048: How Zohran Mamdani and NYC Became MAGA’s Obsession

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Everyone knows that New York City is the Athens of America,
is the Istanbul of America, is the key of America, the soul of
America. We are the Tel Aviv of America.
New York City is the Islamabad of America, the Zabgreb of
America. We are the Lima of America.
New York City is mess Mexico City of America.

(00:23):
This is the doubling of America,New York City.

(00:58):
Welcome back to posting through it, I am Mike.
And I'm Jared. First things first, let's get to
our Patreon shout outs. We don't have any new platinum
or executive members to shout out this week, but we do have to
thank some people in the ultra mega tier.
This is a lot of people don't know about this one.

(01:18):
It's a exclusive invite only tier for listeners who give us
more money than they can physically carry in Fiat
currency exchangeable for goods and services.
It's a real like Finn Dom situation if you're familiar
with that. If not, Google it and please
direct all complaints to Mike. So we've got the patriarch

(01:42):
Apollo, the matriarch Athena, myvery best friend Ajax, Dropfoot,
Little Big One, Hope, Wolverine,Tuna, Tiny Gizmo, Whiskers,
Crooked Head, Tiger, Love, Mama and Homer.

(02:03):
Just kidding, these are the names of Curtis Sliwa's cats.
Sliwa is the ever behatted Republican nominee for New York
City mayor. Definitely seen this guy before.
He wears a goofy beret all the time, and he wears it so often,
in fact, that he has what seems to be a permanent tan line on
his forehead. If you ever see a photo of him

(02:25):
without the hat, you can see where the hat was.
No, but on a real note, we passed 500 paid signups on our
Patreon this week, which has only been open for a couple
months. It's really crazy.
It's been really cool to see community that's forming around
this show. I I love getting to talk to some
of our listeners there. So thanks to everyone who's

(02:47):
joined us on Patreon so far and who's been hanging out with us
over there. If you want to join us, I'll put
a link down in the description of this episode. 5 bucks a month
gets you an extra episode of posting through it each week and
help support the show. Yeah, so today, if you couldn't
tell from the cover art and the jokes and the audio sample,

(03:09):
we're talking about the somewhatsurreal and certainly symbolic
election happening in New York City right now for mayor.
It's one that is local for sure,but has pretty serious national
importance, especially for critics of Trump and the
Democratic Party establishment. I want to say that again, this

(03:32):
has major symbolic importance. 2things to highlight Trump
Stephen Miller Billionaires run-of-the-mill mega.
They are in love with hating theDemocratic nominee, the race's
current favorite, Zoran Mandani,2 Mandani and his embattled
opponent, Andrew Cuomo, the former governor and political

(03:55):
royalty, thanks to his father, who has faced allegations of
improper sexual conduct and corruption while he was governor
of New York, symbolize a divide in the Democratic Party that
really emerged in 2015 and 2016.We'll talk about this a little
bit later, but has continued on,I guess in a slightly circuitous

(04:16):
way. Yeah, so here's some facts to
know about. So Ron Mamdani that I think, you
know, kind of under score of whyMacca despises him so much.
He was born in 1991, so he's a young guy.
He seems to have a pretty good grasp on social media and has
used it to create a lot of interest in his brand.

(04:38):
His campaign used to be a rappernamed Mr. Cardamom.
I'm the number one nanny, don't fuck with me.
Fuck any of the nanny. Says they better than Provine
because I'm already. But it gets more offensive for
MAGA because both of Silron's parents are ethnically Indian.

(05:03):
Zoran was born in Uganda. His mother who's a famous film
director grew up Hindu. His father who is an academic is
Muslim. And then add on top of that,
he's a self-described democraticsocialist involved with the DSA,
Democratic Socialist of America.He's also an outspoken critic of

(05:24):
Israel. He's pledged to use the New York
Police Department to arrest Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu over war crimes if Benjamin Netanyahu enters New
York City. Benjamin Netanyahu, for his
part, has said he will enter NewYork City with Trump by his side
and that he's not worried. Mamdani is like if you built

(05:48):
someone in a lab to give StephenMiller night sweats, Miller said
of Momdani. Quote, New York City is the
clearest warning yet of what happens to a society when it
fails to control migration. Trump said of Momdani that he
quote, better behave, which I love because it's like talking
about a dog. He also said I can't believe

(06:11):
this is happening, which is alsogreat.
Momdani, if he. Wins.
That's me too. I have an.
Obligation. To speak to him but I love New
York. I've always loved New York.
I just can't believe a thing like this is happening with the
communists in church. Look, you just go back 1000
years. I mean, it's been done many
times, 1000 years, it's never worked once.

(06:33):
So it's. Not going to work now for the.
Democrat Party now more Zoran Mandani's party than it is even
Leader Schumer's or. Leader.
Probably is. Yeah.
It's, it's, I mean, maybe he'll run for president in four years.
You have a communist president. That'll be interesting.
Well, I, I, I just just just want to say, I mean, nothing
could under score my point aboutthis being an important symbolic

(06:55):
thing than that. I mean, he's basically saying
this is the, the future of the both the future of the
Democratic Party is being decided here.
And also, I can't believe this is happening to us.
Part of why this has become so animating for MAGA is because
New York, like London, like other major global cities, is a

(07:21):
international city, and that carries a lot of symbolism with
it. London has had a mayor, Sadiq
Khan, who is Muslim. He's won three terms there and
has driven the racist right. Just fucking insane over there.
So adding the fact Trump is a a New York guy, you can see why

(07:44):
this whole situation, the fact that the way things are looking
as we're recording, so Ron very well could become the next mayor
of New York. This is very agitating for Maca.
But Mike, you know who else is aNew York guy?
Is it Gavin Wax? No, it's our New York City
correspondent. Welcome back to the podcast,

(08:05):
Bobby Silverman. Hey, how you doing today?
This is the New York City correspondent Bobby Silverman.
I'm a New Yorker here. Forget about it.
Yeah. Anyway, Hi, My name is Bobby
Silverman. Thank you for that.
I was really worried. I was like when you started
that, I was like, Oh no, we're we're going to be disgraced.

(08:27):
But actually by the end of it, Iwas, I was very pleased.
What's your favorite pizza spot in New York City?
That's that's deforest. No question.
Deforest. All right.
It that's anyone someone want tosay LMB Spumoni Gardens.
That's OK. You want to say Lukali?
You want to say John's? You want to say Joe's?
I'm sorry. I am a Deafar guy.

(08:49):
You may remember Bob as you knowas as the same man who walked
out straight out of line after the Mets blew a 9th inning.
Was it a lead or we came close to winning?
We. They lost.
Wait a second. That's how I'm known.
I'm I'm the fair weather fan whowouldn't stick.
Around fireworks. No, no, no.

(09:10):
That you were so passionate thatyou just blew off fireworks
night. You're like, I'm going and just
started walking. Yeah, after they lost.
I'm walking here. There's.
No fireworks. There's no fireworks when our
team loses. So let's get into it 'cause we
got a long episode here. So, but we got listeners who are

(09:32):
in other countries. We have people from all over the
country itself, thousands of miles away from New York City.
And I want, I know people just take for granted that they know
something about New York City, but let's let's actually like
give them a sample of what New York City is and sort of tell
us, you know, what is a New YorkCity mayor?

(09:55):
Because there's got to be a vibein there beyond Travis Bickle
just driving his cab around. Sick, venal.
Someday a real rain will come and watch all this scum off the
streets. I think the thing, the most
important thing to know about the New York City mayor is that

(10:16):
if you look at movies, there aretwo stereotypical politicians
that you can always identify in a movie. 1 is the president, and
if it's Morgan Freeman or another black man, it means a
disaster is on the way. And the other is a New York City
mayor, like that is a stock movie character, and somehow
it's always a descendant of Edward Koch.
It is a very sort of ethnic, often either Nebishy or sort of

(10:41):
boisterously Italian figure who is totally ineffectual and
corrupt at the same time. And if not the outright villain
is definitely someone whose whose main thrust is to impede
our heroes. Think the this the weaselly
little guy in Ghostbusters, or even the far more weaselly guy

(11:04):
who sounds exactly like Ed Koch,even though this character was
created five years before Ed Koch was elected in The Taking
of Pelham 123. That's a great film, but I just
want to point out that, you know, I grew up when I was I was
in Queens and I remember it. You know, Koch, I was like a
baby and like he was like the always there.
It was like this guy. He was always his like sort of

(11:26):
gentle face. You know, he's a balding, you
know, guy and he's like, you know, sort of avuncular in a in
a, in a, as you said, Navashi way.
And he actually like kind of face off against Trump when
Trump threatened to run for mayor in 1987.
And I'm very honored and anybodywould we may.

(11:46):
Have to wait to see how most of the nation takes to Donald
Trump, but at least one New Yorker has already made-up his
mind. I find those ads ridiculous.
He spent $100,000 for self advertisements.
Who's really interested in his foreign policy?
Anybody. Maybe Mrs. Trump.
Ed Koch has been a disaster as amayor.
You know it, I know it, everybody knows it.

(12:08):
I want to make it very clear, I'm very biased.
I don't like him. Ed Koch has been a lousy mayor.
I believe he'll go down as probably in history, the worst
man in the history of the city of New York.
Ed Koch's catch phrase, for those who are unfamiliar, was to
walk up to various New Yorkers and ask, how am I doing?
Honestly, that's a. That's a really, you know, just

(12:30):
stand back. That's a good bit, honestly.
It's a good bit it it makes it seem engaged and.
Familiar about his job performance, which you know,
that'll that'll get him something.
Yeah, it's it's it we that the Ed Koch archetype is one thing.
A beam was a similar type to this in the 70s during the the

(12:50):
New York's incredible economic downturn.
You know, Rudy Giuliani is also of this type and even going all
the way back to Fiorello LaGuardia, the little flower as
he was known, who ran on good government and cleaning out the
corruption. He didn't succeed at that.

(13:10):
But when, when that type, when people, when New Yorkers grow
tired of that type, they tend toshift to the other extreme,
which is a very dull technocrat who also is corrupt but in a
different way and ends up sort of cosplaying as a cop.
Mike Bloomberg and David Dinkinsare examples of this for those

(13:32):
who are familiar with those former New York City mayors and
Giuliani, Giuliani, Giuliani is the sort of avuncular ethnic
type. Yes, but I mean, he wasn't
really a a proto fascist, you know, in many ways.
And like the Village Voice wouldrepeatedly call Giuliani A
fascist. And I remember being like, oh,
come on every the streets are clean and everything.
You know, I didn't know I wasn'tvery political at the time.

(13:54):
I was like to, you know, I wasn't, I was like, is it
really, is he really a fascist? And then we learn now, you know,
we've seen his behavior with Trump.
And the other thing was he just talked about 911 all the time.
Yeah, he talked about 911 so much that it was like a
punchline. Here's Joe Biden in a 2008
debate. Rudy Giuliani, I mean, think

(14:15):
about it, Rudy Giuliani, there'sthree, there's only three things
he mentioned in the sentence, a noun and a verb in 9/11.
I mean, there's nothing else. There's nothing else.
That's so funny honestly. You know, Joe had some pretty
decent one liners, you know, grandpa style back in the day.
Yeah, So the guy I remember in New York, I, I mean, I live in

(14:37):
Chicago. I've never lived in New York.
So I I'm leaning on you guys heavy for this episode.
But the one I remember coming upwhen I was getting started
reporting was Bill de Blasio. How does he fit into that?
De Blasio was elected as again amore progressive populist and a
counter to the Mike Bloomberg technocracy.

(15:01):
And he did run on a, a what was a good progressive agenda.
He he wanted to expand early education.
He wanted to expend after schoolprograms.
He wanted to give away universalpre-K education and he said he
would pay for this by raising taxes on the wealthy.
He also wanted to raise the minimum wage to $15.00 an hour.

(15:23):
And when it came to the cops, hewanted to end the stop and frisk
policing policy. Again, for those who don't know,
this was a policy that came up under Giuliani, which was how do
we fight low level St. crime? Well, we empower the cops to
just harass anyone they see who looks like a criminal to them.

(15:45):
Who looks like a criminal to a cop.
Well, you can probably take a pretty decent guess about who
that might be. This policy, just to be clear,
was pretty explicitly racist in practice.
I have the numbers here. In fact something like there was
some at at its peak there were approximately in 2011 there were

(16:05):
about 600,000 stops that were made by the police and something
and something like 88% of them were people of color.
So what that meant was in order to bring down crime, we are
going to harass the non white people. de Blasio wanted to put
an end to it and lean into community policing, all of which

(16:26):
were fairly popular with the left of Center City.
And he once he won the Democratic nomination, he ended
up. Becoming mayor.
So none of that sounds terrible to me.
In fact, that I mean, if we lookat Zoran, the the current front
runner in this election, some ofwhat he's pushing for and
getting called a communist aboutseems to be some of the same

(16:50):
stuff. So why did people dislike Bill
de Blasio so much? Well, the fundamental problem
here is that this city is ungovernable.
It is. I think it is either.
If you took the New York City police force alone, the budget
for it, I think it ranks, it would rank as either the 4th or
the 5th largest standing army inthe world.

