Today on the Breakfast Club, Zohran Mamdani On Strengthening Public Safety, Uplifting Small Businesses, Free Busses. Listen For More!
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BreakfastClubPower1051FM
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Wake that ass up in the morning. Breakfast Club Morning.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Everybody is the j en Vy Jess Hilarious, Charlamagne the guy.
We are the breakfast Club. We got a special guest
in the building. He's running for mayor of New York City.
We have Zoran Kwame. Mam Donny nailed it.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
That's that.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
You gave him a great victoria right before we started.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
As I was gonna say, it was off the top
of the dome.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
But I did see a video before we get into politics.
I did see a video.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
You were a rapper, you got a buyt.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
I was an aspiring rap. Aspiring rap.
Speaker 4 (00:37):
Nobody will vote for you based off what I heard.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
And that's why I'm not a rapper. Nobody you see
to be to be the mayor, you have to know
what you know and know what you don't know. And
I learned quickly what I didn't know.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
You really wanted to like pursue a rapper.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
At one point, there was a point. There was a point,
I mean it was it was at the level. So
I was born in Kampala, Uganda, okast Africa, and there
was a point where there's a guy grow up with
he's like my brother. The two of us were rapping together,
and I was trying to sell mixtapes on a public
bus which doesn't leave until it fills every single one
of the fourteen seats. That's how much we were trying.
(01:12):
Wow and here I am. Because it didn't really work
out all that well.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
It was kind of like yin Twins.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Was the inspiration for you and Yan Whisper.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
I have to say that was an inspiration for the
song I made called Nannie, but I think you know,
for me it was It was also a way of
just telling the different stories of what I grew up with,
gotcha and and especially in Kompala. You know, I'm I'm
Uganda and of Indian origin. The guy that I grew
up with, his name is Abdul. He is Ugandan by
way of South Suddan. It's all these different cultures coming together.
(01:43):
We were trying to mix it all in and then
when I was here in New York City just trying
to kind of this. The song that I made was
the testament to my grandmother. Now she's a real badass.
And how so often when we talk about our elders,
we put them in a box of a nice, gentle
person who you know, is very much constrained and how
we imagine them. And I wanted to just be a
little more absurd in the celebration of a woman who
(02:05):
gave me a sense of the world and was a
social worker and should be a little more celebrated.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
And discipline. You have discipline, you know.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
A few Slash Jason video discipline, Yeah, in that video,
not by my Grandmother's.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
A question in real life when you do make the
pivot to, you know, do what it is you're doing now,
do you say to yourself, I scrub all that shit
off the internet.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
We got to get rid of that.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
No, because I think that it's it's about being a
real person, you know, like I I enjoyed that time
in my life, and ultimately I actually see it through
line between that work and this work and that you're
trying to tell a story, and you know, when you're
trying to sell a mixtape or you're trying to get
somebody's signature to get on the ballot. At six point
thirty in the morning, you know, at the Broadway stop
of the NW in Astoria, it's the same thing where
(02:46):
you're asking someone can I have a moment of your
time to tell you about my story or our story.
And it also means learning how to deal with a
rejection very quickly, because once you've once you've tried to
be an artist, once you try to be a rapper,
you know what it means to be humbled. Yeah, it
was on a regular basis, right, Like you know what
it means to be the opener to the opener, to
the opener to the opener to the opener. And I
(03:08):
think too often in politics there's a real sense of self,
as if people should be excited to see you, when
in fact, you should be excited to see them. Right.
We shouldn't be lecturing people as much as we should
actually be listening to them. And I think that, you know,
struggling through being an artist, it was very helpful in
learning that.
Speaker 4 (03:24):
I thank god nobody told you to do you use
any of that hip hop stuff for your campaign.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
That's what they do, just how you reach certain demographics.
They're complete. Oh, I thank god didn't tell you to
do that.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Don't worry, it's not coming now.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
How did you get into politics? What got you into politics?
Because some of your policies that you want to we'll discuss,
I don't see happening but I love it. So let's
start how you got into politics at first.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
So the first time I knocked on doors was in
two thousand and eight for Obama. The first time I
knocked on doors in New York City was when I
picked up a copy of the Village Voice and I
saw that one of my favorite rappers, Hemes, had endorsed
his childhood friend for city council. And I was like, oh,
this guy would be the first South Asian elected official
in New York City's name was Elli. Nudge me, and
so I got on the F train, I went to
one sixty ninth and I knocked on doors for Ali.
(04:06):
And that was the moment where I started to get
involved in local politics. So I joined a club called
the Muslim Democratic Club in New York. And then in
twenty seventeen, I worked on my first race. That was
for a Palestinian Lutheran minister in bay Rich called Color
Eliot Team. And that just changed my life because you know,
I moved to the city when I was seven. This
is the city I fell in love with, the city
where I got my citizenship, where I got married. And
(04:28):
yet there was also a point where I knew I
was a New Yorker. I didn't know if I had
a place in New York City politics. I thought those
two things were separate. And then there was this campaign
which showed me that there was room for all of
us and you didn't actually have to give up any
of yourself to be a part of it. And that
inspired me to understand that politics isn't just something that
you believe in, it's also something that you do as
(04:49):
an active thing. And from there I kept working on
campaigns and then in twenty twenty I ran for the
State Assembly and I represent a story in Long Island City.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Wow THEA.
Speaker 4 (05:00):
They asked a question, and the question is simple, can
an AOC back socialist upset Andrew Cuomo in the New
York Cities may or race.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
I want you, I want you to answer that question.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
There's a short answer, which is yes, okay, and there's
a longer answer, which is the fact that New Yorkers
are hungry for a different kind of politics. We have
seen the same politicians with the same ideas lead us
to the same results for decades and this is in
many ways a question of whether we want to go
back to the past or whether we want to go
to the future, and our campaign is one that sees
(05:31):
this city under attack in two ways. An affordability crisis
on the inside, where the most expensive city in the
United States of America one in for New Yorkers are
living in poverty, the rest are living in a permanent
state of anxiety about whether they can keep affording the city.
And then we're under attack from the outside from a
Trump administration that is hell bent on going after not
only New Yorkers, but frankly democratic cities across the country
(05:53):
like we're seeing in Los Angeles right now. And I
am going head to head with Andrew Cuomo, a former
governor who's the son of a former governor, whose super
pack is funded in large part by the same billionaires
who put Donald Trump back in the White House. That's
not the kind of person who can stand up to
authoritarianism without seeing a reflection of themselves. We need someone
(06:15):
who will actually fight both of these crises at the
same time. And that's why I believe that that I
can win. And I'm so excited to have Congressman Ocosio
Cortez's endorsement and doing.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
That, I wanted to ask, you know, some of the
policies that you stand on is a free bus service
in New York City? Yes, sir, could that actually work?
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Absolutely? You know? So, I grew up in Morningside Heights.
I would take the one train. We set the nine
train back then, but I would take the one train
to two thirty first get on the BX ten to
go to Wrong Science. And I remember when I get
off the one train, if I could still see the bus,
even if it was two stops away, even if I
had missed it, I knew I could catch up to
it because that's how slow that bus was. I'd be
slapping the back of the bus and I could get
(06:52):
there in time. It was good for me, it's bad
for New York City. You should not be able to
catch that bus if you missed that bus, but the
buses are so slow. So as a status Semmember, I
won the first of its kind fair free bus pilot.
We made one bus route free in every borough of
New York City, and we secured fifteen million dollars to
do so. And it showed that ridership went up by
up to thirty eight percent, assaults on bus drivers went
(07:13):
down by thirty eight point nine percent, and of the
largest increase of riders came from New Yorkers making twenty
eight thousand dollars a year or less. And this is
critical because it's not just about economic access, it's also
about public safety. It's also even about environmentalism because we're
seeing that eleven percent of the new riders they were
previously driving a car, taking a taxi. Now they're off
(07:35):
the road, they're on public transit. And the cost of
doing all of this is about seven hundred million dollars
a year. Now that sounds significant, which it is, but
just want to put it into context. We're talking about
that in the context of a city budget that's about
a one hundred and thirteen billion dollars a year, state
budget about two hundred and fifty two billion dollars a year.
There is money, The question is what we spend it on.
(07:55):
And what I've proposed is that we raise ten billion
dollars to pay for our entire year economic agenda and
start to Trump proof our city because we know he'll
use federal funding as leverage over this city, and we
will do so in two key ways. The first is
to match the state's top corporate tax rate to that
of New Jersey. We are at seven point twenty five percent,
they're at eleven point five percent. Corporations can pay it
(08:16):
over there, they can pay it over here. And the
beauty of it is that it doesn't just apply to
corporations headquartered in New York City, because when you say this,
people will say, well, they're going to go to Florida.
Wherever you are headquartered, as long as you do business
in the state of New York, you are taxable for
that corporate tax. We're talking about corporations that are making
millions of dollars, not in revenue but in profit. And
the second is taxing the top one percent of New Yorkers.
(08:38):
We're talking about people who make a million dollars a
year more, taxing them just by flat two percent tax increase.
And I know if fifty cent is listening, he's not
going to be happy about this. Intense to not like
this tax policy, but I want to be very clear,
this is about twenty thousand dollars a year. It's a
rounding era, and all of these things together they make
every New Yorker's life better, including those who are actually
getting taxed.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Now, you also want to cut the police budget, and
people are upset about that. Right, feel that crime is
all over the place. I think a couple of days ago,
two people got shot in Times Square. The other day
I think another girl got shot in the face in
the Bronx. So people are very scared. It seems like
New York is getting worse than getting better. So what
do you say that you know at a time like this,
cutting the police budgets that seems like that is taking
more police officers off the street.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
I want to be very clear, we are not defunding
the police. What we are talking about is sustaining the
number of police that we have within the police department.
And when I talk to those police officers themselves, they
tell me they signed up to join the police force
to tackle serious crimes, and yet what they're being asked
to do today is serve as mental health professionals and
(09:37):
social workers. The same officers who thought they'd be responding
to shootings are picking up the two hundred thousand phone
calls a year of mental health calls. And what we've
seen elsewhere in the country is you can actually move
mental health calls out of the police department. That can
reduce the calls that police have to deal with by
twenty percent. And in doing so, you can increase police
response time to those major categories of crime. I think
(10:00):
that's important because police have a critical role to play
in public safety, and we also need to ask them
to just focus on their job and not ask them
to do every job. Because what we're seeing right now
is these same politicians who have given us this lack
of public safety over so many years, telling us that
their only answer, no matter the question, is to ask
police to do more. I want them to do the
(10:20):
thing that they signed up for and to have a
Department of Community Safety with teams of dedicated mental health
outreach workers at the top one hundred stations with the
highest levels of mental health crisis and homelessness. We have
to deliver public safety.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
And when those calls come in, you know, and people
are saying, hey, somebody's over here having an episode, the police,
I think, should be going out there with the mental
health professional. Let the mental health professional be the person
who tried to defuse that.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
They're backing them up.
