Donald Trump, in the middle of the night, put on Truth Social
that the reason that all these Democrats had won is because his
name wasn't on the ballot. But in actual fact, his name was
all over all of these elections and it was against him that
people were voting. That is the common thread, along
with the economics. Hello and welcome to Trump
World. I'm Anushka Astana and I'm in
New York City. And I'm Matt Fry and I'm in
London. And we've had quite a big night
of elections, especially here in New York itself.
We have a new mayor coming in, Zoran Mamdani.
What do you make of it, Matt? Well, I'm very jealous that
you're there and I'm here and I was following it all night long
and this morning. It's an extraordinary story, as
Mamdani said in his victory speech.
So Donald Trump, since I know you're watching, I have 4 words
for you. Turn the volume up.
And then the response from Donald Trump was in caps, of
course, on social media. And so it begins.
What's the IT Anushka? I think the, IT is a very
ferocious back and forth between 2:00, you know, extremely
forceful politicians who are going to love to hate each other
and are going to try and take each other on.
I think Donald Trump likes to attack city mayors.
He likes to attack. I think it's fine to say this,
minority city mayors. We've talked before about how
he's attacked Sadiq Khan endlessly, how he's attacked
Brandon Johnson in Chicago. And he's really, really going to
go for Mamdani. He's going to call him a
communist. I wonder if Donald Trump thought
maybe we would wake up today to a win for the Democrats in New
York City, but not everywhere else.
And so he could say, you know, this guy is going to scare the
rest of the country. And actual fact, the president
has woken up to a terrible night all over.
What I find amazing yet again, is that in my experience of
American politics, the most outlandish scenario that you
think will never come to pass often does.
You know, Barack Hussein Obama becoming president, Donald J
Trump becoming president, this guy becoming the mayor of the
capitalist headquarters on planet Earth as a 34 year old,
you know, democratic socialist. I mean, this would have been
unthinkable even six months ago. But, you know, when these things
do happen, they show you that America is at some kind of
inflection point. So the question I guess we're
going to try and answer in this edition of Trombolism, does this
guy represent the new voice of the Democratic Party?
Because as you know, Anushka, not all Democrats are happy
about him. And Chuck Schumer, the Senate
Minority Leader, did not endorse him, even though he is the
senator from New York State. So, you know, there's a there's
a civil war going on within the Democratic Party that, you know,
that has just gone to another level.
And then, of course, you've got the ongoing war between Trump,
the MAGA movement and what the Democrats are.
Yeah, and, and I had a moment last night where I really felt
the sense of how far Zoram Mamdani had come.
But obviously last night I decided to go to the Hot Girls
for Zoram party, man, and the Gays for Zoram Party.
And for for those people who don't know what those movements
are, there was a kind of Hot Girls for Bernie movement.
It was meant to be a kind of tongue in cheek movement, this
idea that, you know, there are women on the left whose voice
should be amplified and they can get behind, behind, you know,
the candidates who they want to get behind.
And in this case, they got behind Zoram Mandani, and they
helped to knock on something like 3,000,000 doors in total.
And this night began with an act by two drag Queens.
And I was talking to one of them who's been very, you know,
involved in organizing from the start.
And she was describing this moment much earlier on in the
campaign where there was a big event for trans people and loads
of politicians were going to come and speak.
And then they decided that the only people who would speak from
the stage were trans people. And so she said 1 by 1, by 1,
all the politicians cancelled because they wanted to speak by
the stage. But Mamdani cleared his diary,
she said. And she turned up.
And at that point, he was at 1% in the polls and.
That's when I started believing in him, and that's the first
time I ever had faith in a politician like that.
And now he's not just that 1%, he's actually going to be the
mayor. It's crazy.
I'm sorry. That is how far he has come.
Rank outsider? No chance at all.
He totally, totally stunned New York by winning that primary.
As we know, his opponent, Andrew Cuomo, former governor of this
state 3. Time, Governor?
Yeah. Yeah, and establishment man who
and in the end had to go in disgrace because of complaints
about sexual harassment. And, and I think in a way
embodies his story, embodies what people are fed up with,
which is this idea that, you know, somebody who, by the way,
there's a dynasty there. His dad was governor of the
state. Mario Cuomo should be pushed out
in disgrace and could just come back and assume he was going to
win. He ran as an independent and he
got very thoroughly beaten. And this drag queen who I was
speaking to last night, she, she couldn't stop crying at the
result at the moment that she found out.
And it was just an example of the kind of, you know, the
coalition that has come together to back him, which has had to go
far beyond, even in New York City, far beyond what you would
consider the socialist wing of the Democrat Party.
And you know what's so extraordinary?
We always think that, you know, a very quintessentially
metropolitan candidate like Zora Nandani would be very easy to
defeat. And he's far too metropolitan
and far too New York in order to make an impact, you know,
outside the city. And, and let's see if that's
true. But, but let's dwell just for
two seconds on how metropolitan he is.