(17:13):
Like the it's the budget is equivalent.
And that's to say nothing of theeducation costs, the
transportation costs, which are woefully underfunded, the
infrastructure costs which need a massive upgrade throughout the
city. Like there, there are.
It is a swirl of special interests and competing
interests, and all of it is undergirded by double dealing

(17:35):
cronyism and a patronage system in which every single person at
every step of the food chain needs to be either granted
certain favors or outright bought off in order to get
something done. You have to compromise the
moment you walk in the door. So de Blasio talked a great
game, and he did get a lot of itdone, the, you know, things

(17:56):
done. But ultimately his
administration was, was rife with corrupt activities like he
he, he took what was an old hospital and he gave it to a
bunch of people who were his main financial backers to do a
huge real estate deal. He he set up his own sketchy

(18:18):
nonprofit to whitewash fundraising sources.
He installed all kinds of friends and high paying donors
into sweetheart jobs in the administration and by the end it
seemed very much like he didn't want to be mayor.
Anymore like he well. The cops hated the guy, right?
The cops. Absolutely hated the cops were
on him from day one because he said he wanted to stop the stop

(18:41):
and frisk policing. Because he said he wanted to cut
overtime budgets, because he said he wanted to invest more in
community policing. The cops put a target on his
back before he even walked into Gracie Mansion.
Like I said, with a budget that big, the cops in every major
city, but particularly in New York, function as an incredibly

(19:02):
well funded gang and you have tobow to them or they will screw
you over and. And that got worse, that got
worse during that got worse during COVID, that relationship
with the cops because of all thepro protests that happened.
We talk on the show all the timeabout what happened during
summer of 2020. Just everything changed
throughout the country. But there were like massive

(19:24):
protests in New York City. There were things where NYPD
cars were like nearly running over protesters.
We all saw those videos, if you recall that.
And during that time, de Blasio is kind of in this really
contentious relationship with the man who is now the
independent candidate for mayor in this race, Andrew Cuomo, who

(19:46):
was then the governor. Right there was just to go back
to the thing about the cops, there was a famous incident in
2014 where a couple of of officers who were parked in a
car in Bed Stuy, someone drove up and executed both of them.
And it wasn't, I mean it wasn't because they were pulled over
and the and the alleged perpetrator had a gun and things
went South. This was just someone walking

(20:09):
over to cops who were sitting ina parked car and straight up
murdering them and the cops. The entire police force, but
particularly the Sergeant's Benevolent Association and the
Policeman's Benevolent Association, which are two of
the bigger cop unions, went ape shit and they blamed de Blasio's

(20:29):
anti police rhetoric for inspiring the shooter.
Anyone familiar with how the left is being treated right now
by the current regime, which is blaming that rhetoric for
Charlie Kirk's murder, will findthis kind, this line of thought
very, very, very familiar. So the cops and the unions were

(20:50):
raising holy hell. And these unions are not what
you think of it when you think of a union.
These are decidedly right wing unions.
And so there was a funeral that was held for these police
officers, everyone in their fulldress uniform.
It was a whole thing, like the force came out in massive
numbers to honor their fallen brother.

(21:11):
And at a certain point during the ceremony when de Blasio was
speaking, the unions coordinatedthis stunt in which they had all
of the officers literally turn their backs on de Blasio while
he was speaking. I think you might be able to
suss out what the metaphor is there.
So when the stuff happened around George Floyd's murder and

(21:36):
COVID, the situation was alreadyreally bad.
And then you had cops behaving badly and you had a mayor that
wasn't able to really communicate with them at all.
And you, you and he couldn't communicate also with the
protesters. He couldn't control them.
And then tell, tell me about theCuomo thing.
Thing about Andrew Cuomo is is Andrew Cuomo does not like

(21:59):
anyone in the state being more important than Andrew Cuomo.
All of these, all of the people that we're going to meet in this
story have gargantuan egos and they are incredibly petty and
they are not above, you know, using the levers of power that
they have in order to harm a rival simply because they don't
like them let and let alone to advance their own careers and

(22:23):
and standing. And so Cuomo and de Blasio were
constantly at loggerheads. The main point of contention was
the New York City subway, which again was facing a huge budget
shortfall and was absolutely in a state of ruin as it remains to
this day. And the subway system is part of

(22:44):
the MTA and the MTA is controlled by the state, not the
city. So when de Blasio needs money
to, say, repair a broken subway line, he can't just use city
funds for it. He has to go begging Albany.
And if and if Cuomo doesn't likehim and doesn't want him to have
those funds, he can stall. He can whip votes in the state

(23:08):
Senate to make sure it doesn't happen.
And Cuomo, in fact, made sure that the state Senate remained
in Republican hands during his Democratic institution while he
was governor. Wait, wait.
Wait, wait, hold on one second. No.
So, yeah, I think we need to freeze that one for people to
understand the significance, thesort of symbolism of Andrew

(23:29):
Cuomo. So this is a guy who is a very
much a Democratic Party, you know, mainstay, part of a family
that is a dynasty in the Democratic Party.
Safe, safe to say, right, Even if it is New York centered and
he is willing to help Republicans to undercut the
slightly more like progressive person he has to work with.

(23:54):
And so that I just want to just do that for everybody who's not
a New Yorker and doesn't you know, is not may get lost in the
sauce here. We're talking about something
that may be very familiar to people who are on a daily basis
saying why won't the Democratic Party do what I want?
Here we see an example of somebody who's willing to
actually help Republicans just to punch left slightly.

(24:18):
Just slightly. Left correct that is exactly
what happened. It's and and Cuomo's, you know,
Cuomo's politics as we'll see with Eric Adams, as we'll see
with Curtis Liwa, He he doesn't have an ideology other than
people should be paying more attention and listening to
Andrew Cuomo. So it allows for a certain

(24:38):
amount of flexibility in that you can hand over institutional
power to your supposed rivals ifin this instance, it benefits
you. Because Andrew Cuomo doesn't
really believe in anything otherthan Andrew Cuomo should be
governor and later, Andrew Cuomoshould be president.
And today Andrew Cuomo should bemayor for some reason.

(25:00):
Now I just want to say that one of the things that he did was
restrict the flow of money for repairs for the subway.
Is that the? Is that the basic thing or sort
of? Yeah, it was budgetary concerns.
The subway was. Sort of war over the So he had,
for some reason, there's some sort of bizarre rule that the
governor has control over. The, the, the MTA is, is part of

(25:23):
the, is part of the, the, is part of the, the transportation
system is under statewide control and that includes the,
the New York City subway. So it's funding comes from New
York State, not the city itself.So basically New Yorkers are
suffering. I remember 2017.
I think you have put that in theshow Doc.

(25:44):
I remember I was going to Newsweek at that time and I
would just be going to work and from Jackson Heights and I would
be underground. I would get on the seven train.
I would whatever part we get underground and everything would
stop for half an hour and it'd be like 100 people standing with
no with this thing just in the dark for 1/2 an hour and you're
like, Oh my God, like I hope like someone doesn't just take a

(26:08):
crap in the middle of the subwayor I hope someone doesn't like
try to touch me or some. It was just like the most insane
stuff we were dealing with. Let's.
Be clear about this. The second, the big project that
that Zaron Mamdani is talking about is building what's called
the 2nd Ave. Subway.
Because there's there's very little subway track like you, if
you live on the Upper East Side and you want to go South or

(26:31):
north, for example, there's onlyone train line that serves you.
So there are a lot of people living on the Upper East Side
and both above it and below it. But there are no train lines
there. So for years people have said,
hey, 2nd Ave. we should put a subway line there.
They started talking about that in the 1960s and it hasn't

(26:51):
gotten built yet. So the subway.
Just one other thing, one other thing, just so we know, just so
we're clear, compared to every other international city, places
like London, France, let alone Tokyo or Seoul, the New York
City is so outdated and in a state of disrepair, it is a
laughable, it is a shame. It is a 100 year old transit

(27:16):
system for the greatest city in America.
There are parts of it that are still running on vacuum tubes
more or less. And the reason why it breaks
down is because it has been needof an upgrade for literally a
century. And why hasn't it happened?
Well, how do you get to CarnegieHall practice?
That's why it hasn't happened, because it's the city it's been

(27:38):
run by. Is is unmanageable?
So the short of it one more time, the short of it is people
are blaming de Blasio because it's New York City, correct?
And Cuomo is relishing in not helping him even a little bit.
Yes, because it harms his. Rifle OK, let's get to Eric
Adams. Eric Adams is the current mayor

(27:59):
of New York City, trenched in swag fits and trips for days.
But, but I, no, I think he's kind of, I, I think the way to
understand how somebody like Sohan Mamdani made it this far.
Eric Adams has been involved in some pretty insane corruption.

(28:22):
I, I know some of it off the topof my head.
I, I knew he, I guess he took a bunch of money from Turkey and
then some really like low rank corruption too.
It doesn't seem like he's a particularly expensive guy to
buy off. I've seen like a million clips
of him saying just insane shit, genuinely hilarious.

(28:46):
And sometimes you know, Eric Adams, he's like a black working
class dude. But I'm sorry, but like every
time I see a clip of him speaking, it just sounds like
he's doing a a Connor O'Malley bit.
The one that comes to mind is the one we're call Connor
O'Malley is drinking Listerine and spitting it back into a jug

(29:07):
and giving it to Wall Street brokers as Powerade to get the
the stock market back up. So in turmoil, that's why I come
down here, Wall Street and I'm handing out free homemade
Powerade to all the stockbrokersI made.
I made some Powerade so that they can get the stocks up.
We got to get this shit up. We can't be fucking around.
It's going to be fucking something else.
It is a fucking new day. That's I, I came down here, I

(29:27):
said I'm making homemade Powerade out to all the
stockbrokers. This is this green water.
I mean, it's, it's not. I feel like it's.
Not no. It's it's, it's tamer.
I'm sorry. That is not as tame as some of
the things Eric Adams has done. That pales in comparison to the
time he was talking about new ways to deal with New York

(29:48):
City's rat problem and ended thepress conference with Ted,
animal rights activists around by showing everyone the dead
rats that he had killed. Yeah, it doesn't seem like like
a grifter or, you know, a backdoor deal that Eric Adams is
not interested in. He's been a crypto guy.
He's been, I mean, just anything.

(30:10):
And didn't he get pardoned by Trump, too?
It's like he got. I just want to say, I just want
to say at press time, he's stillthe mayor baby.
Yeah. So who?
Who, who? Who the hell is this guy?
Who? The hell is Eric Adams?
That is a long story, but I willtry to get to it.
So Eric Adams. We just we just extended the
runtime of this episode by two hours.

(30:32):
So, you know, Eric Adams had what what he described.
And again, we're taking Eric Adams word for it, which is
never a good thing. But generally, I think this part
of his life is true. He grew up raised by a single
mom. He has one of six kids.
It was he was living under economic precarity the entire
time. He says he and his brothers
would often bring trash bags filled with all of their clothes

(30:55):
to school because they never knew if when he when the bell
sounded and he went home if theywere going to be evicted.
And growing up, he did have a a few run insurance with law
enforcement. And he famously tells his story
about how when he was 15 years old that he and his brother were
breaking and entering into a home.
And he got busted by the cops and brought in for questioning.

(31:17):
And during the questioning, he says that the cops repeatedly
kicked him in the ribs and worked him over in in order to
drag a confession out of him. There have been multiple
different versions of this storythat Adams has told.
And he tends to embellish and lie in a way that would make
Donald Trump proud. But I think the basic contours
of it are true. But he he tells this story as a

(31:39):
way of saying, well, This is whyI decided to become a cop, that
the experience of both committing this minor offense
and then getting brutalized by the police steered him towards
left of center progressive politics and specifically how
black men in particular often get railroaded by the criminal
justice system. So he decided that the best way

(32:02):
to right these wrongs is to fix the system from within.
He becomes a police officer. And from 1984 to 2006, he moves
fairly steadily up the ranks andhe gets a lot of attention for
being what looks to be a progressive cop, even if that is

(32:22):
an oxymoron and you know it. There, there's some real teeth
to this advocacy here. He's, you know, he's he sued the
NYPD for jailing protesters. He worked with the Civilian
Complaint Review Board, which isan oversight board that covers
cop offenses, to actually dole out real punishments to cops who
violate civil rights. He files a, you know, an amicus

(32:44):
brief to support Muslims who were being surveilled by the
NYPD. And it like his the kind of
press he was getting for those two decades, was real enough
that the Village Voice in fact endorsed him to be the police
commissioner in 2002. I did not know that.
Yeah, Village Voice gave him. The Village Voice wanted him to

(33:06):
be the police commissioner back when the Village Voice still
existed. And he realizes, though, he, you
know, a progressive cop is not going to actually be police
commissioner ever. So he decides for a career
change, and he's got enough of AQ rating to believe that he can
go into politics. And he's right.

(33:28):
And again, he moves up the ranksfairly quickly.
He's, you know, a state senator He's and he's talking about,
again, cop adjacent issues, safety, crime prevention,
community policing. And he gets selected borough
president in Brooklyn and he talks more about jobs and
housing. And but now that Eric Adams is
not just appearing at press conferences and filing amicus

(33:49):
briefs, we get to learn more about Eric Adams the human
being, and how colossally fucking weird he is.
Yes, I just need to do this realquick.
New York City is the Paris of America.
New York City is the Tokyo of America.
New York City is the Mariah Carey's glitter of America.

