Zohran Mamdani

is measured by the quickness with which they can say yes to you and yes to any one of your ideas.

You need to build a team where people can also say no to you, where people can push you, where you are able to have the debate inside the room as opposed to waiting to have the debate outside the room.

And I think that in the appointments we've made thus far, it's not demanding alignment on each and every issue.

It's asking, do you believe in the agenda at hand?

And do you believe, do you have a vision for this specific position that shows you can fulfill that?

You know, I think you have to first and foremost take these critiques in good faith.

That is how you become removed from the reason you did this in the first place.

When you engage with it, you separate and from the good faith from the bad faith.

And I think taking this at the good faith, I understand the criticism that those have shared.

I also think that it is important that it's not just a reproduction of self in every single appointment and

that we understand that, for example, with the NYPD, my decision in retaining Commissioner Tisch is a decision on the basis of looking at her record, of coming into an NYPD that the Adams administration had stacked the upper echelons of with corruption and incompetence and starting to root that out while lowering crime across the five boroughs, making this decision

not only in recognition of that, but also to fulfill the larger public safety vision that we had laid out over the course of the campaign, which focused on the creation of a department of community safety that will tackle the mental health crisis, the homelessness crisis.

This is also a decision that is not one that is in tension with the commitments I've made specific to the NYPD, like the disbanding of the strategic response group.

Those things still happen.

That still happens.

And I think that's what's important to make clear to New Yorkers is that the things that we campaigned on, these are still things that we will fulfill.

We will do so with the teams that we're building around us.

You have to remember not just that reality, but the point of this is to serve this city, right?

It's not like a reality check.

It's the reason why I did this.