Michael Barbaro (host)

We're talking a little bit inside baseball here, but in New York, Andrew Cuomo almost needed, wanted, benefited from –

A diffusion of power.

That kept the Democratic, and frankly, the progressives in New York in check.

I want to go back for just a moment to a timeline when you're kind of working your way from progressive causes into politics.

Clearly, you're inspired at this phase by Senator Bernie Sanders, this movement, this campaign he's created.

You run for state assembly in 2020, a really big year in American civil discourse politics.

And I wonder if you'd agree with this.

It feels to me, looking back at that period—

that you're very much straddling the line still between activist, political candidate.

People who may someday run for mayor of New York City, for instance, tend not to go on social media and write things.

And you know this tweet, and I know it gets brought up.

I think it's fair game.

When you wrote in 2020, we don't need an investigation to know that the NYPD is racist, anti-queer, a major threat to public safety.

You call for defunding the NYPD.

People who think they may run for mayor tend not to describe themselves ever as anti-Zionists.

Those things in the past would be seen potentially as disqualifying.

That clearly didn't happen in this case with you.

But I am curious what prompted you to express those views, especially about the police at that time.

Let me fast forward a little bit to June, the primary, where you blow everyone away, all your opponents.

And it seems like even on the night of that victory, you start to confront those who are skeptical of you and who you want to win over.

And since we were just talking about police, let's talk about what you have said since the primary victory.

I think it was actually at the Times.

where my colleagues asked you about how you're going to be thinking about the police.

And I was struck that you said you were prepared to apologize to the NYPD for some of the things you had said, defund the allegation that the department is racist.

Given what you just said about the experiences you recollect, why issue that apology?

And what would the apology even be?

Are you apologizing for the language?

Yes.

or for the thinking behind it?

I'm not trying to be academic about this, but do you still think that the NYPD as an institution is racist?

Let me turn to the rest of your outreach, which has been really striking.

I mean...

Let's turn to developers and to, frankly, the super-rich in New York and business leaders.

You've been openly skeptical of the role of developers, for example.

You have said you don't think billionaires should exist.

Last night at your rally, you said that your movement is an existential threat to billionaires.

Full quote.

You got to fill the, you're right.

You can't do the ellipses.

That's what I wrote down.

Maybe I missed the full sentence.

And you would like to increase taxes on those making over a million dollars a year to pay for things like the three big promises we're talking about.

By 2%.

By 2%.

And yet you're meeting with many of these people at their offices, at their homes in some cases.

What have you said to those leaders in your meetings with them?

And what have they said to you?

We're about to raise a family.

We don't want to be priced out.

You're pregnant.

The socialist utopia of New Jersey.

You were joking about that, just to be clear.

Very much so.

I mean, it feels like what you're saying to these business leaders is, look, I'm going to be making changes to the system, but I'm not turning New York City, the center of American capitalism, into a socialist utopia, if I'm kind of hearing you correctly.

How many months?

Let me just get specific about a particular policy, and I want to understand your fidelity to it.

The idea of what is being called a millionaire's tax, 2% tax on income over a million dollars, which feels very central to your agenda, felt very integral to the campaign in the primary.

I mean, I don't want to be presumptuous, but free childcare for all.

Since the primary, my sense, please correct me if I'm wrong, is that you've expressed an openness, and I don't know if this flowed from your conversations with business leaders, to fund your agenda outside of that campaign.

kind of a tax.

And you know this, and our listeners may not as well, New York and New York City are funky.

The governor and the state legislature control all taxes but property tax.

And the two taxes you just mentioned therefore require the participation of the governor, who says she does not want to participate in these so far, and the state legislature.

We were just talking about that.

So you seem to now be saying it doesn't necessarily matter where the money comes from.

But for democratic socialists and for this agenda that you are an avatar of, isn't taxing the rich more, as a principle, important?

It very much is, yeah.

Isn't the method here important?

Or are you being more pragmatic about it?

It's now 6 p.m.

Right.

So the method does matter, but it doesn't have to be this method that gets there.

I mean, it does strike me that you're already starting to confront some of the challenges that

When you talk about Cuomo, you found distasteful, which is, you know, you're dealing with a Democratic governor who isn't on the same page with you.

And that's an immediate kind of like old versus new.

DSA, Mamdani.

Thank you for your help.

People know this platform like they know the back of their hands.

on Monday night, October 13th.

Then there's the Jewish community.

as we kind of tick through the folks that you have been meeting with, and you end up in rooms where people have been challenging you directly, sometimes emotionally, is my sense.

I'm thinking about Dr. Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer.

Our colleagues reported on your conversation with him.

He's the son of Holocaust survivors, and he pleads with you to stop calling what's been happening in Gaza up until now.

There's now a ceasefire, a genocide, which is what you call it.

And now we go to security.

And he pushed for you to condemn this phrase, globalizing the Intifada, because in his mind, it raises a specter of violence against Jews.