(34:10):
New York City is the Paul Verhoeven Showgirls of America.
That's my that's my Eric Adams and I I run more here for you,
Bob, which is New York City is the Cosby's Sporting Goods of
America. That's that's maybe, maybe 1
listener knows what that is anyway.
So what happens? He's elected to state Senate and

(34:31):
we start to find out that this guy is a little wacky.
OK, so but. Yet not so wacky that he was
eventually elected there, but anyway.
All right, so one of the first big things that Eric Adams does
to see is he gets really into the respectability politics of
the time. And his one of his big issues
then was why are the black men'spants hanging around their

(34:56):
ankles? That's bad.
So he actually puts up. AI believe that the bill the
Bill Cosby. The Bill Cosby the Bill Cosby
politics yes and his belief is not just this is silly.
Why why are your pants down there.
His belief is is that black men are being held back in society
because they look at them with the pants there and they think

(35:18):
that's a no good Nick. He'll never amount to anything.
I won't hire him for this job. That literally that the lack of
that the that any economic gap can be fixed as long as pants
are worn around the waist. So he puts up billboards in the
city that have pictures of men'sbutts on them, and the sign on

(35:39):
the Billboard says we're better than this.
Stop the sag. Stop the sag.
Stop the sag. I'm storming the capital.
We have to stop the sagging. Pants and and he gets asked
like, like, you know, the Gothamist, which is a New York
City publication that's still around, asks him like, really?

(36:01):
And his response is that he believes that sagging pants are
the first step in a slippery slope to a criminal future.
He also starts to really lean into his various catchphrases
and, and, and the one that you may be with familiar with if you
spend any time online is let thehaters be your waiters at the

(36:23):
table of success. And you can go from being a
dishwasher to owning a restaurant.
You can go from being a person who has dyslexic and become the
mayor as long as you dream, as long as you fight for what you
think is right, this country will become the country we want

(36:44):
it to be. And in the process, there's
going to be a lot of people who will hate you.
All I can say, have your haters become your waiters when you sit
down at the table. Look, success.
Thank you. I'm sorry, that's so good.
If we if when we do a live show,Jared, I want to get hyped to
that before I go out. Yeah, yeah.
We'll play that in the green room.

(37:05):
Yes, we will. It's, it's really something he,
he, he gives it and he's giving this speech.
It's important to note at a college graduation, that's how
he's inspiring the youth of America by by saying that
everyone's going to hate you andyou should overcome that and
make those people who doubted you suffer.
That's his advice to young graduates.

(37:26):
He did this at multiple college graduation speeches.
A note about the dyslexia thing that Eric Adams mentioned.
Eric Adams is himself dyslexic, but he thinks he cured it, and
he cured it with his vegan diet.The vegan diet becomes very
important to Eric Adams. And I think I just want to say
up front, there's nothing wrong with the vegan diet.
There are many benefits to it. And if I were a more moral

(37:47):
person, I would probably adopt one myself.
But I'm not because I like steak.
But Eric Adams believes that thevegan diet has magic powers.
He believes in a lot of different kinds of magic.
This is one of them. He believes that adopting this
vegan diet not only cured his dyslexia, it's healed his
diabetes, his vision problems, his nerve damage that he has had

(38:09):
and other metabolic issues. And he believe, and he says,
like one quote he gave us, that I became a vegan.
And within three weeks, his vision cleared up and there's
three months. Yeah, OK.
Yeah, and then three months as A1C levels dropped and the Ting,
the the neuropathies in his feet, in his hands and feet,
they vanished. He also by the way, goes on on

(38:29):
on a ton of mystical woo woo RFKtype podcasts from 2018 to 2021
before he's elected with names like Plant Strong is one of them
the podcast that he went on and the other podcast is called
Spiritual. Shit, yeah, I like that.

(38:52):
We got to be careful here. My wife's vegan so I.
I again. She's she, she, she's going to
listen to this and be like, I don't know, it sounds good to
me. He basically thinks the vegan,
like they made him vegan Superman.
If you enjoyed the movie Scott Pilgrim, he thinks he's one of
the vegan superheroes, basicallyis what he thinks of himself.

(39:13):
And the best part about it is he's not a vegan.
He does not maintain a vegan diet.
There are an incredible number. There is an incredible number of
photos of him dining at various New York hotspots, often with
mobsters and other criminal figures.
I think you better join there. Yeah.

(39:33):
Yeah, yeah. Enjoying a delicious plate of
chicken or fish. OK, I just need.
To can I just interject here? OK, Yeah, like I'm a
pescatarian, like, and and like it's something you have to walk
around with. It's kind of like the lamest of
all the diets because it's like,it's sort of like you're not a
vegetarian even you're not a vegan.

(39:56):
It's like you're it's like, oh, but he eats fish.
Like, OK, I'm walking around wearing this all the time, OK, I
know I eat fish. I know I'm not like, you know,
all the way vegan or something like that.
And I know that I like butter. OK, so I do that.
But like, just tell the truth about what you are, man.
You can't walk around. You can't fuck around and be
like, I'm vegan and just eat sushi.

(40:16):
You can't do that. It's a.
Class. It's stolen valor.
It's stolen. It's.
It's one it's it's it's a turn from here is something that
would be healthier to actually know.
This is the this we can this thebeing a vegan gives you mutant
powers like Wolverine and then it being a total lie.
That's that's that's the basic. If you want to understand Eric

(40:40):
Adams, you've got everything right there.
As soon as this guy is no longerin any degree of power, he's
going to be. He's so cool.
Like he's one of the, he's like one of the funniest fucking guys
I've ever that has ever come across. 5th.
Chair on the view. Across my news feed.
I I would have no problem with Eric Adams and Donald Trump for
that matter, having a show on New York 1 where they just talk

(41:02):
about like what's on what's on Page Six of the New York.
I don't know. That would be great, actually.
I know what you're saying, but Idon't know if I want to see
Donald Trump. OK, he can.
He can do it from his cell in the Hank, all right.
He can record. We'll we'll say he's a different
animal. OK, yeah.
But this is, I think it's important to note that this is a

(41:24):
very sort of Trump like behaviorwhich he he will sort of grab at
a smattering of facts, not really understand the issue, but
then use it to inflate himself. Like, the basic idea that Eric
Adams has had as mayor is that Eric Adams's mere presence will
solve the problem, and people should be paying more attention
to Eric Adams. He doesn't really have ideas how

(41:45):
to fix things other than everyone should do what Eric
Adams does, one of which is living a vegan lifestyle.
But in any case, there was more weirdness before he actually
gets elected. Yeah, I feel like the video I've
seen go around a lot is where Eric Adams is trying to give

(42:05):
parents advice on how to search their child's belongings for
guns and cocaine. What's the back story for that
video? Because I've seen it like
extracted from context, but thisis and it's very funny out of
context, but I don't. Know it's a there's a there's a
wonderful vice story which we can link to where they talked to

(42:26):
the camera person who actually filmed it.
This was entirely an Eric Adams thing.
A why he felt it was important to put this PSA out is not not
entirely clear, but he managed to sort of get city funds
dedicated to filming it. There was no script.
The camera person said like theyjust dragged a bunch of people
who they hired to this home and said, OK, turn the camera on.

(42:49):
And So what happens is, and if you've seen it, it's I, I really
recommend that everyone watch the whole thing.
It is delightful. Eric Adams sort of appears in
what appears the sort of an upper middle class apartment in
a in a pink child's bedroom. And he walks parents how to
locate hidden items there like jewelry boxes or a dollhouse and

(43:13):
says that guns and crack pipes and bullets might be hitting in
the back of them. It's like he he picks up a kids
backpack, which he, by the way, describes as a popular knapsack
with many different locations, and pulls a crack pipe out of
it. He takes a teddy bear and like,
fishes a gun out of the back. I could come up with anything

(43:35):
like this this. Is no, this is.
This is so. Human.
It's so raw. It is so Adams.
We can't play the video but the audio is so good.
It's like, here's a book. What if a kid carved all the
pages out and used it to hide their cocaine?
And there's this very sort of strange, haunting soundtrack.
It's I I, I love it it with all of my heart.

(43:56):
You should always when your child bring in his popular
knapsack with many different locations, look through it to
see what exactly is your child carrying in addition to a book.
Something simple as a crack pipe, something simple as a as a
baby doll could be just a baby doll, but also it could be a
place where you can secrete or hide drugs.

(44:17):
Run your hands over the pillows and see if you feel anything
that's unusual. Like a pillow like this with a
button is a perfect invitation to hide something.
And I've felt something bumpy. I will reach in, see what it is.
Just look and see what's inside your bookcases.
It could be more than just books.
Perfect place to hide cocaine. It's like the the part about it

(44:42):
that he just sort of he's just, he walked in and he said turn
the cameras on. I got this and started riffing
and. Yeah, it has.
It has a straight from the Dome feel that only Adams can really
do. And and that this is what he
really believes a child's bedroom contains in terms of
contraband that kids are are areusing like a Teddy Ruxpin to

(45:04):
hide AA kilo. So how did this guy get elected?
That's what I want to know. It's like, OK, just just freeze
we. We.
Like we're hearing this stuff. We, we, we've heard a couple
audio clips so far. I'm open minded to this.
I mean, is it just a funny in the way that Trump is funny?
Is it like it just he was he's funny or is it kind of like that

(45:24):
there was a weak field because Ithat that was the other thing I
had heard like it, you know, around that time that there was
just, there were not many great candidates.
Well, well, Michael, let's turn the clock all the way back to
the halcyon years of 2020. I'm not sure if you recalled
what happened that year, but there was a bit of a sniffle
going around for the entire country.
And it was a strange time to be a New Yorker.

(45:46):
I kid. Of course you were living here.
I was living here, Jared is was in the land of big shoulders
fending off gusty winds. But Mike and I were here in New
York, and there was a legitimatefear that New York was going to
finally die. People have predicted the death
of New York on a number of different occasions, after 911,

(46:07):
during the financial crisis of the 70s, but this time they
thought it might stick. There were a lot of very wealthy
people who have second homes outside the city in upstate New
York and various other pastoral regions.
And every wealthy New Yorker whocould go to said second home
did. Nobody knew what businesses

(46:29):
would be left. Nobody knew if all these massive
offices in the city would end upbeing empty once people started
working from home. Like nobody, like really there
was a real fear that the city was going to die.
And who wants to be known as thelast mayor of New York City?
So the field itself of people running in both 2020 and and

(46:50):
even into 2021 when the vaccine came about was not what you
would call your top tier candidates.
No one seemed to want the job. I, I personally voted for Maya
Wiley. Catherine Garcia would have made
a fine mayor, both of whom were former New York City
representatives, but nobody knewwho they were.

(47:11):
So Eric Adams sort of emerged from this very, very, very
shallow pond of candidates and he kept mostly the weirdness
under control during the campaign.
Why he searched to the head. Well, he had a cut.
He was, in addition to all the weirdness, Eric Adams was A and

(47:32):
is a highly skilled political operator.
He knows how to seek out a pet like power centers.
He knows how to build political alliances.
He absolutely knows how to get people paid who support him and
how to extract funds when necessary.
Like he didn't. It's not just like this clown
showed up and everyone said that's really funny, let's make

(47:54):
him mayor like we did the president.
It's that Eric Adams is a politician.
I am not downplaying his skills whatsoever.
And by the time he was Brooklyn,Brooklyn borough president, for
those who don't know, is it one of the main powers, like
stepping stones to the mayoralty?
Like he was really the top candidate even going into it,

(48:15):
weird things did still happen during the campaign.
Like, for example, he really wasn't living in New York City
when he wanted to be mayor of New York City.
He was living in Fort Lee, NJ. But he lied and they said, no,
I, I live in Bed Stuy. I have AI have a home in Bed
Stuy. He does own a property in Bed
Stuy. His son lives there.

(48:36):
But he said he insisted, no, no,no, I don't live in New Jersey.
I live in Bed Stuy again and again.
He went to the point of bringinga whole bunch of reporters to
hit this Bed Stuy residence and it was so clearly where his son
was living and that he had never, this was like the first
time he had stepped foot there. But he just leaned into
insisting I I'm sorry, I don't care.

(48:59):
It's true. It's a bald faced lie but it's
true. He also had this weird habit of
of like he would park directly on the sidewalk a couple of
times. Wait, you mean on the physical
sidewalk? On the physical sidewalk, he
would just drive. Like when he was coming into
work, he would just drive his car on the sidewalk and leave.

(49:20):
He also sort of he also apparently was sleeping in his
Brooklyn Borough President office and not at the Brooklyn
Place or the Fort Lee Place ever.
He sort of did that as a matter of habit to show how hard he was
working. Like, look, I have to sleep in
my office. But it was really weird.
Like he was afraid of going home.
Like all of this strangeness sort of kept popping up.

(49:41):
But he was the best known for all these reasons candidate and
in addition to having some real political power centers and the
ability to get out the vote madehim his.
His politics stopped being his left of center by the time he
ran for mayor. He definitely was.

(50:01):
He went for the centrist vote. So I want to just say you have
some things in your notes here that I just want to go through.
You have him referring to himself as Eric O Adams.
Yes. Like to to get the Irish to get
the Irish vote on Saint Patrick's Day.
Correct. It's honestly that's good
politics, I think. I'm not even kidding.