Speaker 4 (10:45):
And you know, even if even if you want I
think a better I don't want.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
I can't tell you how to say things.
Speaker 4 (10:50):
But no police, if the NYPD got a budget a
ten point eight billion dollars. Does all of that really
need to go to the police. They're already super under page.
Where's that money going anyway? So why not take someone
that money and invested into other alternatives to respond to
things like mental health crisis?
Speaker 3 (11:04):
And that's what I've said, which is that we have
to work backwards from does every dollar we spend go
towards public safety? The critiques that I've said of the
NYPD have been that they don't need an eighty person
communications department that doesn't actually deliver public safety, that delivers
us drone footage. We can actually rapidly downsize that, and
I've I've been heartened to see the current commissioner took
that eighty and made it forty. And I've also said
(11:26):
that we don't need to have a more than billion
dollar police overtime budget. And usually when you say that,
people frame it as if you are going after the police.
But when you ask the police, there are two hundred
officers leaving the department every month, and one of the
leading causes is forced overtime because of quality of life.
They don't know when they're going home, They're working doubles
and triples. This is actually something that can make it
easier to do that job and ensure that we're actually
(11:49):
responding to this because what we have right now is
not working. You know, I sat with the family of
a New Yorker named Win Rosario, who's a young New
Yorker who was going through a mental health crisis. He
called nine one one himself asking for help. Two police
officers who were trained in mental health assistants were dispatched
to his home and they killed him within three minutes
(12:09):
on camera, in front of his mother and his brother.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
So the tined he they were trained.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
And my point here is that that serves no one.
That family grieves him every single day, and we all
know that that was not the way to respond to this.
So why don't we actually look at what works elsewhere
in the country and bring it here. And that's what
we're talking about, evidence based policy solutions that will deliver
real public safe.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Oh maybe we step on our own point.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
If they were trained, they were trained when you say
trained in mental health, would they've trained and did not
know how to respond to people dealing with.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
These police officers were given the training that right now
we're being told is sufficient. And my point here is
that we should not be training police officers for mental
health response. We should have mental health responders be the
ones who are actually the ones there. And this this
this addiction to asking them to do everything, it's one
that leaves them unable to do many things. Because right now,
(13:00):
as you were saying, New Yorkers, when they're worried about safety,
they want to know what's your plan. Sixty five percent
of crimes from the first quarter of this year are
currently unresolved. That's partially because we're asking the police to
do everything.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
So you know, they should do they should.
Speaker 4 (13:16):
Police officers should be having their own mental health evaluations
like that should be part of them.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
It's important and I think that's also part of why
when you when you ask an officer to work triples, right,
the longer you are on your shift, the harder it
is to make the same level of decisions throughout the
entirety of it. We need to ensure that we are
creating the conditions where we can actually deliver that public safety.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
I want to ask about congestion pricing as well. You know,
you talk about free free busses, which is which sounds great,
but now you got free buses but then when you
drive to the city, you charge me thirty dollars to
get to the city. So what's your your thoughts on
congestion price and how it's affecting businesses in New York.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
So I believe that the one thing New Yorkers hate
more than a politician they disagree with is one they
can't trust. So I'm going to tell you the answer
I say in every room. I am somebody who has
supported congestion pricing, and now I wanted to tell you
the truth. I want to say to your face though
I've supported it for a few reasons, because I believed
it would reduce congestion, it would increase bus speeds, it
(14:14):
would raise revenue for the MTA, and it would improve
air quality, and that's what we've seen it be able
to do. At the same time, I have always believed
it needs to be paired with immediate public transit improvements.
I launched a campaign called Get Congestion Pricing Right with
the Deputy Majority Leader of the State Senate, Mike Gennares.
The two of us won about twelve million dollars a
new bus service. I'm proud of it, but it's not enough.
(14:36):
And the reason I fought for. That is when you
look at the implementation of congestion pricing in places like Stockholm, London.
The first day they had it, they had increased public transit.
Because I think it's important to tell New Yorkers that
it's not just about raising revenue for public transit, it's
also about giving them a better option. Right there, there
are some people who need to drive. There are also
others for whom that's the most convenient option. We need
(14:57):
to make public transit the most convenient one. It's hard
when you look at your app and you're told the
bus is coming in ten minutes, and then you wait
ten minutes, and then that bus doesn't actually show up,
and so we need to earn that trust. That's that's
from my position.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
How is it affecting businesses in New York City though?
I mean, I know a lot of restaurants are charging
a congestion fee tax, and you know, prices at everything
is expensive. I mean the other day I went to McDonald's.
I got my kids one meal, and that one meal
is usually two ninety nine when I was a kid,
is now twelve dollars.
Speaker 4 (15:22):
You know, in all your kids one meal times that
are absolutely, they got to split it split.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
That's an expensive about that, right.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
You let me sell.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
But so you know, so how is it affecting business?
You know, especially small businesses? You know, the main businesses, Yeah,
you know they can get over, but you know, you
got that mom and pop store that just can't do it.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
You know. What we've actually seen is that since it's
been implemented, foot traffic has increased in the in the
Central Business District. And I think that's a big part
of it, is that actually, when you make it easier
to get around that same neighborhood, you actually can facilitate
more business. And an interesting thing that I've also seen
is that noise complaints are down by a significant amount
because you have reduced congestion, and that's a difference also
(16:04):
in quality of life. But I think to your point,
small businesses, small businesses are struggling in New York City.
They employ a majority of all New Yorkers who are
working in the private sector. We put forward a small
business proposal where we would cut fines and fees for
those businesses by fifty percent across the board. And we
would do that because the city has one hundred and
thirteen billion dollar budget. It is not funded through these
(16:24):
fines and fees. It doesn't mean that much to the
city if it gets one hundred dollars from a restaurant
because they have a refrigerator every year. But for that restaurant,
those are the kinds of things that can add up,
and so we're going to cut that in half. And
we're also going to make it easier to open them
because right now, I'll tell you want to open a
barbershop in New York City, you got to go to
seven different agencies, fill out twenty four forms, and then
(16:46):
attend twelve activities. That does not make it easy to
open a barbershop. We need to actually follow the example
of Pennsylvania where they took an eight week permitting process
and made it just a couple days. And that's why
we said we're going to have a mom and pop zar.
We're going to increase fun for one to one small
business services because we have to make it easier to
survive in the city, and city government has to understand
its role and responsibility in that because I'm tired of
(17:08):
politicians pretending like we're just bystanders to all these crises.
You know, I'm texting out thoughts and prayers to the
small business just closed. But actually my policies are helping
it to close. We need to make sure that that's
not the case any longer.
Speaker 4 (17:20):
You know, I want to ask you, I want you.
I'm asking you to define something. But when you answer it,
I want you to, you know, think about how you
would define it to somebody if you was writing a rap.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Now, I don't want you to wrap up it.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Look, I know you don't like the reps.
Speaker 4 (17:33):
I'm just saying that the way you would approach your
wrap you know the audience you're trying to talk to,
and you would probably keep things on the ground.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
This is where I lose the election right here.
Speaker 4 (17:42):
How would you define being a democratic socialist to just
to just somebody.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
So you know, some of my favorite songs that they
start with with an old quote, that's how that's how
a song might begin, and so for me, one of
them is from doctor King. Call it democracy or call
it democratic socialism. There must be a be distribution of
wealth for all people in this country, for all of
God's children, and ultimately to me, it's about dignity for
(18:08):
each person. You know, the person who gave me this
language of calling myself a democratic socialist is Bernie Sanders
when he ran in twenty sixteen and his relentless focus
on income inequality. It taught me that things could be
better than they were. So often, when you're voting, it
feels like you're voting between somebody who wants to wipe
you off the face of the earth and someone else
(18:29):
who wants to tell you to celebrate the crumbs that
can't feed your neighbors, and to know that it could
be more, that you could be voting for something that
has inspired me. And I think that you know, as
a Muslim democratic socialist, I am used to bad pr
and having to explain what all of these things mean.
And what I've found, though, is when you actually get
into a conversation, a lot of this is common sense.
(18:51):
Right If I believe that every New Yorker should be
able to live a dignified life, and that it's city
government's job to ensure that New Yorkers will agree with
me when I bring up example of public education free so.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Free education, free healthcare, what else I mean?
Speaker 3 (19:06):
Anything that's necessary rights. It's like when people whatever you
need to live in this city that should not be
something you can be priced out of. And we agree
with that when it comes to school, we agree with
that with libraries, with sanitation, with the fire department. But
there are certain things we've picked and chosen and said,
you know what, you don't need that for housing. You
know what, you don't need that for food, And I
think that we can't let the market determine who gets
(19:28):
to live that dignified life. This is not to say
that it's city government's job to deal with everything, but
for that which is necessary, we have to ensure that
we are doing our part. And that's why I have
said I'm going to freeze the rent for more than
two million rent stabilized tenants, because that's the mayor's power.
The last mayor did that three times. This mayor raised
the rent nine percent. He wants to raise it again
(19:49):
up to eight percent. We have these tools. It's just
a question of do we want to do this, And
I know why politicians don't because there's a lot of pressure.
You know, I'm the candidate wanting to freeze the rent.
Cuomo was the can did it run to raise the rent.
That's why the landlords of those same units just gave
Cuomo two and a half million dollars the same landlords
to say they don't have enough money to be able
to freeze the rent. Just found two and a half
million to give it to him, the single largest check
(20:11):
in this entire race. But it helps let people know
that's what's on the ballot. It's straightforward. It's do you
want your rent to be the same or do you wanted.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
To raise I saw your rent was twenty three hundred
a month.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
Yes, sir, twenty three hundred for one bedroom in a
storia Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
Yeah, was five hundred square feet.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
It's not too much more than that. Let me tell you.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
You know.
Speaker 4 (20:29):
You know it's interesting, right because Democrats have created all
his new politically correct language for everything, jender, sexuality, pregnant women.