I mean, his father, Mahmoud Mandani, is an academic, I think
currently teaching at Columbia University near colonial
history. His mother, Mariner, is an
Indian born filmmaker. His wife, Rama Duaji, is an 28
year old artist. He, by the way, is the first
mayor of a major city who met his wife on Hinge, which is
quite interesting as well. I love the fact about his mum
that she actually, I mean, she's a very, very big famous
director. She actually directed Monsoon
Wedding. Exactly.
And but The thing is, the point is he is so metropolitan that
you would think that he would be low hanging fruit for
establishment Democrats like Andrew Cuomo, who was just
defeated, or indeed for Republicans.
But as despite his metropolitan roots and, and, and identity,
which he's incredibly unapologetic about, he has done
that thing that no other Democrat has managed to do, but
that Trump managed to do on the other side, which is to find a
voice that appeals to ordinary people on issues like the cost
of living, you know, on being fleeced.
You know, he's keeps referring to the unbelievable greed and
corruption of the Trump family, which you could argue is perhaps
their Achilles heel. Look, Republicans need to be
worried if they have any capacity for being worried.
Trump should, you know, be alert to the fact that this guy in the
way that he connects to people is quite similar to Donald
Trump. But on the other side.
And by the way, there were, as you, you know, reflected in all
your pieces this week, which were brilliant.
You know, there are lots of Trump voters in New York.
You know, of ethnic minorities voted for Mamdani, having voted
for Donald Trump a year ago. But the other thing is the civil
war inside the Democratic Party. This is an unresolved issue
that, you know, the voters of New York has just said, no,
thank you. We're not interested in the
Cuomo dynasty. We're not interested in old
people who think they're entitled to office.
But then I also, you know, remind you of the quote of Mario
Cuomo, the father of Andrew, the defeated candidate, perhaps his
most famous quote. You campaign in poetry and you
govern in prose. And for Nandani, that prose
starts in about 57 days from now governing a city with a $140
billion budget, you know, with, with Wall Street and all the
rest of it. Can he do it?
Can he make the difference? He will be judged on his record,
I'm sure. Let's listen to what he said
when he won to a crowd of 3000 supporters in Brooklyn I.
Must say this. Thank you.
Thank you to the next generation of New Yorkers who refuse to
accept that the promise of a better future was a relic of the
past. You showed that when politics
speaks to you without condescension, we can usher in a
new era of leadership. We will fight for you because we
are you, as we say on Steinway and a Milkum Waileikum.
So look, I think there was something quite interesting in
that speech, which was talking to New Yorkers who were going to
vote for Mandani, what they wanted.
And that was someone who would take on Donald Trump.
If you look at the American map for last night, if you look at
the victories in New Jersey, in Virginia, in a California
redistricting ballot for the Democrats.
And you could argue that it's ideologically all over the
place. And look, Democrats will, I
can't tell you how many Democrats in Washington, DC say
to me, Mamdani's not right for the country.
Socialism will work in New York. It's not going to work in
Pennsylvania. And what is true is that he has
won here from the left. Yeah.
And I would like to talk a bit about his policies later.
You know, Abigail Spamberger and Mikey Cheryl in Virginia and New
Jersey, respectively, both basically one from the centre.
But when I look around the country, I see something that is
the same everywhere, and that is 2 parts of their campaign #1 all
of them focused relentlessly on the economy that was at the
centre of all of this. It was about affordability.
It was about recognizing people are feeling the squeeze, they
are feeling poor. They wanted people to talk about
that. Even Mandani, who gets a lot of
criticism for his positions on foreign policy and particularly
around the Middle East, you'll notice that wasn't what he
focused on in this campaign. It was all about, you know, bus
fares, groceries, rent and so on, as it was in New Jersey and
also in Virginia. And then the other thing they
all put set themselves up as somebody who was ready to take
on Trump. You know, Donald Trump in the
middle of the night put on Truth Social that the reason that all
these Democrats had won is because his name wasn't on the
ballot. But in actual fact, his name was
all over all of these elections and it was against him that
people were voting. That is the common thread along
with the economics. The debate that is about to blow
up inside the Democratic Party is okay.
People are feeling the pinch. People are fed up with Donald
Trump. So what is our answer?
Is it some of the radical ideas that Mamdani has put forward,
which I think we should just be clear is a long way from
communism actually, and not that far from a lot of policies we
see in European countries? Or is it something from the
center? Whatever it is, Matt, and I
wonder if you agree with this. It has to feel radical because
Donald Trump has upended politics.
And you know, I remember Emmanuel Macron, you can't even
believe now, but remember when he was elected, it was radical
centrism. It's got to be radical in my
opinion, wherever it comes from. Well, it's got to it's got to
have a voice that punches through.
And I think if Donald Trump has shown us anything, it is that
tacking inevitably to the centre ground is not the way that you
win an election. You remember how he took on, you
know, the Bush dynasty when he first ran in 2016, he said, you
know, low energy Jeb and Jeb Bush, that then the governor of
Florida was the anointed leader of the Republican movement.