My sense is that in these conversations, you've given some ground on things like globalizing the Intifada, not on genocide.

And I wonder what you've come to understand about the perspective of people like Dr. Bourla.

and Jews in general in New York who are, in the same way perhaps that police were grappling with what you were saying about them, grappling with the way you talk about Israel.

So we're inside this auditorium now, which has a capacity of about 3,500 people, and it very much feels like it's at capacity.

Whether it be a caricature... What was that caricature, do you think?

I saw some of those mailers.

They were...

Some of them were rather vivid.

So that you were more menacingly something.

Who has already signed up to Canvas?

After a very long windup and a bunch of introductory speeches, Mamdani is now finally taking the stage.

It's hard to explain just how big this line is.

One of your critiques of the Democratic Party, and it feels worth mentioning this here, is PEP.

progressive except for Palestinians.

And I think given your last answer, I understand the argument there that democratic elected officials have, in your estimation, excluded Palestinians from their sense of a kind of global universal justice.

You well understand that previous mayors to you

have not put the same emphasis on Palestinian rights and have, I'm thinking in the case of Mike Bloomberg, personally donated tremendous amounts of money to social services in Israel or in the case of Mayor Adams visited Israel.

Well, we're at this really interesting moment.

There's now a ceasefire, potentially a peace process.

And because of that history of the way New York City mayors have treated Israel, because I take the critique of journalists when people say, he's running for mayor, not for president.

leader of the free world, not for envoy to the Middle East.

But I am curious, since you raised it and since Jewish New Yorkers ask you, including at Temple Beth Elohim, I think on Sunday, which version of Israel you can support.

Because of your profound critique of Israel, I am curious

If you can be a little specific, because we are now in that moment where potentially a new Middle East may be born, is there a version of Israel that you could be comfortable with and maybe even, as almost all mayors have in the past, visit?

I'm hearing you say an injustice anywhere is...

Essentially an injustice to everywhere, to everything.

I'm just noting the emotion in your voice here.

It literally spans three and a half blocks, and it is dense.

We'll be right back.

The argument can be made that there is, because of President Trump, something profoundly unsafe in theory about your election entirely out of your control, which is that if you're elected, and Trump said this, he'll target New York, he'll target you.

The pretense might be crime.

It might be illegal immigration.

I think you've used this word.

It's an inevitability if you become elected.

Can you understand why that might be a complicating factor in people's decision to vote for you, as unfair as it would be to you?

Whatever former governor.

Whatever former governor.

Ultimately, a major reason why Trump might intervene in New York would be part of an ICE campaign to round up and deport undocumented immigrants.

That's been an argument, a pretense he's made in several places where the National Guard eventually comes.

There are an estimated 400,000.

undocumented immigrants in New York.

And as you found as you ran this primary that was so successful, and you met with many Trump-supporting New Yorkers who have turned around and supported you, is that their viewpoint on these issues is complicated.

And many of them have serious objections to the level of undocumented immigration in a place like New York City.

But I don't hear from your campaign that you're going to be participating in any Trump-led effort to detain, deport undocumented immigrants.

I'm not looking to do so because... Even if you know that some of your, maybe perhaps many of your supporters do want...

I mean, here you're saying the method can't be separated from the goal and you're rejecting the method because you're rejecting the goal.

I mean, that's...

Okay, so the rally's now over.

Would you ever meet with President Trump in the hope that?

The crowd is spilling out onto the streets of Washington Heights.

that you could defang this person, this president, who may have ill will toward you, but frankly doesn't really know you at all.

I want to end this conversation on the movement that you've quite clearly created in New York City.

It's a movement we saw on vivid display last night that argues that the democratic politics of the modern era, the old formulas, that word resonated last night when you said it, have failed and that you can replace it with something new.

And the next stop for us is Mondani's campaign headquarters in Manhattan, where we are going to sit down with him for an interview.

And in your speech at this rally we all went to, you likened it to the great movements of American history.

Civil rights movement, the movement for labor rights that created the modern weekend where workers can take a break, the New Deal, and the birth of the social safety net.

That sets expectations pretty high.

I'm not sure you can get much higher.

And there's nobility in that, and there's real risk in that.

And so, do you worry...

And we are going to talk to people in this line and inside this rally

that it will be hard to deliver on those expectations.

You're pretty new to management on this scale.

And if it's impossible or even really difficult to deliver, what does it do to this movement?

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro.

This is The Daily.

Today, Zoran Mondani on the movement he's created in New York City, his critique of the Democratic Party,

Right.

It sounds like you're saying, I know what I believe.

I'm not going to compromise on my values.

And my administration will not compromise on my values.

And that will be enough.

This is like...

My translator.

Perhaps it will be enough.

Assemblyman.

Zoran.

Host.

Mr. Mondani.

Thank you very much for your time.

Thank you very much.

It's a pleasure.

Good luck to you.

Thank you.

Same to you.

Oh, yes.

We're doing a quick interview photo.

Yes.

No, no, no, no.