How come y'all haven't found a better way to discuss socialism?
Why is socialism a dirty word when essentially all you
want to do is take care of people?
Speaker 3 (20:46):
I don't think it should be. I think it's actually
a word that when you break down its meaning like
you just have done. Is one that many Americans agree with,
and we've seen that that despite all the attempts, Bernie
Sanders continues to be one of the most popular politicians
in America, Congressman Ocostio Cortes similarly, and they have both
defined themselves in that same language. And I think it's that, But.
Speaker 4 (21:08):
I think it's because they tell more so nowadays, instead
of just leaning on the word socialism, they just tell
people you should have free healthcare, you should have a
free education, you should be able to make a livable wage.
You know, they should increase the minimum wage. Like those
are just simple concepts that are all so socialism. Well,
for some reason, y'all still find yourselves tripping up over
that word or letting the other side use to that.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
I mean, I mean, I think it's it's because there
are a lot of people making a lot of money
in this moment who would want Americans to think that
that's the only way life can be. And I don't
hide this, you know, it's it's it's how I see
the world. It's the world that I want is one
of dignity. And it's funny. There's this one guy who
comments under almost every one of my tweets and he's like,
he's a socialist. I'm like, yeah, it's in my bio,
(21:50):
you know, this is this is who I am, And
I think it's it's about being honest with New Yorkers
because I've found, you know, Mayor Koch said this that
if you agree with me on nine out of twelve issues,
vote for me twelve out of twelve ce a psychiatrist,
And I found that in New Yorker's an ability to say, look,
maybe I wouldn't call myself the same word, but I
want the same things. And ultimately, you have to have
a coalition that asks people of just one thing. We
(22:12):
need to make the city affordable. We can have disagreement,
we can have tension, but we have to have agreement
on that one thing so that we can build a
coalition that looks like the City of New York.
Speaker 4 (22:21):
Now, sorry, but you want to please Why I'm in
the polls like you just came out of nowhere, right.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Why do you.
Speaker 4 (22:27):
Think the young people are rying with you?
Speaker 3 (22:30):
You know, I think it's it's because people are hungry.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Forget they didn't throw your name in the hat at first.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
It was just look, let me tell you I was.
I was sitting in a coffee shop in a Storia.
This is right before we launched the campaign. If somebody
in politics showed me a poll. I was looking at
the beginning of the poll and they were like, no, no,
keep looking, keep looking. And then I was there at
one percent.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
They were like, that's what you said, right, How did
you make the pool where?
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Pause?
Speaker 3 (22:59):
You know? I think, I think. I think. I think
just by being consistent. You know, from the beginning of
the race, from October twenty third, the first day, I
said this was a campaign about affordability. I said, this
was a campaign about New Yorkers who have built this city,
who are being pushed out of this city. And I
said that I was going to do three things. I
was going to freeze the rent. I was going to
(23:19):
make the slowest busses in America fast and free. I
was going to deliver universal childcare. And it got to
the point where I can go to a rally and
I can say I'm going to freeze the and the
crowd will say rent buses, fast and free, universal childcare.
People know, and I think for too long politics has
become about a person as opposed to a platform, and
New Yorkers see themselves in that. And you know, growing
up in this city, so many of the people that
(23:41):
have helped to raise me that I've grown up with.
They haven't always seen themselves in our politics. You know,
they haven't voted in a lot of these elections. The
last mayoral primary, twenty six percent of Democrats voted, and
most New Yorkers and you ask them when's the election,
they'll tell you it's in November, not in June. Most
people don't know about the importance of the primary. But
I've been getting text messages from people that I've known
(24:02):
for years and people that I've just met, just screenshots
of voter registration that I'm going to vote for the
first time. And that's meant the world to me. Because
if we really want to protect our democracy, one of
the best ways of doing so is that people see
themselves in it. People see themselves as participants. You can't
protect it at an intellectual level. You have to protect
it an everyday level. And ultimately, going back to your
(24:25):
question about democratic socialism, it's about extending that democracy from
the ballot box to the rest of our lives. If
you get to choose your own leaders, why shouldn't you
be able to choose the economic conditions that you're living.
Why shouldn't you be able to ensure you have that dignity.
And I think that what's so exciting is, as you said,
a lot of this is powered by young people. You know,
young people who so often political analysts will say, don't
(24:49):
worry about them, they don't vote at the same rates,
they don't come out, And it's been so exciting to
see those same young people be part of the thirty
four thousand volunteers we have. You know, it took us
months to knock one hundred and fifty thousand doors in
this city. Last week we knocked that in seven days alone.
That's the level of momentum we're at, where people are
(25:09):
just going all across the city. And my mother is
one of these canvassers. She has her weekly canvassing shift
on Sunday. She's paired up with a twenty five year
old who she complains, walks too fast. They go up
six floor walk up, and she goes through ten consecutive knotdoors,
not homes, And then when she finally meets a voter
and they say they're going to vote for me, she says,
that's my son. And it's that sense of everyone is
(25:31):
a part of she don't She's like, you know, I
have my concerns as well.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
Let me ask you, you know, if you were the
mayor and you see what's going on in LA, how
would you handle that problem? If there was protesters, they
were you know, breaking stuff, looting, smashing police cars, vandalizing things.
Of course Trump sending the troops, how would you handle
that if you were mayor of New York City and
that actually happened here.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
I think, first and foremost you call it what it is.
It's authoritarianism. This is is the Trump administration looking to
arrest enough migrants that they can say they've fulfilled their
campaign promise of building the single largest deportation force in
American history. And too often we think about it as
just an attack on immigrants. It's an attack on the
fabric of this country. And it's not just in LA.
(26:18):
I mean, we have New Yorkers who have been arrested
and detained today. You know, a few days ago marked
three months since sa Palestinian New York named Mahamud Khalil
was arrested in his apartment building lobby, taken away from
his pregnant wife nor and has since been in an
ice attention facility in Louisiana. It wasn't able to even
witness the birth of his first child, Dean. And we
(26:38):
have another New York City public high school student named Dylan,
who was snatched at a regular check in at Federal Plaza.
Is now hundreds of miles away from his mother and
his two siblings. And this is personal for me because
I got my citizenship just blocks from where those arrests
are happening. Those blocks used to be my favorite part
of New York Cities, where I got my citizenhip, where
(26:59):
I got married, and those are now the same blocks
where when I took my father for his immigration interview
this year, I hugged him so tight because I didn't
know if I was going to see him in the afternoon.
There are too many New Yorkers who are feeling that,
and so I think you call this what it is.
You also make clear that Trump is reversing historical precedent
in that calling the National Guard is typically something a
(27:20):
governor requests of the president. It's not something a president
puts on a governor. And Kathy Hochel is someone who,
as the governor of our state, has been able to
fight Donald Trump and defend a lot of his potential
attacks on this state. One of The first things I
would do is work with her to make it clear
that this this has no room in our city and
(27:42):
our police force should not be assisting ICE in what
they are conducting. You know, we recently saw arrests where
the NYPD was then arresting a pastor and other New
Yorkers who were observing ICE arresting migrants coming in for
their check ins. We don't need to be a complices
to authoritarianism. We need to show that there's another way
(28:03):
of running this city, in this country. And that's who
I'm excited to be.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Could you explain to people why federal overreaches dangerous?
Speaker 3 (28:09):
You know, it's it's so funny to see Republicans, for
whom so long their rallying cry has been states' rights,
and now here they are they don't have a concern
for that at all. It's the same way that they
used to care about free speech. That's gone as well. Ultimately,
these are principles they only hold when are convenient to them.
And what's so dangerous about this is that we have
a clear delineation of what is a federal responsibility what
(28:31):
is a state responsibility. But Donald Trump wants to make
every responsibility his He wants to run a country in
a manner that is more befitting of an authoritarian state.
And I think what's so concerning is he's looking at
the example of someone like Naib Bukele and saying that
this style of leadership, of having mass prisons where we
(28:52):
send so many people who we allege our criminals no
matter whether we can find it or not, that's what
he wants to bring to this country. And I think
what we need are Democrats who are willing to stand
up and fight that. You know, we have a mayor
right now who has wanted to fear monger around sanctuary
city policy. This is a policy we've had in this
(29:13):
city for decades. It's a policy that's been defended by
Republicans and Democrats alike. It allows for the city to
work with the federal government if someone is convicted on
one hundred and seventy serious crimes. What it says, however,
is outside of those there should not be that collaboration.
And you know, I'm sure you know you've heard of Kilmar,
the man in Maryland who was taken to El Salvador.
(29:34):
If the city he was arrested in by ice had
sanctuary city laws, he would not have been able to
be picked up. That's what we're preventing from happening. And
still with what we have in place, because we have
a mayor who doesn't want to enforce it, because we
have a mayor who wants to collaborate, still we see
New Yorkers being picked up.
Speaker 4 (29:49):
That's a question, right, Why is Donald Trump the Democrats boogeyman?
Because none of you' all are running against Trump. And
to me, the biggest hurdle to the Democratic Party is
the Democratic Party.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
An action of the Democrat Ccratic.
Speaker 4 (30:00):
Party over all of these years is the biggest hurdle
for the Democratic Party.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
Now, I don't disagree with you. That's part of my
critique of Andrew Cuomo is that he's the very kind
of leadership that helped give rise to Donald Trump. You know,
before Donald Trump was the president of this country, before
he was a reality TV show host, he was a
real estate developer in New York City, and he was
someone who both parties had room for and time for.
(30:25):
And I think that our ability to accommodate the very
kind of real estate developers that have broken law after
law after law is also part of what has given
rise to an era of politics with no accountability. I mean,
Andrew Cuomo had a video of Donald Trump playing at
his own bachelor party. Like, that's the level in which
all of this is a mesh together. And I'm trying
(30:45):
to chart a new course with this campaign, alongside thousands
of New Yorkers for a politics that is clearly distinct
from that of Donald Trump. And I think when New
Yorkers are shocked at Donald Trump's record of cutting medicaid,
of trying to steal hundreds of millions of dollars from
the MTA, of giving tax breaks to billionaires, of hounding
(31:07):
the many women who have credibly come forward to accuse him,
those are the same things you could say about Andrew Cuomo.
We don't need a reflection of that in New York City.
We need someone who is the opposite of that, and
as a progressive Muslim immigrant who's willing to fight for
the things I believe in. That's what That's what makes
me donald Trump's worst night Mayor.