And that didn't go so well. And, you know, that sort of
centrist attitude, whether it's from the Republican side or the
Democrat side, doesn't really work.
And the environment, and we've talked about this before, you
know, of cable television, of the primary cycle, which always
rewards the candidate, you know, who's got the loudest voice on
the margins. That has changed the nature of
American politics. But even though Mandami is very
much, you know, of one side of the Democratic Party, he's a
self avowed, proud democratic socialist in the capital of
capitalism, which is which of course is, you know, unheard of.
He's also very pragmatic. So if you look at the kind of
the things that he's done during the campaign, he has had a
meeting with police officers where he is bent over backwards
to apologise for tweets that he put out after the George Floyd
murder where he basically called for the defunding of the police.
Now, they may not all believe him, but the fact is he's gone
out there and he's apologised. Crucially, he then added on to
that by saying that he would keep Jessica Tisch as the police
commissioner of New York. Jessica Tisch is, you know, is
an heiress from a billionaire's family, the Tisch family.
And she's been very popular apparently, as a police
commissioner. He will keep her on.
Now, this goes against the grain of kind of a lot of things that
he says he believes. You know, at the same time, he
says, well, you know, I'm not sure if I'm going to raise taxes
on on billionaires in New York. And not all the billionaires
believe that. But he's saying I'm open to all
sorts of suggestions about how we reduce income inequality.
And guess what? Those Wall Street billionaires
who were horrified at the idea of Mamdami becoming their mayor,
they are, they do what billionaires do, which is that
they bow to the inevitable. They reposition themselves.
So even Bill Ackman, very pro Israel, you know, very anti, he
led the fight against Harvard University, you know, a rich
dude, you know, who was incredibly nice about Donald
Trump and friendly with Donald Trump.
Even he came out and said, let's give this guy a chance, you
know, let's see how he's doing. And then other billionaires on
Wall Street have been saying, you know, we've got to help this
guy. We're going to make we've got
him help him win because the city needs to succeed.
So again, because everything these days is transactional in
politics, including someone as ideological, you know, as Zoram
Mandami to the Democrats and to Donald Trump, I would say watch
him. Watch that pragmatism.
Watch that transactional state of mind that has served you so
well in the past. Yeah, you know what?
Last night I was talking to these supporters who were
dancing and crying and they were so happy and they'd campaigned
for him day in, day out. And, and they describe
themselves as being from the hard or the far left, whatever
you would call it. And they said we're the ones who
might be disappointed because because as you say, he has
moderated on the issue of Israel, which, by the way, you
know, has really divided New York's Jewish community.
You know, I witnessed UMM, which we put out on them the program.
You had that amazing scene of two people, 2 New York Jews,
arguing with each other on the bus.
It's fantastic. Yeah, one of them was back in
Cuomo and saying, look, you know, he was really upset about
things that Zoram Mandani has said about.
He does recognize umm and think that the state of Israel has a
right to exist, but he's talked about whether it should exist
with any hierarchy on religion. Umm and this was saying he to
him, that means he, he doesn't think Israel has the right to
exist. And he, he was genuinely scared
about this. And then the guy next to him
suddenly said, I'm Jewish too. And I think these attacks of
anti-Semitism are a nonsense. Umm in terms of the policies,
though, just to go through them. They're not, you know, like I
say, they're certainly not communist.
If you look at the idea of rent freezes for 2 million New
Yorkers who live in certain types of apartments that the
mayor actually is able to control because of the way the
structures work, you know, Bill de Blasio did that three times.
So it's not like it's never been done before.
If you look at the idea of subsidising childcare, I mean,
it became an arms race of a policy in the UK where the
Conservatives won and it was Jeremy Hunter's chancellor who
put in a massive package of subsidised childcare, grocery
run, city run grocery stores. I mean, they actually already
exist. And then free bus fares.
I mean, the question I think that is going to be difficult
for Zoram Mandani is, is he actually going to get these
things in because they require the state in many cases to vote
for them, including the idea of increasing taxes.
And he says that the bus fares would cost $700 million.
If you actually think about the impact potentially of so many
more people traveling by bus of needing more members of staff
to, you know, be on those buses actually, then you might
question whether his 700 million is realistic.
And then you might ask for more money than that.
I mean his argument is mayors of ended up spending much more than
that on other things in the past.
Why shouldn't they be able to spend that?
I mean, listen, there's lots of things that can go wrong.
And, you know, guess what, governments promising never to
raise taxes and then doing it. Well, that sounds very, very
familiar, you know, talking from Britain at the moment.
But I think what what would be intriguing is to see whether he
can use his undoubted skills, campaigning skills, which he did
so brilliantly on TikTok and other social media, and his
ability to go into the lion's den of Trump voters in New York
and speak to them, you know, and get them on side.
