Zohran Mamdani (guest)
👤 PersonPodcast Appearances
It's almost like you spent some time in Albany.
As inside baseball as it is.
But I think that's clearly because he feared an unchecked left.
Or a left that would actually be able to deliver.
And God forbid an unchecked left that was able to fulfill the aspirations of working people.
And I say this because governing will necessitate compromise.
There's no question about that.
Some of the compromises that have been made, however, are not the ones that are actually innate to these positions and to this politics.
Some of them have actually been created as a means by which to ensure that we could never fulfill the ideals that have brought so many to politics.
And the reason I am confident in my ability to deliver on what we have campaigned on is
is because of the fact one, that we have campaigned on a very specific set of commitments.
I would argue that far more than many other campaigns, New Yorkers know exactly what it is that I'm running on.
I'll have people stop me in the street and just shout fast and free buses or universal childcare or freeze the rent.
And that means that we're building a movement not around an individual,
But rather around these policy commitments.
And that is what we will be held to account for.
And that is something that I want.
Because in order to bring people back to politics, in order to bring people's faith back to the idea that government could actually make their lives easier, we have to be honest about what it is we're fighting for, who we're fighting for, and then to deliver on those very things.
No, I moved to New York City when I was seven years old.
And one of the things that I would think about often was the necessity of safety and justice.
And growing up meant learning about the moments in which the chasm between those things
felt as if it was only continuing to expand.
Learning about the Central Park Five, growing up in the city and reading about... The wrongly convicted.
Growing up and reading about Sean Bell, Eric Garner.
These are victims of police brutality in the city.
Reading about Michael Brown.
And then in 2020, the year the tweet is written, the murder of George Floyd.
And feeling like this chasm was at the largest I'd seen it in my own life.
And struggling with how far apart it felt.
And in the time since then, becoming an assembly member, representing about 130,000 people in Northwest Queens, Astoria and Long Island City, and learning that to deliver that justice doesn't mean to do so in isolation, it means to still fulfill these twin necessities of safety and justice.
And doing so means working with police officers,
who put their lives on the line every single day, representing Muslim New Yorkers in the district that I represent, who were illegally surveilled on the basis of their faith, going so far as even to be watched when they played soccer, and the black and brown New Yorkers who've been victims of police brutality.
It means representing all of the eight and a half million people of the city and understanding the necessities of doing so while delivering safety and justice and understanding that no one thing can be or should be pursued without the other.
The issuing of it is to reckon with the fact that it's language that I'm applying to officers when in fact what I'm speaking about are specific practices.
And when I've met officers not only over the course of being an assembly person but also running for mayor,
Understanding that behind every caricature, behind every headline, is a New Yorker trying to do their best.
And those meetings, those conversations, those are some of the ones I've appreciated the most, where I've shared an apology for the language that I've used and a desire to continue to fulfill those same ideals of safety and of justice and to do so together.
And what I'm apologizing is for the language that I've used.
And also doing so as someone who is clear-eyed about the necessity of still fulfilling those two things.
Who think that they can buy an election?
I've said many of the same things that I'm saying at these rallies out on the street in these conversations, which is that I continue to believe that two of the most straightforward and productive ways to raise revenue, to fund
A significant part of our affordability agenda and the need to Trump-proof the city are by, as you said... Trump-proof, we'll get back to that.
Yes, are by increasing personal income taxes on the top 1% of New Yorkers.
New Yorkers make a million dollars a year or more by 2%.
And by increasing the state's top corporate tax rate from 7.25% to match that of New Jersey, 11.5%.
And what I've appreciated about these conversations is that everyone knows exactly where I stand on these fiscal policies.
And I'm looking to have a conversation both about why I believe in these fiscal policies but also that a disagreement on those policies should not preclude us from looking for agreements elsewhere.
If you look at the chronology of the campaign,
The first thing we speak about is what we are looking to fund.
October 23rd, when we launch the campaign, we talk about freezing the rent for rent-stabilized tenants, making buses fast and free, delivering universal childcare.
is always the policies themselves.
And I continue to believe as a principle that it's important to have a fair system of taxation.
And I do not think the one that we have is an example of that.
And to me, it is always and has always been the case
that far more important than the means by which you fund something is the fact that you are in fact funding it.
And so I still think that these two tax proposals are the most straightforward and productive ways to do so.
There are other revenue proposals that also exist that have been put forward.
There's also the fact that I have sat in Albany year after year and watched as we've been told the receipts we estimated, they're actually going to be bigger this year than we thought.