Speaker 4 (31:27):
But I saw you say that in the debate. You
know you would be Trump's worst nightmare. Well, once again,
why should that matter to anybody voting for you?
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Now? Cut running against Donald Trump.
Speaker 3 (31:37):
No, you, but but you are running against the authoritarianism
that he's bringing to this city.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
Authoritarian.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
No. I think that there's too many commonalities between him
and Donald Trump's record. And my point is that you
don't want to have a mayor who has to pick
up a phone call from someone who cut a two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars check to both him and
Donald Trump. You want to have a mayor who's willing
to fight for the city and have that that be
the thing that he's ultimately responsible for. And I think
(32:03):
to your point, we also have to be honest about
how we lost this presidential election. You know, New York
is the state that had the largest swing in the
country towards Donald Trump eleven and a half points. And
it happened far from the caricature of Trump voters. It
happened in the hearts of immigrant New York City. I
went to Fordham Road in the Bronx, I went to
Hillside Avenue in Queens and when I asked New Yorkers there,
(32:26):
almost all of whom were Democrats. Who did you vote
for and why? Many told me they didn't vote. Many
told me they voted for Trump, and they told me
they voted for him because they remembered having more money
in their pocket four years ago for their rent, for
their childcare, for their groceries, even for their metroplogan. And
as insincere and ridiculous and horrific as we know Trump's
policies to be, that is how people felt. Those are
(32:47):
the decisions that they made. And when I asked these
same New Yorkers what would it take to bring you
back to the Democratic Party, they said, a relentless focus
on an economic agenda. I said, what would you say
to a candidate running to freeze the rent, make buses
fast and free deliver universal child care, that I vote
for him. And that's when I introduced myself. And that's
my point here, is that there are some Democrats like
Andrew Cuomo, who think that we we went too far
(33:09):
left in how we ran a campaign. And my point
is that we actually betrayed working class voters a long
time ago, and it's time to own up to that
and finally fulfill the promises that were made decades ago.
Speaker 4 (33:20):
Well, I mean, that's interesting, right, because you know, you say,
Cuomo and Trump have so many similarities, But Cuomo has
been a career Democrat, and that's why I feel like
anybody who is going to be the future of the
Democratic Party, you do have to throw that old regime
under the bus, because.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
It's not just that bus is going to be free.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Sure, but it's not just Cuomo in the Democratic Party.
It's a lot of old leadership.
Speaker 4 (33:41):
List, the Chuck Schumers, it's the Bidens. You gotta throw
all of that under the bus and run it over.
And people have to hear you say that because I
keep hearing y'all. You know, you keep talking about Trump, Trump, Trump,
h Trump, but your party has been just as ineffective
and just as corrupt in a lot of ways.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
Trust me, I have I hear you because I've been
critical about the style of leadership that gave rise to
Donald Trump. He is also a style of leadership within
the Democratic Party. And I think for too long it's
been a party that has valued insider politics, pay your dues,
the words and advice of consultants, over the people that
are Democrats themselves. And I do think it's time for
(34:16):
a new generation of leadership. You know, Cuomo would be
the oldest mayor elected in New York City. I would
represent a completely new generation. And I think it's important
for that because it's not just about age, it's not
just about vision. It's also about what has your record
been and who have you been fighting for? And is
that distinct enough from what got us here?
Speaker 1 (34:38):
Got a couple more questions.
Speaker 4 (34:39):
You said, as the Blasio was the best mayor in
your lifetime for New York, and you gave three reasons.
You said, because he ended stopping for risks. Quote, yeah,
he ran on endian, stopping for risk, taxing the rich,
and funding universal pre k. You said he got a
lot of that done. How much of it did he
get done?
Speaker 3 (34:54):
Universal pre k? I think is one of the most
shining examples of what city government can do right. This
is something that took tens of thousands of dollars off
New York family's backs and made it easier to raise
a family here. You know, I'm tired of hearing New
Yorkers tell me that they're going to settle down, and
I know that the next sentence is going to include
the words long Island of the suburbs, because they just
(35:14):
can't make it work in the five boroughs. Part of
making it work is making it easier to have childcare.
You know today the average cost of childcare is twenty
five thousand dollars a year. That's more money than it
costs to send that same kid to Cune eighteen years later. Those,
I think are accomplishments.
Speaker 4 (35:29):
Now.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
It's not to say that there is no critique of
that time in office. I mean, I'm somebody who was
on a fifteen day hunger strike alongside thousands of working
class taxi drivers fighting that same administration for debt relief,
and we were able to come to an agreement where
we won four hundred and fifty million dollars in debt
relief for those taxi drivers. And ultimately, I say this though,
(35:50):
because we have seen what's possible if we have someone
focused on delivering it. And to me that the greatest
mayor in New York City history is Firell LaGuardia, because
he was someone who transformed our sense of the possible,
and he put working people at the heart of his politics,
and he did so while also confronting this rise in
anti immigrant hate all at the same time. And I
(36:12):
think we need a mayor who has that ability to
fight multiple crises at the same time and show what
it means to be a New Yorker.
Speaker 4 (36:19):
You said, as your elected mayor, Israel wouldn't let you in,
and you mentioned some legislation, but would that legislation apply
to you if you're actually met.
Speaker 3 (36:26):
We've seen elected officials, even congress people of this country
not be allowed into the state of Israel. And my
point was, I've been asked this question many times, and
I've said directly that I believe one need not visit
Israel to stand up for Jewish new Yorkers. What I
need to do is to meet Jewish New Yorkers at
their synagogues, at their temples, at their homes, subway platforms, parks,
(36:46):
wherever they may be, to hear their concerns, and actually
deliver on those concerns. And then, when I have been
asked about this, what I've also said is that even
if I was going to make that trip, there is
legislation that does not allow anyone who supports a nonviolent
movement calling for the compliance of the Israeli government with
international law to be allowed into that state. And I
(37:07):
say that to say that there has to be a
greater recognition of what is going on. And the fact is,
for me, my politics come back from the politics of
the universal. I believe that freedom and justice and safety, liberty,
these things have to apply to everyone for them to
be meaningful, and that also includes Palestinians.
Speaker 4 (37:26):
Why does it also seem like elected officials care about
what's going on in other countries more than they care
about what's happening here in America? Because you know, you, you
realize it's hard to think about starving kids somewhere else
when your kids is starving.
Speaker 3 (37:36):
Right, My focus is right here in New York City.
This is a question that's been asked of me time
and time again, and ultimately, I think it's actually a
question that, as you're saying, is not actually in line
with the top concerns of New Yorkers, not even in
line with the top concerns of Jewish New Yorkers. You know,
when you see in a poll, what are those top concerns?
The number one is affordable. After that, it's childcare, it's
elder carets, discrimination. These are all New York City issues,
(37:59):
and I think that we need to have a mayor
who is focused on New York City. And that's why
when I was asked in the debate, where is your
first trip abroad going to be I said, I'm going
to be here in New York City. And then I
was asked, followed up, are you going to go to Israel?
And I said, one need not go to Israel to
stand up for Jewish New Yorkers. And then I was asked,
you know, it just continues to continues to continues. But
for me, the focus has to be the Five Boroughs.
I mean, you are running to be the mayor of
(38:20):
this city. This is a city that is losing hundreds
of thousands of people in the last few years alone
because they can't afford it. They're going to Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Connecticut,
anywhere their dollar can go a little further. And we
know that. You know, as the saying goes, when white
America catches a cold, Black America catches pneumonia, that inequality
is compounded. For Black New Yorkers. We lost two hundred
(38:40):
thousand Black New Yorkers in two decades, about nine percent
of the city's population of Black New Yorkers. From twenty
ten to twenty nineteen, nearly twenty percent of black children
and teenagers had to leave this city. And that is
a crisis that has to be focused on that would
be that would be at the heart of what my
administration would do.
Speaker 4 (38:56):
Yeah, I don't understand why conversations about affordability, free healthcare,
making buses, free freezing the rent on rent, stabilized apartments.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
Why is that considered far left?
Speaker 3 (39:05):
Come on, I'm just saying why it's common.
Speaker 4 (39:09):
See, I can't y'all message that better. Like I think
you got to get rid of that word socialism. You know,
my man killer Mike used to tell Bernie Sanders to
use the term compassionate capitalism, or maybe just talk about
what it is you want to do constantly instead of
getting caught up in those labels.
Speaker 3 (39:23):
I mean, I think it's both important to tell people
where this belief comes from. But what I always foreground
is what this belief will mean for someone. You know,
it's it's people want to know, how are you going
to help them in their life, in their struggle. The
reason we focus this entire campaign on affordability is that's
what New Yorker's told us. When you ask them what
are you struggling with, They'll tell you rent, they'll tell
(39:46):
you childcare, They'll even tell you public transit. Because I
know to many people two ninety doesn't feel like a lot.
One in five New Yorkers cannot afford a Metro card.
That's the state of inequality in this city. While income
inequality has declined in the country, it's in increased in
New York City. This is the wealthiest city in the
wealthiest country in the history of the world. And so
to what you're saying, these are common sense policies. And
(40:08):
also when they're polled, they even sometimes have supportive majority
of Republicans because they speak to what people are actually
going through.
Speaker 4 (40:15):
It's it all people wanted some more money in their
pocket and they want to feel safe.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
Look, that's it.
Speaker 2 (40:19):
Well, if they want to support you, how can they
go out and support you?
Speaker 3 (40:21):
Well, what I would tell them has come to Zoran
for NYC dot com. Don't donate to us. We've already
raised the maximum we can spend in this campaign. But
do give us something more valuable, which is your time.
We're building a team of thirty four thousand people New
Yorkers from all walks of life, knocking on doors, talking
to their neighbors. Come on out canvas. It would be
a joy to have you. And I would also say
that the three of you want to come Canvas. We'd
love to have you as well.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
Thank you. Early residents in New Jersey, oh come.
Speaker 3 (40:45):
So look, you know, just bring that corporate tax rate.
Bring that corporate tax right over from New Jersey June
twenty fourth. Early voting starts June fourteenth, and we're confident
we go in this, but only with the help of
New Yorkers.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
Well, good luck.
Speaker 2 (40:58):
Thank you so much, Joe, ron Kwalm and Mama Donny.
I appreciate. We're all right, Zoran Kwame, Mam Donnie.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
There we go.
Speaker 3 (41:07):
Goodness, get the polls up.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
There you go.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
It's the Breakfast Club. Good morning, Wake that ass up
in the morning.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
The Breakfast Club.