It'd be really fascinating to see whether, you know, he can
make that big difference. By the way, just one small kind
of wrinkle in his record in New York.
If you look at the different barriers of how they voted,
actually Staten Island, which is quite conservative and slightly
further out and and really quite poor and also very working
class, they voted for Andrew Cuomo and not for Zoran Nandani.
So that was, that's quite interesting.
I mean, you know. Someone said to me today if
Staten Island had had voted for Zoran Mamdani, it would be
absolutely unbelievable. But indeed, and, and, and Cuomo
did get quite a large chunk of the vote.
So I think that that debate within the Democratic Party that
is only just begun. I don't think that's over yet.
But, you know, I mean, I remember people close to Donald
Trump telling me that if Hillary Clinton had not been the
candidate in 2016, but Bernie Sanders and remember, they were
they, you know, they were against each other in the
primary, then Bernie Sanders, they thought this is Republican
speaking might have defeated Donald Trump.
So the the kind of search is on desperately seeking a younger
Bernie Sanders. And you could argue that Zoran
Mandani is is a prime candidate for that as indeed as Alessandra
Octavio Cortez, who AOC, you know, the Hispanic congresswoman
from New York who's often mentioned as presidential
material. I mean, these are all people,
you know, waiting to line up. And whether this strategy from
the left works well, we'll find out, especially in this, you
know, upcoming year, which is the year of the midterm
elections. And, you know, in the last
midterm elections when Trump was president, he lost the majority
in Congress. Let's see if that happens again.
I mean, judging from the result this week, I'd find it very hard
to imagine the Democrats not doing well as a correction to
everything that Trump has done. And because Trump is having a
such a good time being a disruptor, I didn't expect him
to calm down anytime soon. And Muska?
We've been focusing on New York for obvious reasons.
It's New York City, and Zoran Mandami is a unique candidate in
so many ways. But what about all these other
races? They were pretty significant as
well, weren't they? Yeah, and also because they were
more unexpected if you think just over the water from here in
New Jersey, everybody said that governor race was incredibly
tight, but the Republicans could win it.
I mean, some people were worried about over interpreting that
because actually although New Jersey votes Democrat in
presidential elections, it does swing in terms of the
governorship. It's been Democrat for 2
governors in a row. And actually, you know, Mikey,
Cheryl, the. Democrat really won comfortably,
like, well, well, well ahead of her opponents.
Yeah, double, double digits, Exactly.
And then Virginia, we did expect to go to Abigail Spanberger, and
that's the way it did go. But actually the attorney
general race was also won by a Democrat candidate, Jay Jones.
So that was seen as a bit of a surprise.
And then if we just cut across the country to California, you
know, in the background of all of this, we've had Donald Trump
trying to gerrymander. He's been forcing states,
starting with Texas. I mean, it's forcing the right
word, pressuring them to redraw Congressional District
boundaries in order to give Republicans an advantage in the
midterms. Well, Gavin Newsom, the governor
of California, hit back and said, we've got to do the same
in reverse. And I remember watching one of
the early debates on this in in California, and, you know,
people were saying, well, hang on, this is like cheating.
And he was saying we have to respond like with like, and the
queues in California as people came out to say, yes, we are
ready to redraw our districts in order to gerrymander too, so
that we can take on Donald Trump.
I mean, that's what I mean. And I think we both see this,
don't we? What we're seeing is the
beginnings of some sort of fight back from a party that has
frankly been flailing many ways. The question is, how does that
fight back now move forward? I mean, we've had a situation
that you mentioned earlier where Chuck Schumer wouldn't endorse
Zoram Mandani, wouldn't say how he had voted in the election.
And now he's meeting Democrats here who were saying, we will
not go out and knock doors for Chuck Schumer, we will not
support him anymore. He's got to watch out now and
understand that the Democratic Party has changed.
I still think there's going to be this very first debate that
we're about to see about whether whether this works elsewhere.
Won't that be fun to cover? I think the other big divide
here is not so much even between left and right within the
Democratic Party, between young or youngish and old or very old.
You know, Biden was the obvious example of a Joe and tocracy
kind of out of hand. Chuck Schumer is 74 years old.
You know, Nancy Pelosi, I mean, I know she's no longer running
Congress, but you know, she's very active politically and very
ancient. I wouldn't dare mention her age
in case I get some blowback there.
But you know, you know, the Democratic Party has been run by
very old people. Even Hillary Clinton is quite
old now and her husband Bill is really seems very old indeed, as
you know, as as a comedian in New York said in at a Mandani
rally. You know, it's so nice you have
a Democrat who wasn't old enough to know Jeffrey Epstein.
That kind of sums it up. He's so young, though.
I said this to someone. They said it's a smear, but I
was like, Zora Mandani was in high school when Barack Obama
was elected. It's enough to make you feel
extremely old, isn't? It he's, he's, he's got such
good lines in, in the debate with, with Andrew Cuomo, Andrew
Cuomo said, you know, you've got no experience.
