Zohran Mamdani Knows He Has Political Capital. And He Intends to Spend It.
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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From The New York Times, this is The Interview. I'm Lulu Garcia Navarro. And today I'm talking to New York City Mayor Zoran Mamdani. In his first six months in office, Mayor Mamdani has been riding high and has begun delivering on the issue that defined his campaign. affordability. He's frozen the rent on nearly a million apartments, and he's made progress on universal childcare. What's more, he's recently endorsed a slate of progressive congressional candidates who swept their New York primaries to the dismay of the Democratic political establishment. Of course, Mamdani has many, many critics, but he's now undeniably a national political force. So just how does he plan on using all this power? Here's my conversation with New York City Mayor Zoran Mamdani.
Welcome to the interview. Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate you coming here today. Thank you so much for having me. On a day of the World Cup. I don't know if you heard some of my colleagues cheering.
I think there's about 20 minutes left in the France-Spain game.
Yeah, yeah. So sorry that we're interrupting perhaps your viewing of this. Not at all. But yeah, I appreciate the time. I was going to do this whole interview without mentioning President Trump. But as often happens, he tends to enter the chat regardless of one's intentions. And President Trump recently shared a video by Michael Savage, who's a pro-Trump pundit, calling for you to be criminalized and deported. And my question is, what does it mean when the president of the United States shares a sentiment like that? And how do you deal with it? I...
I think that it's part of the corrosion of political and public life that this is frankly something that I don't even blink at anymore because it's become in many ways a norm over the last few years. And I also think that Americans are hungry for a very different kind of politics, one where disagreement is a part of it, deportation and demonization is not.
Does it worry you that it is normal and that by not reacting, it normalizes it more? Or do you worry that he's trying to goad you into reacting? I don't want to be part of the sort of cycle of that. I'm just wondering how you calculate it. I...
I think that for all of the fear-mongering around democratic socialism, the best response is to show what it actually means. And what we've shown over the last six months is exactly that.
What early policy wins has Mayor Mamdani achieved on affordability and childcare?
We've shown that a city with a democratic socialist vision is one that paves more than 170,000 potholes, 50,000 more than the prior administration by this point. It's a city that has delivered the lowest recorded number of shootings and shooting victims and murders in New York City's history. It is a city that is on a pathway to universal childcare, saving thousands of parents more than $20,000 a year. And it's a city that is doing all of these things while fighting for the people who are often left behind, workers who we've secured more than $10 million for, tenants more than $64 million. These are all indicators of what is so scary to a right wing that has built its entire economy power and framework on the idea of debating who should be left behind.
One last question on this. When these kinds of attacks against you, and I can hear you deliberately not trying to personalize it, not trying to respond to it, but does it impact you and your security, for example? I mean, we've seen other people who get targeted like this verbally. It has an actual impact.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–3:18
2
What early policy wins has Mayor Mamdani achieved on affordability and childcare?
3:18–10:32
3
How did Zoran Mamdani respond when President Trump shared calls to deport him?
10:32–37:28
4
Why did Mamdani endorse progressive congressional candidates and what message did he intend to send?
37:28–50:06
5
How does Mamdani define his political identity as a Democrat and a democratic socialist?
50:06–1:07:32
Speakers
4 identifiedMore from The Daily
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