Wake that ass up in the morning. Breakfast Club Morning.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Everybody is the j en Vy Jess Hilarious, Charlamagne the guy.
We are the breakfast Club. We got a special guest
in the building. He's running for mayor of New York City.
We have Zoran Kwame. Mam Donny nailed it.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
That's that.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
You gave him a great victoria right before we started.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
As I was gonna say, it was off the top
of the dome.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
But I did see a video before we get into politics.
I did see a video.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
You were a rapper, you got a buyt.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
I was an aspiring rap. Aspiring rap.
Speaker 4 (00:37):
Nobody will vote for you based off what I heard.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
And that's why I'm not a rapper. Nobody you see
to be to be the mayor, you have to know
what you know and know what you don't know. And
I learned quickly what I didn't know.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
You really wanted to like pursue a rapper.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
At one point, there was a point. There was a point,
I mean it was it was at the level. So
I was born in Kampala, Uganda, okast Africa, and there
was a point where there's a guy grow up with
he's like my brother. The two of us were rapping together,
and I was trying to sell mixtapes on a public
bus which doesn't leave until it fills every single one
of the fourteen seats. That's how much we were trying.
(01:12):
Wow and here I am. Because it didn't really work
out all that well.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
It was kind of like yin Twins.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Was the inspiration for you and Yan Whisper.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
I have to say that was an inspiration for the
song I made called Nannie, but I think you know,
for me it was It was also a way of
just telling the different stories of what I grew up with,
gotcha and and especially in Kompala. You know, I'm I'm
Uganda and of Indian origin. The guy that I grew
up with, his name is Abdul. He is Ugandan by
way of South Suddan. It's all these different cultures coming together.
(01:43):
We were trying to mix it all in and then
when I was here in New York City just trying
to kind of this. The song that I made was
the testament to my grandmother. Now she's a real badass.
And how so often when we talk about our elders,
we put them in a box of a nice, gentle
person who you know, is very much constrained and how
we imagine them. And I wanted to just be a
little more absurd in the celebration of a woman who
(02:05):
gave me a sense of the world and was a
social worker and should be a little more celebrated.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
And discipline. You have discipline, you know.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
A few Slash Jason video discipline, Yeah, in that video,
not by my Grandmother's.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
A question in real life when you do make the
pivot to, you know, do what it is you're doing now,
do you say to yourself, I scrub all that shit
off the internet.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
We got to get rid of that.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
No, because I think that it's it's about being a
real person, you know, like I I enjoyed that time
in my life, and ultimately I actually see it through
line between that work and this work and that you're
trying to tell a story, and you know, when you're
trying to sell a mixtape or you're trying to get
somebody's signature to get on the ballot. At six point
thirty in the morning, you know, at the Broadway stop
of the NW in Astoria, it's the same thing where
(02:46):
you're asking someone can I have a moment of your
time to tell you about my story or our story.
And it also means learning how to deal with a
rejection very quickly, because once you've once you've tried to
be an artist, once you try to be a rapper,
you know what it means to be humbled. Yeah, it
was on a regular basis, right, Like you know what
it means to be the opener to the opener, to
the opener to the opener to the opener. And I
(03:08):
think too often in politics there's a real sense of self,
as if people should be excited to see you, when
in fact, you should be excited to see them. Right.
We shouldn't be lecturing people as much as we should
actually be listening to them. And I think that, you know,
struggling through being an artist, it was very helpful in
learning that.
Speaker 4 (03:24):
I thank god nobody told you to do you use
any of that hip hop stuff for your campaign.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
That's what they do, just how you reach certain demographics.
They're complete. Oh, I thank god didn't tell you to
do that.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Don't worry, it's not coming now.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
How did you get into politics? What got you into politics?
Because some of your policies that you want to we'll discuss,
I don't see happening but I love it. So let's
start how you got into politics at first.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
So the first time I knocked on doors was in
two thousand and eight for Obama. The first time I
knocked on doors in New York City was when I
picked up a copy of the Village Voice and I
saw that one of my favorite rappers, Hemes, had endorsed
his childhood friend for city council. And I was like, oh,
this guy would be the first South Asian elected official
in New York City's name was Elli. Nudge me, and
so I got on the F train, I went to
one sixty ninth and I knocked on doors for Ali.
(04:06):
And that was the moment where I started to get
involved in local politics. So I joined a club called
the Muslim Democratic Club in New York. And then in
twenty seventeen, I worked on my first race. That was
for a Palestinian Lutheran minister in bay Rich called Color
Eliot Team. And that just changed my life because you know,
I moved to the city when I was seven. This
is the city I fell in love with, the city
where I got my citizenship, where I got married. And
(04:28):
yet there was also a point where I knew I
was a New Yorker. I didn't know if I had
a place in New York City politics. I thought those
two things were separate. And then there was this campaign
which showed me that there was room for all of
us and you didn't actually have to give up any
of yourself to be a part of it. And that
inspired me to understand that politics isn't just something that
you believe in, it's also something that you do as
(04:49):
an active thing. And from there I kept working on
campaigns and then in twenty twenty I ran for the
State Assembly and I represent a story in Long Island City.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Wow THEA.
Speaker 4 (05:00):
They asked a question, and the question is simple, can
an AOC back socialist upset Andrew Cuomo in the New
York Cities may or race.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
I want you, I want you to answer that question.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
There's a short answer, which is yes, okay, and there's
a longer answer, which is the fact that New Yorkers
are hungry for a different kind of politics. We have
seen the same politicians with the same ideas lead us
to the same results for decades and this is in
many ways a question of whether we want to go
back to the past or whether we want to go
to the future, and our campaign is one that sees
(05:31):
this city under attack in two ways. An affordability crisis
on the inside, where the most expensive city in the
United States of America one in for New Yorkers are
living in poverty, the rest are living in a permanent
state of anxiety about whether they can keep affording the city.
And then we're under attack from the outside from a
Trump administration that is hell bent on going after not
only New Yorkers, but frankly democratic cities across the country
(05:53):
like we're seeing in Los Angeles right now. And I
am going head to head with Andrew Cuomo, a former
governor who's the son of a former governor, whose super
pack is funded in large part by the same billionaires
who put Donald Trump back in the White House. That's
not the kind of person who can stand up to
authoritarianism without seeing a reflection of themselves. We need someone
(06:15):
who will actually fight both of these crises at the
same time. And that's why I believe that that I
can win. And I'm so excited to have Congressman Ocosio
Cortez's endorsement and doing.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
That, I wanted to ask, you know, some of the
policies that you stand on is a free bus service
in New York City? Yes, sir, could that actually work?
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Absolutely? You know? So, I grew up in Morningside Heights.
I would take the one train. We set the nine
train back then, but I would take the one train
to two thirty first get on the BX ten to
go to Wrong Science. And I remember when I get
off the one train, if I could still see the bus,
even if it was two stops away, even if I
had missed it, I knew I could catch up to
it because that's how slow that bus was. I'd be
slapping the back of the bus and I could get
(06:52):
there in time. It was good for me, it's bad
for New York City. You should not be able to
catch that bus if you missed that bus, but the
buses are so slow. So as a status Semmember, I
won the first of its kind fair free bus pilot.
We made one bus route free in every borough of
New York City, and we secured fifteen million dollars to
do so. And it showed that ridership went up by
up to thirty eight percent, assaults on bus drivers went
(07:13):
down by thirty eight point nine percent, and of the
largest increase of riders came from New Yorkers making twenty
eight thousand dollars a year or less. And this is
critical because it's not just about economic access, it's also
about public safety. It's also even about environmentalism because we're
seeing that eleven percent of the new riders they were
previously driving a car, taking a taxi. Now they're off
(07:35):
the road, they're on public transit. And the cost of
doing all of this is about seven hundred million dollars
a year. Now that sounds significant, which it is, but
just want to put it into context. We're talking about
that in the context of a city budget that's about
a one hundred and thirteen billion dollars a year, state
budget about two hundred and fifty two billion dollars a year.
There is money, The question is what we spend it on.
(07:55):
And what I've proposed is that we raise ten billion
dollars to pay for our entire year economic agenda and
start to Trump proof our city because we know he'll
use federal funding as leverage over this city, and we
will do so in two key ways. The first is
to match the state's top corporate tax rate to that
of New Jersey. We are at seven point twenty five percent,
they're at eleven point five percent. Corporations can pay it
(08:16):
over there, they can pay it over here. And the
beauty of it is that it doesn't just apply to
corporations headquartered in New York City, because when you say this,
people will say, well, they're going to go to Florida.
Wherever you are headquartered, as long as you do business
in the state of New York, you are taxable for
that corporate tax. We're talking about corporations that are making
millions of dollars, not in revenue but in profit. And
the second is taxing the top one percent of New Yorkers.
(08:38):
We're talking about people who make a million dollars a
year more, taxing them just by flat two percent tax increase.
And I know if fifty cent is listening, he's not
going to be happy about this. Intense to not like
this tax policy, but I want to be very clear,
this is about twenty thousand dollars a year. It's a
rounding era, and all of these things together they make
every New Yorker's life better, including those who are actually
getting taxed.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Now, you also want to cut the police budget, and
people are upset about that. Right, feel that crime is
all over the place. I think a couple of days ago,
two people got shot in Times Square. The other day
I think another girl got shot in the face in
the Bronx. So people are very scared. It seems like
New York is getting worse than getting better. So what
do you say that you know at a time like this,
cutting the police budgets that seems like that is taking
more police officers off the street.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
I want to be very clear, we are not defunding
the police. What we are talking about is sustaining the
number of police that we have within the police department.
And when I talk to those police officers themselves, they
tell me they signed up to join the police force
to tackle serious crimes, and yet what they're being asked
to do today is serve as mental health professionals and
(09:37):
social workers. The same officers who thought they'd be responding
to shootings are picking up the two hundred thousand phone
calls a year of mental health calls. And what we've
seen elsewhere in the country is you can actually move
mental health calls out of the police department. That can
reduce the calls that police have to deal with by
twenty percent. And in doing so, you can increase police
response time to those major categories of crime. I think
(10:00):
that's important because police have a critical role to play
in public safety, and we also need to ask them
to just focus on their job and not ask them
to do every job. Because what we're seeing right now
is these same politicians who have given us this lack
of public safety over so many years, telling us that
their only answer, no matter the question, is to ask
police to do more. I want them to do the
(10:20):
thing that they signed up for and to have a
Department of Community Safety with teams of dedicated mental health
outreach workers at the top one hundred stations with the
highest levels of mental health crisis and homelessness. We have
to deliver public safety.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
And when those calls come in, you know, and people
are saying, hey, somebody's over here having an episode, the police,
I think, should be going out there with the mental
health professional. Let the mental health professional be the person
who tried to defuse that.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
They're backing them up.