(50:24):
I think that's pretty funny froma black dude.
Then he wore. You're missing the best part of
these notes though, which is that he downed 2 beers at an
Irish pub in Midtown before noonon Saint Patrick's Day and then
said I'm Erica Adams. That's nice.
OK, so then he I also, I, I alsosee here and I've seen this

(50:46):
photograph that he wore a bracelet that said hustle while
at the Wailing Wall, which is a form of hustle.
I, I think I think we could agree and you have here like we
know about the cryptocurrency, put sweet potatoes in pasta.
What the what the fuck is what? It's part of his.
It's part. It's like the vibrations and the

(51:06):
Mystic energy provided by his vegan diet, which he literally
talks about, led him to say sweet potatoes in pasta.
Anyway, and he never goes to sleep and and I looked into
that, I looked into the link that you left there and it says
that he he only sleeps 4 hours. Just one other thing I we have

(51:27):
to talk about that's in these notes.
He was asked about what his favorite rock show was that he
ever attended, you know, live music, big part of New York City
life, right? And he said it was a Curtis
Mayfield concert, right? But not just any Curtis Mayfield
concert. What was that?

(51:48):
Bob Well, for those unfamiliar, the R&B musician Curtis Mayfield
had a concert in 1990 in Brooklyn and he was paralyzed
because a lighting unit like it was the middle of a rainstorm.
They kept going with the concertand a lighting grid above Curtis

(52:09):
Mayfield's head came dislodged and landed on him and paralyzed
him. That's like, and like, it was,
it was a horrific injury, like a12 year, like 6 other people
were hurt. A 12 year old girl was one of
them. And he stopped like once.
After that injury, Curtis Mayfield couldn't play mute like
the guitar anymore. And so they asked him during the

(52:31):
campaign like, well, what's yourfavorite rock show?
And it's the kind of fluff question that a mayoral
candidate will get. And it's a chance for them to,
you know, reveal something interesting or cool about
themselves or whatever. And he says the Curtis Mayfield
concert and the thing about thatconcert is Curtis made the like
the lighting unit fell on him before he played a song.

(52:52):
So Eric Adams's favorite concertis 1 where no music happened and
a guy got paralyzed. Which leads, which leads me to
think, did some advisor tell himto like Curtis Mayfield and
that's the one that he came up with?
Or the the even weirder possibility with which Eric
Adams you cannot discount, whichis that Eric Adams liked the

(53:14):
fact that it only lasted for a few seconds, there was no music,
and a 12 year old girl got hurt real bad.
That's within the realm of possibility.
So he won. Yeah, yeah, he won the election.
And it wasn't just that, but thepundit class of, you know, our

(53:37):
political media began talking about Eric Adams as if he was
the future of the Democratic Party.
I'm going to read this very wellaged 2022 tweet from Nate
Silver. It's probably foolish to think a
New York City mayor will successfully translate them to
being a national political figure, but I still think Eric

(53:59):
Adams would be in my top five for who will replace the next
Democratic presidential nominee after Joe Biden.
So. So that nickel strikes again.
But again, I think that this is important for the overall
conversation just because it is representative of the Democratic
Party establishment and the way they think of which Nate Silver

(54:20):
is sort of a part. I mean, I, I assume that he
doesn't think he's partisan whenhe's had some reactionary takes
as well. But I mean, the fact that he
looked at Eric Adams two years after that like election and was
like, this guy is the potential future face of the party.
All right. It's important.

(54:41):
I do think it's if you want to understand why say, Hakeem
Jeffries took until today when we're recording this to endorse
Mom Donny, or why a so much of the Democratic establishment has
refused to get behind Mom Donny.Or why we why Chuck Schumer is
still New York Senator, Or why was the Democrats aren't

(55:03):
mounting a more vigorous opposition to the fascist regime
in place. The endorsement of Eric Adams is
a bit of a skeleton key because the way that the pundit class
looks at him and says, well, he's a person of color, that's
good for Democrats. Check.
Well, he's absolutely pro cop. And all of the lefty bona fides,
by the way, that he built up while he was both a policeman

(55:24):
and then a state senator and a borough president were dumped by
the time he ran for president. But he want he has brought back
some of the more extreme policing in New York City.
He was involved with bringing back the street crimes unit,
which were responsible for the death of Amadou Diallo.
They were a violent undercover police unit, which by the way,

(55:44):
Eric Adams made a whole bunch ofnoise like whipping into the
Police Department for Diallo's shooting.
And yet now he brought back the very unit that killed that that
harmed him. Eric Adams was absolutely like
pro cop, pro law and order. He railed against critical race
theory during the 2021 election.He has taken like extreme anti

(56:08):
trans stances at the same time like he ran on what would be
considered center right politics.
So in the pundit class they're like well we need a Democrat.
Well he's black so that's close enough.
Well we need one who actually runs on conservative policies, a
Republican who doesn't call themselves a Republican.
Therefore this guy is the future.

(56:28):
And if you want to know why the Democratic like party as a whole
is so aging and sclerotic and ineffectual and refusing to
resist Trump, it's because the actual power centers in the
party don't want to be an actualleft wing party, which is why
they go around endorsing Eric Adams.
I I think that dynamic is reallysummarized well in this skeet,

(56:53):
this blue sky post from Brendel.Eric Adams is amazing because
when he won, every media person was leaping over each other to
go, this is the normal sane leadership that the political
left doesn't understand normal sane Americans crave.
And then every day since that, Eric Adams has been like,

(57:13):
leprechauns are real and I'm going to cook one.
I love that shout. Shout out to Brendel.
Thank you for that skeet from 2023.
We need to talk about how these scandals give birth to Mum
Donnie. Really.
Because if not for the scandals,you know Adams would have been

(57:33):
running probably on the Democratic ticket.
Is that safe to say yes, if not for that, it's hard to say
because he's really his reign was only scandals.
So it's hard to it really actually there are very little,
very little non scandal stuff going on.
It was almost just scandals. So.
Yeah, let's talk about what got Eric Adams in trouble, which is

(57:56):
that he has never met a payout or a grift or a bribe that he
would not take. Like in context, all New York
City mayors do corrupt stuff. deBlasio did it.
Bloomberg, it was a little bit less, but you would still see it
was still rife. Absolutely.
Giuliani going all the way back,you can go back to Ed Koch.

(58:18):
They were all wracked with corruption scandals because the
city is, it's still at its heart, a spoil system and a
patronage system. But Eric Adams blows them out of
the water in terms of if you want to talk scandals over
replacement average. He is the Shohei Otani of New
York City scandal mayors. Pretty much every senior

(58:40):
official in his in in in his staff has had to like has been
caught up in this taking money for favoritism like laundering
cash for construction jobs felt like the feds seized phone
warrants and and and and and arrested all that his chief
fixer who was a mobbed at Brooklyn power brokers is it's

(59:00):
been recorded trying to help outmafia buddies with like trucking
licenses. Every single aspect of Eric
Adams's governance revolves a pay off to a friend or a pay off
to Eric Adams or it's it's it's truly imaginable.
The thing that got him actually indicted by the feds is starting
when he was Brooklyn borough president, continuing through
the campaign and who knows how long.

(59:23):
Adams was receiving all these perks from Turkey from the
Turkish government. That includes like international
travel on Turkish Airlines, freehotels, luxury rooms, laundered
campaign officials. And in return for that, he put
the screws to a couple of city officials to get a Turkish

(59:43):
government affiliated building approved despite serious fire
safety concerns. Nice.
Yeah, yeah. The the the joke with the the
Turkish businessman thing is that like, oh, Eric Adams is
flying from New York to Raleigh,NC Well, buddy, that plane stops
in Istanbul. Yeah, the the IT makes it makes

(01:00:05):
the Eric Adams line. New York is the Istanbul of
America like hit different, you know what I mean?
It it was it. And and, you know, and that
includes, you know, donors to his campaign from illegal
foreign sources like he was running the the enterprise is
corrupt from top to bottom. Any other New York City mayor
would have quit on the spot. Eric Adams didn't.

(01:00:30):
Why did Eric Adams not immediately resign?
Well, when the Southern Districtof New York indicted Eric Adams,
in comes the Trump administration.
And Eric Adams has, throughout his tenure made it clear that he
is not happy with the fact that there are migrants in New York
City. Whether that's refugees who are
fleeing or just other undocumented immigrants, Eric

(01:00:51):
Adams is against them being here.
He is absolutely 100% on Trump'sside.
And in January and February of 2025, when it became clear that
there would be ICE raids and other immigration efforts by the
Stasi coming into New York City,the Trump administration very
much wanted Eric Adams to still be the mayor so that they could

(01:01:14):
happen without too much friction.
So the Trump administration, they intervened with the
department like the Trump administration, DOJ decided that
the case needs to be dropped andthey literally told the judge in
the filing that the prosecution was interfering with Eric Adams
ability to govern New York effectively, specifically

(01:01:36):
immigration enforcement. The TLDR is that the charges
were made to go away as long as Adams let ICE run rampant
through the city and the chargeswere dropped.
Career prosecutors in the Southern District resigned on
Mass rather than go ahead. With this so blatantly obvious
quid pro quo it is staggering that they all quit their jobs.

(01:01:59):
E-mail Bove, who is now been installed with a lifetime
federal judgeship, was the one who had to personally sign off
on this. It got so bad.
Without Googling it, do we think?
How do we think Mom Donnie feelsabout ice?
It's very clear, negative. It's a little, it's a little
different. But I, I, I point that out
because because this like, you know, this administration as as

(01:02:24):
mayor really paved the way for something, you know, much more
radical to poke through, I think.
Or so, you know, I don't, I don't think Mamdani is actually
very radical. We'll talk about this, you know,
more towards the end. But in in this reactionary
environment he he's in, he certainly feels like something.
And I feel like a lot of the things that you mentioned right

(01:02:46):
now about the corruption and hisideas for the city feel like
they are sort of interrelated with Adam's tenure, his his
really disgraced tenure. Everybody kind of is screwing
around after Trump aligns himself with Adams.
And it's very clear that his histenure as mayor is going to end

(01:03:08):
and he's not going to be able torun again.
And he is just, you know, just treading water.
And Andrew Cuomo enters the race, and he himself is no
stranger to scandal. Again, it's strange that when I
talk about things that happened five years ago, it feels like
I'm talking about ancient times.But five years ago during during

(01:03:31):
COVID, there was a real belief that Andrew Cuomo could be
president. And it largely had to do with
what he said during during COVID, not what he did during
COVID. But really what he said during
COVID and what he was doing is as well.
Trump was giving these daily briefings that were talking
about the best ways to chug bleach and inject yourself with

(01:03:55):
light rays. Andrew Cuomo was achieving
baseline good governance by letting citizens know, like, OK,
here are the hospitals that are open.
Here's what you do about XY and Z.
Here are the ways the city can help you.
Here are the most recent totals.He was doing the job of letting
people know in New York State what's what.
And people online who were scared and desperate suddenly

(01:04:18):
began to say, like, look at this, this is the guy who can
save us. Here is a real challenge to
Trump. And look, he's competent and
he's a brawler, and he's not willing to take any guff.
We love Andrew Cuomo. The term Cuomo sexuals for these
people was something that was real.
I remember that this was like a,this was like a resistance Lib

(01:04:41):
tier, Oh yeah thing. Homosexuals.
He's he's, he's kind of old, oldguy, which is doesn't mean I, I,
you know, give it to the old guys.
I have no problem for people finding old guys hot.
So there's no issue with that, just.
Just ask Olivia Nussy, Ricochet shot.

(01:05:02):
Yeah, Catching Fire. The new deputy something editor
at Vanity Fair. Let's not talk about her, but
yeah, but he there's something kind of gross and oily slimy
look yeah, I didn't want to say it.
I didn't want to do some anti Italian let's.
Let's say lugubrious. Lugubrious.

(01:05:22):
Can we do that? Is that fair?
But he's there's something like and I just what he would do
these covic things, he'd be likelike, so we're putting in place
this thing and you know, the theCuomo sexual thing was just so
disgusting to me when I would whatever.
People, people will in any any port in the storm, man, it was

(01:05:42):
we were looking for a lifeline. Now any little quote.
That was like really doing well,he wrote A.
Book about how he handled COVID.And then immediately they found
out. Immediately he became killed
that bunch. Killed Senior.
Citizens. Well, what happened exactly?
They a bunch of senior citizens.What happened is, is that when
senior like senior living centers were, as you would

(01:06:04):
expect, really death traps during COVID because you have a
population that is already immunocompromised and far more
susceptible to the impacts of COVID and you are keeping them
all in an enclosed place. And if you've ever put you have
a relative who is in an assistedliving space or you realize that

(01:06:27):
things like the HVAC system aren't going to be
state-of-the-art. And the sanitary conditions are
also often not going to be greatunless you are paying hundreds
of thousands of dollars a year for these institutions.
They really were death traps. And what Andrew Cuomo did is he
he kept the senior citizens all living in these places.

