Best of 2025: Zohran Mamdani New York's Next Mayor?

Summary

Podcast Summary:

The Majority Report with Sam Seder – "Best of 2025: Zohran Mamdani, New York's Next Mayor?"
Date: December 29, 2025

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Episode Overview

This "Best of 2025" Majority Report features an in-depth interview with New York State Assemblyman and Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member Zohran Mamdani, who emerged as a major progressive force and, against the odds, won the Democratic primary for New York City mayor. The episode explores his background, key policies, critique of establishment Democrats like Andrew Cuomo and Eric Adams, and examines the right-wing media backlash to his campaign. Sam Seder and his co-hosts provide analysis, commentary, and sharp, irreverent humor, engaging with both Mamdani's vision for New York and the political climate at large.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Zohran Mamdani's Political Background

• Mamdani's Journey:
  • Inspired by Bernie Sanders' 2016 campaign, which "gave me the language to describe myself as a Democratic socialist" (Mamdani, 12:33).
  • Became deeply involved in the DSA and organizing on progressive causes, notably in housing advocacy and Palestinian solidarity.
  • Elected to NY State Assembly, notably representing Astoria and Long Island City, NW Queens.
• Prolific Organizer:
  • Involved in NY Taxi Workers Alliance’s debt relief campaign, supporting drivers caught in a "bait and switch" by the city—culminating in a historic hunger strike, civil disobedience, and resulting in "$450 million of debt relief" (Mamdani, 13:00–14:29).

2. Key Mayoral Platform Issues

• Affordability Crisis:

  • "The rent is too damn high" is now a mainstream sentiment, but Mamdani has rooted his campaign in three concrete proposals for affordability (Mamdani, 16:38):
    1. Freeze the Rent:- Immediate day-one action via the Rent Guidelines Board, appointed by the mayor (Mamdani, 18:11).
    2. Make Buses Fast & Free:- Addressing inequity in transit access; successful pilots increased ridership by 30% among lowest-income New Yorkers and decreased assaults on drivers (Mamdani, 20:04).
    3. Universal Childcare:- Drawing inspiration from De Blasio's Pre-K success; "can save New Yorkers around $20,000 a year" (Mamdani, 25:35).
    4. City-Run Grocery Stores:- Proposal for one per borough to combat supermarket price gouging (Mamdani, 23:01).
    5. Baby Basket Policy:- Providing essentials and information to every family with a newborn, "minimal" cost, high impact on maternal health and trust in government (Mamdani, 28:31).

• Theory of Change:

  • Not just technocratic policies but "relentless focus on making the city more affordable for working-class people"—echoing Bernie-style economic populism (Mamdani, 31:38).
  • Emphasizes replacing means-testing with universalism ("means testing our way out of every single issue...is a failure," Mamdani, 25:35).

3. Contrast with Cuomo & Establishment Politics

• Cuomo and Adams used as foils:
  • "If you're running against Andrew Cuomo, guaranteed interview on the show" (Seder, 2:56).
  • Cuomo painted as the architect of legislative obstruction, subway dysfunction, "a governor who gave us the summer of hell... who spent more on consultants than construction for the Second Avenue subway" (Mamdani, 34:39).
  • Eric Adams lampooned over corruption and "support from the Turkish government" (Seder, 30:02, Mamdani, 31:10).
• Fundraising and Grassroots:
  • Mamdani boasts a $50 median donation, "84% of our donors are from New York City, and the number one profession was educator"—insinuating contrast to corporate and real estate–funded opponents (Mamdani, 31:38).

4. Analysis of Political Messaging & Media Backlash

• Fox News Appearance:
  • Mamdani excels under hostile questioning on Israel/Palestine, sticking to principle:
    "I have no issue with critiquing Hamas or the Israeli government because my critiques all come from a place of universal human rights" (Mamdani, 61:45).
  • Repeatedly pivots to "affordability" and local issues:
    "My focus, however, is right here in New York City and transforming the most expensive city in America into one that's affordable for each and every New Yorker" (Mamdani, 61:45).
• 'How Will You Pay For It?':
  • Turns the cliché on its head:
    "It's often a question of whether you have the willingness to spend that money to benefit working-class people, not where that money is in the first place" (Mamdani, 65:29).
• Response to Islamophobia & Right-Wing Attacks:
  • Charlie Kirk and others deploy racist/xenophobic talking points in the wake of Mamdani's victory (“Perfect example of so many different forces happening in our country…Does this person make America better or worse? And Mamdani is a perfect example of worse”—Kirk, 73:31).
  • Hosts analyze this as “old school,” post-9/11 style bigotry, compare it to the Barack Hussein Obama attacks, and point out its political impotence (“Barack Hussein Obama won that election. And won reelection. …You lost this one, guys.” —Brian, 77:22).

5. Humor, Irreverence, and Satire

• John Benjamin prank call as a “phone banker for Cuomo,” satirizing elite-centered, exclusionary approaches (“We want rents higher so that wealthier people…will come to live here."—Benjamin, 42:09).
• The crew skewers New York political realities, campaign strategies, and media absurdities with biting wit throughout (“If I ever come back to this show with a much better hairline, then I think you should ask me directly if I’ve received any assistance from the Turkish government."—Mamdani, 31:10).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Political Motivation:
  "My political journey in some ways begins with Bernie’s 2016 run, which gave me the language to describe myself as a Democratic socialist."
  — Zohran Mamdani, 12:33

• On the Taxi Workers Struggle:
  "...organized five fellow elected officials to get arrested in active civil disobedience, and eventually going on a 15 day hunger strike...winning on November 3rd of that year, $450 million of debt relief."
  — Zohran Mamdani, 13:00–13:54

• On Rent Freeze Power:
  "The rent for these units is set by a board called the Rent Guidelines Board...each of them are appointed exclusively by the mayor...I would identify New Yorkers who could serve on that board who would be willing to make determinations on the basis of reality, which is the fact that tenants are suffering and landlords are doing fine."
  — Mamdani, 18:11

• On Universalism vs Means Testing:
  "...create a firmer social safety net and a larger sense that we are all part of this same city as opposed to means testing our way out of every single issue that we see in front of us."
  — Mamdani, 25:35

• On Message Discipline:
  "One is our relentless focus on making this a more affordable city. The foregrounding of those three, now four, now five different policy proposals. To the extent that when I meet people across the city, they recite that platform back to me more than they know anything about me or my record."
  — Mamdani, 31:38

• Fox News Confrontation:
  "I don't really have opinions about the future of Hamas and Israel beyond the question of justice and safety and the fact that anything has to abide by international law. And that applies to Hamas, that applies to the Israeli military, applies to anyone you could ask me about."
  — Mamdani, 62:25

• Fundraising Populism:
  "I see a $50 median donation...I met voter after voter who told me they had never donated to a mayoral campaign...that speaks to the fact that we're trying to not only speak to the 25% of Democrats who voted...but also the 75% who stayed home..."
  — Mamdani, 34:39

• Satire on Cuomo Platform (John Benjamin):
  "The Cuomo campaign...really think that the rents are not high enough in New York. We want to free the rent. We want rents higher so that wealthier people...will come to live here."
  — John Benjamin, 42:06

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Important Timestamps

| Time | Topic/Quote | |----------|-----------------| | 12:33 | Mamdani explains his political journey after Bernie 2016 | | 13:00–13:54 | Taxi Workers' Alliance campaign & hunger strike | | 16:38 | Mamdani lays out three-part affordability policy | | 18:11 | Rent freeze explained; mayor's authority over Rent Guidelines Board | | 20:04 | Free bus pilot – measurable benefits | | 25:35 | The transformative impact of universal Pre-K | | 28:31 | Baby Basket policy for newborns/maternal health | | 31:38 | What sets Mamdani’s campaign apart — focus and fundraising | | 34:39 | Grassroots fundraising, anti-corporate lens | | 61:45 | On Israel/Palestine: universal human rights principle | | 65:29 | "How do you pay for it?" — challenge to austerity paradigm | | 73:31 | Charlie Kirk's Islamophobic rant post-Mamdani's victory | | 93:07 | Mamdani’s zinger to Cuomo: “The name is Mamdani. M A M D A N I. You should learn how to say it.” |

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Host & Panel Tone

The panel, led by Sam Seder and joined by Emma Vigeland, Hasan Piker, others, blends incisive political analysis with irreverent humor, left-populist energy, and occasional inside jokes about New York and political media.
Their approach is equitable, deeply factual, but always seeking the absurdity and contradictions of establishment and right-wing politics, exposing the hypocrisy of corporate-backed opponents and the emptiness of right-wing rhetoric.

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Summary for New Listeners

This episode functions as both a retelling of Zohran Mamdani’s underdog campaign—reshaping New York's political conversation towards affordability, universalism, and working-class power—and an anthropological read on the U.S. center-left at a moment of right-wing reaction.
Mamdani’s steady, strategic progressive messaging, his frictionless handling of media ambushes, and the hostility he elicits from the right are all presented as evidence of a changing, more assertively left-wing Democratic politics.
Throughout, the hosts celebrate Mamdani's victories but keep a critical eye (“he needs to deliver...or he's going to go down as a failure”—Seder, 104:50), inviting further scrutiny as he transitions from insurgent to incumbent.

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Listen for:

• How a campaign rooted in bold left populism can break through in big city politics
• The anatomy of a successful response to right-wing scare tactics and Islamophobia
• Sharp satire of both centrist Democrats and paranoid right-wingers
• Lessons on universal versus means-tested policy frameworks

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Recommended Segments:

• Mamdani on Taxi Workers & Medallion Crisis – [13:00–14:29]
• Detailed breakdown of the Rent Freeze policy – [18:11]
• Analysis of Fox News ambush and Mamdani’s deft pivots – [61:45–62:25]
• Mamdani’s fundraising/popular support – [31:38, 34:39]
• John Benjamin’s satirical “Cuomo phonebank” – [42:06+]
• Mamdani’s confrontation with Cuomo, on-air – [93:07]

For More About Zohran's Mayoral Platform:
zahranfornyc.com and @zahrankmamdani on all social media.

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The episode is a masterclass in modern left journalism: critical, funny, never dour, and committed to spotlighting organizing as the source of progressive breakthroughs.

Transcript

[John Benjamin]

The Majority Report with Sam Cedar.

[Sam Cedar]

The destiny of America is always safer in the hands of the people than in the conference rooms of any elite.

[John Benjamin]

Sam Cedar.

[Sam Cedar]

They are unanimous in their hate for me and I welcome their hatred. We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex.

[Emma Vigeland]

The Majority Report with Sam Cedar.

[Sam Cedar]

And I get the feeling you've been cheated. It is Monday, December 29, 2025. My name is Sam Cedar. This is the five time award winning Majority Report. We are broadcasting live to tape steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, usa. It is part of our famous best of year collection of shows. On today's show, we replay a, an interview we did almost a year ago, really like 12, 11 months and two weeks ago on January 15, 2025, with a hopeful mayoral candidate for New York City. Long shot. Total long shot. Which I, I did because my sister, my sister, my daughter was like, you gotta interview this guy. And you know, I was aware of him, like, yeah, okay, let's do that. That's a good idea. And his name is Zoran Mamdani. You may remember Zoram Dani. He was the one who had those videos that he did up in his district, which was the same as AOC or at least part of AOC's congressional district, where he asked voters, why did you vote for Trump? Asked his voters, why'd you vote for Trump? And he gave him answers. And so this guy, Zoran Mamdani, wanted to be mayor of New York City. Total long shot. And we titled the question, it's like something to the effect of like, will Zoran Mamdani be New York's next mayor? And I, if we could have gone on Polymarket at that time, would be super rich. But I'm finding polling from January 7th, the week of 7 to the 13th, 1%.

[Brian]

5.

[Sam Cedar]

5%. 5%. Okay, so there it is. That's our threshold. Incidentally, if you have 5% and you're a DSA running for mayor, potentially against Andrew Cuomo, all you need to show is like 0.05% if anybody's running for, against Andrew Cuomo for anything. And I don't even know if Cuomo had actually declared at that point, but everybody knew he was going to run. People thought that Eric Adams would be in jail by then, but even still, he was at 10%. If you're running. Exactly. If you're running against Andrew Cuomo, you guaranteed interview on the show. Well, at least One of the people running against him. So we interviewed Mom Donnie and. Is that it? Are we only going to play the Mom Donnie thing? How long is it? Oh, okay. And then after the Mom Donnie interview, we will have what is known as Matt's Picks. And that's. Matt will put together some stuff. Maybe, maybe, maybe. This is where we do like a John Benjamin thing, right? So those are two big names. Benjamin polling for Cuomo. Yes, that's actually would be great. John Benjamin of.

