Elizabeth Ames - Author, New Yorker, FOX News Contributor Joins Houston's Morning News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm not sure if he's blaming this on the campaign
trailer dead, but he's probably got something a little bit
more hipper than Woody Guthrie five point fifty two our
time here on Houston's Morning News. The guy's name is
Zoran Mamdani. He is the presumptive Democratic nominee for mayor
in New York City. Yesterday I meet the press, he
said he doesn't believe that billionaires should exist. Is he

(00:23):
mentioned that to George Soros because George Soros might disagree
with that. It's okay to have billions as long as
you're a socialist, right. Whether you want to call him
a Democrat socialist or a communist, you know, there's not
a whole lot of difference between the two. President Trump
called him a communist yesterday. I call it trouble, big

(00:44):
trouble for the Democrats. Elizabeth Ames, George Just. He's an
author at New Yorker. She's also a Fox News contributor.
She's a resident of the New York metropolitan area. Did
you ever think you'd live to see this day? What
the hell is going on with you, folks?

Speaker 3 (01:00):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
It really reflects the sorry state of New York and
thank you for having me.

Speaker 3 (01:05):
I mean, he wants to give away.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
Free food, free health, free childcare, free buses, tax the rich.

Speaker 3 (01:12):
Even more than their tax.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
Now New York posts that he really wants to go
after white neighborhoods, raise the minimum wage to thirty dollars
an hour, and trump proof New York, which means, you know, obviously.

Speaker 3 (01:25):
Not work with ice.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
I think it's really a reflection I think partly of
the Democrat policies which have really driven up the cost
of living in New York and the Biden inflation, and
those are the kinds of things that bring in these
very far left extremists often.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
Does he have a prayer? Does he have a chance?
Could he possibly become New York's next mayor?

Speaker 3 (01:49):
Actually?

Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yes, sadly, polymarket right now gives him a seventy three
point six percent chance of winning. Adams actually has a
nine teen percent chance of winning. But Polymarket can change,
you know.

Speaker 3 (02:04):
I think they gave Harris.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
The chance of a larger chance of winning at one
point during the presidential election. And there are also a
lot of caveats to this. The turnout for the Democrat
primary was very low. Mandami got only about four hundred
and thirty two thousand votes in the ranked choice system,
which actually gives him an advantage as an extremist ranked

(02:27):
choice voting.

Speaker 3 (02:28):
And New York has.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
Over five million registered voters, so the overwhelming majority of
voters did not vote in this election, but the own there.
But there are lots of you know, there are lots
of factors on both sides. Adam's running as an independent.
People think he's got the best chance of anybody. But
Cuomo did not drop out of the race. I think
that was a very selfish arrogance. It was that's typical

(02:53):
of him, which is why he didn't win. I think
one of the he didn't drop out. He's also running
as independent, and the Republican candidate Curtis Lee, what is weak.
I mean, he didn't you know, he did, you know,
garner a number of votes in his last attempt, but
he's not enough to you know, he really couldn't really
beat man Don Mandanni. So I think it's a big

(03:17):
you know, it's undecided right now. The whole thing is
up in the air.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
Something about this reminds me of right before Rudy Giuliani
ran for New York City mayor, did. The city had
kind of hit an all time low. Crime was out
of control, rats and rat infested buildings, and unaffordability, all
the things that seem to be plaguing New York City
right now. But the difference this time is there is

(03:42):
no Rudy Giuliani to run to the rescue.

Speaker 2 (03:45):
No, and actually that there's a lot of the many
differences in the population than there were. I think about
this often. There are many differences in the population today
than there were in Giuliani's time. You've got an enormous
immigrant population of Muslims in it Indians, and he's a Muslim,
and he's an Indian mamdani, and so they identified with

(04:06):
him in this case. Interestingly, the Union's big labor was
not a big player in this. It was the Democrats
Socialists of America, which has been they've been on the
upswing since AOC.

Speaker 3 (04:20):
So there's that.

Speaker 2 (04:21):
There's the whole immigration, you know controversy, the ice controversy.
People are angry about that in New York. And also
you've got the crazy, uh you know, the college educated,
you know, purple hair kids that come from.

Speaker 3 (04:38):
You know, well to do families.

Speaker 2 (04:40):
They voted for him, voted form Mamdani. So you know,
it's a little different of an environment.

Speaker 3 (04:46):
Than it was back in the early nineties.

Speaker 1 (04:49):
Well, it's gonna be interesting. I think President Trump's already
threatened if this guy gets elected mayor, that's going to
be into federal funding as far as he's concerned.

Speaker 2 (04:56):
Yeah, well, I think that might be a good idea,
although it won't help. It won't make any friends here,
I mean not that he has any at this point
in New York. I mean New York has gone so
far to the left, I don't recognize it. It's very sad.

Speaker 1 (05:09):
It is sad. Elizabeth Thames, I never thought i'd see
this day. Thanks for joining us, though I do appreciate
that author at The New Yorker also Fox News contributor
to Elizabeth Thames. It's five fifty seven