(01:06:49):
And by some accounts, there was something like like at least one
study estimated that I believe in fact checked me on this, that
there were 16,000 senior citizens who who died during
COVID who probably would not have if they were allowed to not
be concentrated in a self-contained COVID chamber

(01:07:10):
during COVID. Like the way that like he did
not actually do a good job of protecting New Yorkers from
COVID. Whether someone else could do a
better job given the conditions on the ground, that is a larger
question. And if you want to call it a
eugenics based decision to save the healthy by sacrificing the

(01:07:31):
young, you can do that. And we can sort of debate the
ethics of that another time. But it turns out he badly
mismanaged New York, the New York State during COVID.
What also came out shortly thereafter, Speaking of
homosexuals, is the 13 women accused Andrew Cuomo of various
sexual harassment charges of groping, unwanted touching,

(01:07:53):
unwanted comments, and basicallybeing sort of leering and oily
and inappropriate with female staffers.
And wasn't there something like the state of New York paid the
attorney fees to battle that or something?
Mike and I's taxes paid for Andrew Cuomo's attorneys when he
defended himself against these sexual harassment allegations.

(01:08:15):
I mean. Two hundreds of thousands of
dollars. You know, like my taxes are now
going to like fucking alligator Alcatraz.
So it's like what, you know, in for a penny, in for a pound,
right? As well as the genocide of, of,
you know, people who, Yeah. But now your New York State
taxes are not going to alligatorAlcatraz.

(01:08:35):
Let's be clear. I mean, but it I, I, yeah, true.
But I'm just saying like, I mean, things are so bad that
I've kind of, you know, I, I just memory hold this stuff.
Another point I just want to point and interject here is
again, this legacy of corruptionthat you have here.
The Democratic Party establishment universally backed

(01:08:58):
Andrew Cuomo in the primary against Mamdani.
Is that right? I mean, it's like, almost
universally. But nobody stood up.
And they're like, hey, that was a pretty shitty way to go out as
governor. Maybe we should try some.
Maybe we should try someone else.
Oh yeah. Well, the, the look again, when
the, when the mayor, when, when the, when the campaign started,

(01:09:19):
Cuomo had name recognition. And this was I, I, I skated
this. So I'm on the record here.
When the first poll started emerging, Cuomo had I think
close to, if not 50% of the votein a fairly wide field, like he
was the hands on favorite. And I said this is just name
recognition and a point here. You know, people talk about New

(01:09:43):
York as if it's this, you know, especially if you're on the
right, you know, it's it's a place that's filled with with
Antifa communists and blue haired baristas, all of whom are
raging lefties, that it's this incredibly like, you know,
progressive city. And that's not really true.
There's an old line that New York City is the place where

(01:10:03):
Republicans get to pretend to beDemocrats.
That's what New York City is like.
If you look at the wealth centers of New York City, they
may vote Democratic, but they are far more small C
conservative than you might imagine.
And that was the Andrew Cuomo voting bloc is the wealthy and
the powerful and the white neighborhoods in New York.

(01:10:25):
I am recording this right now from the Upper West Side and
this part, this district voted for Cuomo in the primary,
largely because of Israel, but we'll get there in a second.
But Cuomo was not considered a lock by any means because of the
fact that he had these scandals and a lot of people resented

(01:10:46):
him, I think, for the way he went out and.
Yeah, yeah. The support was very broad, but
it was also very shallow. Like I said, I think it was just
the fact that, oh, Andrew Cuomo,that's a name.
I know that his dad was the governor.
I know who Andrew Cuomo is. He was the governor.
Andrew Cuomo is, is that's a guy.
I will vote for that guy. But once the campaign started,

(01:11:09):
it became very clear that AndrewCuomo did not seem to have an
idea about why he wanted to be mayor of New York City.
He did not seem to particularly like New York City.
And if we go back about 20 minutes ago, you'll recall,
Andrew Cuomo screwed over New York City repeatedly as
governor. He had no policy, like
initiatives or ideas or platformto speak of other than Andrew

(01:11:33):
Cuomo should be the mayor of NewYork City because this is my
political comeback. And so that turned people off
pretty quickly. Yeah, and, and it, and it also
made brought out a lot of peoplewho wanted to challenge him
because they realized that a lotof people wouldn't like him.
So one of those guys is a character, is a small player in
this, but a lot has grown, people have grown very

(01:11:55):
affectionate towards him, I think.
And that's Brad Lander. Two decades ago, Brad Lander
would be the front runner for mayor in New York City.
He's he's a, he is again, an effective City Council person,
lefty bona fides. He is at least more progressive
on on Israel, Palestine, which again, it's that's not an issue

(01:12:16):
that you would think would be forefront in the New York City
mayoral campaign, but it was absolutely the center of this.
One, yes, we're going to talk about that.
And I should point out, of course, Lander's Jewish and it I
will say as an Arab, very nice. When, when you got that kind of
discourse from Jews and and Muslims and stuff like that, I
was, I, I like to see it betweenhim and Mumdani.

(01:12:37):
Yeah, yeah, there's not a lot ofdaylight between Lander and
Mumdani as actual in terms of a policy platform.
It's just that Mumdani is is really good at social media and
and Mumdani more than anything, he comes across like a real
human being and that's a rarity in the political sphere these
days. Yeah, so I think let's let's

(01:12:58):
talk about Mumdani himself. He's fairly telegenic, not
necessarily in a conventional way.
He's a person of color. He's got a beard.
He looks like a nerd. You know, I, I mean, and I, I
don't say that disparagingly, but he just looks like your
nerdy friend. And he enters the race for New

(01:13:22):
York City mayor in the Democratic primary.
He's almost totally unknown to anyone but New York City
political insiders, and but he does so in the shadow of Eric
Adams time as mayor, which has to be like one of the the
craziest trajectories in recent memory.

(01:13:44):
We've spoken a little bit about a forum, like I said, well, as
we mentioned, you know, he was aState Assembly person and a
democratic socialist, but he hadthe platform that he ran on was,
again, it'll sound a lot like what de Blasio was proposing A
decade ago, cost of living, freezing rent for rent,
controlled apartments, improvingpublic services like offering

(01:14:04):
free bus rides. But what really made people
attracted to Mumdani, and this is again I cannot say to you how
much of A rarity this is, is that he seemed to really like
New York City. And he liked the people here and
he liked the people who were, and he liked living in New York
City and celebrating all that New York City has to offer.

(01:14:28):
Mamdani got thousands of people to come out on a Saturday for a
scavenger hunt just because theywanted to sort of hang around
with him. And he would do these spots like
where he would show up with a mic in hand like every other
YouTube who sort of, you know, ambushes people for impromptu
stuff. But they they make for fun
moments where people tell him what's wrong with the city.

(01:14:49):
If you want to harken back to EdKoch saying, hey, how am I
doing? It's the same vibe, but for a
social media age. And like, there's him talking to
Knicks fans after a Knicks game.And he seems genuinely thrilled
that the Knicks. Are doing well.
That's such a smart move. I I've seen he has a whole, you
know, a, a series of social media videos where he just picks

(01:15:11):
figures out of New York's history and is like, yeah,
wasn't this person sick? Which, like, like, it's because
he seems to genuinely love living in New York.
City, which, yeah, none of them do.
Andrew Cuomo does not live in New York City.
Eric Adams does not live in New York City.
Curtis Lewa, who we will get to lives in New York City 100%.

(01:15:34):
But you know, the idea that the thing about those videos that
was so great, he didn't seem to be asking for anything, not even
your vote. He wasn't like saying like I
want to be mayor because he theywere just high.
This is me. Here are things that are cool.
Would you like to experience this cool stuff too?
It didn't. It wasn't a demand made on you.

(01:15:54):
It was an invitation to participate in something that
made you feel good. And boy oh boy, especially
online. Is that the exception that
proves the rule? He he's also really good, I
think at kind of showing all of what New York City is and all of
New York City is kind of the world.
That's always the way we think about it in a positive way,

(01:16:16):
Particularly people from Queens because of all the different
ethnicities and cultures and everything that are surrounding
there. But the really the whole city is
like that. And he capture, he seems to be
enthusiastic about it in a, in a, in a way that sells it just
sort of sells the world of New York City as the world.
And I, I'm one example of that is he kind of blew me away with

(01:16:37):
this ad, this early ad. This was the first time I ever
became really closely familiar with him.
I mean, I, I, I knew a little bit about this stuff, but I
started to pay attention to him a little, a lot more after this.
He he comes in in the ad talkingin in Hindi like who doesn't ad
in Hindi, right? I mean that that that's kind of
crazy. And then the.
Street card Fender ad that you saw because that.

(01:16:59):
Was no, no, this is this is one that's like in Jackson Heights
and he just leans into kind of maxing out, you know, being in
getting the Indian. American vote $1,000,000 raise.

(01:17:26):
He has No Fear. He has No Fear whatsoever of
being like Obama. Do you know what I mean?
That fear of being perceived as foreign.
He just comes out and does that.And I would just say like, you
know, having lived in India for five years myself and lived in
Jackson Heights where a lot of that was, I mean, I, I can see

(01:17:47):
how that really for, for the immigrant is like who has become
a naturalized citizen, how like exciting that is to be spoken to
you that way. And he does it with.
He's the only, he's the only person talking to them.
Yes, and he also drinks mango lassie in it and so therefore I
think he's the only politician drinking mango lassie in the

(01:18:08):
bullpen. He.
Might be open up the Mali tab. I'm about to burn up the Swedish
in the trench coat. Stupid.
The only one drinking mango lassie in the bullpen.
My lips are sealed like the singer with this.
I mean, compare it to the amountof fear mongering that we have
gotten from the entire MAGA right about the New York City

(01:18:29):
subway over the last six months.Like those guys absolutely fill
their diapers if you even mention the subway.
They think they're walking into the movie.
The movie The Warriors and that every subway is a death trap
filled with noticeably dark skinned creatures looking to
pounce on you for a second. Like he, they are terrified of

(01:18:52):
life in the subway. But the reason the subway is
great, despite the major structural issues with the
subway, the idea of the subway as opposed to the actual
functional subway, the reason itrules is because you walk into
this thing and you are filled with every single economic class
and ethnicity that the city has to offer.
Pretty much no matter what stop you get on.

(01:19:14):
And for that, for the duration of that ride, no matter how long
it is and how long you're there,you all have to figure out how
to work together. And for the most part, you do
it. It is efficient, it is fast, it
is economically viable. And let me tell you something
compared to when I was a kid growing up in the 1980s in New
York City, it is safe. And what it does is, is it says
to all those Republicans who aretelling you that you need to

(01:19:37):
lead tiny little atomized, sheltered lives that you cannot
leave lest the world prey on you.
Actually, no. Go out in the world, Go into
this place, meet people you've never met before, hear sounds
you've never hear heard before, hear music you've never heard
before, encounter people you would never see before and spend
5 minutes just living together. And not only are you not going

(01:20:00):
to be harmed, but guess what? You're going to be great and
selling point and saying your fear Republicans is a lie and
I'm not going to put up with it anymore.
Well, it's a great pitch for him.
So he wins. He wins the primary.
He he kind of routes Cuomo. Oh, yeah.
And Brad Lander takes the stage with him.

(01:20:22):
And it's this moment where they're kind of united.
There's the Jewish candidate andyou have Mamdani, who is, again,
Muslim, Hindu background, and they're on stage.
And, you know, there's been all this stuff about Israel and
trying to make him seem anti-Semitic.
And then he has that moment withBrad Lander.
And, you know, now he looks likehe's the favorite.

(01:20:44):
And what happens is in the general election, Eric Adams
comes in to be an independent candidate.
Andrew Cuomo comes in to be an independent candidate.
Andrew Cuomo has a lot of baggage, as we've talked about.
And I just want to quickly tee up, we have a story about the

(01:21:09):
Cuomo family that comes from a listener named Rob Grannis.
By posting through it. I'm a long time listener, first
time caller. I just wanted to share a story
about mom, my childhood where I grew up down the street from

(01:21:29):
Joan Cuomo who was Andrew and Chris's aunt by marriage.
I think she was married to the brother of Mario.
Anyway, she clearly had wanted to live on some kind of gated
community and we were not that. So she would use her

(01:21:49):
government's connections to makeeveryone's life on the block
pretty miserable. And you know, like we grew up
along a canal on East Drive in Copiague.
And when our raft attached to mydock in the backyard wasn't up
to whatever code that she thought she called up the, you

(01:22:12):
know, the Coast Guard, they would come by and harangue us.
So evil lady. And the most evil thing that she
did was the older man next door to us, Mr. Walsh.
He had a pigeon coop that he would fly his pigeons out every
morning. And it was, you know, after he
was an older man and after his wife had passed away and his

(01:22:34):
kids had moved out, this was thething that kind of, you know,
kept him coming out of bed everymorning.
And she had the city sanitation department come and break it
down, even though it was fine. It was next to our backyard.
So there's no, you know, just a little extra pigeon crap, but
seagulls crapped all of our docktoo, so it was not a real

(01:22:55):
problem. But she just, you know, took
that joy away from that man and he died about two weeks later.
Because, you know, you get get a, an age like that and you need
a reason to get out of bed. And yeah, not much else.
Andrew was apparently a total piece of human garbage as a

(01:23:16):
child, too. Or, you know, older teenager
Chris Cuomo seemed to be OK. That's at least the lowdown from
my brother, who spent more time kind of hanging out with them in
the on the block. Anyway, that use of government
resources to punish and ultimately lead to the death of

(01:23:36):
the elderly seems to be a familytradition.
So yeah, I think I'll be voting for Momdani this election cycle.
Anyway, keep up the great work, guys.
Thanks. We talked about Curtis's cats.
We talked a little bit about Curtis's cats.
Can you? Can you?
Just just give us a little bit supporters to the pod, man.