[Eddie]

Who'S the Caboose?

[Sam Cedar]

Fame. Maybe you've seen him in who's the caboose?

[Brian]

Dr. Katz.

[Sam Cedar]

Dr. Katz. I mean, that would have been like. I, I mean, I, I'm like, did people not watch Dr. Katz? Of course, that was 40 years ago. So I was trying to play along with your bit. Now who's the caboose? No, the Dr. Katz. I can assure you. You may have seen that short that I made on apartment 2F, that Sklar brothers show. Benjamin made a cameo appearance in that as my former roommate who owed me money and was being whipped by a dominatrix. So it's. You should release that. Anyways, folks, we'll get to that in just a moment, but a couple of words from our sponsors. Why do most people want to learn a new language? Why do you want to learn a new language? Do you speak another language? I can read German.

[Zoran Mamdani]

Wow.

[Sam Cedar]

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[Hasan Piker]

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[Sam Cedar]

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[Emma Vigeland]

It's not that long.

[Sam Cedar]

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[Emma Vigeland]

You're very welcome.

[Zoran Mamdani]

I was actually going to announce that endorsement later in the interview. Thank you.

[Sam Cedar]

All right, well, I scooped you, so. All right, Zoran, just tell us a little bit of your background. Your state assemblyman for New York's 36 district. You are, you've been a member of the DSA since 2017 and that predates, obviously you're running and your endorsement from them. Just give us a fill in a little bit of those gaps for us.

[Zoran Mamdani]

Well, my political journey in some ways begins with Bernie's 2016 run, which gave me the language to describe myself as a Democratic socialist. And the year after that, I began getting more involved with DSA here in New York City and started to work on a City Council campaign in southern Brooklyn for a Palestinian Lutheran minister named Khader El Yateem. And that was a campaign that transformed my life.

[Hasan Piker]

And.

[Zoran Mamdani]

And since then, became more and more involved with the organization, working on multiple campaigns, becoming a housing counselor, working with low to moderate income New Yorkers facing foreclosure, and eventually running to be the State assembly member of Astoria and Long Island City here in Northwest Queens. And in the time that I've been in the Assembly, I have worked on issues affecting the fact that our city is becoming incredibly unaffordable for the very people who built it. In 2021, I worked closely with the New York Taxi Workers alliance, standing alongside thousands of tax taxi drivers who'd been sold a dream by the City of New York, going on 45 days of consecutive protest with them, organizing five fellow elected officials to get arrested in active civil disobedience, and eventually going on a 15 day hunger strike with those drivers winning on November 3rd of that year, $450 million of debt relief. And that is the first year of my time in the Assembly.

[Sam Cedar]

And we should say, I mean, that was an amazing sort of campaign to help out these taxi drivers who. There was a little. I don't know if bait and switch is the best description of it, but it was pretty close. I mean, they ended up getting roped into these very expensive medallions. Meanwhile, the entire industry was undercut and cut out from underneath them by the, you know, gig economy like Uber and Lyft and whatnot. And then a lot of these guys were just absolutely trapped in enormous amounts of debt.

[Zoran Mamdani]

I mean, it's. I would. I would say that bait and switch is fair and, frankly, kind, considering what this city did to taxi drivers. Under Michael Bloomberg's administration. The city identified medallions as a potential source of revenue to make up a budget shortfall, and intentionally jacked up the price of a medallion to levels that they knew drivers would never be able to repay, eventually seeing costs go close to a million dollars when they had previously been hovering around or a little below $200,000. And then on top of that, as you said, flooding the market with Lyft and Uber cars, which have decimated the ability for these drivers to collect fares, all while welcoming lenders into the market. The same lenders that we had said could not operate in the housing market because of their culpability in the financial crash. Now saying you can actually do this, do business with immigrant taxi drivers across New York City leading to an average debt amount of 550,000 DOL. And this is something that wasn't news. You know, you grow up in the city, you know about this, you saw nine drivers over the years take their own lives because they were living through a life of debt peonage. And what was so exciting is getting a chance to work alongside the union to finally win the relief that these drivers deserved and bring that average debt down by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Eliminating balloon payments, giving people fixed amounts they have to pay, and ensuring that if they do default, they then these lenders can't take their homes, which is what was happening to so many of the drivers.

[Sam Cedar]

All right, and there's something similar a little bit on the, it's not quite as, I think, sort of extreme that's happening on the, sort of the, the food vendor market, as it were. But before we get there, let's, let's start with what you see as, and you've alluded to it in terms of like the affordability of housing. But is that what you perceive to be the biggest A issue that New Yorkers have and B, that you want to tackle as mayor?

[Zoran Mamdani]

I think it is the top issue for New Yorkers. And what we see is that for the New Yorkers who leave our city and our state, they are far from the caricature we've been told of, of wealthy individuals searching for tax havens. In fact, they are working class New Yorkers who are being driven out by the cost of housing. And it's gotten to the point where even Governor Kathy Hochul in her state of the state just yesterday said from the stage that the rent is too damn high. And I think that speaks to what New Yorkers are suffering through. And it speaks to why we have built our entire campaign around making New York City more affordable with three concrete policies to begin with. The first, freezing the rent. For every rent stabilized tenant, there are more than 2 million or close to 2 and a half million New Yorkers who live in units that used to be the bedrock of economic security under previous city administrations. They have a median household income of $60,000 a year. But Eric Adams has subjected them to rent hike after rent hike after rent hike. The second thing, to make buses fast and free, taking the slowest ones in the nation, making them a model for the country. And the third, delivering on the second issue of Cost for most New Yorkers, which is childcare. Making universal childcare a reality.

[Sam Cedar]

How would you go about in terms of the rent freeze? I mean, that seems like something the mayor can do on day one, like literally. And in terms of the, in terms of the buses and the MTA and the, the child care, what's the processes for that?

[Zoran Mamdani]

Absolutely. So the, to what you said on the rent, you're right, this is firmly within the mayor's jurisdiction because the rent for these units is set by a board called the Rent Guidelines Board, has nine members and each of them are appointed exclusively by the mayor. Eight of them right now. Their terms are up and could be replaced tomorrow. And that's what I would do because I would identify New Yorkers who could serve on that board who would be willing to make determinations on the basis of reality, which is the fact that tenants are suffering and landlords are doing fine. And that's actually borne out in statistics from the board itself as of March of last year on the question of buses and universal childcare. You know, the mayor of New York City has probably the second largest bully pulpit in America. And every mayor gets a list of items they can fight for in Albany that they go up for on an annual basis. We saw Bill de Blasio use that opportunity to win Universal Pre K and then 3K. We saw this mayor instead use that opportunity to try and roll back civil rights protections successfully over multiple years. What I would do is go to Albany with the clear and concise list of making buses free for New Yorkers and bringing about universal childcare. And I'm confident that we'd be able to do so because I've already seen as an assembly member deep interest across the ideological divide on these issues, most especially on free buses, where we launched a campaign called Fix the mta, where we won a free bus pilot making one bus route in each borough free, funded by the state. And so I see an immense amount of interest. If you had someone of the power of the mayor putting themselves full throated.

[Sam Cedar]

Behind that demand, what's the, what's the theory on the free buses? Like, what is that? How does that increase the affordability? I'm obviously the, the direct implications of no fare, but what, what else does it do in terms of making it more affordable for New Yorkers?

[Zoran Mamdani]

So to start, I would say that it's important we recognize that the Fair 290 is out of reach for about one in five New Yorkers. That's what has been reported thus far. And that'll likely increase when the fare also is set to increase to $3 this upcoming summer. And what we found is that those very New Yorkers who we have targeted with means tested programs are actually not applying to those programs because they have been failed by bureaucracy before. And it's very hard to convince them to trust that very bureaucracy again. And when we made these five routes free across New York City, what we saw is that ridership went up by 30%. And the majority of those new riders were making $28,000 a year or less, all of whom eligible for that program, only 14% of whom had actually applied to it, showing the importance of a universal approach. Second, we saw that there's a massive public safety implication here. When you made those five routes free, you saw a drop in assaults on bus drivers by 38.9%. And that mirrored almost exactly what we saw when Kansas City made their buses free, where they saw a Dr. In assaults on bus drivers by 39%. And finally, there's the environmental impact here. We desperately need to get people to use public transit more than they want to use a car for many different reasons, but one of them is also environmental. And the way that we do that is making it easy for them to do so. And we saw that in this pilot, 11% of new riders got out of their car, got out of a taxi, and took the bus instead. If we expanded this city wide, we would be seeing an incredible result for every single New Yorker, not just the ones lucky enough to be on those routes.

[Sam Cedar]

While we're talking about transportation and the sort of, like, the impact, I mean, I think for, you know, for some people, it may be hard to, you know, appreciate the, you know, when you're talking about six bucks a day, thirty bucks a week, hundred and twenty bucks a month in terms of travel. And, you know, then over the course of a year, people could do their own math there, but I think it comes around the 1300 bucks, 1400 bucks for someone who's making $28,000 a year, that's a big, That's a big chunk of their. Of, of their. Of. Of their income. But what's your sense of congestion pricing and how it's been impacted? It's been now, what, two or three weeks. And I feel like walking down Flatbush, I can tell the difference in the morning as to how many cars are going in there. And I'm watching, you know, the numbers seem to be up on the subway and, you know, watching also, you know, videos of people saying, like, what used to take me 45 minutes to get into the city. Now it takes me like 10 minutes. And I'm saving that money. The nine bucks I'm spending to get in, I'm saving because I'm getting an extra hour and a half to work. Essentially.

[Zoran Mamdani]

Yeah. I had a friend send me a video last night, a friend who has been a skeptic at times of congestion pricing, sending me a video of a guy who himself was a skeptic, but found that he was saving money on the parking that he used to pay because there was far fewer cars, even on street parking. Now, across Manhattan's central business district, I have been someone who has supported congestion pricing primarily out of the fact that the vast majority of working class New Yorkers who travel into Manhattan do so using public transit. And they deserve a public transit system that is well funded. And they also deserve to have a streetscape that has fewer cars on the road because the congestion that is throttling New Yorkers who are sitting in traffic. We've seen ourselves in the top three cities in the world in terms of how long we spend in traffic. But also for bus riders. Right? A million New Yorkers ride the bus every day. And there are parts of the central business district where the average speed of a bus is around five miles an hour. And we're seeing reports that a lot of those buses is their speed is increasing in a significant way for any of them that are having any part of their route be in Manhattan. Even buses that are spending the majority of their route in Queens because now they're not throttled on the bridge. And I launched a program last year in Albany called Get Congestion Pricing Right, saying that what we needed to do is follow the example of cities like Stockholm and London. When they implemented congestion pricing, they paired it with immediate service improvements. Because what New Yorkers need to see is that this is a price worth paying. And I'm excited that we're starting to see that. I'm also excited that we won more than $12 million in additional bus service for New Yorkers to be paired with congestion pricing. The governor has rolled out, but we need more. We need to make it clear that we will have world class public transit. That although it is more affordable to be in the city than anywhere in the country, when it comes to how much you spend on transit, it is still not affordable enough. And I think that's, again, it just goes back to the heart of this campaign, which is how do we make the city more affordable for working class people? And I've laid out a few of the proposals, but we've also since put in an additional one, which is for a pilot program of city run grocery stores where we'd open one grocery store in each borough, guaranteeing lower prices for New Yorkers, all while they're being price gouged by corporate supermarkets for eggs and for milk and for bread. We could deliver them a price they could actually afford and do so by taking profit out of that equation and passing on the savings that you don't have to pay in rent and property taxes. As a city institution.

[Sam Cedar]

What do you think has been the most consequential sort of like policy rolled out in the past, let's say 15, 20 years in New York City?

[Zoran Mamdani]

The most consequential policy? I mean, I think the 2019 rent laws in Albany were incredibly consequential for New Yorkers living across the five boroughs. Because what they did is provide stability to New Yorkers lives and ensure that there were finally protections for a significant number of New Yorkers who had previously been subject to harassment of every kind by their landlord. And I think at a city level, we have to look at Bill de Blasio's universal Pre K program. That is one that has been transformative for New Yorkers and it has showcased the incredible importance of a universal approach that can save New Yorkers around $20,000 a year and also create a firmer social safety net and a larger sense that we are all part of this same city as opposed to means testing our way out of every single issue that we see in front of us.

