany, I'm trying to call out everybody. Somebody said blessed or messy. I think I feel like I'm both in this moment. So thank you guys for being here and we're going to talk to you guys again very soon. Please be sure to share, subscribe. Hit that subscribe button right now. We got to 160,000 subscribers in record time, in literally one week. This is record time, but we want to keep growing, growing, growing and building. 70% of the people who are watching this stream right now are not subscribers. If you are watching this Show Right now, 70 of you are not yet subscribers. Why would you not want to be a subscriber? You might as well join if you subscribe. That way you will never miss an episode. So make sure that you subscribe. Don't just watch. Don't be a lurker. Subscribe. You can also join the team tjrs, which is our little upgraded subscribership. You get the little cute emojis. We're going to do some subscriber only chats coming up, so if you want to join the club, join the club as well. But for free. You can just subscribe and also please share this channel to make sure that all your friends, neighbors and aunties get on as well. All right, that's it. That's it for the Joy Reed show this Friday. Happy Friday, everybody. Enjoy your weekend. Happy Juneteenth weekend. Even if Trump didn't recognize it, we don't care. We didn't need him. Peace and love. Goodbye.