(01:24:00):
Just give it just just give us alittle rundown as to how this
guy, how did he, when did he first put on the the hat?
Like when did he first get the mask?
How did I get these scars? OK, well Curtis Lewa is a New
York guy. Curtis Lee was absolutely a New
York guy. Courtesy was he was born in

(01:24:21):
Canarsie. Again, working class family
dropped out of high school at age 16 and he's working at a
night manager at a McDonald's inthe 1970s up on Fordham Rd. in
the Bronx. Again, I've mentioned the movie
The Warriors that is based on that time in New York City.
If you are working at the Night Manager at the McDonald's in

(01:24:41):
Fordham Rd. in the Bronx, that is an unsafe place.
The Warriors is one of my favorite movies of all time, so
I I'm going to ask Jared to justquickly play it. 60,000 soldiers
now there ain't but 20,000 police in the whole town.

(01:25:01):
Can you dig it? Can you dig it?
Can you dig it? So Curtis Liwa is, I'll just say
it. I'm not an election forecaster.
He's not going to win this election.
OK, But like, what's with the beret?
OK, You talked about earlier, itit has left seemingly a

(01:25:25):
permanent mark on his head. This guy has such a back story
in New York and a lot of it involves that beret.
Curtis Lee what seeing the amount of danger that he's
facing at his job and the the crime problem in New York City,
which honestly, if you at that point was very, very real.

(01:25:47):
He decides to form what he was always described as a
neighborhood watch group called,which eventually came called the
Guardian Angels. And they have a uniform.
They wear red windbreakers, white T-shirts, and red berets.
Curtis, where's that red beret? Everywhere.
They were basically a group of he organized people from the
neighborhood to join what is I, I think essentially A vigilante

(01:26:12):
group. They would patrol the subways.
They would patrol dangerous St. corners.
And they were not actual law enforcement officers.
They were just citizens working to intervene and to scare off
potential criminals. It was entirely a volunteer
force. They relied on donations if you

(01:26:32):
want to call them though. AII don't even know where they
fall in the political spectrum, but they're a militia for lack
of a better term. They're not that dissimilar from
the Proud Boys, except in theorythey're working to stop crime,
fighting crime from happening instead of perpetrating crimes
themselves. But they would.
The idea was is that they're going to these places and parts

(01:26:53):
of the city. The subway, Fordham Rd. in the
Bronx, all over the Rumble, The Ramble in Central Park, which
was a cruising spot for gay men up until this day, was a place
where gay men would be. They would suffer all kinds of
violence. They went there to protect them
and the city. The people living in New York at

(01:27:15):
the time felt the cops couldn't protect them from the criminals.
And there was this desperate need to feel like someone was
fighting for them that was standing up for the little guy.
And they were very public about it.
They and they were saying, no, we are going to defend our
fellow New Yorkers. There is something noble at the
heart of this. But the thing about the Guardian

(01:27:36):
Angels is they didn't really do much to change the amount of
crime in the city. Individual people were
protected. Sure, they may have stopped a
few individual incidents, but interms of the actual crime
statistics, it had zero impact. It did make a national figure
though out of Curtis Sliwa. Throughout the 1980s he was held
up as you know, this like Batmantype figure, for lack of a

(01:27:59):
better word, is the guy who's willing to put his ass on the
line to fight crime. Cops hated Curtis Sliwa for
this. Of course he was making Yeah,
cop hated him. City officials hated him if they
all felt he was making them lookbad and he was, but he was also
this he Curtis was is how do I put this?

(01:28:21):
He's a con artist. And he later admitted by the
1990s that he staged a lot of the crimes so the guardian
angels could come and disrupt it.
That a lot of the crimes like like he told a story about how
he was kidnapped by, by a cop, total bullshit made it up,
didn't happen. Like so the guardian angels

(01:28:41):
themselves as an institution were a media invention.
It was a way to get on Jerry Springer.
It was a way to get, you know, put on the local news.
It was a way to to do all this stuff and to to give the
appearance of creating societal change while accomplishing
absolutely nothing. And he got a lot of media
coverage, still gets a lot of media coverage here.

(01:29:03):
Here's just a clip of like kind of the tone this would take.
This is actually like kind of a a critical question, but I think
his response kind of illuminateshis basically the persona he
would take on in these appearances to.
Defend themselves though, I mean, if you take a take an 18
year old kid who's got stars in his eyes about fighting crime

(01:29:23):
and then you actually send him out into that situation, do you
think that that that's fair to that kid with a couple?
Of weeks of karate training in his bill.
It's not a couple of weeks. These individuals are tested,
OK? It's a constant routine where
you combine all the skills that you've learned within your
lifetime, street fighting, boxing, whatever it is, and if
you can deter a knife, you're good enough for us.

(01:29:45):
So just just kind of cartoonish.It feels like, you know where
It's like, yeah, you're rough. He sounds like a movie
character. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's kind of what I'm getting at, where it's like, it doesn't
matter who you are, if you, if you can make a guy with a knife
piss his pants, you're good enough for us.
And it's like it. Was.

(01:30:06):
Fun that doesn't actually do shit.
No, In fact, it really makes it harder for the cops to fight
crime. If there are a bunch of people
who Curtis Sliwa, again, who's just a guy who was a night
manager at McDonald's going through this training regimen
and saying, well, you know how to fight in the street, you can
get rid of someone's knife, thatdoesn't actually impede crime.
They were, let's be clear about this.
Every time they intervened, theywere committing crimes.

(01:30:28):
Curtis got arrested dozens of crimes in the 80s because he was
committing crimes. It was but you know, people in
the city I I posted about this on on blue sky a couple of weeks
ago after something Curtis said and I had a bunch of people in
my life saying like, you know, he really stood up for the
little guy. Like the legend and the myth of
Curtis Lee was this Batman type figure persists to this day.

(01:30:52):
But he is he and he was in mediainterview should get a snippet
of that. And the one we just heard the
gruff New York are being like, you know, forget about it.
I'm not going to come here and take this kind of attitude.
If you could help us, you can help us.
We we here to stand up for the little guy.
It was very appealing. Curtis himself is an excellent
self promoter. And like a lot of excellent self

(01:31:14):
promoters, there's a lot of bullshit at the heart of it.
But the thing about a bullshitter is you often can't
bullshit them. So when Curtis often is spitting
these bars, a lot of the time hesays things that are true.
So the guardian angels, by 1992,the crime, like crime in New
York City, was already on the downturn.
People will point to Rudy Giuliani and his broken windows.

(01:31:36):
Policing is the thing that reduced crime.
That's a lie. Crime was already going down
before Giuliani even got in office.
The person who fixed crime in New York City is David Dinkins,
but nobody talks about him. So by the 90s, Curtis stops
being an important media figure because the cultural zeitgeist
had moved on to other things. He gets a job doing, of course,
talk radio, which was a natural career pivot for Curtis Lewa.

(01:31:58):
And he spends most of the 90s asyou know, local gadfly who gets
interviewed, gets interviewed whenever crime issues are
discussed, does his weight weekly, like, you know, does his
his new, his talk radio show. He's a talk radio host is what
he is and has been for really the last 30 years, more or less.
So it was a bit of a surprise rise when in 2021, he decided to

(01:32:24):
run as a Republican. For mayor, right?
For mayor, he ran for mayor the despite having zero actual
experience as a politician. He was just it's again, it's
trading and he's. Become kind of this this like
perennial loser, Yeah, Republican, right.
This guy just comes in to just to sort of be the Washington

(01:32:45):
generals to the proverbial. Yeah, New York City is.
I mean, aside from Bloomberg, who did run as a Republican, did
govern as a Republican, but was really just a centrist Democrat.
And Giuliani? Right.
A Republican is, you know, well,Giuliani was a reaction to the
Crown Heights riots and a lot ofother things happened as the
concern, but we'll leave that for a different podcast.

(01:33:09):
Yeah, odds are a Republican isn't going to win in New York
when the city is something like 60% registered Democrats.
So he's there to he's there to be the Washington generals to
the Harlem Globetrotters. And you know, his, his initial
campaign was again, it was just it seemed like more of Curtis
doing self promotion to attract attention to Curtis Sliwa.

(01:33:31):
At the time when he ran, he was living with his significant
other. They have two kids and he's had
three wives in between the significant other and they were
raising 16 cats, which I believewere lovingly listed at the top
of the show. Curtis loves cats.
That's no joke. It's it like he One of his
proposals when he ran for mayor was to turn Gracie Mansion into

(01:33:52):
a cat sanctuary. One probably one of the least
defensive ideas he's had. Really.
Truly. Yeah.
Nice pitch, actually, yeah. And, and it's a mixture like
someone, I, I forget who posted this, but I'm going to steal
your idea. Sorry.
Curtis Sliwa is the median low information American voter,

(01:34:13):
which will mean he has some verysort of awful conservative
ideas, which are, you know, the New York City, NY City tabloid
garbage of like the city is surrounded by vicious animals
who needed to be rounded up and executed.
If if we're going to be safe. And also all the all the people

(01:34:33):
in charge are, are corrupt and we need to do away with all
these elites. So it's this like occasionally
he will stumble on things that are true and honest and, and he
can also like a real New Yorker,he will cut through the bullshit
like and. He.
Absolutely hates. Andrew But I've I've had more
than one person who is the leftytype who is not from New York

(01:34:58):
send me stuff like audio clips of his and being like, this guy
is hilarious. So this guy's awesome, right?
Which is you never hear about a Republican now.
So so just to just to slow it down for a second for everybody
again, it's Curtis Andrew and Eric drops out Eric Adams drops

(01:35:19):
out of the race. He endorses just a day a few
days ago, Andrew Cuomo, we're down there was a.
Brilliant moment, by the way, with like, Eric Adams, who
previously described Andrew Cuomo as a snake when he first
announced that he wasn't dropping out of the race, now

(01:35:40):
says he's endorsing Andrew endorsing him because Mamdani is
a snake oil salesman, which is better than a snake, right?
OK. So I just want to quickly before
we discuss this, this race now and and sort of what it means
because it is again important for the whole country and
largely because it obsesses MAGAand MAGA is the dominant

(01:36:02):
cultural strain in our country. To give you an idea of how
obsessed they are, Trump and andpeople in the White House have
openly fantasized about deporting Mamdani if he wins.
That's that's the level of psychosis.
Well, that's in on these people.So before before we get into
that conversation, I just wantedto drop 4 things that I wanted

(01:36:24):
to say about Mom Donnie, before we get into that conversation.
So it's going to acquire Jared. I'm going to need you to read a
few paragraphs here, but the thethe number one this this article
from Jerry Dunleavy at the junk news site called Just the News.
Oh my God, hold on one second. Jerry Dunleavy got hired at just

(01:36:47):
the new. Oh my God, what a downgrade.
Jared, wait, where do you get the article?
Let's go give it to me. This is the first I'm hearing of
this. You're telling me for the first
time. You told me this was the first
time. New York City mayoral hopeful So
Ron Mamdani for years has markedthe 4th of July by sharing a
photo of a rap group that is infamous for its glorification

(01:37:08):
of the Taliban and Al Qaeda and for its praise of one of the
9/11 hijackers. Mamdani wished his social media
followers a happy 4th on Independence Day in 20/21/2023
and 2024, less than one year before the failed rapper and
socialist activist became the Democratic Party's nominee.

(01:37:32):
In tweets accompanied by bad writing.
Here in tweets accompanied by a picture from a music video of
the two lead singers of the controversial rap group called
The Diplomats. Fuck yeah, let's go.
Also known as Dipset. Famous Dipset who were famous

(01:37:53):
and infamous for some of their pro terrorism tinged lyrics.
Mom Donnie, a long time rap affectionato who took a largely
unsuccessful stab at being a rapper himself, has tweeted
happy 4th exactly 4 times. Damn dude this analysis is
crazy. Sharing the picture of the pro

(01:38:14):
terrorist Dipset Rap groove on the 4th of July in 20/21/2023
and 2024 and then only after becoming the Democratic.
Nominee. Sent out a much more anodyne
standard fare politician style tweet in 2025 wishing his
followers happy. 4th. Featuring pictures of a

(01:38:36):
Democratic Club BBQ held in Queens.
I am fucking screaming. Oh my God.
For I mean, if you don't know who the diplomats are and you
don't know who Dipset is, the idea is like we're talking about
lyrics where it's just like, it's like, yeah, I'm going to
blow up the spot. Like it was the, you know, twin
towers or something. The type of lyrics that are pro
terrorism. But I'm going to demand Jared

(01:38:59):
that we that we just, I, I, I just need to say that after I
read about this scandal of Mamdani being into the
diplomats, I had the jewel Santana of, of, of that group
track. Oh yes, in my head.
And it, and it appeared in my dream and I need you to play
literally I had a dream where this song was playing throughout

(01:39:20):
the dream. So I need you to play a like
just a hit or you got to turn itup because you can't listen.
To that, it's quiet. Crank this shit loud.
Let's go, OK. Get up, get up, Dipset.
Uh oh. Duel Santana heatmakers.
I think this is the one right here.
Everybody come on, get up. He's moving again.
I'm like, I'm nice. Still pitching, still flipping.