[Sam Cedar]

I still am amazed at how poorly de Blasio did in touting that and how little attention it got for the implications of it. Because you're, you're not only like, like you say sometimes, you know, 10, $15,000 annually, you're saving New Yorkers, but you're also getting kids into preschool as opposed to daycare. And so they're actually like they're starting their educational careers on parody. Because we know that like, you know, low income kids enter into kindergarten, often with literally tens of thousands of vocabulary word deficit that they are making up in this. I don't even know if we've done any like, real studies to see the implications. But you know, and obviously things got screwed up with COVID so that might, you know, make it harder to assess that stuff. But the impact of that proposal I just think is stunning.

[Zoran Mamdani]

It is. And I think it's also, to your point, it's an example of what government can do if it puts its mind to it. And I think we have sadly been living through many years where it seems as if not only is there the ability to execute, but whether there's even an interest in providing more for working class New Yorkers is up for debate. And de Blasio didn't just foreground the importance of this. He fought for it and won it through additional funding from Andrew Cuomo.

[Sam Cedar]

No, it was a huge battle. I mean, Cuomo was such an ass about it. With all due respect, Cuomo fans.

[Zoran Mamdani]

Although I don't know.

[Sam Cedar]

I don't. I don't know what you're doing here. While we're on it, tell us about. You have a baby basket policy. What. What is that policy?

[Zoran Mamdani]

So this is a policy building on the 91 programs we're seeing across the world where governments provide the parents of a newborn child with a basket or a box. And what we are putting forward is a program to give every single New Yorker who is born across the five boroughs to give their family a baby basket that both has the instructions for those parents as to how they should be raising their child and the materials that they need to actually raise that child. And we've seen incredible impacts of this in a pilot program that was actually done by the federal government where we saw an increase in the mental health of many of those parents, as well as a greater sense of trust with government institutions. And Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso rolled out a pilot of this in Brooklyn, serving about 500 families.

[Hasan Piker]

And.

[Zoran Mamdani]

And it was incredibly impactful. And what we're proposing to do is expand this to every single New Yorker across the five boroughs and to ensure that we actually get it done, because the cost of it is minimal. We're talking about $19 million a year. But the effect of it, especially at a time when we're seeing a continued crisis of maternal mortality, is one that we cannot afford to avoid.

[Sam Cedar]

Is there a. Do you have one of those, like, instruction manuals for parents who have maybe a kid in like, middle school and one in college?

[Zoran Mamdani]

I don't want you to scoop our June announcements, but all right.

[Sam Cedar]

I'd like to sign up for that one. Let's just talk about to a little bit about what makes you. What distinguishes you from. There's about. I don't know right now, I think I've lost count, but somewhere around like six to eight people, I think have already declared. Obviously, Eric Adams in the race, you do not have the same support from the Turkish government, I understand, as Eric Adams does, or you obviously don't have the number of aides who are being investigated across the board or any investigations of federal investigations of yourself. So, you know, people can make that assessment in terms of Adams. But what about some of the other folks who are running in the race? There are. We've got several progressives in there. And I should also remind people we now have ranked choice voting, so there is no, like, concept of splitting the progressive vote after you get to. I guess you get, like, four votes. But what distinguishes you from those competitors?

[Zoran Mamdani]

Well, Sam, the first thing I'd say is if I ever come back to this show with a much better hairline, then I think you should ask me directly if I've received any assistance from the Turkish government.

[Sam Cedar]

All right.

[Zoran Mamdani]

As of now, nothing. And I do not plan to accept any of that because we're running a campaign, unlike Adams, that is firmly within the confines of the law. And we don't view it as simply a suggestion that we can ignore at times when we want to.

[Sam Cedar]

Well, that may be the new baseline. We may do that.

[Zoran Mamdani]

But, you know, I think there are a few things that set us apart. One is our relentless focus on making this a more affordable city. The foregrounding of those three, now four, now five different policy proposals. To the extent that when I meet people across the city, they recite that platform back to me more than they know anything about me or my record. It's about what we are actually fighting for. And I think in many ways, that's inspired by Bernie's relentless focus on an economic agenda at a time of immense inequality across the country. I think another point of separation is our fundraising stats. We have just announced as of yesterday, that we raised more than $642,000 for more than 6,500 donors. And that has meant that we qualify for the city's matching funds program, which will give us an additional $2.4 million. So we will have all told $3 million just to start to run this race and tell every New Yorker how we're going to make the city more affordable. You know, the other point I would just make is that 84% of our donors are from New York City, and the number one profession was educator. And that speaks to who is actually putting the city on their back right now and who believes in us to do the same as a city government. And of all of the different campaigns, we raised the most in a single firing filing period. And we also were the first one to qualify for matching funds at the first opportunity. And then to your point about ranked choice voting and progressives, look, this is the only campaign that's calling itself a progressive campaign in the context of the mayor's race. And I've also made very clear to New Yorkers as well as to other candidates, I have no interest in critiquing anyone unless they're a disgraced New York executive, whether current or former. And so, other than Eric Adams or Andrew Cuomo, I am looking to work together with all of the other candidates to ensure that we turn the page on Eric Adams mayorality. And we do so by putting forward a clear vision for what a New York City would look like that wasn't actually dominated by the austerity politics that we've had to live on.

[Sam Cedar]

I mean, between Cuomo and Adams, you, you could, you could spend multiple campaigns outlining critiques with them. So I can understand, I can understand that, that dynamic. Well, let me ask you this. It's fascinating to me that educator is your top fundraising thing. A final question. Like, when we're looking at fundraising in the city, where do you see, where do you see alarms? Like, where does an alarm bell? I mean, look, you've been a voter, obviously in New York, when you're looking at the, you know, who's supporting, and the easiest way to do that is by, obviously by fundraising. Who support. What sets off alarm bells for you in terms of who might be least likely to protect New York residents interests?

[Zoran Mamdani]

I think it's those who are least connected to those very New Yorkers. You know, I think about looking at things like a median donation or a number of donors, or whether or not the real, real estate industry is putting the full force of everything it has behind you. And when I look at our campaign, I see a $50 median donation. I see, you know, about 5,400 New Yorkers. And I have gone to each one of the five boroughs, speaking specifically to our donors, to ask them, why did you donate to this campaign and have you donated before? And I met voter after voter who told me they had never donated to a mayoral campaign. And I think that speaks to the fact that we're trying to not only speak to the 25% of Democrats who voted in the mayoral primary in 2021, but also the 75% who stayed home who didn't see that much to vote for. And we're not blaming New Yorkers for the decisions they've taken thus far. We're actually trying to listen to them and put forward an agenda that speaks to what it is that they're saying. And I think that that's what makes me so confident about the prospect of running against even an Andrew Cuomo. You know, inevitably, he will raise an incredible amount of money, but he will be raising it from the very kinds of institutions and individuals who are profiting from a city that is so unlivable right now. He will be raising it from people who are willing to turn a blind eye to the fact that this is the same governor who gave us the summer of hell in 2017 on the subways. This is the same governor who spent more money on consultants than construction for the construction of the Second Avenue subway, the same governor who cut mental health and hospital beds, and the same governor who is now touting himself as a master builder, having spent more than a billion dollars on renovating Penn Station while not building any public seating. That's the governor who I'm looking forward to running against.

[Sam Cedar]

Can I also add that Cuomo also was the guy who basically midwifed. What was the ids, what was the Independent, I can't remember the name of that.

[Zoran Mamdani]

You know, he.

[Sam Cedar]

Which thwarted every single bit of progressive legislation over the course of, I think it was eight years at least in this state. And. And did it sort of. They could provide a fig leaf for him where he got a bunch of Democrats, a handful, to basically caucus with the Republicans and thwart every piece of legislation so that he didn't have to veto it and make him, you know, set himself up for a, you know, ostensibly a presidential run. I could go on and on about Cuomo, and I guess when he jumps into the race, I'm going to have to. But in the meantime, where can folks find out more about your campaign? Where can they. If they want to donate or volunteer, where can they do that?

[Zoran Mamdani]

Please come to zahranfornyc.com you can also find me across all social media zahrankmandani and you will find us on Instagram, on TikTok, on Twitter, on Bluesky, because we are seeking to speak to every New Yorker, no matter how they actually consume politics or whether they consume it at all. And we can't wait to have your support and your consideration.

[Sam Cedar]

All right, we will put links to that. Zaran Mamdani and I should also say here's an open invitation for Andrew Cuomo to come on the program just so that we can play this fair and we give him an opportunity to make his case.

[Zoran Mamdani]

We'll see.

[Sam Cedar]

We'll see. Thanks so much. We will put the links to your website and good luck. Thank you for. For coming on.

[Zoran Mamdani]

Thank you so much for having me.

[Sam Cedar]

It was a pleasure calling from a N646 area code.

[Hasan Piker]

Who's this?

[Sam Cedar]

Where you call him from?

[John Benjamin]

Hold on. Hello? Today.

[Sam Cedar]

Wait, who's this? Where are you calling from?

[John Benjamin]

My name is John. How are you?

[Sam Cedar]

I'm Hardy Maharti.

[John Benjamin]

Mahority. Mahority Rapport.

[Sam Cedar]

Mahar. This is the Majority Report.

[John Benjamin]

Majority? Your name is Majority? My name is John. I'm calling on behalf of the Andrew Cuomo for mayor campaign. How are you doing today?

[Sam Cedar]

I'm fine. This is Majority. John.

[John Benjamin]

This is Majority. Your name is Major. Trust me. I've been doing a lot of phone calling today, and I. My name is John, which is a very common name, but I've had tons of different names. Is your vanity?

[Sam Cedar]

Is your.

[John Benjamin]

I've talked to a malar like. Malar.

[Sam Cedar]

It's your last name.

[John Benjamin]

How's it going today?

[Sam Cedar]

Is this Benjamin? Is your last name John. Benjamin? John Benjamin?

[John Benjamin]

Yes. How did you know my last name?

[Sam Cedar]

Dude, you just called into my show. You just called into my show.

[Zoran Mamdani]

What are you doing, Peter?

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, what are you doing?

[John Benjamin]

Oh, my God. That's so crazy. It says you're on my call list. All right.

[Sam Cedar]

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You're calling for Cuomo?

[John Benjamin]

Well, yeah, I am. I didn't think I would. I don't know how I got this number. That's so fucked up.

[Sam Cedar]

So you've been. Wait, wait. You've been.

[John Benjamin]

Campaign gave me a whole list of numbers. I don't know who I'm calling. I've been. You know, this is like my 300th call.

[Sam Cedar]

And you're calling for Andrew Cuomo?

[John Benjamin]

Well, quality for Cuomo. For rare. Yeah. Did I not tell you that?

[Sam Cedar]

No, you didn't. Why? What. What. What is your. Why are you calling for Cuomo? You vote. Like, why would you possibly support Andrew Cuomo?

[John Benjamin]

Well, I know you support the other candidate. That's fine. I do. I don't know whether I should give you my pitch because.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, I'd love to hear your freaking pitch.

[Hasan Piker]

Hey, Benjamin.

[John Benjamin]

Hey, how are you?

[Hasan Piker]

Hey.

[John Benjamin]

Sorry about this confusion.

[Hasan Piker]

It's okay.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, Son piker is sitting in, too. Well, let's see. Tell us, all three of us, your pitch.

[John Benjamin]

Well, I. Okay. I mean, part of it is red. I don't know if that's. But, you know, it's election day. It's crucial. Crucial to get your voice heard.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah.

[John Benjamin]

Do you have a plan to get out there and vote today?

[Sam Cedar]

I actually vote early, but go ahead.

[John Benjamin]

You voted already.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah.

[Hasan Piker]

Yeah, me, too.

[Unidentified Caller]

I am going to illegally vote today on the day of the election. So I'm excited for this pitch. I might go in either direction.

[John Benjamin]

I mean, are you all aware that we have an affordability, affordable, affordability crisis here in New York?

[Sam Cedar]

Yes.

[John Benjamin]

Affordability, right.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah.

[John Benjamin]

The other candidate, which I think, Sam, you already voted for, says the rents are too high. And here's the Cuomo campaign. We really think that the rents are not high enough in New York.

[Sam Cedar]

Why is that?

[John Benjamin]

Well, we don't want to freeze the rent here in New York. Right. We want to free the rent. We want rents higher so that wealthier people in New York and outside of New York will come to live here. And the only way that's going to happen is if we raise the rents considerably in order for them to be able to do that. You understand?

[Hasan Piker]

Yeah. Like to make the luxury good. Like, you know how when, you know, you make something a little bit more expensive than the competitors, it makes it so that the wealthy people will want to come here.

[Unidentified Caller]

Like a Rolex, like a Veblen.

[Hasan Piker]

Yeah, Good. Good point.