Speaker 4 (10:45):
And you know, even if even if you want I
think a better I don't want.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
I can't tell you how to say things.
Speaker 4 (10:50):
But no police, if the NYPD got a budget a
ten point eight billion dollars. Does all of that really
need to go to the police. They're already super under page.
Where's that money going anyway? So why not take someone
that money and invested into other alternatives to respond to
things like mental health crisis?
Speaker 3 (11:04):
And that's what I've said, which is that we have
to work backwards from does every dollar we spend go
towards public safety? The critiques that I've said of the
NYPD have been that they don't need an eighty person
communications department that doesn't actually deliver public safety, that delivers
us drone footage. We can actually rapidly downsize that, and
I've I've been heartened to see the current commissioner took
that eighty and made it forty. And I've also said
(11:26):
that we don't need to have a more than billion
dollar police overtime budget. And usually when you say that,
people frame it as if you are going after the police.
But when you ask the police, there are two hundred
officers leaving the department every month, and one of the
leading causes is forced overtime because of quality of life.
They don't know when they're going home, They're working doubles
and triples. This is actually something that can make it
easier to do that job and ensure that we're actually
(11:49):
responding to this because what we have right now is
not working. You know, I sat with the family of
a New Yorker named Win Rosario, who's a young New
Yorker who was going through a mental health crisis. He
called nine one one himself asking for help. Two police
officers who were trained in mental health assistants were dispatched
to his home and they killed him within three minutes
(12:09):
on camera, in front of his mother and his brother.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
So the tined he they were trained.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
And my point here is that that serves no one.
That family grieves him every single day, and we all
know that that was not the way to respond to this.
So why don't we actually look at what works elsewhere
in the country and bring it here. And that's what
we're talking about, evidence based policy solutions that will deliver
real public safe.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Oh maybe we step on our own point.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
If they were trained, they were trained when you say
trained in mental health, would they've trained and did not
know how to respond to people dealing with.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
These police officers were given the training that right now
we're being told is sufficient. And my point here is
that we should not be training police officers for mental
health response. We should have mental health responders be the
ones who are actually the ones there. And this this
this addiction to asking them to do everything, it's one
that leaves them unable to do many things. Because right now,
(13:00):
as you were saying, New Yorkers, when they're worried about safety,
they want to know what's your plan. Sixty five percent
of crimes from the first quarter of this year are
currently unresolved. That's partially because we're asking the police to
do everything.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
So you know, they should do they should.
Speaker 4 (13:16):
Police officers should be having their own mental health evaluations
like that should be part of them.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
It's important and I think that's also part of why
when you when you ask an officer to work triples, right,
the longer you are on your shift, the harder it
is to make the same level of decisions throughout the
entirety of it. We need to ensure that we are
creating the conditions where we can actually deliver that public safety.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
I want to ask about congestion pricing as well. You know,
you talk about free free busses, which is which sounds great,
but now you got free buses but then when you
drive to the city, you charge me thirty dollars to
get to the city. So what's your your thoughts on
congestion price and how it's affecting businesses in New York.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
So I believe that the one thing New Yorkers hate
more than a politician they disagree with is one they
can't trust. So I'm going to tell you the answer
I say in every room. I am somebody who has
supported congestion pricing, and now I wanted to tell you
the truth. I want to say to your face though
I've supported it for a few reasons, because I believed
it would reduce congestion, it would increase bus speeds, it
(14:14):
would raise revenue for the MTA, and it would improve
air quality, and that's what we've seen it be able
to do. At the same time, I have always believed
it needs to be paired with immediate public transit improvements.
I launched a campaign called Get Congestion Pricing Right with
the Deputy Majority Leader of the State Senate, Mike Gennares.
The two of us won about twelve million dollars a
new bus service. I'm proud of it, but it's not enough.
(14:36):
And the reason I fought for. That is when you
look at the implementation of congestion pricing in places like Stockholm, London.
The first day they had it, they had increased public transit.
Because I think it's important to tell New Yorkers that
it's not just about raising revenue for public transit, it's
also about giving them a better option. Right there, there
are some people who need to drive. There are also
others for whom that's the most convenient option. We need
(14:57):
to make public transit the most convenient one. It's hard
when you look at your app and you're told the
bus is coming in ten minutes, and then you wait
ten minutes, and then that bus doesn't actually show up,
and so we need to earn that trust. That's that's
from my position.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
How is it affecting businesses in New York City though?
I mean, I know a lot of restaurants are charging
a congestion fee tax, and you know, prices at everything
is expensive. I mean the other day I went to McDonald's.
I got my kids one meal, and that one meal
is usually two ninety nine when I was a kid,
is now twelve dollars.
Speaker 4 (15:22):
You know, in all your kids one meal times that
are absolutely, they got to split it split.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
That's an expensive about that, right.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
You let me sell.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
But so you know, so how is it affecting business?
You know, especially small businesses? You know, the main businesses, Yeah,
you know they can get over, but you know, you
got that mom and pop store that just can't do it.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
You know. What we've actually seen is that since it's
been implemented, foot traffic has increased in the in the
Central Business District. And I think that's a big part
of it, is that actually, when you make it easier
to get around that same neighborhood, you actually can facilitate
more business. And an interesting thing that I've also seen
is that noise complaints are down by a significant amount
because you have reduced congestion, and that's a difference also
(16:04):
in quality of life. But I think to your point,
small businesses, small businesses are struggling in New York City.
They employ a majority of all New Yorkers who are
working in the private sector. We put forward a small
business proposal where we would cut fines and fees for
those businesses by fifty percent across the board. And we
would do that because the city has one hundred and
thirteen billion dollar budget. It is not funded through these
(16:24):
fines and fees. It doesn't mean that much to the
city if it gets one hundred dollars from a restaurant
because they have a refrigerator every year. But for that restaurant,
those are the kinds of things that can add up,
and so we're going to cut that in half. And
we're also going to make it easier to open them
because right now, I'll tell you want to open a
barbershop in New York City, you got to go to
seven different agencies, fill out twenty four forms, and then
(16:46):
attend twelve activities. That does not make it easy to
open a barbershop. We need to actually follow the example
of Pennsylvania where they took an eight week permitting process
and made it just a couple days. And that's why
we said we're going to have a mom and pop zar.
We're going to increase fun for one to one small
business services because we have to make it easier to
survive in the city, and city government has to understand
its role and responsibility in that because I'm tired of
(17:08):
politicians pretending like we're just bystanders to all these crises.
You know, I'm texting out thoughts and prayers to the
small business just closed. But actually my policies are helping
it to close. We need to make sure that that's
not the case any longer.
Speaker 4 (17:20):
You know, I want to ask you, I want you.
I'm asking you to define something. But when you answer it,
I want you to, you know, think about how you
would define it to somebody if you was writing a rap.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Now, I don't want you to wrap up it.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Look, I know you don't like the reps.
Speaker 4 (17:33):
I'm just saying that the way you would approach your
wrap you know the audience you're trying to talk to,
and you would probably keep things on the ground.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
This is where I lose the election right here.
Speaker 4 (17:42):
How would you define being a democratic socialist to just
to just somebody.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
So you know, some of my favorite songs that they
start with with an old quote, that's how that's how
a song might begin, and so for me, one of
them is from doctor King. Call it democracy or call
it democratic socialism. There must be a be distribution of
wealth for all people in this country, for all of
God's children, and ultimately to me, it's about dignity for
(18:08):
each person. You know, the person who gave me this
language of calling myself a democratic socialist is Bernie Sanders
when he ran in twenty sixteen and his relentless focus
on income inequality. It taught me that things could be
better than they were. So often, when you're voting, it
feels like you're voting between somebody who wants to wipe
you off the face of the earth and someone else
(18:29):
who wants to tell you to celebrate the crumbs that
can't feed your neighbors, and to know that it could
be more, that you could be voting for something that
has inspired me. And I think that you know, as
a Muslim democratic socialist, I am used to bad pr
and having to explain what all of these things mean.
And what I've found, though, is when you actually get
into a conversation, a lot of this is common sense.
(18:51):
Right If I believe that every New Yorker should be
able to live a dignified life, and that it's city
government's job to ensure that New Yorkers will agree with
me when I bring up example of public education free so.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Free education, free healthcare, what else I mean?
Speaker 3 (19:06):
Anything that's necessary rights. It's like when people whatever you
need to live in this city that should not be
something you can be priced out of. And we agree
with that when it comes to school, we agree with
that with libraries, with sanitation, with the fire department. But
there are certain things we've picked and chosen and said,
you know what, you don't need that for housing. You
know what, you don't need that for food, And I
think that we can't let the market determine who gets
(19:28):
to live that dignified life. This is not to say
that it's city government's job to deal with everything, but
for that which is necessary, we have to ensure that
we are doing our part. And that's why I have
said I'm going to freeze the rent for more than
two million rent stabilized tenants, because that's the mayor's power.
The last mayor did that three times. This mayor raised
the rent nine percent. He wants to raise it again
(19:49):
up to eight percent. We have these tools. It's just
a question of do we want to do this, And
I know why politicians don't because there's a lot of pressure.
You know, I'm the candidate wanting to freeze the rent.
Cuomo was the can did it run to raise the rent.
That's why the landlords of those same units just gave
Cuomo two and a half million dollars the same landlords
to say they don't have enough money to be able
to freeze the rent. Just found two and a half
million to give it to him, the single largest check
(20:11):
in this entire race. But it helps let people know
that's what's on the ballot. It's straightforward. It's do you
want your rent to be the same or do you wanted.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
To raise I saw your rent was twenty three hundred
a month.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
Yes, sir, twenty three hundred for one bedroom in a
storia Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
Yeah, was five hundred square feet.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
It's not too much more than that. Let me tell you.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
You know.
Speaker 4 (20:29):
You know it's interesting, right because Democrats have created all
his new politically correct language for everything, jender, sexuality, pregnant women.
How come y'all haven't found a better way to discuss socialism?
Why is socialism a dirty word when essentially all you
want to do is take care of people?