And he and Mandami shot back and said, what I lack in experience,
I make up for in integrity. And then he turned to Cuomo and
said, and what you lack in integrity, you'll never make up
for in experience. Bam.
You know, that's the kind of line that Donald Trump comes up
with, although not quite as elegant, but equally punchy.
And and with Mandami, you know, that's what you're getting.
You know, you could feel the hunger, the thirst amongst
Democrats to finally get a voice that even though they're they're
a bit worried about what he might do to taxes or to their
bottom line. You know, they feel finally as
if they're punching back. And, and what an unlikely
puncher, 34 year old, you know, Muslim American immigrant born
in Uganda, you know, all the rest of it that we've discussed
it is it is so unlikely. But as I said before, the most
unlikely scenario in America, the one that if you went to
Steven Spielberg with a pitch, he would show you the door often
becomes the the reality. And that reality then changes
everything else. So let's see, you know, could he
be the next Barack Obama? That's the question we're really
circling around. Because he was born in Kampala,
so he can never be president. Well, yes, absolutely.
There's a Bertha campaign right there.
But, but in terms of in terms of energizing the party, you know,
and who does he then hand that baton onto for president?
Yeah, although like I say, Democrats outside of New York
are very insistent that this isn't the answer elsewhere.
So I do think they'll be that kind of battle for it.
I. Don't know San Francisco
Democrats, you know, they're, I mean, they're, you know, the
Chicago Democrats. I mean, you know, the debate
will be between Gavin Newsom, incredibly good looking
telegenic governor of California, who obviously wants
to be president and is behaving as if he's already on the
campaign. You know, Pritzker, the that,
you know, the less telegenic but multi billionaire hotel air, you
know, governor of Illinois. I mean, he's another contender.
You know, Josh Shapiro, governor of, of Pennsylvania, I mean,
these are there's some really powerful voices there in the
Democratic Party. You just want them all to make
up their mind who's going to lead.
I think one just final thought on this is about how you deal
with Donald Trump. I mean, you mentioned San
Francisco. The San Francisco mayor was
actually, it was a bit controversial.
Donald Trump was like, I rang him up.
I spoke to him. He was nice and polite.
He said he'd work with me. So I'm not sending the National
Guard in to San Francisco on on the final night of campaigning
here in New York, I went to watch Zoran Mandani's last kind
of rallying talk to canvassers. It was in a park in Astoria in
Queens where he years an assemblyman.
I was on my knees for quite a long time waiting for him to
come to try and him ask him questions and listen to what he
had to say. And and Donald Trump had just
put on Truth Social that voters should back Andrew Cuomo, not
the Republican candidate in New York, because in his words, a
bad Democrat was better than a communist.
And Mamdani seemed to almost inflate that attack.
That was the thing that he thought was going to help him.
The idea that Donald Trump was endorsing the other guy was what
was going to bring New Yorkers out to the polls and get them to
vote for him. And, you know, we had an
absolute, you know, massive turn out here for this type of
election, the biggest since 1969, so I think.
It's an amazing question. How do you deal with Trump?
Everyone who won last night dealt with Trump by taking him
on and placing themselves on the opposite side of the debate.
OK, let's bring in scholar. Doctor Christina Greer,
political scientists and professor at Fordham University.
Also Co host of FAQ NYC podcast. Doctor Greer, thank you for
joining us. How are you feeling waking up in
a new New York? It definitely feels like a new
New York. You know, it's been really
interesting to see Mamdani's rise.
This time last year, he was pulling at about 1% name
recognition. And through hard work and
mobilizing people online and getting them into the streets
and talking about a lot of issues that New Yorkers care
about, he's been able to build this movement across the city
that has put together so many diverse types of coalitions that
we have never seen before. So it feels like a new day,
especially when thinking about what's going on at Washington,
DC Instead of trying to pit Americans against one another,
this feels like the antithesis of that.
And it's really interesting that he he focused a lot on, you
know, cost of living issues, you know, the stuff that really
effects ordinary New Yorkers, including many of those who
voted for Trump. So tell us a little bit about
that. His his strategy of going
straight into, you know, the mini pockets of Trump heartland
in New York to to bring people on side.
Well, if you all remember in 2024, Donald Trump's case was,
you know, affordability. The difference was he was saying
he's going to bring down the price of eggs.
He's going to bring down the price of groceries and gas.
And the only reason why things are expensive in your life and
things aren't working in your life is because immigrants are
taking things away from you. That's the Donald Trump
philosophy. Very subtractive.
This one in many ways, is the same populist message that deals
with affordability. Can you afford your rent?
Can you afford to get to work? Can you afford groceries?
But collectively we can change that.
And so instead of blaming your immigrant neighbor, then you
work with your immigrant neighbor to try and get a better
life. And I think those two issues
both hit at affordability, but from very different angles.