[John Benjamin]

And Hasan, you're talking my language right now because, yes, New York City is a luxury good. And I do mean that in both sense of the term good. Luxury is good. It's. It's for the common good. I mean, we're. The Cuomo campaign. Want to make sure that the less wealthy people and the poor people can. Can be housed elsewhere, but not in New York City, where we want wealthier people to be here, to stay here and to have the luxury life that they're used to. We don't want them leaving and going to Florida. We want them coming here. See how expensive it is to private jets of Florida and back.

[Sam Cedar]

Is it expensive? I would imagine it's expensive.

[John Benjamin]

It certainly is. I've been invited on several private jets, and then I can't afford it, but the people who were on the jet with me could. It's expensive.

[Sam Cedar]

Solid point. I see. Yeah. Okay.

[John Benjamin]

No, I mean, I, like I said, I don't fly commercial. I do. I. But I had, at the, at this point in my life, I have to do what's called Net shares, which is. It's a group of people that fly private.

[Zoran Mamdani]

So it's not like.

[Hasan Piker]

Actually, that's horrendous.

[Unidentified Caller]

I mean, it's basically slumming it. Like, you need your own.

[John Benjamin]

There were like three. There were three families.

[Sam Cedar]

Greyhound in the sky.

[John Benjamin]

Which was fine. Which was fine.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah. That must.

[John Benjamin]

I mean, have you considered these. Have you considered these points? I mean, we could think. We're thinking like, for instance, in New York, we can Create certain zones for the wealthy class in order to stay. And those zones are only permitted to be entered by those people who live here and pay, you know, their fair, not their fair share of taxes, but some taxes will lower those taxes.

[Sam Cedar]

So wait, so wait, you're saying that in support of Cuomo, you're calling around, calling for lowering taxes on rich people.

[John Benjamin]

Lowering taxes on rich people and raising rents for rich people, yeah.

[Sam Cedar]

Oh, I see.

[John Benjamin]

But so that richer people can make more money as well. I mean, so that we can have the city we deserve.

[Sam Cedar]

Right?

[Hasan Piker]

Wait, wait, so I'm sorry, let me.

[John Benjamin]

Give you an analogy just before you get back, because I know you're going to hit back. No, no, let's say you live. I'm sure a lot of you guys live in an apartment building, right? I live in an apartment building. I have a neighbor. Okay. My door is clean. I don't have anything on it except my door knocker. Right. My neighbor has a, has a bunch of stickers all over their door. One says, like, I climb on Washington. There's a ton of them. I don't know, they like, they're hikers, they travel a lot. They put stickers on the outside of their door. It's sort of unseemly. Right. You share space.

[Sam Cedar]

Gotcha.

[John Benjamin]

Now, let's say I could live in a place where those stickers are gone. They're not there anymore. Their doors like my door.

[Hasan Piker]

So, Benjamin, I just. You said earlier that you want a separate space for rich people. Are you trying to. Yeah. Is the Cuomo campaign advocating for apartheid within New York City?

[John Benjamin]

I don't speak entirely for the Cuomo campaign.

[Sam Cedar]

Not entirely.

[Hasan Piker]

Okay. You wouldn't use the word apartheid, maybe?

[John Benjamin]

I mean, I don't think that would be a good necessarily word to use to get out the vote.

[Hasan Piker]

Okay.

[Unidentified Caller]

What about the buses? Because like I said, I'm not very tapped in on what's going on. I'm about to vote illegally. And I've heard, I've heard that, by the way.

[John Benjamin]

I appreciate that.

[Unidentified Caller]

Yeah. Oh, yeah, of course. I'm doing it for New York and New Yorkers, rich New Yorkers specifically.

[John Benjamin]

We need more votes. Yeah. So there you go. We want numbers.

[Unidentified Caller]

Yeah. So I, I heard that Zora wants to make the buses fast and free, which, yuck, obviously, because that would, that would allow the rabble rousers to move around the city and we don't want that. What's that? What's the Cuomo counter to that?

[Hasan Piker]

Good question.

[John Benjamin]

So this is a good question. Slower buses.

[Unidentified Caller]

Okay.

[Sam Cedar]

I'M buses than they are now. Why would you want slower buses?

[John Benjamin]

I mean, like, it sends a message.

[Sam Cedar]

What's the message?

[John Benjamin]

Well, that it's going to be harder to get into New York. It's going to take a lot more time, and we don't want that. We want to free. You know, we want more space, maybe. I would say less buses. Less buses for sure. So, like, buses are. Buses create congestion in the city, certainly in Manhattan, and I think in a lot of the boroughs, buses create congestion, creates traffic problems. We can't get our cars in and out easily. I would say. I would say, like I said, I'm not speaking directly for Cuomo, but this would be an incredible plan for a Cuomo run city. Eliminate buses.

[Sam Cedar]

And what about subways?

[John Benjamin]

I would definitely make the subways slower and less available. I think that the subways are also create a congestion problem. Super high crime. Less people would start taking the subways. We can start now and in four years, completely eliminate the subway system.

[Unidentified Caller]

I love this. More room for vehicles. I think we could use the subway tunnel systems. Maybe even get like the Elon Musk also.

[John Benjamin]

Elon Musk tunnel. The Elon Musk tunnel plan is a great plan for New York. It was a great plan for Vegas. Look how it worked in Vegas. Yeah, it worked in Vegas.

[Sam Cedar]

I mean, what do you mean by work?

[John Benjamin]

There are tens. There are tens of Teslas transporting people one at a time from one place to another in Las Vegas, one of the most heavily visited cities in the country. And you're talking about four or five people accommodated at a time, one at a time in the tunnels. We could. We could do. This city could absolutely use a transformation of the subway system into Tesla tunnels. I think that's a great plan. Thank you.

[Sam Cedar]

What about universal childcare? What's the Cuomo plan for that?

[John Benjamin]

Well, I think universal is crazy. That's the entire. Let's just focus on New York City.

[Unidentified Caller]

Eyes on the prize.

[John Benjamin]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

So you.

[John Benjamin]

I mean, I think, like, that's. That's why Cuomo, Andrew Cuomo from America wants to focus on the city, doesn't want to post.

[Sam Cedar]

Well, I, I think. I think. I think you're misunderstanding what universal means. It means universal, like everybody. It's available to everybody in New York City.

[John Benjamin]

Right. I mean, I think that's like. That's pie in the sky.

[Sam Cedar]

Pie in the sky.

[John Benjamin]

And I think. Well, right. Cuomo wants to get things done. He just doesn't want to say things. Right. Like, do you want every child take. You want every child in the city taken care of.

[Emma Vigeland]

True.

[Unidentified Caller]

Sometimes kids. No, he's right. Sometimes kids have bad vibes, like they.

[Hasan Piker]

Might not deserve that.

[John Benjamin]

Well, and sometimes kids can take care of themselves.

[Unidentified Caller]

Yeah.

[John Benjamin]

And those are the kids who become. Who become very successful later in life.

[Sam Cedar]

Well, we're talking. When we talk child care, we're talking like ages, like 3, 4.

[John Benjamin]

Cuomo thinks out of the box. These kids can probably, even at age 2, 3 and 4, some kids. I'm not saying all kids, but some kids can travel on their own and navigate the city on their own.

[Sam Cedar]

Some 2 to 3 to 4 year.

[John Benjamin]

Old go back, can go back to the ballpark or the basketball court and play with other children on their own and then find their way home. That's that. I know kids who do that.

[Sam Cedar]

You know two, three and four year old kids who do that. Why would you. Why would you know 2, 3, 4 year old kids?

[John Benjamin]

My kids. My kids. About your kid did that. He's. Yes, he's 22 now and he's not doing well at the moment, but he did do that.

[Unidentified Caller]

I think it's important to instill hustle culture and Sigma Grindset mentality in children as early as the ages of 2 and 4. I'm. You are convincing me to illegally vote for Andrew.

[John Benjamin]

There you go. I don't know what Sigma Sigma mindset is, but I'm sure Andrew Cornwall will be behind that.

[Unidentified Caller]

There was a little bit of hang up. It felt like he was against me in particular in the campaign. He did bring me up quite a bit, but I think now you.

[John Benjamin]

I didn't know that. I can certainly talk to him about that.

[Hasan Piker]

You didn't hear about this, Benjamin?

[John Benjamin]

It sounds like you guys. You guys sound like you're simpatico as far as. Wait, wait, wait.

[Sam Cedar]

You're in direct contact with Cuomo?

[John Benjamin]

I mean, when I listen to Hasan Piker, I hear a young Andrew Cuomo. Basically.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah. Thank you.

[John Benjamin]

I think you're online to do great things.

[Unidentified Caller]

The highest honor.

[John Benjamin]

If you stay on track. Right. And do the right thing. If you stay on track and do the right thing. Yeah, that's always important.

[Sam Cedar]

Well, John, I'll let you, I guess, get back to doing your call.

[John Benjamin]

Well, Andrew will have your back. I know we don't have your vote, Sam, but I guess. See, Emma, I can hear you changing your mind. Hassan. Same. Even though you're gonna vote illegally, I think. I think like. Like Andrew would say, I don't care how you vote. Vote.

[Sam Cedar]

Okay, Love that, Andrew. All right, well, say hi to Andrew for us.

[John Benjamin]

Get out there. I haven't met him yet, but I will try and get into the party tonight.

[Sam Cedar]

I suspect there's gonna be room. Easy invite.

[John Benjamin]

You should come with me, bro.

[Sam Cedar]

Well, talk to you later.

[John Benjamin]

Andrew taught me to say pro, bro. Okay.

[Unidentified Caller]

Wow.

[Zoran Mamdani]

There were.

[Eddie]

The Cuomo watch party is tonight.

[Sam Cedar]

It's probably a Peter Luggers.

[Unidentified Caller]

No, I've. I've. I have a friend who's been trying to go to one, and he can't find it. He's in, like, all the group chats because he's like, he wants to document it and potentially write about it. I won't reveal their name here, but he has been unable to find a single Andrew Cuomo watch party, which is. It makes sense, I guess, like. Like retirement homes, maybe, or probably a Mari Marriott.

[Sam Cedar]

Like, probably they would have it.

[Hasan Piker]

Yeah, he's been basically. Instead of doing campaign events. Oh, right.

[Unidentified Caller]

I didn't think about that. No, I just.

[Hasan Piker]

Yeah, he's been doing campaign events. He's been renting out, like, hotel conference rooms.

[Zoran Mamdani]

Yeah.

[Hasan Piker]

Do PowerPoint presentations.

[Sam Cedar]

That a holiday? Honestly, my understanding with the Zuron campaign, they have. They had 100,000 volunteers.

[Unidentified Caller]

Yeah.

[Sam Cedar]

There's no way they can have. I mean, they're. My understanding is there's like a half a dozen parties around the city. They're obviously not going to be able to get all the volunteers in there. How many? Unpaid. I guess, definitionally. How many volunteers do you think there were for Andrew Cuomo?

[Unidentified Caller]

Well, I was one of them, and I think your friend John.

[Emma Vigeland]

Ben.

[Unidentified Caller]

John Benjamin was another.

[Sam Cedar]

Cannot believe that Benjamin would be doing this for free, but it's possible. But honestly, I mean, I. In the primary, I found one person handing out Cuomo things. I was on the Upper east side. It was a Thursday. I was going to see the doctor, and I walked by. The guy gave me the thing, and then I walked like, half a block, and I'm like, I wonder. And I went back and I was like, why? What is it about Cuomo that you like? And the guy was like, I'm getting paid. Yeah, there you go.

[Unidentified Caller]

Many such cases, he wouldn't even attempt to sell Cuomo.

[Sam Cedar]

Like, he didn't even know. They didn't give him any sort of. This is what you say. You just hand it out.

[Hasan Piker]

But that's also when we were talking about the consultant class freaking out in the first hour of the show. That is part of what Zoron threatens, not just ideologically with Democratic socialism, also, you know, attacking the Islamophobia from within the Democratic Party. He Represents a new way of doing politics that doesn't make the same people rich who have been getting rich in democratic politics for 30 years. There is no money in canvassing and in volunteers. There's a lot of money in TV ads. And I think that's as much of a threat institutionally to the Democratic Party as is his ideology. Zoram Hamdani's appearance on Fox News yesterday, this was just such a phenomenal performance by him. I know we keep singing his song praises, but this is important beyond, in my view, the context of the city that we all live in here. Because he's been providing a blueprint for many Democrats in terms of their answers on a variety of different issues. Not just about the blanket affordability, which is what Hakeem Jeffries wants to narrowly focus on, but. But not even like affordability about what Democrats will do. It's more just like we have to address affordability this time. Zorin is very specific. He treats the voters like they're adults and he explains everything to them and how he's going to do it and what he's going to do for New Yorkers. Comes up in this interview in the second part, but this is how it opens. Didn't realize this because it was clipped separately, but Brian watched it live like a sicko. You're really getting on board on my level here. And you mentioned that this was how they opened it in the segment. Then they went to break and came back.