Speaker 3 (20:46):
I don't think it should be. I think it's actually
a word that when you break down its meaning like
you just have done. Is one that many Americans agree with,
and we've seen that that despite all the attempts, Bernie
Sanders continues to be one of the most popular politicians
in America, Congressman Ocostio Cortes similarly, and they have both
defined themselves in that same language. And I think it's that, But.
Speaker 4 (21:08):
I think it's because they tell more so nowadays, instead
of just leaning on the word socialism, they just tell
people you should have free healthcare, you should have a
free education, you should be able to make a livable wage.
You know, they should increase the minimum wage. Like those
are just simple concepts that are all so socialism. Well,
for some reason, y'all still find yourselves tripping up over
that word or letting the other side use to that.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
I mean, I mean, I think it's it's because there
are a lot of people making a lot of money
in this moment who would want Americans to think that
that's the only way life can be. And I don't
hide this, you know, it's it's it's how I see
the world. It's the world that I want is one
of dignity. And it's funny. There's this one guy who
comments under almost every one of my tweets and he's like,
he's a socialist. I'm like, yeah, it's in my bio,
(21:50):
you know, this is this is who I am, And
I think it's it's about being honest with New Yorkers
because I've found, you know, Mayor Koch said this that
if you agree with me on nine out of twelve issues,
vote for me twelve out of twelve ce a psychiatrist,
And I found that in New Yorker's an ability to say, look,
maybe I wouldn't call myself the same word, but I
want the same things. And ultimately, you have to have
a coalition that asks people of just one thing. We
(22:12):
need to make the city affordable. We can have disagreement,
we can have tension, but we have to have agreement
on that one thing so that we can build a
coalition that looks like the City of New York.
Speaker 4 (22:21):
Now, sorry, but you want to please Why I'm in
the polls like you just came out of nowhere, right.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Why do you.
Speaker 4 (22:27):
Think the young people are rying with you?
Speaker 3 (22:30):
You know, I think it's it's because people are hungry.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Forget they didn't throw your name in the hat at first.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
It was just look, let me tell you I was.
I was sitting in a coffee shop in a Storia.
This is right before we launched the campaign. If somebody
in politics showed me a poll. I was looking at
the beginning of the poll and they were like, no, no,
keep looking, keep looking. And then I was there at
one percent.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
They were like, that's what you said, right, How did
you make the pool where?
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Pause?
Speaker 3 (22:59):
You know? I think, I think. I think. I think
just by being consistent. You know, from the beginning of
the race, from October twenty third, the first day, I
said this was a campaign about affordability. I said, this
was a campaign about New Yorkers who have built this city,
who are being pushed out of this city. And I
said that I was going to do three things. I
was going to freeze the rent. I was going to
(23:19):
make the slowest busses in America fast and free. I
was going to deliver universal childcare. And it got to
the point where I can go to a rally and
I can say I'm going to freeze the and the
crowd will say rent buses, fast and free, universal childcare.
People know, and I think for too long politics has
become about a person as opposed to a platform, and
New Yorkers see themselves in that. And you know, growing
up in this city, so many of the people that
(23:41):
have helped to raise me that I've grown up with.
They haven't always seen themselves in our politics. You know,
they haven't voted in a lot of these elections. The
last mayoral primary, twenty six percent of Democrats voted, and
most New Yorkers and you ask them when's the election,
they'll tell you it's in November, not in June. Most
people don't know about the importance of the primary. But
I've been getting text messages from people that I've known
(24:02):
for years and people that I've just met, just screenshots
of voter registration that I'm going to vote for the
first time. And that's meant the world to me. Because
if we really want to protect our democracy, one of
the best ways of doing so is that people see
themselves in it. People see themselves as participants. You can't
protect it at an intellectual level. You have to protect
it an everyday level. And ultimately, going back to your
(24:25):
question about democratic socialism, it's about extending that democracy from
the ballot box to the rest of our lives. If
you get to choose your own leaders, why shouldn't you
be able to choose the economic conditions that you're living.
Why shouldn't you be able to ensure you have that dignity.
And I think that what's so exciting is, as you said,
a lot of this is powered by young people. You know,
young people who so often political analysts will say, don't
(24:49):
worry about them, they don't vote at the same rates,
they don't come out, And it's been so exciting to
see those same young people be part of the thirty
four thousand volunteers we have. You know, it took us
months to knock one hundred and fifty thousand doors in
this city. Last week we knocked that in seven days alone.
That's the level of momentum we're at, where people are
(25:09):
just going all across the city. And my mother is
one of these canvassers. She has her weekly canvassing shift
on Sunday. She's paired up with a twenty five year
old who she complains, walks too fast. They go up
six floor walk up, and she goes through ten consecutive knotdoors,
not homes, And then when she finally meets a voter
and they say they're going to vote for me, she says,
that's my son. And it's that sense of everyone is
(25:31):
a part of she don't She's like, you know, I
have my concerns as well.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
Let me ask you, you know, if you were the
mayor and you see what's going on in LA, how
would you handle that problem? If there was protesters, they
were you know, breaking stuff, looting, smashing police cars, vandalizing things.
Of course Trump sending the troops, how would you handle
that if you were mayor of New York City and
that actually happened here.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
I think, first and foremost you call it what it is.
It's authoritarianism. This is is the Trump administration looking to
arrest enough migrants that they can say they've fulfilled their
campaign promise of building the single largest deportation force in
American history. And too often we think about it as
just an attack on immigrants. It's an attack on the
fabric of this country. And it's not just in LA.
(26:18):
I mean, we have New Yorkers who have been arrested
and detained today. You know, a few days ago marked
three months since sa Palestinian New York named Mahamud Khalil
was arrested in his apartment building lobby, taken away from
his pregnant wife nor and has since been in an
ice attention facility in Louisiana. It wasn't able to even
witness the birth of his first child, Dean. And we
(26:38):
have another New York City public high school student named Dylan,
who was snatched at a regular check in at Federal Plaza.
Is now hundreds of miles away from his mother and
his two siblings. And this is personal for me because
I got my citizenship just blocks from where those arrests
are happening. Those blocks used to be my favorite part
of New York Cities, where I got my citizenhip, where
(26:59):
I got married, and those are now the same blocks
where when I took my father for his immigration interview
this year, I hugged him so tight because I didn't
know if I was going to see him in the afternoon.
There are too many New Yorkers who are feeling that,
and so I think you call this what it is.
You also make clear that Trump is reversing historical precedent
in that calling the National Guard is typically something a
(27:20):
governor requests of the president. It's not something a president
puts on a governor. And Kathy Hochel is someone who,
as the governor of our state, has been able to
fight Donald Trump and defend a lot of his potential
attacks on this state. One of The first things I
would do is work with her to make it clear
that this this has no room in our city and
(27:42):
our police force should not be assisting ICE in what
they are conducting. You know, we recently saw arrests where
the NYPD was then arresting a pastor and other New
Yorkers who were observing ICE arresting migrants coming in for
their check ins. We don't need to be a complices
to authoritarianism. We need to show that there's another way
(28:03):
of running this city, in this country. And that's who
I'm excited to be.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Could you explain to people why federal overreaches dangerous?
Speaker 3 (28:09):
You know, it's it's so funny to see Republicans, for
whom so long their rallying cry has been states' rights,
and now here they are they don't have a concern
for that at all. It's the same way that they
used to care about free speech. That's gone as well. Ultimately,
these are principles they only hold when are convenient to them.
And what's so dangerous about this is that we have
a clear delineation of what is a federal responsibility what
(28:31):
is a state responsibility. But Donald Trump wants to make
every responsibility his He wants to run a country in
a manner that is more befitting of an authoritarian state.
And I think what's so concerning is he's looking at
the example of someone like Naib Bukele and saying that
this style of leadership, of having mass prisons where we
(28:52):
send so many people who we allege our criminals no
matter whether we can find it or not, that's what
he wants to bring to this country. And I think
what we need are Democrats who are willing to stand
up and fight that. You know, we have a mayor
right now who has wanted to fear monger around sanctuary
city policy. This is a policy we've had in this
(29:13):
city for decades. It's a policy that's been defended by
Republicans and Democrats alike. It allows for the city to
work with the federal government if someone is convicted on
one hundred and seventy serious crimes. What it says, however,
is outside of those there should not be that collaboration.
And you know, I'm sure you know you've heard of Kilmar,
the man in Maryland who was taken to El Salvador.
(29:34):
If the city he was arrested in by ice had
sanctuary city laws, he would not have been able to
be picked up. That's what we're preventing from happening. And
still with what we have in place, because we have
a mayor who doesn't want to enforce it, because we
have a mayor who wants to collaborate, still we see
New Yorkers being picked up.
Speaker 4 (29:49):
That's a question, right, Why is Donald Trump the Democrats boogeyman?
Because none of you' all are running against Trump. And
to me, the biggest hurdle to the Democratic Party is
the Democratic Party.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
An action of the Democrat Ccratic.
Speaker 4 (30:00):
Party over all of these years is the biggest hurdle
for the Democratic Party.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
Now, I don't disagree with you. That's part of my
critique of Andrew Cuomo is that he's the very kind
of leadership that helped give rise to Donald Trump. You know,
before Donald Trump was the president of this country, before
he was a reality TV show host, he was a
real estate developer in New York City, and he was
someone who both parties had room for and time for.
(30:25):
And I think that our ability to accommodate the very
kind of real estate developers that have broken law after
law after law is also part of what has given
rise to an era of politics with no accountability. I mean,
Andrew Cuomo had a video of Donald Trump playing at
his own bachelor party. Like, that's the level in which
all of this is a mesh together. And I'm trying
(30:45):
to chart a new course with this campaign, alongside thousands
of New Yorkers for a politics that is clearly distinct
from that of Donald Trump. And I think when New
Yorkers are shocked at Donald Trump's record of cutting medicaid,
of trying to steal hundreds of millions of dollars from
the MTA, of giving tax breaks to billionaires, of hounding
(31:07):
the many women who have credibly come forward to accuse him,
those are the same things you could say about Andrew Cuomo.
We don't need a reflection of that in New York City.
We need someone who is the opposite of that, and
as a progressive Muslim immigrant who's willing to fight for
the things I believe in. That's what That's what makes
me donald Trump's worst night Mayor.
Speaker 4 (31:27):
But I saw you say that in the debate. You
know you would be Trump's worst nightmare. Well, once again,
why should that matter to anybody voting for you?
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Now? Cut running against Donald Trump.