No, no, no, no.

Later tonight, Zoran Mondani will participate in the first general election debate of the mayor's race, where he'll face off against Andrew Cuomo, now running as an independent, and Curtis Sliwa, a Republican.

The debate begins at 7 p.m.

The Times reports that the Trump administration has secretly authorized the CIA to conduct covert action in Venezuela, a major escalation in its campaign against the country's authoritarian leader, Nicolas Maduro.

The U.S.

his courtship of those he has alienated with his campaign so far, and his plans to stand up to Donald Trump.

military has already been destroying boats off Venezuela's coast that it claims are transporting drugs.

And in private conversations, U.S.

officials are now making it clear that their end goal is to drive Maduro from power.

And in oral arguments on Wednesday, the Supreme Court's conservative majority appeared ready to challenge a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 by prohibiting state lawmakers from using race as a factor in drawing election maps.

If the court decides that race may not be used in such maps, it could allow Republican legislatures to eliminate at least a dozen Democratic-held House seats across the South.

Today's episode was produced by Aasla Chaturvedi, Mary Wilson, Jessica Chung, and Mujzadi.

It was edited by Paige Cowan and Brendan Klinkenberg.

Contains music by Alishaba Itub, Dan Powell, and Marian Lozano.

And was engineered by Alyssa Moxley.

It's Thursday, October 16th.

That's it for The Daily.

I'm Michael Barbaro.

See you tomorrow.

about what it is Mamdani means to them.

Hey, we're here to go to the Mandani campaign headquarters.

Oh, they'll come pick us up?

Okay, I'll text them.

Is this your office?

Let's go.

To call it modest would be an injustice to the word modest.

Okay, we're going.

Assemblyman, do people call you Assemblyman?

Some people do.

You can call me Zoran.

That's a little familiar.

Assemblyman Mondani, thank you for making time for us.

We're from the show called The Daily.

And thank you for inviting us to your rally last night.

You're very welcome.

It's a pleasure to be here.

So you sit, according to the polls, including our own at the Times, on the cusp of a historic political victory.

Because at the age of, well, you're now 33, but you'll be 34 just a couple days after this runs.

Oh, hello.

You would be the youngest mayor in a century.

You'd be New York City's first Muslim mayor.

You'd be its first Democratic Socialist mayor.

Hi.

And we're just going to ask people, in a word, what Mamdani means to you, what he represents.

Interesting.

Thank you for the correction.

Unaware.

You'd be the second Democratic Socialist mayor after David Dinkins.

And I'd like for this conversation to trace the arc of how you got to this moment, the forces, the ideas that made you the candidate, that first got into this race, the style of the campaign that transformed you from being, I think it's safe to say virtually unknown, into the winner of the primary.

for the Democratic nomination, and the way since that you have tried to broaden your appeal, answer your skeptics in this general election, and finally, of course, what it will look like if you do become mayor.

And somehow we're going to do that in an hour.

You grew up the son of a well-known filmmaker.

Your mother directed Denzel Washington, even.

Mississippi Missile?

In one word?

Mississippi Missile.

Your father was a college professor who studied, among other things, apartheid and genocide.

As a young man, you become a college activist.

You're focused on progressive politics.

And when you graduate from college,

and start your career in the progressive world, you start to identify not as a Democrat, but as a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

Compassion.

And given your bio, being a Democrat feels like it would have been a pretty natural home.

So just let me start by asking about what went into that decision, what you were embracing and what you were rejecting in that identification.

Honest person.

Right, and it's somewhat arbitrary.

So democratic socialism gives you a vocabulary to identify those injustices, those inequities, and say they don't need to be.

Democrats talk about many of the things that you just identified have for quite some time, right?

Childcare, healthcare, affordability.

And I think it's fair to say

that, and this I think was on display at your rally last night, that you have some real objections to the way traditional Democrats have operated.

And I want to get to the heart of that, where you think the distinction lies between the problems you're identifying and want to solve, the vision for solving it, and what the existing Democratic Party's view of those things are.

Because you don't mince words about old ways, old formulas.

and a kind of sclerotic Democratic Party that you see your movement as not just changing, but maybe fully replacing.

Because I think there are plenty of New Yorkers who see an Andrew Cuomo putting aside, which for many is impossible, the allegations of sexual misconduct.

So what I am staring at is a line of people waiting to get inside Zoran Mamdani's campaign rally here in Washington Heights.

A governor who used his platform to remake LaGuardia Airport, to build Moynihan Station, we just went through it, to pass gay marriage, who used the Democratic Party and its values to create pretty substantial change.

Democrats like Cuomo make big progressive promises.

When the rubber meets the road, in your mind, they will cave to the other side, to the elites, to the donor class.

They ultimately disappoint on questions like affordability.

And you're saying you will not.

You will not do that.

You will not disappoint.

Yes.

That's the idea.

Yes.

Why do you think that they make compromises that you...

not yet mayor, not governor, and not having to work with the other side are so certain you will never make.