[Eddie]

This is what the most important thing.

[Hasan Piker]

Yeah. You want to, you want to guess where Fox News went with this Brown guy? You must be an anti Semite. This is just a part of the five minute piece of this, like around 20 minute interview where they press somebody running for a mayoral race that does not involve foreign policy about his views on, you guessed it, Hamas.

[Zoran Mamdani]

That's where you give credit.

[Interviewer]

So you've denounced Israel and the United States for the response to the slaughter on October 7th. In fact, at times you've called it a lasting stain. The response. And at times you have left October 7th out of your statements completely around this issue right now. You just talked about Israelis killing some Palestinians, but Hamas is killing Palestinians within Gaza.

[Hasan Piker]

Can you pause this? All right.

[Zoran Mamdani]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

This needs a little bit of contextualization.

[Hasan Piker]

Hamas is, yes, killing Palestinians within Gaza. It is horrible that this like hellscape has created this amount of chaos. The Palestinians that they're currently executing, according to reports, are the people who collaborated with Israel. The gangs that Israel funded.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Hasan Piker]

To attack Palestinians who were trying to access aid. Now, any Response to what about October 7th should be. And there's a viral video of a guy at a protest doing this. What about October 8th? What about October 9th? October 10th. And by the way, you could say that doubly right, because we've been two. We're two years into this genocide. That's the response, but that's the context.

[Eddie]

We also have to say the most important thing you can see from those, again, horrible images of people who horrifically collaborated with an apartheid regime. Allegedly no due process, again, because this entire region is just basically anthill bombed by Israel anytime it wants to. But Hamas is still in power. So this entire two years, yes, that we've seen a fucking genocide with our bombs. Because the whole reason was because it needs to get rid of Hamas. It was never actually about that. And everybody knew it wasn't about that. Anthony Blinken, General David Petraeus knew that actually Hamas was going to be there whenever this ended. Because you can't bomb groups like this out of existence.

[Hasan Piker]

It's the only governing structure.

[Eddie]

Guess what? They're still there.

[Hasan Piker]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

And so now what?

[Sam Cedar]

It's like the Taliban and.

[Hasan Piker]

And Trump is admitting it too. Trump is saying it's actually a good thing we're giving them temporary policing power over the area because they're the only group with the capability to do it. Because despite like all of the fear mongering about this, they are a governing structure there in an open air concentration camp.

[Eddie]

The way to end these cycles of violence is very clearly demonstrated in history. Ireland is one example. The imperialists have to negotiate with who they call terrorists. That has to happen and it could have happened after October 7th. What Anthony Blinken said on October 8th, there needs to be a ceasefire and hostage exchange. There was plenty of hostages in Israel. Palestinians held in cages in Israel on October 6th. That could have been very easily used and that would have exchanged and that would have sort of helped us along to this two state solution that so many people act like they want to see. But that would have legitimized Hamas as a diplomatic body. That would have given Gaza and Palestinians more sort of. That starts the process that Israel doesn't want to see. They don't want to see what happened with Ireland. They don't want to see any of that. They want to conquer every piece of land that is there from the river to the sea. Yeah, they're explicit about this all the time.

[Interviewer]

Yep.

[Eddie]

Forgot we had a clip to play.

[Interviewer]

They have not returned the bodies that they promised to return. Including two Americans.

[Eddie]

Yeah, they're under Rubble because Israel bombed everything.

[Interviewer]

Itai Chan and Omar Noutra, whose families we have interviewed over these months. So what is your response to what Hamas is doing now?

[Zoran Mamdani]

I think those are bodies and remains that should absolutely be returned. And I think that I have no issue with critiquing Hamas or the Israeli government because my critiques all come from a place of universal human rights. And my focus, however, is right here in New York City and transforming the most expensive city in America into one that's affordable for each and every New Yorker.

[Interviewer]

But. Okay, and I want to get to that. Absolutely. But do you believe that Hamas should lay down their weapons and leave the leadership in Gaza?

[Zoran Mamdani]

I believe that any future here in New York City is one that we, we have to make sure that's affordable for all as it pertains to Israel and Palestine, that we have to ensure that there is peace and that is the future that we have to fight for.

[Interviewer]

But you won't say that Hamas should lay down their arms and give up leadership in Gaza.

[Zoran Mamdani]

I don't really have opinions about the future of Hamas and Israel beyond the question of justice and safety and the fact that anything has to abide by international law. And that applies to Hamas, that applies to the Israeli military, applies to anyone you could ask me about.

[Hasan Piker]

Okay, all right, move on, move on, move on. That was great. And he's provided the blueprint there. And in terms of talking about what eventually has to happen is the end of the apartheid and a one state reality from the river to the sea, with Palestinians and Israelis in the same protectorate territory, whatever that is the only solution here, like in South Africa, it has to be racial and ethnic integration. And he had previously been asked this question in the primary cycle about do you believe that Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state? And he says, I believe that Israel has a right to exist as a.

[Eddie]

State with equal rights.

[Hasan Piker]

As a state with equal rights. Exactly. And that's exactly how every Democrat going forward, if they are not an AIPAC shill, should be responding to this.

[Eddie]

Yeah, because if you say, I mean, and even John Kerry had this contradiction out when he was Secretary of State, you can either be a Jewish state or a democratic state. You cannot be both. And liberal Zionists have a decision to make. And the decision is a pretty, I think, severe one. Are you for democracy or are you for ethnostates? And for whatever reasoning you have behind support in ethnostates? And the answer that we have to have is if you are for ethnostates, you join the Ethnostate Party and go vote for Republicans.

[Hasan Piker]

Absolutely. Because it's of actually quite urgent importance to have that Democrats change course immediately and absorb and embrace this answer, because there is a continuing active genocide that we're still not. We're still finding out how many hundreds of thousands are dead in Gaza right now, in Gaza, where they're trying to reduce the population size through genocide of Palestinians, to foreclose that opportunity to make sure they're a demographic majority even in the outcome that we're talking about. And then they're trying to ethnically cleanse the West Bank. So this is a matter of urgency. But now to New York City, because that's where he's actually running, Even though Martha MacCallum was a little bit slow to that, it seems here is what part should we do here? We can't. Of course, like myself, I'm constantly pulling over, pulling things that I find awesome. But let's do the part where he redirects the how will you pay for for it? Question, part one here, because he actually kind of wins her over by the end of this question. And this is another way that Democrats should think about responding to this stuff of how will you pay for it? There are plenty of resources for the. There's an abundance of resources and funds, if you will.

[Interviewer]

They would love to have free health care and free buses and all these things. But the question is, how do you pay for it? The city's already in debt. The governor says no to new taxes. Like Margaret Thatcher said, you know, socialism is great until you run out of everyone else's money, other people's money.

[Zoran Mamdani]

Well, what Andrew Cuomo said is that if he had $959 million, he'd give it to Elon Musk in tax credits, because that's exactly what he did. And I bring that up to you to say that it's often a question of whether you have the willingness to spend that money to benefit working class people, not where that money is in the first place.

[Interviewer]

So what would you call cut? What would you draw from to do it?

[Zoran Mamdani]

I don't think we have to cut. I've spoken about raising taxes on the wealthiest. And frankly, this is, this is an issue that we have here in New York City. And frankly, even across this country, when I've spoken to Trump voters right here in New York City, Hillside Avenue in Queens, Fordham Road in the Bronx, they've told me it was cost of living that drove them to vote for Donald Trump. They've told me it was a promise of A lower actual. Whether it be cheaper groceries, whether it be childcare, whether it be rent.

[Interviewer]

Rent.

[Zoran Mamdani]

And what we're seeing time and time again is we're more focused on the question of billionaires and the most profitable corporations than we are on people who can't even afford to make ends meet in the city.

[Interviewer]

Well, we know affordability is an issue, and I think that all are getting to an understanding of that. And I think that you've done a lot actually, to bring attention to that.

[Sam Cedar]

I appreciate that.

[Hasan Piker]

I'm sorry, can we just play the. I interjected because I had forgotten he did the. I appreciate it. Just go back five seconds. Because he's his.

[Eddie]

Did he hypnotize?

[Hasan Piker]

By the end of this interview, it was like she started asking him about soccer. He's just. The charm is. And just like the common sense of what he's advocating for is undeniable. Just watch this part.

[Interviewer]

Well, we know affordability is an issue, and I think that all politicians are getting to an understanding of that. And I think that you've done a lot, actually, to bring people's attention to that issue. Let's take a look at the free buses.

[Sam Cedar]

Okay.

[Eddie]

Okay.

[Hasan Piker]

So, because I know that part was great. And then this part where he addresses Trump directly is the thing that's really making the rounds. Another incredibly smart move to top. First of all, to look like the fighter against Trump. This is part two. To look like the fighter here against Donald Trump. Trump understanding that a Fox News interview with Zoran is going to excite Democratic partisans and tying Andrew Cuomo to Trump and looking like the fighter people want for Donald Trump in this moment is so potent in his pivot to a general election audience and is artfully done.

[Eddie]

This is when I knew he was gonna win the primary was when he went to Cuomo on that debate stage and says, unlike you, Andrew, I didn't, like, sue women for their gynecological records.

[Hasan Piker]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

That is the type of go for the jugular sort of politicking that progressives need. And frankly, I think Bernie can't really model because he's such a team player.

[Hasan Piker]

Right.

[Eddie]

But we need people who are willing to do that.

[Hasan Piker]

Well, Tim Walls is the number one example, and that was the campaign. I mean, the Harrison Walls campaign. But when he was calling J.D. vance weird and then immediately abandoned in that because he wanted to look more conciliatory in the VP debate, that was one of the many, like, bullet wounds in that campaign that caused the slow bleed out. But here, he never let your foot off the Gas with these fascists? Never. Here's Zoran acting like a leader, looking.

[Zoran Mamdani]

To take these buses.

[Interviewer]

I know that you're turning 34 on Saturday, and I want to talk about your qualifications. You know, some say you have never run a business in. I'm curious. And President Trump said that you never worked a day in your life.

[Hasan Piker]

I went.

[Interviewer]

You worked as an assemblyman and you've had other positions in the government. But.

[Hasan Piker]

Can you pause just for one sec? I'm sorry, I just got to say, like, it's actually, I want all of my public servants to not have any corrupting influence by the private sector.

[Sam Cedar]

But yeah, also that is a job.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah.

[Hasan Piker]

It's actually a tough job where you don't get paid. Paid that much.

[Eddie]

Also, he was a rapper.

[Hasan Piker]

Yeah. And it comes from show business.

[Eddie]

He's stable mates with Trump.

[Hasan Piker]

Right. Well, I mean, I'm not even joking that his rap, like, like that's what he's. So he has the gift of gab and he's really quick on his feet.

[Eddie]

And the production of that is impressive.

[Hasan Piker]

Right. But anyway, like that.

[Eddie]

I listened to it.

[Hasan Piker]

But, but you see how like a pro capitalist kind of bent they want you to be in the, in the community.

[Eddie]

Why would you, born into real estate, like our president.

[Interviewer]

From your life experience, to run the largest city in the country.

[Zoran Mamdani]

You know, I want to take this moment because you spoke about President Trump and he may be watching right now. And I just want to speak directly to the president, which is that I will not be a mayor like Mayor Adams, who will call you to figure out how to stay out of jail. I won't be a disgraced governor like Andrew Cuomo who will call you to ask how to win this election. I, I can do those things on my own. I will, however, be a mayor who is ready to speak at any time to lower the cost of living. That's the way that I'm going to lead this city. That's the partnership I want to build, not only with Washington D.C. but anyone across this country. I think it's important because too often the focus on the needs of working class Americans, working class New Yorkers are put to the side as we talk more and more about the very kinds of corrupt politicians like Andrew Cuomo that delivered us into this kind of conflict crisis.

[Interviewer]

So the question I asked you was what specifically in your background.

[Hasan Piker]

That's good. Very well done. Very well done. So excited for the debate tonight, but other Democrats take notes. This is what works. And it's not just crazy commie New York City. He was able to basically charm Martha MacCallum by the end of this. Don't be afraid of making a case.

[Sam Cedar]

Affordability resonates with her because she's going to get fired for Smile.