And if there is a proposal that the $4 billion we would raise from one of these taxes from the personal income tax increase can be found elsewhere, I'm not going to fight to bring it back to the original means that I suggested.
I'm going to fight to ensure that that works.
$4 billion is then used to fund a significant portion of universal childcare.
And I think that always has to be what drives us, that we are funding the affordability agenda, not the question of how.
And I do believe these are the two most straightforward ways to do so.
I would contrast Governor Hochul with Governor Cuomo in that Cuomo almost made it his mission to go to war with New York City.
He would cut so much of what he could find in what the state was funding across these five boroughs.
And when Bill de Blasio ran...
And to me, that is the kind of agreement that was missing under the previous leader of the state, because so often he was the obstacle to any affirmative vision of what government could be doing for working people.
I would distinguish one piece in that my use of the term genocide is not
a personal opinion, rather it's a reflection of findings by institutions even of genocide scholars themselves, institutions like the United Nations.
And it is a word that reflects what has been happening in Gaza.
And these conversations that I've been having both since the primary, but also frankly, prior to the primary,
have been illuminating for me in both having an opportunity to meet many New Yorkers, especially Jewish New Yorkers, for whom their only impression of me was through a caricature.
Well, you know, I had the distinct pleasure of having around $30 million spent against me in the primary.
And it was $30 million that was spent in mailers, in TV ads.
There was a mailer sent by Andrew Cuomo's super PAC that artificially lengthened my beard.
And there was another mailer sent by another candidate.
And it specifically chose to feature a photo of me in a kurta.
And there was another mailer sent by another candidate that implied I was going to kill Jewish New Yorkers.
Part of the earlier conversation we were having about the Democratic Party, these are mailers that were sent in a Democratic primary.
And so if you're a Jewish New Yorker and you're receiving these kinds of mailers, you're opening an article that you're reading and you're reading this kind of a caricature of me.
I do not begrudge skepticism.
I do not begrudge concern.
And what I've appreciated about these conversations is an opportunity to
to share who I am and the opinions and thoughts and commitments that may be in disagreement with those on the other end of the table, but at the very least can show that these are thoughts that are built on a belief in a universal system of human rights.
It's the opportunity to make clear that, you know, I've had a number of Jewish New Yorkers ask me,
You've said you recognize Israel's right to exist, but you won't recognize its right to exist as a Jewish state.
Would that be the case for Saudi Arabia?
And I've said, absolutely, it would be, because my belief— So your objections remain equal to Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, UAE, as they do to Israel.
I'm not going to recognize its right to be a state with a hierarchy of citizenship on the basis, whether it be of religion or race.
And part of that is because, especially as an American, thinking of the importance of a state which enshrines equal rights within it.
to make clear that my critiques of Israel are critiques that I would hold for any other state violating any one of these other international laws.
that I and many other New Yorkers have had on the question specifically of Israel's violations of these international human rights is also in part because of our unique complicity as Americans in those violations.
You mean because of the American funding of the war in Gaza?
And prior to that, and the nature of sending, you know, $4 billion a year every year prior to this.
Mayor Adams ran in 2021 with a promise that he would retire in the Golan Heights.
He not only visited Israel, he met with settlement leaders and came back promising to increase cooperation with them.
Billionaires like Bill Ackman and Ronald Lauder have poured millions of dollars into this race because they say that we pose an existential threat.
I've said, and I continue to believe, that one need not visit Israel to stand up for Jewish New Yorkers.
And I've also said in the question of visiting countries outside of ours that my focus is going to be on New York City.
My belief, whether it be for Israel and Palestine or anywhere across the world, is the importance of equal rights as part of any future that we're fighting for.
And as you said, I am running to be the mayor of the city.
And I also know, to your point, that there are millions of New Yorkers, myself included, who care deeply about Israel and Palestine.
My desire is to be a mayor who is both clear in my belief in universal human rights, the necessity of extending those beliefs of freedom and safety and justice and equality to all people, and that that must also include Palestinians, and that my job in leading the city is to embody that shared sense of humanity.
I would say that that's correct.
And I think what's been galling to many in this city has been the ability to be blind to certain injustices.
We have a mayor right now.
who has often been blind to the suffering of many in this city, especially, I would say, Palestinian New Yorkers.
I met a Palestinian New Yorker from Bay Ridge about two weeks ago.
It's an older man who walked with a cane.
We were having chai in Astoria.
And he told me how he'd lived in this city for decades.
And I am here to admit something.
And for decades he worked to save up to build a house in Gaza.
And he built that house and it was the pride and joy of his life.
And the Israeli military destroyed that house in one minute.