It's, it's really fascinating. I spent, I went back to Hillside
Ave. in Queens where Zoram Mandani had gone to try and talk
to people who were voting for Trump.
And I met a number of Bangladeshi voters who who would
all everyone I spoke to had voted Trump the year before,
even though they were all lifelong Democrats.
And then they were voting for Mandani.
And I was trying to understand this shift in terms of the
politics. And as you say, it was about
affordability. Although interestingly, they
weren't regretting their votes for Trump, which I think is also
quite interesting in itself. I guess the question is that
people keep voting for change. They keep voting for something
new here in the UK as well, thinking, you know, maybe this
will make my life easier. If it doesn't make their life
easier, they then seek out another thing.
So in terms of Zoram Mamdani's policy offer, how realistic is
it that he can actually get it done?
I mean, quite a lot of it does rely on, you know, getting votes
through the state legislature here, doesn't it?
Right. So I'll take the first part of
your statement first, though. I mean, I do think we have to be
realistic about 2024. There's just certain people who
can't vote for a woman no matter how qualified.
And not saying that the campaign was perfect and we know it was a
very short campaign, but there are a lot of people who said it
was the economy and it was not. So that's one piece.
The second piece is, you know, affordability across the
country. We just have these calcified
problems that don't seem to get resolved.
And even and in both parties, we have these lifelong politicians,
these career politicians, 70 years old, 80 years old.
We just keep coming back and essentially telling the American
people, well, we can't do it right.
We we've tried, but this can't be done.
So in Donald Trump's case, he says, why not?
Let's try it. And the same with Zaram Abdani.
Why do we have to accept the status quo?
I think for immigrant communities who have sort of
switched back and forth and maybe back again, because they
are, you know, all Americans go to the the polls.
They based on pocketbook issues, we can say it's about
immigration, we can say it's about, you know, whatever the
issue is. But at the end of the day,
people vote their pocketbooks and if you're promising them a
better life, then that's very real.
With Mamdani, he does not have citywide experience.
It's a very little bit of time in Albany, which is the state
capitol, where he'll have to get quite a bit done.
But the good thing working for him is that the governor, Kathy
Hochul, is not only up for re election in 2026 in her general
elections in November, but she's being primaried by her own
Lieutenant governor for now. That's the only real primary she
has, but there could be others who jump in.
So she's going to need in the next six months to keep this
mobilization in this groundswell of energy that comes out of New
York City, because that's the bulk of her votes across a very
purple, if not red state. She's going to need Zaram
Abdani, and something tells me he knows he's got six months
before the left and the right turn on him.
Those two are going to have to work in conjunction with one
another, and I think it'll be for the better of New York City
residents. And Christina, I mean,
immigration is a massive issue in politics, both in America but
also here in Europe. And most political leaders, as
far as I can tell, are dealing with immigration in a kind of
semi apologetic way. They they don't really want to
talk about it if they're incumbents.
They want to shout about it if they're in opposition.
But Mandani is the first candidate of this stature
because he's of, you know, immigrant stock himself, I
guess, who is unapologetically embraced the identity of
immigration and the importance of immigration in New York City.
I found that really remarkable. And it it seems to work.
It did. And you know, what's interesting
is that, you know, we're a nation of immigrants.
We're a city of immigrants. John F Kennedy famously wrote a
book about the nation of immigrants.
I'm a proud board member of the Tenement Museum that does
nothing but celebrate the history of immigrants.
But he didn't run on I'm an immigrant.
Let's all be immigrants. It was I'm a New Yorker, and we
all encompass what it means to be New York.
And a large part of what it means to be a New Yorker is also
to be an immigrant. But his identity politics were a
little different this time. It's not the traditional
identity politics that you've seen.
It's the I would argue that the identity of being a New Yorker
encapsulates way more of New Yorkers than being an immigrant.
And that's what he tapped into in the.
Clever. Fantastic way.
And I think a lot of, well, honestly, we're just excited
about the fact that he's young. We have almost 1,000,000 Muslims
in New York City. We consistently undercount the
South Asian population, which is politically active but largely
ignored in polling. So there are a lot of different
ways, to say nothing of a fantastically run campaign going
to neighborhoods and communities who have never been talked to
before. I think all of those things
resulted in what we saw last. Night.
But what he did do, and I did find this completely fascinating
and I think almost with a British perspective in Britain
as an Asian woman growing up, there was a sort of almost
separation between my Englishness and my Indian Ness.
And I always looked to America and thought America was
different because the assimilation was so much more
expected. So you became African American,
you became Asian American, but what you were above everything
else was American. And, and watching Zoram Mandani,
I mean, he embraced his culture. He's not going to hold back and
tell you what, you know, Asian food, he wants to go and eat
around the country. He's not going to hold back from
eating that food with his hand if that's what his culture says
he's going to do. And he's not afraid of speaking
all these different languages, you know, playing on the
Bollywood themes, etcetera. That must feel very different
and fresh. I am interested in a, it worked
here big time in New York. Do you think that can be
embraced elsewhere in the US? And I'm just want to ask you on
the woman point that you made, you're absolutely right.