[Hasan Piker]

I know. I mean, and, and what was funny and watching it in full is like she'll, you see her being charmed by the end of questions, but then she comes back with another like out of nowhere right wing framing question. It's just in her ear, like, do not give him an inch, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So that's, that was my read on it. Great job, Zoron.

[Charlie Kirk]

Charlie Kirk, who is obviously very upset that Zoran Mamdani has won the mayoral Democratic primary in New York City. So much so that he immediately took to Twitter after Mamdani's victory to say some of the most racist, vile, xenophobic Islamophobic crap you've ever seen. Saying how he can't believe that just decades, few 20 some odd years after 9 11, New York City would elect a Muslim. This is the grossest shit imaginable. That of course never gets called out. But Mamdani shows some empathy for Palestinians and all of a sudden you have every single media outlet declaring him anti Semitic and asking him if he'll visit Israel and allow Israel to remain the one Jewish state to exist. Here's Charlie Kirk on Zoran Mamdan.

[Emma Vigeland]

Perfect example of so many different forces happening in our country. And it goes to show that our debate around immigration is not just about the southern border. Securing our southern border is very important and President Trump deserves hero's praise on a repeated and daily basis for which he has been able to do on the southern border. No one is coming across the border. Zero is the only number that President Trump puts up with on the southern border. And he deserves so much praise for that and how quickly and effectively he's been able to do that. But let's be honest, everybody. That issue, as long as President Trump or J.D. vance are president, that issue is settled and solved. This is not about a southern border issue. It's about deportation. But it's actually about something even more immediate. Mr. Zoran, Kwame Momdani. He came here locally and now he is a US Citizen. Did we make the right choice? It's time for us to have an honest and open conversation about this. Was that a good move? Is this guy currently trying to make America better? Is he the best that we could possibly bring in? Kwame Mamdani, he wants to destroy New York City. He literally wants to defund the police. Every person that we naturalize as citizen in this country should come with the question, does this person make America better or worse? And Mamdani is a perfect example of worse. Do we want more people in America named after African dictators? You can't choose your name, but should make you press pause. Is Mamdani assimilating when he came to this country as he assimilated to our values? He's trying to globalize the intifada. That's my said, we need to globalize the intifada, which means to globalize terrorism. He wants to sanction the state of Israel. He said that he will arrest Netanyahu if he comes to New York for you.

[Charlie Kirk]

That was the best policy I heard from.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

Can I just remind folks, and Brandon, if you can refresh there. We lost your video, but New Yorkers voted in this election. They knew all of this stuff and they rewarded him for those positions, including when the International Criminal Court has a goddamn warrant out for war crimes. You don't just let that person person traips through your city like Eric Adams does. I'm so disgusted that Itamar Ben Gavir was in my goddamn neighborhood this year. It is like one of the most sickening feelings I've had that he just gets to clown around with his fascists as they beat up like women who are just passersby in the street. That is a menace. And we should have a mayor that is willing to stand up for it. And by the way, he also said that the same thing, he would not honor Modi either because of his Gujarati background. So this is not a fixation on Israel. The person who's fixated on Israel is a guy like Charlie Kirk who is willing to throw over all of the things that he described as truths several months ago, such as any strikes in Iran are a horrible idea. Well, now that Daddy Trump did it, Charlie Kirk comes running back. And his audience was not for those strikes. And so now how do you make up for the fact that you've been basically exposed as in the bag for Trump in Israel? Is you double down on being Islamophobic?

[Sam Cedar]

Right, Right.

[Charlie Kirk]

It's amazing to. It's not shocking or anything. Of course they're gonna go here. I mean, but this is some, like, really old school. Like, this is what we saw in 2008 with Obama, the Barack Hussein Obama. They would always have to say his full name. Extra on the Hussein Party doing the same shit. Zoran Kwame Mamdani, like, who gives a shit? Everyone knows his full name. In fact, unlike Obama, Zoran is double downing on his full name because he's proud of it like he should be. And he puts his full name, Zoran Kwame Mamdani, in his social media profiles for his. For his name. Like, this is a guy that you're not surprising anyone with. This isn't the guy with some, like, radical preacher's church that he went to back in the day and now he's trying to downplay it. No, this is a guy who stands by every single thing that, that Charlie Kirk is trying to hit him for, as if it's some sort of big shocking surprise to people. No, Zoran Kwame Mamdani ran on all these issues and he won. And not only did he win, he won with a mandate. So much so that Andrew Cuomo, the guy who thought he was gonna fight for the till the end for this race, doesn't even see a lane for himself anymore after the first round of ranked choice voting.

[Brian]

It's also funny that they're like, you know, doing the Barack Hussein Obama thing again, because Barack Hussein Obama won that election.

[Sam Cedar]

Anyone reelection.

[Eddie]

He's the most popular politician of our lifetime.

[Brian]

Exactly. So, like, I mean, that's not to say Islamophobia doesn't exist in our country. It's just to say that, like, you know, this one is. You lost this one, guys. You lost this one. I know they're circling the drain on this one. They're crashing out pretty hard, but, like, you know, it was a wash. Yeah.

[Eddie]

I want to put up this tweet here. This is. And get Mason's full tweet in there too. This is at one hand, politics. Charlie Kirk basically got into this debate with Jessica Tarlov, who responded saying, charlie, this is so gross and Islamophobic. Take it down. And Charlie said, debate me on the merits. Just don't, don't just throw out petty thought terminating cliches. Now I want to talk to the young men, particularly on this. The young men who talk about illogical fallacies put us all up. Who, like, who think that they're getting some sort of logic mastery when they listen to someone like Charlie Kirk, as Mason points out here, debate me on the merits. You just equated a Muslim state legislator with Al Qaeda. But there is a certain sort of type of young man that when they hear Charlie Kirk put out a vocabulary term like thought terminating cliches like, oh, he's actually got him there. No, a thought terminating cliche is not pointing out that Charlie Kirk is a racist. Because that's just true. The thought termin cliche is to say anybody who's standing up against Israel is a terror supporter. Like that is your thought terminating cliche there. And Charlie Kirk relies on those exclusively. So look, depend me on the merits. The merits are Charlie, that you are paid to support whatever America and its vassal state Israel, client state, slash aircraft carrier Israel want and you will do that. And one of the key ways this has always been done is through racism.

[Brian]

Yeah, I mean there are no merits to his argument because his argument relies on the internalized Islamophobia of his audience to make any kind of sense. Right. You know, Pepperdine, which is like lies about the demographics of New York City. I can't remember if it was him or Matt Walsh who was like fear mongering over the fact that New York City is now like 40% ish immigrant or non native New Yorker occupied. And it's like it's always been that way. Right. Like that's always been the demographic in New York City because it's the city of immigrants, United States of America. So I mean these people are like struggling to cope with the reality that their brand of fear mongering, at least in this one particular instance, just didn't work. But I'm sure they will be using Zoron's name like we've already seen, to like fundraise to scare their elderly audience to into sending them their rapidly dwindling Social Security. And you know, it'll work for that. Right.

[Charlie Kirk]

They're gonna go full on like you know, for the last time, we warned you about the Muslim from Africa. Well we were lying then. He wasn't Muslim or from Africa.

[Sam Cedar]

But now there is one. There's actually a Muslim from Africa.

[Brian]

This one's extra Muslim. He's instituting Islamo communism in New York City.

[Sam Cedar]

Right.

[Eddie]

Also, who has a large foreign born population is Houston. Don't hear so much about that. And it's so funny when like people who are from like cities like Nashville or like St. Louis, cities with like frankly extremely high gun crime and violent crime rates think that New York is unsafe.

[Sam Cedar]

Bro.

[Eddie]

New York is very safe for how many people live here?

[Brian]

You know what, what other place has a really high foreign born population? Israel.

[Emma Vigeland]

Oh yeah.

[Brian]

Checkmate.

[Eddie]

And then he's like what Muslim country do you prefer to live in? Like I, I don't want to live in a Jewish one either, Charlie. I don't want to live in ethnostates. Thanks. And I don't want to make this one one either. Unlike your, you know, gummy ass.

[Charlie Kirk]

Yeah. These are the guys always claiming this is a Christian nation.

[Brian]

Right.

[Charlie Kirk]

What is us. Right. Is there anything else worth listening to in that clip? Does he say anything else stupid?

[Eddie]

A little bit more, I suppose. Yeah.

[Emma Vigeland]

When he first five quote, he is total desi. Completely. He's not at all. Again, this is all like Indian.

[Sam Cedar]

Talk.

[Charlie Kirk]

Oh my God.

[Sam Cedar]

Wait, wait. What? This is what we, we were talking.

[Eddie]

About this before because he, it's like they don't know. Okay, should we go after him because of the Indian thing, the Africa thing, the socialist thing, the Musliming, the, like, he's too many things. It's a too target rich environment. He's flooding the zone with all of his identities.

[Brian]

They can't even, they can't even finish a sentence. That like the amount of racism that they're trying to process in their brains is like short circuiting them. They, it's like they're overloading their cpu. Like they just can't handle it. Like they, he's like frothing and turning red. He just goes like, he's, he's African. He's, he's, he's, he's, he's Muslim. He's Muslim. He's African. Uganda and liberal socialist. And I, I'm, I'm.

[Eddie]

I can't believe.

[Charlie Kirk]

He crashed out on seeing the word desi.

[Sam Cedar]

He, he actually crashed out Indian stuff.

[Eddie]

He's an Islamist who's also radically pro gay and trans.

[Brian]

Bro, it'll be all right. It's going to be all right, bro. Just put on kabi kushy copy gum. Put on ddlj. You know, dedicate next, next seven hours of your life to some of the best music you've ever experienced, some of the prettiest locations, prettiest, you know, people. And just, just, just let it happen. Like, let Shahrukh happen to you. Like, it's fine.

[Emma Vigeland]

He is total desi. Completely. He's not farangis at all. Again, this is all like, he is very much us. He's not American at all. He was born in Uganda, raised between India and America. He's at home in many places. He thinks of himself as a Ugandan, as an Indian. Mayor told us during a recent visit to the capital. So he's Indian, not Western. Just find him a right to be Indian. You're trying to be the mayor of America's largest city. I would like for you to be American.

[Eddie]

You're Bro, you don't even go here. Where does Charlie broadcast from?

[Charlie Kirk]

Certainly not in New York City. I'll tell you that much.

[Eddie]

Yeah, it is the America's greatest. It's because your ass and people like you are afraid of it and stay the away.

[Brian]

Yeah.

[Emma Vigeland]

Trying to run America's largest metropolis. It'd be good if you knew something about this place and you loved us. This is not like the mayor us.

[Hasan Piker]

You get like.

[Charlie Kirk]

Like Matt said, you don't go here.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, bro.

[Charlie Kirk]

In fact, I bet if you search Charlie Kirk's like social media history or look at the transcripts for all his podcasts, I'm sure Charlie Kirk has knocked you the New York City, the liberal blue state, more so than anything Sauron has ever said about New York at a even a critical way. Give me a break.

[Eddie]

And also he's been here since he was 7.

[Brian]

So according to Wikipedia, it seems like, like Charlie Kirk lives in like Phoenix, Arizona. I don't know if he's moved recently to New York City. He lives in the heat dome. You got other things to worry about. Don't worry. Don't worry about how hot New York City politics are. Worry about how hot it literally is where you are. Just don't worry about it.

[Emma Vigeland]

Keokuk, Iowa. He's not the mayor of Fort Collins, Colorado.

[Eddie]

Yeah, I don't care.

[Charlie Kirk]

He's name dropping Small city. It sounds like.

[Eddie]

Okay, cool.

[Emma Vigeland]

Erica's largest metropolis. It'd be good if you knew something about this place and you loved us. This is not like the mayor of us us.

[Sam Cedar]

You are not Iowa.

[Emma Vigeland]

He's not the mayor of Fort Collins, Colorado. And I hope you guys don't have Islamists running those cities.

[Eddie]

I was gonna say, would you be fine if it was?

[Brian]

They should.

[Emma Vigeland]

That's running those cities. No, New York City is the beacon of the entire West.

[Eddie]

You're right, Bill.

[Emma Vigeland]

You think of America, you think of New York City as John Lennon said it is the center of the world.

[Charlie Kirk]

As John Lennon not an American guy.

[Emma Vigeland]

And they tried to stop you from talking about this again? Last night someone tried to stop me from talking to us on Twitter. They said, oh, you're an Islamophobe. It's just thought terminating cliche. Do I? I have voted.

[Eddie]

Who taught him thought terminating cliche? That's so funny. No, it is just true. Because you're a psycho. Race fixated Charlie.