And in the rubble of that house lay the dreams that he had held for decades and how his son and his grandkids were in Gaza, continue to be in Gaza today.
And he told me about how his son called him the other week and said,
He gave the phone over to this man's grandchild, and the grandchild said, I'm hungry.
And this man had to grapple with the fact that there was nothing more he could send.
There was no way he could reach out.
Because I think there's no other way to respond to this kind of despair and to hold this despair and say that as the mayor of your city, I see what you are struggling through.
And the very least you deserve is someone who looks at you with the full humanity you deserve.
And that's what I want to bring is a real belief in a shared sense of humanity for all, because for far too long, there have been exceptions that have been carved out.
Fundamental change only comes from the courage to turn your back on the old formulas.
What I've described as inevitability is Donald Trump's desire to send the National Guard to New York City.
And what I would say to those who would say this argument, whomever they may be, whatever they may be.
The courage to invent the future.
Whoever Andrew Cuomo living in Westchester may be.
Donald Trump is not waiting for me to be the mayor to enact this kind of political retribution.
He had arguably the most collaborative mayor he could find in Eric Adams.
And even with that mayor, he pulled $80 million out of a Citibank account.
He suspended $50 million in funding because the city refused to give up.
But kept the National Guard at bay.
While looking to suspend $18 billion in federal infrastructure funding in no small part
Together, that is exactly what we have done.
because of Democrats at the national level refusing to allow him to throw 4 million Americans off of their healthcare.
My point being that retribution is not something that will only appear in this city by virtue of my being mayor.
It's already a feature of what it looks like to live in Donald Trump's America.
And what we've seen, whether it be in his first administration or now in the second administration, is that Donald Trump, if you want to stand up to him, the first thing you have to do is be able to actually be willing to fight him.
Because for all those who say, our time is coming, my friends, our time is now.
And what we have in this moment…
is not just my campaign, but Andrew Cuomo's, which is one that is so unable to stand up to him, in large part because of the fact that he knows his narrow path to city hall is paved by the very donors who gave us Donald Trump's second term, which is why- There's overlap.
When he was asked, would he condemn Donald Trump for the weaponization of justice in the prosecution of Attorney General Tish James, he said, condemn him for what?
He released a statement on the weaponization that refused to name either Donald Trump or Tish James.
And so my point being, there already exists retribution here in the city, the likes of which that has immense consequences.
We have a candidate who is running on the promise of being able to stand up to Trump while he can't even name him.
And what I will do is no doubt face these kinds of threats, including those that have been made about Trump.
Deporting me, arresting me, denaturalizing me.
I will face them knowing that just by virtue of Donald Trump saying something, it doesn't make it law.
What actually makes it law is when we go through the court system.
And what we've seen is a approach in California where the attorney general, the mayor of LA, the governor of the state came together to file a lawsuit that where a federal judge recently found in their favor, the deployment of the National Guard was illegal.
And also an attorney general who found that for every dollar that they spent on legal fees, they were able to recover more than $30,000 in federal funds that would have otherwise been stripped of them.
I'm not looking to assist Donald Trump in his attempt to fulfill his campaign promise to create the single largest deportation force in American history.
illegal immigration to be treated differently than it has.
What I've heard from my supporters and what I've heard from New Yorkers, frankly, is a desire for dignity.
And in looking at what ISIS's presence has been in New York City, what it has meant for our city, seeing at the very least an absence of that, and in fact, an attack, not only on the question of dignity, but on the very fabric of the city, right?
I know of who took down the numbers on every apartment on their floor so that ICE wouldn't know where anyone lived.
And no, I'm not going to help Donald Trump in doing so.
I'm, in fact, going to fight Donald Trump when he looks to tear families apart.
And I'm going to do so because I know what the stakes are.
When he detains a six-year-old girl from Queens and deports her, I know that her principal is writing a letter to ICE saying, please don't do this.
I think also I reject the goal.
It's not just the manner in which this detention is happening.
It's the fact that the goal here is cruelty.
The goal is to rip these families apart.
And the goal is to attack so much of what is the foundation of the city as an immigrant city.
Absolutely, I will meet with President Trump.
I think it's incumbent upon any mayor of this city to meet with the president of the country.
What I won't do is work with President Trump at the expense of the city.
That's the critique that I've made of Andrew Cuomo and of Eric Adams is that their conversations with Trump have more to do with themselves than to do with the people of the city.
It's not that they're talking to him.
It's that who are they talking to him about?
I'm glad I won't have to answer the hypothetical, because I fully intend to deliver.