You know, one of the men I was speaking to about why he didn't
vote for Kamel Harris, he was like, you know, America didn't
really want to vote for a woman. And I was like, no, you clearly
didn't want to vote for a woman. But but you know, Mandani can't
be president because he was born in Kampala.
And I was speaking to democratic socialists last night who I was
saying, who's your person? Because it's not any of the
candidates around the country that we've heard of.
And they were talking about AOC. Can a woman win in this country?
Sorry, two questions there. I think it's more than two
questions in there, but I'm going to try and impact them.
So let's take, let's start backwards.
AOC is still young. You know, she is soon to be 35.
She'll be eligible. You know, this is a very
conservative country. So I don't know how well she
plays across the country, to be very honest.
And we'll see. But it depends on her messaging
and how she can galvanized people.
I mean, it's so interesting. I look to London as to how you
all have sort of assimilated in different ways because, you
know, America seems as though it's this melting pot and, you
know, gorgeous mosaic and, you know, fruit salad, all the
things. But for a lot of community, yes,
we have, I wrote a book called Black Ethnics, right?
You can become African American, but that prefix is mandatory.
And you never get that complete American status.
It's you're just, you're, you're an American with something in
front of it. So Americanness means whiteness.
And that's been the tension for a very, very long time.
So it's it's fascinating because I actually look to the UK
because Mark Twain, our great satirist and and writer would
always go to London to help him think clearly about America.
I do think that Mamdani's identity works in New York
because we are this city of immigrants.
I don't know how it works in other cities.
You know, we have such an exponentially large immigrant
population and population of non whites.
Other cities, I don't know how how they communicate and how
that really shakes out. I do think though, it will give
people permission to be their more authentic selves because we
have seen when you show up as your authentic self, that's what
so many young voters are craving.
So many voters who have been sitting on the sidelines who are
coming into the process for the first time, that's what they're
craving. And so we'll see if that becomes
a model. I think the larger take away
though is when you ask voters what it is they want out of
their politics, all the consultants said the main issue
in 2025 is public safety because that was the big issue in 2021.
That was not the issue on on the public's mind.
The biggest issue in 2025 was affordability.
And that's, and that's the message that mum Donnie came out
with last November. That's the message he stayed
with all the way through last night.
Because first of all, you don't get public safety if if people
can't afford things, if they don't have a place to live and a
place to eat and a place in a way to get to work.
But instead of letting DC consultants, Washington DC
consultants tell you what the message should be, he actually
went to the people and asked them what the message should be.
I wonder also if the old labels of left and right are kind of
redundant in the age of Trump and you know, the, the, the
fledgling age of Mandani and whether the, the, the, the
tacking to the centre ground, you know, the famous two-part
strategy in the primaries you stick to the edges and then in
the general election you go to the centre.
Does that even work anymore? Is that still a thing?
Not in a in. It's complicated.
I don't want to punt, but it's complicated because Donald Trump
has dragged his party so far, right?
He's just in the stratosphere. So many Democrats are just
chasing that center and that center has moved far to the
right. But there are a lot of Democrats
who are saying if I'm voting for a Democrat, I want a Democrat.
I don't want a weak leaning Republican who's disguised as a
Democrat. And I think every city election
is is it's own thing. Every congressional election is
it's own thing. And obviously statewide is it's
own thing. And we've seen moderates
obviously last night in New Jersey and Virginia win because
states tend to be by and large, very conservative.
And Donald Trump was not on the ballot.
And so people behave a little differently when that's the
case. But I do think that if you
actually talk to people about issues they care about, you
don't have to frame them in, you know, radical ideas.
You know, helping people stay in their homes isn't a radical
idea. I think Republic will harp on
democratic socialism, but let's not get caught up in semantics.
Most Americans want to be able to afford their rent.
That's not a socialist idea. That's just good politics.
So I think the labeling is getting a little fuzzy since so
many Democrats feel like, you know, a George HW Bush
Republican from the the late 80s, nineteen 80s.
And so we'll see, you know, now that we've got this democratic
socialist label that's on the rise, I'm very interested to see
how the Democratic Party situates itself because it's
such a large tent with so many diverse ideological Democrats in
one in one space, I mean. What, what would you think is
the lesson of this election? In many ways, as you say, there
was a commonality across the different victories in that it
was about cost of living, it was about affordability and about
taking on Trump. But these were ideologically
very different politicians. Who won what?
What does the Democratic Party learn from this?
Right. I think for 2025 the issue was
affordability. I don't know what the issue will
be in 2026. Something tells me it might
still be affordability since the president is laying people off
and firing them. But the key is to ask people
what it is. I also think you know the common
denominator is that Dharma Amdani is.
A politician, but not a career politician.
The same goes for Virginia and New Jersey.