[Brian]

Republican. All of the Republican, like influencers got that term installed in the last like, firmware update they've been using or ABE hobby.

[Emma Vigeland]

They really poured.

[Charlie Kirk]

I was gonna say they really, they really love to like, take 9 11. This is what he's talking about his 9 disgusting 911 tweet. They really love to take it as if it's something like they experienced to like they like the like Charlie Kirk in Phoenix, Arizona, however old he was on 9 11. Like he was under attack and he saw the smoke and he had family members or someone who his family knew anywhere in New York City and was worried about them. You are just like, like biting off of people who actually went through like a horrific experience and came out a better person than you even after they actually experienced it. And don't blame anyone who looks different from themselves on what happened that day. You learned nothing from this because you had nothing to do with it. So get the fuck out of here. Get the fuck out of here.

[Emma Vigeland]

Even talk to us on Twitter. They said, oh, you're an Islamophobe. It's like it's a thought terminating cliche. And do I, I have voted for a Muslim before. Abe Hamadi. I've supported Muslim Abe Hamadi. I've endorsed Zudi Jassy. My primary care doctor is Muslim. Has nothing that just. I'm not even going to play that game.

[Zoran Mamdani]

You just did.

[Emma Vigeland]

And I got in a dispute with Jessica Tarlov. If you guys know who that is. Whatever.

[Brian]

He's so mad.

[Eddie]

He's so pissed.

[Emma Vigeland]

And you guys can read my. My response. I thought my response was actually very good.

[Eddie]

Oh yeah.

[Emma Vigeland]

Very thoughtful.

[Brian]

Oh, wow.

[Emma Vigeland]

And I asked the question, what Western city name? It has gotten better the more Islamic that it's become.

[Brian]

London.

[Emma Vigeland]

And then one of the guys in the replies said, Doha. Okay, that's not a Western city. That is a. That is the capital of Qatar. Another guy said, well, Abu Dhabi is really nice again. That's in the Emirates, by the way. Just we know Doha is getting less Muslim as they import more labor from Africa to go do the work of the ruling class of Qatar. Is Paris better? Is Amsterdam better? Is Berlin better?

[Eddie]

All these are great cities that none of Charlie Crook's audience will go to because like barely any of them have passports. And it's like, yeah, fine, don't go to London. I very much enjoyed London being there. You know who the problem with London and the problem with Paris is the rich people who pay for Charlie Kirk to talk online all day.

[Brian]

Also, the mayor of. Well, I mean I guess he's saying Amsterdam has become more Islamist. But I was like, the mayor of Amsterdam is not Islamic. I don't think.

[Eddie]

Yeah, I don't know. I think he just means like there is he. It's his replacement theories or stuff. This is Europe's committing suicide by allowing refugees sort of stuff. This is people looking at demographics and being absolutely hysterical that there are less white people being born than brown people.

[Brian]

Oh, yeah. And I mean, I think when things like this happen, we're also always talking about the psychosocial. I mean, psychosocial, yes, but also psychosexual obsession of the far right in the sense that seeing a brown person take a position of power just makes them and the people who watch their content feel less valuable. It makes them feel like, well, I'm not the mayor of New York. I'm not doing this. Like, how does this make. How does this implicate me? And so, like, you know, that kind of white grievance policy, I mean, politics is, you know, deeply ingrained in the kind of content that Charlie Kirk is pushing onto his, like, audience. And then also, obviously, he's just afraid for the same reason a lot of, you know, people in political media are afraid, because he knows these things are going to be successful and popular. He knows that he's successful and popular. And, you know, ideologically, we're, you know, opposed.

[Emma Vigeland]

Better is any one of these places in Europe. And it's not a matter of being racist. All that stuff is dumb. I don't do that. This is not 2015. Your little weird voodoo, voodoo mind trick doesn't work anymore. This little mentalist.

[Eddie]

No, it's gonna work, Charlie, where they.

[Emma Vigeland]

Come up to you and they could just say, like, a bunch of magic words. It's like the Harry Potter thing.

[Brian]

He is melting down.

[Emma Vigeland]

Just kind of do a little magic.

[Eddie]

Expecto racismo.

[Emma Vigeland]

Like, paralyzed. It doesn't work that way anymore. Oh, you're in a.

[Charlie Kirk]

You're paralyzed in a different way. You can't stop talking about it because you're so messed up because she called you out for being racist. Oh, my God, that's so funny. I'm not paralyzed. Yeah, you're not paralyzed. Like, you're not like Wiley Coyote watching the train come to hit you. You keep rambling and rambling and rambling about it because you can't get it out of your mind.

[Brian]

I mean, he is. He's paralyzed by his own racism. Like, you know, I know that racism and bigotry is not a mental illness, but certainly some people on the right have turned it into one for themselves. Like, he's having this ingredient, incredibly emotional, like, freak out about he's not even a mayor yet, guys that, like, that's the real sign that this is going to only get worse. Like, he's not even the mayor yet. He didn't even win the general election and they're already acting like this. Good. I mean, they're right to be upset. They're right to be hysterical. I think. I think if anything, they should be more upset.

[Emma Vigeland]

It doesn't work that way anymore. Ooh, you're in Islamophobia. Okay, I'll stop talking. Yeah, that doesn't work. Okay. Trump destroyed that entire paradigm. Thank you, Donald.

[Unidentified Caller]

Trump.

[John Benjamin]

Trump.

[Eddie]

Okay, I kind of disagree, and we'll stop it there. But I think Trump may have actually. I think wokeness is what, in Charlie Kirk's terminology, this whole, like, oh, we actually don't like racism. I think that stuff is going to come back, Charlie. I think it is going to arise for the same reason arose the first time, which is that when the American people see the Republicans in power, beyond just them saying, oh, Democrats can't do anything, which is true, they see the heinous bigotry and react negatively to it.

[Brian]

Oh, for sure. More people are going to be canceled under Donald Trump's presidencies than were ever canceled under Joe Biden or Barack Obama. For sure. Because the right wing is, you know, incredibly emotional and incredibly sensitive, and they're the ones who mostly lead these witch hunts, and they're going to start eating each other, especially over this schism that's arising over Iran, over Israel, over, you know, who's being funded by whom.

[Eddie]

Yeah, here's the. Here's the clip on Modi. Oh, crap. This isn't the full one. Never mind. Actually, before I get to that, here is actually a different clip. This is. You guys familiar with Avalon Emerson. She's an electronic musician who I've liked for a while. Got great stuff. Stuff. I like her a lot more now that she did a sort of remix of the moment that Zoran Kwame Memdani called out Cuomo for mispronouncing his name. And she posted this to her Instagram. This is a quote tweet of Jeremy Flood underscore floodlight on. On Twitter to Mr. Cuomo.

[Zoran Mamdani]

I have never had to resign in disgrace. I have never cut meas. I have never stolen hundreds of millions of dollars from the MTA. I have never hounded the 13 women who credibly accused me of sexual harassment. I have never sued for their gynecological records, and I have never done those things because I am not you, Mr. Cuoma. And furthermore, the name is Mamdani. M A M D A N I. You should learn how to say it.

[Hasan Piker]

Wow.

[Charlie Kirk]

That'S Great. That's awesome.

[Brian]

No, that's great. That was a great moment, too. I love, I love how he dragged his name through the mud.

[Eddie]

I agree. I think it's an important one. Like, I think when socialist shout, when people say. And I think it's probably a little bit reductive that Bernie didn't have sort of the killer instinct when he ran against the Democrats, but he never did anything quite like that, where you go at the heart of the credibility of the person that you're up against. And in part because Bernie's a team player and, and you know, it. Whatever. But I think you do need to do this in order to signal to the wider voting public that you're serious and you're not going to pull a punch here. Here's the thing I was talking about. He was at a, a mayoral candidate sort of get together with Brad Lander here, and there was a, A, a question about Narendra Modi. And I think this is an extremely just good answer. And this is a guy who understands world politics really well.

[Sam Cedar]

President Narendra Modi.

[Zoran Mamdani]

And this will go to you first.

[Sam Cedar]

Come on. Of India.

[John Benjamin]

I was supposed to connect Yahoo and.

[Emma Vigeland]

He was supposed to get.

[John Benjamin]

Modi didn't even get the memo.

[Hasan Piker]

You all get all of them.

[Eddie]

So is Modi is holding a rally.

[Hasan Piker]

In Madison Square Garden.

[Zoran Mamdani]

He wants to hold a joint press conference with you afterwards, reaffirming the strong bond between India and New York.

[Hasan Piker]

Do you agree to the event?

[Brian]

No.

[Hasan Piker]

All right.

[Zoran Mamdani]

Mr. Stringer.

[Charlie Kirk]

No.

[Zoran Mamdani]

And Mr. Ramdon. No. And I just want to say something here, which is that my father, his family comes from Gujarat in India, and his family is Muslim. I'm Muslim. And Narendra Modi helped to orchestrate what was a mass slaughter of Muslims in Gujarat to the extent that we don't even believe there are Gujarati Muslims anymore. And when I tell someone that I am, it's a shock to them that that is even the case. And this is someone who we should view in the same manner that we do. Benjamin Netanyahu. This is a war criminal.

[Charlie Kirk]

That's, that's good.

[John Benjamin]

Yeah.

[Charlie Kirk]

Why does he guarantee you most people who, unlike Netanyahu, is just how it is. A lot of people in the US probably unfamiliar with Modi and India's political landscape, and they will walk away learning the base, like the baseline stuff from that conversation with that Mamdani had on that stage.

[Brian]

Oh, absolutely. And I mean, I think it's hard for a lot of Americans to come to terms with the fact that you Know, a lot of the people you see shaking hands with the President are like war criminal, criminal, guilty of human rights in violation. I would say no. Most, if not all of them are, but sometimes they meet with like, I don't know, a tribal chief from like a smaller countries. So it doesn't happen all the time technically. But like, yeah, you know, seeing people, seeing Trump shake hands with Mohammed bin Salman, seeing them sit down with Modi, seeing them sit down with Netanyahu, that should not like engender a sense of trust in that other person. It should be, you know, make you distrust our President Even more.

[Eddie]

100%.

[Charlie Kirk]

Yeah. All right, folks, it's already, wow, 245. Let me read some IMs. And that's, that's the show. Let's see. Any thoughts on Bernie on Joe Rogan recently asks. Bingo Dango.

[Sam Cedar]

I saw it.

[John Benjamin]

Yeah.

[Eddie]

We'll do a clip tomorrow of Bernie and Joe talking about climate change. And you'll be shocked that Joe didn't have all the facts that he claimed to have at his disposal.

[Charlie Kirk]

Tom Collins beard says the right wing and Lib freak out alone makes Zoran winning the primary worth it. Yeah, I mean it's, I haven't seen the right this racist in a while. I mean they're always very racist, but this is like hyper drive racism nightmare.

[Brian]

I'm actually concerned for their health. They're so racist right now. I'm concerned like you're going to see a lot of like hogs, like making those like front facing, you know, vertical camera videos in their cars and they're going to be halfway through like mispronouncing Zoran's name and then they're going to grab their chest and their face is going to turn all red and it's going to like collapse. And I think that's just going to be like, it's sad. It's sad racism.

[Charlie Kirk]

So Rahmani is going to cause a lot of right wing aneurysms, that's for sure.

[Brian]

Oh yeah.

[Sam Cedar]

When you run in midterms, particularly when the opposite party is in power, it is all a referendum on those in power. And so Republicans had nothing to run on proactively except to demonize Mamdani and attempt to tie him. Now, whether that would have worked or not, we don't know. But now I can tell you it is impossible for them to run this play successfully or with the same amount of success. Because if you're running for some swing district in Pennsylvania and somebody goes, are you really going to elect somebody who is from the party of Zoram Mamdani. And this person's going to go like, well, I think, you know, President Trump said, this is, you know, this is clearly a rational guy trying to do his best. And now the only other part about this that people have to understand is, again, like, you know, this is. Mom, Donnie was able to do this. I don't think Donald Trump went into this meeting.

[Hasan Piker]

Yes.

[Sam Cedar]

In this way. Because if there was any indication that that was the case, we would have heard about it. We would have heard about it, at least. The phonic would not be out there.

[Hasan Piker]

He called him a communist 24 hours before the meeting.

[Sam Cedar]

Exactly. Like he was getting ready to do a humiliation tour. And Mamdani went in there and said everything he needed to. To say to make Donald Trump like, this guy's great. He's a winner. He's very smooth, very good gentleman.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Sam Cedar]

But when he's in the room with him, he doesn't back off of anything. Let's do the. Let's do the number one.