We came to these policies, to these commitments, not because of a poll that we commissioned or a consultant that we sat with.
In fact, the polls said that you should focus on public safety, not affordability.
There are many politicians who will tell you that the best life could ever be is the one that you're living in right now.
And those are also the ones who have paved the way for the politics we've seen of Donald Trump.
Because you have to be able to reckon with the material needs of working people and the fact that so many of them are going unmet.
Should we do one of those politician handshakes?
The third floor, which we sometimes stop at, has these Halloween decorations that always take you a little bit aback.
Well, I wouldn't actually be the first Democratic Socialist mayor.
David Dinkins was also a member of the Democratic Socialist America.
He was a co-member of the Democratic Party, right?
Well, he was a member of DSA, identified also as a Democratic Socialist.
describe those two identities as mutually exclusive.
I think that one can live within the other, meaning that I am both a democratic socialist and I'm also a Democrat.
One is a description of my political ideology, the other is a description of the party that I belong to.
Democratic socialism being the ideology, DSA being an organization, the Democratic Party being the party.
And it was Bernie Sanders' run in 2016
that gave me the language of democratic socialism to describe my own politics.
It took what I had thought were disparate ideas and cohered them and gave me an understanding of
What that politics was and also what a larger movement looked like of people who also were animated by that same focus on dignity on the unacceptable nature of income inequality across this country.
And to me, what democratic socialism means is a belief that.
It is government's job to ensure that every person is living a life of dignity.
And dignity is not the things that you'd like.
It's not the things that you'd want.
It's the things that you need.
I think he is a fresh and actual change in the party.
And there's a general common sense around many of those things.
In New York City, in this country, we'd say that every child deserves public education.
That's a free point of service of K through 12.
But we also think that it's okay to be priced out of the education you need prior to that, child care.
And for some reason, there's a point at which you should deserve education, and there's a point before that at which it depends on your family's ability to pay.
Yes, and the ability to pay is not a nominal amount.
We're talking about an average generally of $22,500 a year for a three-year-old or a four-year-old or a two-year-old.
And so to me, what democratic socialism is, the fulfillment of the ideal that underpins things that already exist within our society but are currently –
being applied in either a partial manner or not at all.
And it teaches me that the way I feel about housing and the way I feel about public transit and the way I feel about childcare, these are not different opinions necessarily.
They are in fact rooted in the same understanding of the world we should be living in.
You know, in this race right now, it's easy to view one of my opponents, Andrew Cuomo, through the caricature that he is creating of himself.
But prior to this moment, he was considered by many to be a leader in the Democratic Party.
One of the most prominent Democrats to emerge from this state.
At a point, someone that people were speaking about as a politician who should run for president of this country.
And he is an example of so much of what has disappointed so many about our party.
Because for all that he is today, there have been examples of this in years past.
And these were the very things that we would overlook or we would simply see as parts of what politics had to be.
Yeah, get specific about it, if you don't mind.
And he's the same governor who ensured that there would be Republican power in Albany, such that the only progress that would be made was that which he was willing to accept.
Many of the same achievements that are accredited to him are the ones that he was initially an obstacle towards before becoming seen as the architect of.
This is the same person who cut funding for a program called Advantage that was providing millions of dollars in connecting homeless New Yorkers with apartments that they could live in.
And I actually met a woman right here in New York City who had just been approved to that program right before the funding was cut.
And the cutting of that funding was one that then pushed her out of the apartment that she was able to rent.
This is the same governor who gave Elon Musk $959 million in tax credits.
I say these things because sometimes it's tempting to think that all that is wrong in this moment is from Donald Trump.
But it's important that the very same people that we have villainized and thought of solely through the prism of Trump existed prior to him.
And in fact, were some of the very people that were uplifted by these kinds of leaders in the Democratic Party.
If you want to understand why so many have come to associate politics with a extended play of diminishing faith and trust, then we also have to understand who the politicians have been that have been leading these very parties and that many of these issues are not exclusive to the Republican Party.
They are, in fact, endemic within our own party.
And if we want to truly move beyond Donald Trump, we also have to understand the systems that allowed for the flourishing of someone like Donald Trump and that many of those systems and styles of politics are also within our own party.
And Andrew Cuomo being an example of the fusion of these things.
So just to distill this critique.
I've heard about these pauses.
It's interesting to hear you say the word the other side.
Part of my point is that Andrew Cuomo created the other side in Albany.
He took what would have otherwise been a democratic trifecta of democratic control of the governor's office, the assembly, and the state senate, and ensured that there was a Republican minority in the senate that was in power.