We have to have a regenerative politics.
I think a lot of Americans, but especially Democrats, are so
tired of seeing septuagenarians and octogenarians who will not
leave the office. They have not passed the baton.
They've not created a pipeline of mentorship for other people
to come in. If you notice, all these
candidates are 55 and below. And so when you look at Congress
and you look at the the average age of a senator is like in
their 60's. The average age of a member of
the House is slightly lower. But we have, you know, my
students say the March of the dinosaurs and here, you know,
here we are. If you give people some young
energy, new ideas, or at least something that's packaged as a
new idea, I think that helps with turn out exponentially.
When I first heard Zoam, and I mean describe himself proudly as
a democratic socialist, I was really, you know, quite
surprised because socialism is normally the word that dares not
speak its name in American politics.
And it clearly, you know, didn't prevent him from winning in New
York. And I've, you know, wonder
whether that would be possible outside New York City.
But also explain to us, you know, why policies that are kind
of quite reasonable on the centre left in terms of housing
and transport, and you see them in many European countries are
socialist in America. And why is socialism, Why is the
S word so toxic in American politics over history?
Right. I mean, it goes back to, you
know, obviously the early 20th century.
I mean, it's interesting. The president keeps calling him
a communist, which is obviously not the same thing at all.
You know, democratic socialism, when you think about someone
like AFC or someone like Bernie Sanders, I think they're
essentially, you know, in the past, they would have just been
Democrats. But because so many Democrats
have moved so far to the right in the center, this new label to
help welcome in people who have progressive ideas has emerged.
I mean, I don't think that, you know, helping people have a cost
of living is a socialist idea. I do think that we don't talk
enough about the donor class that is captured not just the
Republican Party, but also the Democratic Party as well.
And so many of them make it such that our elected representatives
really reticent to start talking about redistributive politics in
a way that will help millions of Americans.
And so that's considered socialism.
Let's be clear. Rich people in this country, in
America have socialism every day.
They're not paying their fair share of taxes.
They get tax breaks and sort of all types of free things that
they argue, you know, the lessers will get.
And so I think that this is a conversation to the, you know,
to earlier point, I think this is going to open up a
conversation about what it is that Americans demand and
deserve. And the, the key phrase that I
keep hearing, whenever I would ask people about Mamdani, you
know, my podcast and other places, everyone would say he
awakened something in me almost akin to 2008, Barack Obama's
candidacy, where so many people and a lot has happened since
2008. But a lot of people said, I just
thought this is the way things had to be.
And they're so beaten down by 2016's election, They're beaten
down by 2024 election. And they just thought that the
status quo or worse was what they had to live under.
And they said that he woke something up and reminded them
that this democracy belongs to ours.
It's active and living and breathing and if we fight for
it, we can win. And that was a repeated message
from the campaign. If we do it collectively, we can
win. And I think that's the piece
that will be interesting to see moving forward, to see how many
people recognize that this is it's a marathon and not a
Sprint, and they have to sort of stick with it even through all
the highs and lows and the wins and losses.
Just really quickly, if I may, do you think he's a bigger
threat to establishment Democrats or to mega
Republicans? I think establishment Democrats,
just because establishment Democrats have gotten by quite a
bit with saying what they can't do for the Democratic Party.
And I think he is saying, well, we need to get creative and
figure it out. And so I think is evidenced by
the fact that Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, the two New
York states or near US senators, did not endorse Mamdani.
And I get it. They don't want to be accused
nationally. Hakeem Jeffries, who's the House
Minority Leader, also from Brooklyn in New York, he gave a
very tepid endorsement. And so I think that a lot of
Democrats are thinking nationally.
So they have not endorsed Mum Donnie, but I think the message
is clear. And I think that message
resonates across the country. I mean, especially in New York
in a place where if you make $40,000 or you make $400,000 or
she'll put it in pounds, you make £40,000 or £400,000, right,
you're feeling the squeeze. And I think that's a lot of
Americans across the country. And so the framing of the
message can work. I don't know if the package that
it comes in will be something that everyone accepts, but I do
think that the larger Democratic Party has to look at how this,
these wins all crossed last night happened and really
doubled down on the articulation of a message and not just trying
to steamroll like, I'm working. Don't ask me what I need to do.
Don't. I'm just working on your behalf.
The Democrats have struggled with stopping to explain why it
is that they're actually working to keep this democracy afloat,
working to make sure healthcare isn't taken away from millions
upon millions of Americans, working to make sure that there
are jobs that exist. But the the articulation and the
explanation phase has always been like one of the weakest
parts of the Democratic strategy.
Absolutely fascinating. Christina, thank you so much for
joining us on Trump World. We really appreciate it.
Thank you so much. And that is all we've got time
for this week on Trump World. Next week I will be back in
Washington, DC. I'll see you then.
And I will still be in London. We'll see you then.
Thanks very much for joining us on this edition of Trump World
after the election results in New York and elsewhere.