[Hasan Piker]

Like this is Zoran didn't back off of one thing. And Trump backed off of every critique of Zoron.

[Sam Cedar]

Not just backing off of. Of Zoran's critique. He said, yeah, okay, he can say that about me. Go ahead.

[Hasan Piker]

Even. I'm sorry, but even. Look at the visual. Trump sitting down and Zoron standing up. Like, from the beginning. Whoever orchestrated the private meeting before this and then the press conference, I mean, his. Zoron's team is phenomenal. But this was just amazing.

[Sam Cedar]

Do you remember that picture we took in here? That joke picture?

[Hasan Piker]

Yes.

[Sam Cedar]

With me and with Hasan.

[Hasan Piker]

Yeah.

[Sam Cedar]

Like, that was a joke. Me going like this. That's all that Trump was doing the whole all freaking time.

[Hasan Piker]

I'll see if I can send that to Stephen Nelson.

[Zoran Mamdani]

He asked about your comment calling the.

[Interviewer]

President a fascist, and your answer was.

[Sam Cedar]

Both President Trump and I have been.

[Interviewer]

Clear about our positions and our views.

[Hasan Piker]

Are you affirming that you think President.

[Interviewer]

Trump is a fascist?

[Zoran Mamdani]

I've spoken about.

[Sam Cedar]

That's okay. You can just say okay. It's easier. It's easier than explaining it. I don't.

[Hasan Piker]

But I don't mind asking also about this Ukraine plan, incidentally.

[Sam Cedar]

I just. He said yes. He said yes. Okay, then yes. Okay, yes. I'll take yes as an answer.

[Eddie]

And Trump is sincere when he says, I don't care if you call me fascist.

[Hasan Piker]

And then later he said, there's something about, you know, he's called me a despot. I've been called a lot worse.

[Zoran Mamdani]

Than that.

[Sam Cedar]

He patted him again.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Hasan Piker]

Did we want more? Because I have a lot to watch.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah, yeah. Here's number three in terms of like, you know, we forgot to mention in setup for this is the 86 Dems who voted to denounce socialism. Oh, yeah. I mean, that's the thing. It's like, how poorly time. Of course, the Republicans brought that up as part of this. Like, this was all part of their strategy. That was not a coincidence that that vote took place that day. It was, the Republicans are putting that up because they know they're on a roll here. And then all. All of a sudden, you know, I hate to say this, but record scratch, like.

[Hasan Piker]

Yeah, well, it turns out Trump's only in it for himself and he kind of doesn't care that much about the Republicans and what they're going to do with the midterms.

[Sam Cedar]

I actually think he does is concerned, but at that moment, his brain just doesn't work that way. Because I'm convinced within a couple of days he's going to try and come out and say, like, oh, he'll say something.

[Hasan Piker]

Oh, sure, sure. But the damage is done.

[Sam Cedar]

Damages.

[Hasan Piker]

He's already undercut their whole argument.

[Sam Cedar]

And here is more of Mamdani not backing off of anything he says. Actually, let's start with. Let's start with five. Okay. Just how Mamdani sort of manipulated Trump. Donald Trump has praised many presidents in office.

[Hasan Piker]

Yep.

[Sam Cedar]

Andrew Jackson. Andrew Jackson, McKinley. I'm better than Reagan, better than Lincoln.

[Eddie]

Late, great Frederick Douglass.

[Sam Cedar]

There is one president who is more clearly associated with progressive Democrats and Democrats for that matter, than any other. And Zoran is about to make Donald Trump sing this guy's praises practically. Go ahead.

[Zoran Mamdani]

Sorry. I'll just add one thing to what the President said, is one thing I also appreciated is in our meeting to appreciate a portrait of FDR and the incredible work that was done with the New Deal. And also in thinking about what it can look like when the federal government and New York City government work together to deliver on affordability and can be transformed.

[Sam Cedar]

Have a great portrait of FDR that I found in the vaults that was missing for years. I found it and I put it up.

[Zoran Mamdani]

I found it Democrat.

[Sam Cedar]

To the best of my knowledge, he's a Democrat. And when the mayor saw that portrait, he said, sir, do you mind if I have a picture taken by that port? It's an amazing portrait. The picture comes out, but it's an amazing portrait in the Cabinet Room. So he's a big fan of the New Deal, I guess. And of. Yes, okay, I like this. Democratic social is a big deal.

[Hasan Piker]

He took it as a compliment about the decor. Basically. He's a nice piece of art. That's what.

[Sam Cedar]

That's actually mine.

[Eddie]

I found it.

[Hasan Piker]

Yeah.

[Sam Cedar]

I love the idea of him rooting.

[Eddie]

Around the vault, national treasure style.

[Sam Cedar]

When was the last time in a Republican Oval office that FDR was praised by anybody? By anybody. I mean, and, you know, this is like, this is the only part that ultimately counts in terms of, like, the political, you know, materially. We will see what's going to happen. But as a political matter, this could not have gone better. And here is Mamdani not only getting, somehow tricking Donald Trump to allowing him to praise FDR in the White House and Trump the sort of backing it up. Right. Like, you know, well, I think Trump.

[Hasan Piker]

Maybe has said one thing about fdr and he likes the fact that FDR served multiple terms past the constitutional limit. That might be the only thing I think that he's kind of acknowledged in.

[Sam Cedar]

Terms of that Zoe's sitting just like me.

[Hasan Piker]

He's hiding a health condition. And just like me.

[Sam Cedar]

And just watch how clever he is. Here's number four. I mean, look, I'm just analysis analyzing this in terms of, like, its political value. Right. Mamdani needs to be held to account on a lot of different things that are going forward. He needs to deliver a, you know, the material benefits he's talking about or he's going to go down as a failure. He needs to do that. But in terms of, like, the political value of this very brief meeting and, you know, it's. Mamdani is now the sort of, like the center focus because of the value that the Republicans thought that it was to him and the value he has to progressive, you know, folks and leftists and whatnot. And so here he is being asked, and this is so minor, but it is so well done. Does New York love Donald Trump? And here is how Mamdani answers it. That both signals, like, I'm not going to give anybody a clip that says New York loves Donald Trump, but I'm also going to continue to have like, ding dong over here sitting to my, sitting to my left. Think that, like, I'm a great guy.

[Hasan Piker]

Compliments.

[Eddie]

Yes.

[Sam Cedar]

Because. Because remember now, the threat was we're going to defund New York's federal money. No Second Avenue subway, no tunnel to New Jersey, no federal, other federal projects. We're going to send in the National Guard. And so Mohammedani has a. Have material reasons to keep Trump happy or at least feel not personally offended because that's the way that Trump ends up governing half the time, but also to maintain his own personal integrity in terms of, like, what he believes in. Not so much like, I don't think he gives a crap as to how people perceived him in this. It's the message he's delivering. Go ahead. Turning point. One way or the other, it could go great or it can go in a different direction. And I think you really have a chance to make it great. Mr. President, you said you love New York City.

[Eddie]

Mr. Maumdani, does New York City love President Trump?

[Zoran Mamdani]

New York City loves a future that is affordable. And I can tell you that there were more New Yorkers who voted for President Trump in the most recent presidential election because of that focus on cost of living. And I'm looking forward to working together to deliver on that affordability agenda.

[Sam Cedar]

I got a lot of votes. So there it is. He, he refuses to say New York loves Donald Trump. He just simply says New York love affordability. And as a factual matter, more people did vote for Donald Trump over an affordability agenda, as opposed to saying, like, you know, people didn't believe Democrats.

[Hasan Piker]

And that's where we come, like, where we can be wildly speculative. But I think Trump's pretty transparent. So it's not that hard to be speculative about what was said in the closed door meeting prior to this. Right. Where it seems abundantly clear that Zoran Mamdani went in with like the understanding that this person is, as Kamala Harris on the campaign trail, so susceptible to flattery. And it seems like apparently he called, actually spoke with Schumer and Jeffries offices previously because they have experience obviously with him. It's the smart thing to do about how you deal with a guy like this. And he, when Trump brought up Bernie at the beginning, that was really the tell where it's clear that Zoran Mandani emphasized the fact that 1 in 10 of his voters voted for Trump in the last election. And then he's going to say this, this is over a share shared agenda of affordability and that we should work together because you made historic gains in the city and buttered him up in that way, which is true. I mean, he's using the failure of the Democratic Party to his advantage. And the way that the party has treated him has enabled Trump to see him in that light in the same way that Bernie Sanders was as an outsider. The first event that I ever covered as an intern when I was at tyt, like political event was seeing Trump at his hotel. And it was right after Bernie Sanders had dropped out. And it was just remarkable to watch him try to fold in all of the rhetoric that Bernie had used in order to kind of manipulate it. Obviously, he's a lying con man, but then he says what he needs to say in any room. But he recognizes at the very least the power of popular support and what crowds and energy does. Trump knows and understands that fundamentally. And so he doesn't respect, like, the concierge liberalism of Schumer or Jeffries. He knows that Zorin has people power, too. So it backs up his.

[Sam Cedar]

I'd be willing to bet that Mamdani went into that meeting and the first thing he said, I want you to know that I launched my campaign with a video that I shot on the streets of my district talking to Trump voters and why they voted for you and would they vote for an affordability and maybe even showed like a clip of it. But there's no doubt my mind that's the way he opens it up. Like, that's why I understand your appeal in New York. And Trump is then that's it. And he's nothing but like stars.

[Hasan Piker]

And who knows.

[Sam Cedar]

I really get.

[Hasan Piker]

Yeah. And who knows where it goes from here. But I do think that, like the he. Trump also wants a foil. I mean, this is all reality TV for him, right. And he hasn't had an actual foil in this era so far. He's not using well, I guess. But I do think that in the future they're. They're going to have some sort of. He thinks that this is an opportunity for good tv and like, he respects the fact that Zoron is good on TV and they may get along in this moment, but I anticipate there will be clashes later. But that's not necessarily necessarily, I think, how he views how Trump views Jefferies and Schumer.

[Sam Cedar]

Oh, no, he definitely not.

[Hasan Piker]

But that says everything.

[Sam Cedar]

Here is a, another example of Mamdani saying stuff in the White House that we haven't heard before. A B, completely not giving any ground whatsoever in this meeting with Trump and seemingly getting everything good.

[Zoran Mamdani]

And you did the piece and all the nine months around the world. I would like to ask, Mr. Mandani.

[Brian]

You accused the US government of committing.

[Zoran Mamdani]

Genocide in Gaza while President Trump was working on peace. Why? Why that? I've spoken about the Israeli government committing genocide and I've spoken about our government funding it. And I shared with the president in our meeting about the concern the many New Yorkers have of wanting their tax dollars to go towards the benefit of New Yorkers and their ability to afford basic dignity. And what we see right now is we're in the ninth consecutive year of more than 100,000 school children being homeless in our city. And there's a desperate need not only for the following of human rights, but also the following through on the promises we've made New Yorkers. And I appreciated the meeting we had and the work that we can do. Do you agree that President Trump did do a piece and work on because he worked hard to do the peace.

[Brian]

In the Middle east and everywhere?

[Zoran Mamdani]

Do you agree with that? I appreciate all efforts towards peace. And I shared with President Trump that when I spoke to Trump voters on Hillside Avenue, including one of whom was a pharmacist, that spoke about how President Trump's father actually went to that pharmacy not too far from Jamaica states that people were tired seeing our tax dollars fund endless wars. And I also believe that we have to follow through on the international human rights. And I know that still today those are being violated. And that continues to be work that has to be done no matter where we're speaking of good.

[Sam Cedar]

That's what he says. That's what Trump says it good. Because you know why? Trump heard nothing after pharmacy, dad, dad, pharmacy.

[Hasan Piker]

But that was the other part. We he, he 100% just sprinkled an anecdote about Trump's name being all over the city. And it's so cheap, you know, it's a cheap date, you can say that kind of stuff. And Trump is able to come out of it feeling better about the meeting. And I mean, it's just amazing. It's amazing. It was a really undercut the Republicans, which is primarily what we care about. But it's also an amazing thing to see the way that Chuck Schumer still did not endorse Zoran Mamdani. And Trump is speaking more positively about him than I've seen other Democratic leaders, major Democratic leaders. And that's part of like when we're talking about the Democratic Party not being committed to an authentic Democratic represent, authentic Democratic representation in its own ranks, it is the fact that they can't even recognize or harness the popularity because they are so bought off in a way that's intrinsic to Trump and that looks like play acting in a way as an embrace of democracy or a swell of enthusiasm. And Democrats have allowed that play acting to replace an actual Democratic responsiveness which has harmed the party's brand in addition to committing genocide with it for years and years to come.