(01:39:43):
Yeah. So come fuck with the boy.
I'm still pumping the boy. I'll still dump on the boy.
Blue steel pump to the boy. I'm Mr. Postman.
Also Mr. Toastman. I'm yelling.
Gee, I'm selling. Yeah.
I think it's, it's worth noting.Like the fact that Mumdani is of
the Muslim faith. Is like Laura Loomer has been

(01:40:05):
basically comparing Mumdani winning the Democratic Party
very seriously to 911. There was a cartoon that
appeared that was a photo of thetwin towers, and there's a red
missile with a hammer and sickleon it and the word Mumdani on it
heading towards the twin Towers is the way, this is the way that
the conservative New Yorkers aredescribing this.

(01:40:26):
It doesn't even make sense. The towers are gone bro I'm
sorry. I heard this is the first time
hearing. Oh shit, podcast is getting
pulled from Spotify. No, it's literally true.
No, it's literally true. I, I say that as a New York.
It's literally it, it, it is literally true #2 I got to do
annoying #2. He did an ad during the Knicks
opener that I thought was prettysmart and and tasteful.

(01:40:49):
I thought it was like it was just sort of like it was just
this guys playing kind of pick up basketball together and they
were of different races and his black and white and it's like we
scuffled and whatever, but I'll tell you now, now is the moment.
This is our year. And then Mamdani appears
quickly, very briefly is like let's go or whatever.

(01:41:10):
And then there's like and then it ends.
This was it ends with a with with with the the Knicks logo,
but it says Zoron. I mean, fucking very tasteful,
very stylish way to do this. And it was done during the
Knicks opening game. And I thought that was so cool.
That was such a cool thing. And now they were pulling it off

(01:41:30):
the air because Dummy Dolan, whoowns the Knicks and is a
complete incompetent, is a big Trumper and anything about the
Knicks being good has nothing todo with James Dolan.
Bob, you are not allowed to comment on this section.
You are not basketball. I'm not familiar.
With that, we we only, we only have a certain amount of time.
So we get no, no, but it also you can bring it up in the late,

(01:41:51):
but I just it was just they theythey're doing everything they
can around the edges to try to stop him and now they're forcing
him not to use the that pools around logo.
Yeah, the the the, the, the freak out about not just a brown
person, not just a democratic socialist, but an actual Muslim
running New York City is causingthe most racist elements of New

(01:42:12):
York society to just lift the the mask right off.
I mean, Bill Ackman noted posterhas immediately was like after
Zoran 1 was like, well, who can we pay $1,000,000 to run?
How can we bribe Eric Adams to drop out of the race?
He tried to bribe him. And I have a feeling, by the
way, Eric Adams has gotten a really sweet payoff for dropping

(01:42:33):
out of the race. We'll find out about that soon
enough. Like they.
He he, he certainly is, is like,he would be the type of guy be
like, go up, go, go ahead, keep going.
The price of the the price and then.
And then he would probably hit like $15,000.
He'd be like, sold. Yeah, anyway.
I mean, the the thing about it, it's like, and the thing that

(01:42:55):
drives me crazy is like there is, as we've mentioned a couple
of times, it's not like like momDonnie is by by the way, is, is
going to say, OK, I am seizing control of Madison Square Garden
and declaring it a part of stategovernment, which I would be in
favor of. And that's the only basketball
comment I will make on this podcast.
It's not like he's he's what he's proposing is a rent freeze.

(01:43:19):
He's posing public transportation.
He wants to build food co-ops. It is so far from a radical
proposal that the the fact that this is making all of the
dumbest, worst people wet their beds is both laughable and kind
of terrifying at the same time, as so many things are these
days. But #3 I'm sorry, I'm mad, yeah,

(01:43:43):
I got you #3 This is a sort of apersonal note, but I think it's,
it's useful to understand, like,why Mumdani is so fascinating.
It really is. I've been to two show.
I go to a lot of shows in New York City.
I've been to two shows where Mamdani has been like in the
last few months. He was at the Wu Tang show with

(01:44:05):
Run the Jewels at Madison SquareGarden and then he I believe
he's at the Hotline TNT show. It which was a pretty like
obscure venue. It was like a venue in Greenwich
Village. Hotline TNT is an indie neo
shoegaze band. Amazing show.
They like really killed it. But Will Anderson from the band,

(01:44:26):
the singer took a selfie with Soran outside of the venue.
I was, I, I couldn't and like, post it on Instagram.
I couldn't believe it. It's like, so like, like, OK, Wu
Tang maybe, but like the hotlineTNT show, like it's this.
It's almost like he seems like he's just like somebody that you
would hang out with or something.
It's so, so weird. And then the 4th 1 I wanted to

(01:44:49):
bring up, just because we need to get this audio in, is when
Mamdani said he wouldn't visit Israel.
And it's like, I will just say, like, for a brown dude to do
that, like in a debate, setting the balls on this guy to say
that is just absolutely absurd. Visit Israel as mayor.

(01:45:09):
I've, I've said in a UJA questionnaire that I believe
that you need not travel to Israel to stand up for Jewish
New Yorkers. And that is what I will be doing
as the mayor. I'll be standing up for Jewish
New Yorkers and I'll be meeting them wherever they are across
the five boroughs, whether that's in their synagogues and
temples or at their homes or at the subway platform.
Because ultimately we need to focus on delivering on their

(01:45:30):
concerns and just yes or no. Do you believe in a Jewish state
of Israel? I believe Israel has the right
to exist as a Jewish state, as astate with equal rights.
He won't he not say it as a. Right to exist.
Does a Jewish state be? Very.
And his answer was no, he won't visit Israel.
I I said that that's what he wastrying to say.
No, no, no. Unlike you, I answered.
Unlike you, I. Answered questions very.
Directly, I want to be very clear, I believe every state

(01:45:52):
should be a state of equal rights.
But but his But his answer is not absurd, his his answer no.
His answer but his answer is very affectionate.
I mean his answer is very warm hearted and and and very like
pro about Jewish people, but it's just the fact that I mean
it, it still takes tremendous amount of balls given the amount
of pressure there is on being silent about this stuff.

(01:46:14):
He, he addressed that in the speech he made today.
I don't know if you guys got a chance to see this.
Like he basically said like, hi,I, I, I was been, I'm a Muslim
when I started running and I'll be a Muslim after this campaign
is over. And I'm tired.
I'm paraphrasing his speech so badly and I'm tired.
And I'm not going to apologize for it.

(01:46:34):
In fact, I'm very proud of it. And for all of my fellow New
Yorkers, all of my fellow MuslimNew Yorkers who have been made
to feel like second class citizens simply because of our
faith, we're done with that. It's an incredibly powerful
speech and the message is, is isboth seemingly self like,
patently self obvious and both and courageous of him to say.

(01:46:57):
But yeah, I mean, he's he. He.
Like getting a politician say that is not this could not have
happened five years ago. It really couldn't.
And I think it's because we're facing the, like, dealing with a
fascist regime, that you're finding out what kind of people
have real courage. And that's why, yeah, I don't
think Mom Donnie's actually going to govern in a way that

(01:47:18):
that is that different than Billde Blasio.
I'm hoping there's a lot less corruption.
But in terms of policy, I don't think he's going to be that
different. What is different is saying
simple truths and allowing people to exhale and go like,
yeah, that's real. So let's let's let's that's a
good jumping off point, I think to discuss this situation.

(01:47:42):
First of all, I'm just curious. And I think both Jared and I
will just listen to you. I'd rather than weigh in because
actually I'm not, I don't know like 100% everything about this,
to be honest. Is he really going to win?
Because you seem to have a lot of you seem to think like, you
know, you're just, and I know for people who don't know Bob or

(01:48:03):
like, if I'm like, you know, are, you know, is this team
going to win on, on Sunday? He's like, no, they're going to
lose by 20. You know, it's like he's he's
like that. It's like a snap reaction.
So, you know, do you really think he's going to win?
Because part of me is like, I can't even believe that he would
really win. But it seems like the polls say
that he is. He's destined to to be Cuomo

(01:48:26):
again. Polls.
In America in 2025 and I'm reading the vibes as I do when
Mike and I discuss sports and the vibes say, yeah, he's going
to win. He's going to.
I think he's going to exceed 55%of the vote.
I will lay down of the popular vote.
I'm laying down my marker. He breaks 55%.
If I'm wrong it won't be the first time, but but if you're

(01:48:49):
right, it makes once again posting through it the most
trusted name in news. We absolutely get to go spike
the football and say do do what all these right wing guys do
where they're like I just as I predicted and it's like the most
yeah, like just like Tim Pool, just like Tim Pool was right in
predicting a 49 state Trump landslide.

(01:49:11):
I'm I'm. Laying down my marker here.
And and I think it's because thesimple reason is because, yeah,
you can do a poll and see that Mandani is regularly beating
50%. He's been up by anywhere from
like 15 to 25 points on, on, on Cuomo.
But people actually want to go out to vote for Mandani.

(01:49:32):
They want to feel like, they want to feel like they're a part
of it. And even if they're not
campaigning or, you know, phone banking or anything like that,
pulling a vote for Mamdani feelslike they're making them a part
of something, or at least the idea that a better New York City
is possible. And I think a lot of people want
to vote. It doesn't feel like, OK, well,

(01:49:54):
lesser of two evils, I guess. I'll go this way and I'll hope
for the best. People are actually excited
about voting for him. Yeah.
It's like the same kind of energy that that motivated
Bernie Sanders when he was running.
Right or not motivated Bernie Sanders, but motivated people to
vote for him because he was whathe was talking about was again

(01:50:16):
these as as you said, things that feel just like obvious
truths. It's too expensive.
Things are getting worse and, and at the same time the rich
are getting richer and, and, andall that, you know, it's just
stuff that anybody can understand.
And, and in the field, just saying that kind of stuff makes

(01:50:37):
you such an outlier that it, it excites people.
People are like, yeah, OK, I don't want to, I don't want to
pick between, you know, piss, piss jug and, and shit bowl.
I I even if this guy like achieves 10% of what he wants to
do, it's like at least the conversation is in a place that

(01:50:59):
feels more real. And, and let's be clear about
one thing. I want to while I am very
excited about Mom Donnie's prospects.
In the actual election, I want to be far more of the usual
pragmatist is a nice way of putting it.
When it comes to what Mom Donniemight accomplish as mayor, there
are a couple of things. One, the main thing is opposing
ICE. And for all of the people who

(01:51:20):
are wetting their bed at the thought, well, Trump is going to
come after New York City unless they unless we vote for Cuomo,
which by the way, has been the pitch that the that the White
House has been making. He is going to do it anyway.
And I think if we've learned onething from the last eight
months, it's that the only way to stop a bully is to actually
stand up. Cuomo will not.

(01:51:41):
Yeah, You. You increase the cost, you say?
I dare you, Mother fucker is what you do.
Yes. And, and they make me and they
chicken out half the time because it's expensive and
complicated and it's like and hard.
They have to do all the work. But if you roll over or or
signal that you might roll over,then they barely have to lift a

(01:52:01):
finger. Most of my opinion on this comes
from, not. Necessarily viewing the momdani
and the vibes thing that you have there, because I can't,
that's where I can't tell Is it people that I know who are just
extremely amped? This podcast does not endorse
political candidates or anythinglike that.

(01:52:25):
But like, I know a lot of peoplewho are extremely excited about
Mamdani, right? A lot of people who are really
amped up on him. A lot of people are also
hopeful, hoping he doesn't turn on to be another de Blasio as
well. But my thing is the people who
are not typically your democratic socialist.
Targets. I think the best case for

(01:52:47):
Mamdani to win big is that. People look at Andrew.
Cuomo and see a piece of shit like a fucking piece of shit
like a complete piece of shit a.Slimy.
Disgusting, horrible person. And I feel like he's having a
heart. He used to have this veneer of

(01:53:08):
being like, you know, where it'sjust sort of like this, this
thing that some kind of Democratic politicians do well,
which is sort of like, hey, you need a little corruption to get
it done, you know, like that kind of attitude, Right.
And Bill Clinton had that too, just sort of like, wink, wink,
right. Like, they're good that you, you
know, and I, I think that that'svery effective for Democrats for
whatever reason. Just this sort of like, you need

(01:53:30):
a little sprinkling of this to get it done.
That's you. Little cynicism helps.
Like, yeah. It's like, also, I don't mind
the gays, wink wink. Right.
Like that kind of this kind of guy.
So. I think that he lost.
I feel like he's been unmasked and people see the the, the kind
of schmoozy, corrupt thing is just now it's just this unmasked

(01:53:52):
guy. I really think people look at
him like he's a ghoul. I don't see any enthusiasm for
Andrew Cuomo anywhere. I look like cynical
incrementalism. There's hot girls for Cuomo,
Which? Was launched by a pro Trump
influencer. The the the girls better be
Italian. If they're not, we're not doing

(01:54:12):
this right. Yeah.
Oh, the girlfriend looks pretty and and and they finished both
of their meatballs. So Jennifer Rubin once said,
I'll, I'll say this like as Cuomo, I, I mean.
Curtis Sliwa is like, like we said, you can basically just
like count him out. And now the conversation has

(01:54:34):
shifted to where people like Bill Ackman are like fuming at
him being like he's going to steal votes from Cuomo.
He's going to be the reason Cuomo loses.
And it's like those no coming up.
The people, the people who are voting for Slew are not if they
if they stay home, they are not voting for Andrew Cuomo.
The idea that cynical incrementalism is going to

(01:54:54):
appeal to anyone, regardless of where you sit on the political
spectrum is just wildly out of touch where the country is right
now. And I think you can take any
race like if not to delve into what's happening in Maine right
now with our favorite oystermen.But no, no, no, no.
PGI is a no main election. Policy.