Speaker 3 (31:37):
No, you, but but you are running against the authoritarianism
that he's bringing to this city.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
Authoritarian.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
No. I think that there's too many commonalities between him
and Donald Trump's record. And my point is that you
don't want to have a mayor who has to pick
up a phone call from someone who cut a two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars check to both him and
Donald Trump. You want to have a mayor who's willing
to fight for the city and have that that be
the thing that he's ultimately responsible for. And I think
(32:03):
to your point, we also have to be honest about
how we lost this presidential election. You know, New York
is the state that had the largest swing in the
country towards Donald Trump eleven and a half points. And
it happened far from the caricature of Trump voters. It
happened in the hearts of immigrant New York City. I
went to Fordham Road in the Bronx, I went to
Hillside Avenue in Queens and when I asked New Yorkers there,
(32:26):
almost all of whom were Democrats. Who did you vote
for and why? Many told me they didn't vote. Many
told me they voted for Trump, and they told me
they voted for him because they remembered having more money
in their pocket four years ago for their rent, for
their childcare, for their groceries, even for their metroplogan. And
as insincere and ridiculous and horrific as we know Trump's
policies to be, that is how people felt. Those are
(32:47):
the decisions that they made. And when I asked these
same New Yorkers what would it take to bring you
back to the Democratic Party, they said, a relentless focus
on an economic agenda. I said, what would you say
to a candidate running to freeze the rent, make buses
fast and free deliver universal child care, that I vote
for him. And that's when I introduced myself. And that's
my point here, is that there are some Democrats like
Andrew Cuomo, who think that we we went too far
(33:09):
left in how we ran a campaign. And my point
is that we actually betrayed working class voters a long
time ago, and it's time to own up to that
and finally fulfill the promises that were made decades ago.
Speaker 4 (33:20):
Well, I mean, that's interesting, right, because you know, you say,
Cuomo and Trump have so many similarities, But Cuomo has
been a career Democrat, and that's why I feel like
anybody who is going to be the future of the
Democratic Party, you do have to throw that old regime
under the bus, because.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
It's not just that bus is going to be free.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Sure, but it's not just Cuomo in the Democratic Party.
It's a lot of old leadership.
Speaker 4 (33:41):
List, the Chuck Schumers, it's the Bidens. You gotta throw
all of that under the bus and run it over.
And people have to hear you say that because I
keep hearing y'all. You know, you keep talking about Trump, Trump, Trump,
h Trump, but your party has been just as ineffective
and just as corrupt in a lot of ways.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
Trust me, I have I hear you because I've been
critical about the style of leadership that gave rise to
Donald Trump. He is also a style of leadership within
the Democratic Party. And I think for too long it's
been a party that has valued insider politics, pay your dues,
the words and advice of consultants, over the people that
are Democrats themselves. And I do think it's time for
(34:16):
a new generation of leadership. You know, Cuomo would be
the oldest mayor elected in New York City. I would
represent a completely new generation. And I think it's important
for that because it's not just about age, it's not
just about vision. It's also about what has your record
been and who have you been fighting for? And is
that distinct enough from what got us here?
Speaker 1 (34:38):
Got a couple more questions.
Speaker 4 (34:39):
You said, as the Blasio was the best mayor in
your lifetime for New York, and you gave three reasons.
You said, because he ended stopping for risks. Quote, yeah,
he ran on endian, stopping for risk, taxing the rich,
and funding universal pre k. You said he got a
lot of that done. How much of it did he
get done?
Speaker 3 (34:54):
Universal pre k? I think is one of the most
shining examples of what city government can do right. This
is something that took tens of thousands of dollars off
New York family's backs and made it easier to raise
a family here. You know, I'm tired of hearing New
Yorkers tell me that they're going to settle down, and
I know that the next sentence is going to include
the words long Island of the suburbs, because they just
(35:14):
can't make it work in the five boroughs. Part of
making it work is making it easier to have childcare.
You know today the average cost of childcare is twenty
five thousand dollars a year. That's more money than it
costs to send that same kid to Cune eighteen years later. Those,
I think are accomplishments.
Speaker 4 (35:29):
Now.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
It's not to say that there is no critique of
that time in office. I mean, I'm somebody who was
on a fifteen day hunger strike alongside thousands of working
class taxi drivers fighting that same administration for debt relief,
and we were able to come to an agreement where
we won four hundred and fifty million dollars in debt
relief for those taxi drivers. And ultimately, I say this though,
(35:50):
because we have seen what's possible if we have someone
focused on delivering it. And to me that the greatest
mayor in New York City history is Firell LaGuardia, because
he was someone who transformed our sense of the possible,
and he put working people at the heart of his politics,
and he did so while also confronting this rise in
anti immigrant hate all at the same time. And I
(36:12):
think we need a mayor who has that ability to
fight multiple crises at the same time and show what
it means to be a New Yorker.
Speaker 4 (36:19):
You said, as your elected mayor, Israel wouldn't let you in,
and you mentioned some legislation, but would that legislation apply
to you if you're actually met.
Speaker 3 (36:26):
We've seen elected officials, even congress people of this country
not be allowed into the state of Israel. And my
point was, I've been asked this question many times, and
I've said directly that I believe one need not visit
Israel to stand up for Jewish new Yorkers. What I
need to do is to meet Jewish New Yorkers at
their synagogues, at their temples, at their homes, subway platforms, parks,
(36:46):
wherever they may be, to hear their concerns, and actually
deliver on those concerns. And then, when I have been
asked about this, what I've also said is that even
if I was going to make that trip, there is
legislation that does not allow anyone who supports a nonviolent
movement calling for the compliance of the Israeli government with
international law to be allowed into that state. And I
(37:07):
say that to say that there has to be a
greater recognition of what is going on. And the fact is,
for me, my politics come back from the politics of
the universal. I believe that freedom and justice and safety, liberty,
these things have to apply to everyone for them to
be meaningful, and that also includes Palestinians.
Speaker 4 (37:26):
Why does it also seem like elected officials care about
what's going on in other countries more than they care
about what's happening here in America? Because you know, you, you
realize it's hard to think about starving kids somewhere else
when your kids is starving.
Speaker 3 (37:36):
Right, My focus is right here in New York City.
This is a question that's been asked of me time
and time again, and ultimately, I think it's actually a
question that, as you're saying, is not actually in line
with the top concerns of New Yorkers, not even in
line with the top concerns of Jewish New Yorkers. You know,
when you see in a poll, what are those top concerns?
The number one is affordable. After that, it's childcare, it's
elder carets, discrimination. These are all New York City issues,
(37:59):
and I think that we need to have a mayor
who is focused on New York City. And that's why
when I was asked in the debate, where is your
first trip abroad going to be I said, I'm going
to be here in New York City. And then I
was asked, followed up, are you going to go to Israel?
And I said, one need not go to Israel to
stand up for Jewish New Yorkers. And then I was asked,
you know, it just continues to continues to continues. But
for me, the focus has to be the Five Boroughs.
I mean, you are running to be the mayor of
(38:20):
this city. This is a city that is losing hundreds
of thousands of people in the last few years alone
because they can't afford it. They're going to Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Connecticut,
anywhere their dollar can go a little further. And we
know that. You know, as the saying goes, when white
America catches a cold, Black America catches pneumonia, that inequality
is compounded. For Black New Yorkers. We lost two hundred
(38:40):
thousand Black New Yorkers in two decades, about nine percent
of the city's population of Black New Yorkers. From twenty
ten to twenty nineteen, nearly twenty percent of black children
and teenagers had to leave this city. And that is
a crisis that has to be focused on that would
be that would be at the heart of what my
administration would do.
Speaker 4 (38:56):
Yeah, I don't understand why conversations about affordability, free healthcare,
making buses, free freezing the rent on rent, stabilized apartments.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
Why is that considered far left?
Speaker 3 (39:05):
Come on, I'm just saying why it's common.
Speaker 4 (39:09):
See, I can't y'all message that better. Like I think
you got to get rid of that word socialism. You know,
my man killer Mike used to tell Bernie Sanders to
use the term compassionate capitalism, or maybe just talk about
what it is you want to do constantly instead of
getting caught up in those labels.
Speaker 3 (39:23):
I mean, I think it's both important to tell people
where this belief comes from. But what I always foreground
is what this belief will mean for someone. You know,
it's it's people want to know, how are you going
to help them in their life, in their struggle. The
reason we focus this entire campaign on affordability is that's
what New Yorker's told us. When you ask them what
are you struggling with, They'll tell you rent, they'll tell
(39:46):
you childcare, They'll even tell you public transit. Because I
know to many people two ninety doesn't feel like a lot.
One in five New Yorkers cannot afford a Metro card.
That's the state of inequality in this city. While income
inequality has declined in the country, it's in increased in
New York City. This is the wealthiest city in the
wealthiest country in the history of the world. And so
to what you're saying, these are common sense policies. And
(40:08):
also when they're polled, they even sometimes have supportive majority
of Republicans because they speak to what people are actually
going through.
Speaker 4 (40:15):
It's it all people wanted some more money in their
pocket and they want to feel safe.
Speaker 1 (40:18):
Look, that's it.
Speaker 2 (40:19):
Well, if they want to support you, how can they
go out and support you?
Speaker 3 (40:21):
Well, what I would tell them has come to Zoran
for NYC dot com. Don't donate to us. We've already
raised the maximum we can spend in this campaign. But
do give us something more valuable, which is your time.
We're building a team of thirty four thousand people New
Yorkers from all walks of life, knocking on doors, talking
to their neighbors. Come on out canvas. It would be
a joy to have you. And I would also say
that the three of you want to come Canvas. We'd
love to have you as well.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
Thank you. Early residents in New Jersey, oh come.
Speaker 3 (40:45):
So look, you know, just bring that corporate tax rate.
Bring that corporate tax right over from New Jersey June
twenty fourth. Early voting starts June fourteenth, and we're confident
we go in this, but only with the help of
New Yorkers.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
Well, good luck.
Speaker 2 (40:58):
Thank you so much, Joe, ron Kwalm and Mama Donny.
I appreciate. We're all right, Zoran Kwame, Mam Donnie.
Speaker 1 (41:06):
There we go.
Speaker 3 (41:07):
Goodness, get the polls up.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
There you go.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
It's the Breakfast Club. Good morning, Wake that ass up
in the morning.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
The Breakfast Club.
The Breakfast Club News
Hosts And Creators
Charlamagne Tha God
DJ Envy
Jess Hilarious
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.