(01:55:15):
We're we're just. Like we we sorted out New
England. Yes, OK.
Fair. Honestly fair.
But it's just a it, it is a desperate attempt by by people
who are used to, who are used toset feeling as if they get to
decide who runs things in the city.

(01:55:36):
Being told for the first time, actually, no, we are going to
have a democratic process and your money and your influence
and your power don't get to choose here.
And that's very appealing. And I think people, look, people
who are voting for Curtis Lewa, they don't want that either.
They don't want this, you know, they do not want to be told by
various power brokers how they have to vote for their own good.

(01:56:00):
And so it's it's ridiculous. It's ridiculous calculus on its
logic. And I just don't think it's
going to work. And I think the more of that
that you see, like the more we see.
You know, establish power, the ultra rich, whatever kind of
rushing, scrambling, trying to astroturf shit around Cuomo and
stuff. I think it only reinforces

(01:56:21):
Mamdani's argument, which is that, you know, the city could
be better if the people in charge weren't beholden to
people who don't give a single shit about whether 99 Percent,
99.9% of people in New York liver die.
You know? Yeah.
I mean, look, Curtis said that yesterday.

(01:56:42):
He said the elite and the ultra wealthy.
Don't get to decide anymore. That's what Curtis said on like
in an interview as to why he's as to why he won't drop out.
He's like, your money doesn't mean anything to me.
Go fuck yourself. And that's appealing.
But so if, if that version of go, go fuck yourself doesn't
appeal, they're not going to turn to Cuomo.

(01:57:03):
It's it's a bad joke. Like the rich and the wealthy
are legitimately terrified and they're also all promising to
leave the city if Cuomo, if, if Mamdana gets elected, they're
not going to do that. And he starts.
No, no, of course not. No, no, of course.
Look what? Happened.
Look what happened when. Massachusetts or Boston, is it?
I'm not sure if it's Boston or the entire state of

(01:57:24):
Massachusetts had a millionaire's tax, which by the
way, they all promised, oh, all the rich people are going to
leave Boston. One, it didn't happen, all they
did was raise a lot of tax dollars.
It's just they keep lying to us.And maybe for once some people
are starting to say, I don't believe you.
I won't fall for this bit anymore.
So let's just talk about what would happen if Mumdani wins,

(01:57:47):
and I'm not talking about New York City.
Governance necessarily because Idon't think everybody in the
audience is really wants to knowabout how difficult it's going
to be to impose his subway, although that's important and
will certainly have, you know, impact how people he is
perceived going forward. But I'm just talking about the
impact of a democratic socialistlabeled a communist Muslim

(01:58:12):
Indian roots, what happens And also outspoken criticism of
Israel. That's a big one right now.
What happens if he wins? Now, I will just before you guys
answer, I have, I think, floatedon on a particular previous
episode of posting through it. I said I am a little nervous.

(01:58:33):
I believe it's the one where Marisa Cavis is on.
And I said, yeah. And I said, like, I'm a little
worried that they're, that ICE is just going to go arrest him.
And I just want to say that my opinion, my, my fears haven't
changed. And I'm, I'm probably the most
dire gloomy in terms of predictions, but I'm, I'm

(01:58:53):
nervous, I'm nervous for the guy.
You know, I, I see, I see the hate for him.
And I also see it's that it has it's not just related to his his
ethnicity and it's not just related to his politics or the
fact that he's found a way around the current.

(01:59:13):
Moment through his social. Media he's weaved and been able
to kind of succeed even in a very reactionary time.
It's that he kind of represents a post MAGA world, like he's a
kind of a promise of something different than what we're
dealing with right now. And people are happen to also be

(01:59:35):
very down on MAGA at this momentand for with good reason.
The country is going down the fucking tubes.
So I am just worried about what could happen to this guy and how
people could react from on it ata national level.
I mean, I don't think those fears are out of place at all.
I I mean like I said. Earlier that people in the Trump

(01:59:58):
administration have openly fantasized about deporting him
if he wins, right? That's the condition.
Right. It's like, well, if he wins,
we'll deport him. Not that they, the argument's
not even like this fantasy doesn't even have a
justification because presumably, like you could
deport him earlier, right? If, if this fantasy had a reason

(02:00:19):
to do it. But I think his campaign, what
it's managed to accomplish is such a potent symbol for the
left, like people who are disillusioned with the
Democratic Party, which I will say until, and I mean like the
day we recorded it has left thisguy out to try.

(02:00:42):
We did some analysis at at open measures, which is where I'm
doing my day job and all this stuff about how so Ron is
supposedly anti-Semitic or how Zoran is like, you know, a
Muslim Brotherhood or whatever. That shit took off after he won.
Not to say it didn't exist beforehand, but but when he won

(02:01:04):
and it started to become a threat, that's when that shit
popped. This was not, you know, these
are, these are smears. They're disgusting, the attack,
you know, they not only perpetuate hateful attitudes,
but attack his identity, right? And the Democratic Party for the
most part, has left this motherfucker out to dry and just

(02:01:27):
completely, completely avoided even showing a little bit of
sympathy, right? So if he is able to succeed
without them, if he is able to succeed against the interest of
all these wealthy New Yorkers who, like you said, Bob, are
used to getting to call the shots in this city and just

(02:01:49):
proves that something else is possible, whether he
accomplishes it or not, of course, open question.
He's going to go into a government that is, you know,
notoriously corrupt and crooked and full of so much insider
trading. He's going to have to, he is one
guy. He's going to have to work
within that system. It doesn't matter what ideas he
has. He's going to have to try to

(02:02:10):
figure out something in there. And he may turn out to be a huge
disappointment. You know, that office might
corrupt him the way it has corrupt other people.
We don't know. But I I think that simple will
be is so threatening to the right not only.
Just because of. Of his identity and getting
success that way, but also just something potent on the left

(02:02:35):
that doesn't have a bunch of institutional support from the
Democratic Party that kind of threatens the power structures
that they are trying to protect and deepen.
Like, I think they're going to go for the jugular on this guy,
and I am pretty. Concerned about?
How ugly that could be. And I can only hope that the

(02:02:56):
Democratic Party pulls its head out of its ass finally and
realizes that if they let this guy just take the brunt on his
own, people are going to see that and will remember that and
resent them for generations. You know, it is just because
some of a lot of the stuff that people are saying about it, I

(02:03:18):
think you have fucking Andrew Cuomo being like, so Ron, do you
disavow Hassan Piker? And it's like, what the fuck is
going on, dude? How does it getting this bad?
That's so funny that I forgot I had forgotten about that.
It's just sort of like there's, there's, there's been like.
Various mini Hassan Piker news cycles around Mumdani I.

(02:03:40):
I don't think it's when he. Wins.
It is going to be ugly, yes. When he wins and has to actually
navigate the nest of Vipers thatis New York City's governance,
there will be a lot of moments where he has to compromise or
eat a plate of shit that we are not going to like.
That is a given. I don't think that's the most

(02:04:04):
important thing about his victory though.
Two days before the Democratic primary, I was at my folks place
and there was a doorbell rang ataround 7:00 and that's after
delivery hours. So I was a little surprised and
I I went downstairs to open the door and there were two kids
outside and I assumed they were canvassing for Zoran and they

(02:04:31):
said no, actually though we are supporting him, we're organizing
for it wasn't Jewish Voices for Peace.
It was a different Jewish organization that was organizing
to discuss Gaza and helping people get involved.
And my folks live on the Upper West Side, which means it was,
it's not a big apartment. Like you have to go door to door

(02:04:53):
there. Like you go to a door, you get
to talk to one person. And they weren't.
And I asked them like, when did you join this group?
And they said after Sauron started to pick up momentum.
And I was honestly just blown away.
And I, I took their card and I sent them my, I gave them my
e-mail information and I get messages from them.
I haven't gone to a meeting yet,but you know, I get info from

(02:05:14):
them. And the thing that to me is the
most important about that is teaching not just New Yorkers,
but people across this country that the only way out of the
situation that we're in right now is together.
And that it is not going to be the Democratic Party.
It is not going to be institutions.
It is not going to be the wealthy who some wealthy white

(02:05:36):
knight who comes in to save the day.
It is certainly not going to be running some celebrity in 2028.
It is going to have to be peoplegetting together and organizing
slowly, painfully, step by step.It is showing that like the
reasons are on one is because hehad an army of volunteers
talking to people. The reason that the scavenger

(02:05:58):
hunt people showed up is they wanted to be around other
people. And to show people that it, you
know, when you do that, even when you lose and most of the
time you're going to lose, it makes you feel good and it makes
you feel more human. And that to me is the lasting
effect of what Sohan Sohan has hopefully kicked off.

(02:06:18):
And that that's why I think so many people are excited about
it, because it's a window that another world is possible and
that the way to get there is with us.
We are the ones who are going tohave to change it.
Well, this is the last question.And then we're going to send
people off. I just want to say before I do.
The last question this is a realpreview of posting through.

(02:06:41):
It's a potential election coverage.
Should elections be normally shaped elections?
This is This is our. First, go at it.
And I want to thank Bob again, which we'll do as we send this
off. What does this do to the
Democratic Party if Cuomo? Loses.

(02:07:02):
I'm not framing it as if Zoran. Wins, but if Cuomo loses because
they really put everything into this, this just walrus carcass
of a of a candidate to try to just push him over and be like,
come and get your bullshit right?
You know what I mean? It was really like the IT was
really the same old, it was another Joe Biden type thing,

(02:07:25):
right? And we just saw, we just saw the
horrors that transpired when they brought Biden out and then
had to change horses midstream. This is kind of like, this is
like sort of like here, there's a name, you know, come on, good,
deal with it. You know what I mean?
Like the same old slop. Do they learn their lesson?
They've already got their ass handed to them once, and now
they're trying it again. Basically, outside of the

(02:07:47):
Democratic Party, the establishment, you're having a
Democrat as an independent. Do they learn anything if
Mamdani beats this guy twice? I mean, are they capable of
changing at all? Are they capable of looking at
Mandani's election or looking ateven, how about this?
Let's say even Mandani loses, becomes close.

(02:08:09):
Are they capable of looking at his rise and popularity and
seeing that there's that, that maybe it's time to change
something? No, it could.
It could be as simple as that. All right.
Folks, that's all we've got for this week.
Anybody. Got anything?
I mean, are they going to no theanswer?

(02:08:30):
'S no. The answer's no.
The answer is the Democratic Party.
Has to be replaced eventually, but they're not going.
To learn anything. No, they can't.
It's it's it is. No, no, we have to build
something else. And that's terrifying, but
that's all right. Well, let's actually wrap it up
then. Bobby Silverman, thanks for.

(02:08:50):
Joining the show once. Again, we love you, the
listeners love you and I'm excited to to see the the stats.
What was, do you remember what your your breakdown on the poll?
What he was going to get 55 percent, 5555 percent, 55%.
All right, folks, when that takes Bobby polls 55.

(02:09:12):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's going to get the full
dikembe. Mutombo on this.
One OK, and I just want to say since this is this is.
This is the New York City episode I want to give a shout
out. I want to give a shout out to
the the old school New York thatdoesn't exist anymore because
it's not the same as it was. I want to talk about just a
quick shout out to holiday cocktail lounge where it was
back in the day, the the when itwas the real thing back in the

(02:09:35):
day. I want to give a shout out.
I want to give a shout out to click and drag the fetish party
at mother in, in the, in the meatpacking district back in the
day. Yeah, you know what I'm talking
about communion at Limelight. I want to give a shout out to
Can you give me some shout outs?I want to give a shout out.
I want to I want to give a shoutout to the matzo ball soup at
Ratner's. I want.

(02:09:55):
To give a shout out to CBG VS before it became a John Varvato
store. I want to give a shout out to
Tompkins Square to to Needle Park.
I want to give a shout out to all these places.
I want to give a shout out to the Latin Kings.
I want to give a shout out to the New York skinheads.
I want to give a shout out to the Decepticons man.

(02:10:16):
I want to give AI. Want to give a shout out to
film? Forum I want.
To give a shout out to Sounds Music, you sell CDs on Saint
Mark. 'S place and all those stars
where I saw Todd Salons back in the day.
Anyway, that's it. I, you know, I do have some
affection for New York City. It was a delight.
Thank you, Jared, for letting usdo this.
And and I think it it's an important, like I said, a very
important, a very important episode to do.

(02:10:39):
OK, everybody go to bed. You've had enough time listening
to your. Podcast and now you got to
download it and please like and review and share and if you want
to be a subscriber that would help us out very much.
Thank you. No, no, it's the end.

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