What is the driving force of Mamdani and how do we defeat him? Yeah, well, Trump told me yesterday he's just going to put him in jail. Your beloved New York City may well be led by a communist soon. Zoran Mamdani, who in his nomination speech said he will defy ice [00:00:16] and will not allow ice to arrest criminal aliens in New York City. Your message to communists, Orhan Mamdani. Well, then we'll have to arrest him. Well, you just heard the president of the United States, Donald Trump, threatening to surveil and arrest New York City mayoral candidate Zoran Mamdani [00:00:36] for not going along with Trump's demands. Now he's also falsely questioning Mamdani's immigration status, which, is par for the course when it comes to this administration, quite frankly. Right wing hack, Benny Johnson. And he is, in fact, a right wing hack, claims that Trump, a man who has Ice [00:00:55] detaining American citizens as we speak, is planning to arrest Mamdani because, his policy proposals are patently illegal. Here he is describing the policies that allegedly are worthy of arresting a mayor over. [00:01:11] Mamdani wants to tax people based on their skin color. He says so. And he doubled down on that. In fact, this weekend, saying that white people in New York need to pay more taxes. That's something that obviously drew a rebuke from the Trump Justice Department. But President Trump told me yesterday when I asked him about Mamdani, [00:01:30] that he's going to be facing serious federal threats for stopping Ice enforcement in the city of New York. This is what he promised to do when he won in his nomination speech last week. So how do you stop them? I'm not sure. And it begs the question, Charlie, that I don't know the answer to, which is, [00:01:48] do we let our great American cities fail? Okay, so Benny's comment about taxing people based on their skin color is a reference to, a controversial line in Mamdani's Donny's homeowner homeowner policy memo [00:02:05] that outlined some of his proposals. I'm going to read from it. It said that he plans to shift the tax burden from overtaxed homeowners in the outer boroughs to more expensive homes in richer and whiter neighborhoods. [00:02:22] I think he could have dropped the whiter part and just focused on richer, but he didn't. And so obviously that's attracting a lot of negative attention. In an interview with NBC. Mamdani explained what was meant by that? Explain why you are bringing race into your tax proposal. [00:02:41] That is just a description of what we see right now. It's not driven by race. It's more of an assessment of what neighborhoods are being undertaxed versus overtaxed. We've seen time and again that this is a property tax system that is inequitable. It's one that actually Eric Adams ran on saying that he would change [00:02:57] in the first 100 days. He's since sought to defend it and lost at every juncture in court. And I understand you're saying we're simply describing the types of neighborhoods that would see these increase in taxes. And yet, by invoking race, do you run the risk of potentially alienating key constituents? [00:03:13] I think I'm just naming things as they are. And ultimately my the thing that motivates me in this is to create a system of fairness. It is not to work backwards from a racial assessment of neighborhoods or our city. Rather, it's to ensure that we actually have an equal playing field. [00:03:28] And right now, what we see with the property tax system is one that is overtaxing a number of New Yorkers and overtaxing others, and an inability of political will to resolve that. I think the inclusion of white was not only unnecessary, I think it was politically stupid to do it. [00:03:44] This was an unforced error. I get it, I get that the left is obsessed with demonizing white people, but it is a losing strategy. Focus on class, for God's sake. I don't I don't understand why this is so difficult to understand. It does alienate people. [00:03:59] When you focus on race in a context where you really don't need to. You need to focus on class and the fact that there's an unfair system that benefits the rich at the expense of the poor. - It's very simple. - Yeah. I mean, look, again, I always clarify the radical left. [00:04:15] It demands that you say it's a white neighborhood, right? But the rest of the left is actually, first of all, they're white. Okay. And and all races black, brown, Asian, etc.. And they're not demanding that you single out any race. [00:04:31] Look, if you're on the left, you're supposed to be for equality. You're not supposed to be for finally we get to lord over them. That's not a thing, okay? That's not an ideology on the left. Even though some are radical enough that they're pretending that it is okay. Anyways, look, here we are stuck between two things that, [00:04:49] that that are problematic. Okay. So, first of all, yeah, take out the. You don't need the description of white. You know, it doesn't add anything to it. Okay. - Right. - No it doesn't. But by the way, Jake, I don't want to get distracted by that stupid unforced error because the real issue, and I don't want to even equivocate here. The real issue is when you have right wingers salivate over the idea of throwing [00:05:08] their political prisoners in prison. Yeah. No political opponents in prison, I mean. Yeah, I know. That's what I'm getting to. So I, I don't love that he would put the word white in there, but is it that he was going to do racial assessments and then tax people accordingly? [00:05:25] Well, you just heard him say absolutely not. Absolutely not. It was a description of the neighborhoods that already exist. Okay. So now Ben Johnson knows that. And he goes on and he says, oh, that's it. They're going to tax people based on race and it's illegal. [00:05:42] Well good news he's not doing that. And then we're going to have to arrest them. We're going to have to arrest him before he does it. On pre-crime of a thing he's not saying that he's actually going to do. So he puts in one, in my opinion, dumb word in there. And so that's what is that that's an infraction of what, 2%, 5% whatever. [00:06:02] But you see I'm annoyed by it. Right. The infraction of arresting the guy who won the Democratic primary because of your disagreements about taxes is an infraction of a, I don't know, 2,000%. What do we do in America? [00:06:17] We're now arresting people based on nonexistent differences on taxes. In this case, it's not that Benny Johnson and Mamdani agree on the tax code. It's nonexistent in that what Benny Johnson is claiming Mamdani is not going [00:06:33] to do and doesn't say he's going to do so he makes up something and then says, we have to arrest him for the thing that I made up. - Okay, that is a billion times worse. - So but I want to be accurate, right? So, you know, Benny Thompson is a dishonest Benny Johnson. [00:06:50] Oops. - What did I say? - Thompson. Benny Johnson. Oh, sorry. No. Benny Johnson. Sorry about that. I misspoke, but he, I don't take anything this guy says seriously. He's a dishonest actor when it comes to the question that he asked to Trump, it was focused on ice operating [00:07:08] in New York City, and how Mamdani is going to stand in the way of that happening. So it is true that the Trump administration has already arrested other office holders who have, you know, fought back against what Ice is doing in their cities. [00:07:25] So I don't put it past him to do that. If Mamdani if it comes to that, if he gets elected as the new mayor of New York City and attempts to, you know, stand in the way of whatever ice under Trump wants to do in that city. Yeah. So this one also requires nuance. [00:07:41] So on on the Mamdani side, look, when it comes to sanctuary cities, if they're coming for undocumented immigrants, that, you know, are not criminals. No, we have to protect those folks. I get it. There's a lot of reasons why sanctuary cities make sense. [00:07:59] A lot of people are worried about reporting crime. If the police are going to collect information about the victims. So all of that makes sense. But there is one part of sanctuary cities that's never made sense to me. And which is if they've committed a crime and Ice is going to come pick them up after they've served their sentence, [00:08:15] you should let them into the prisons to pick up the criminals, to deport them, because that is the law of the country, and it's a perfectly rational and fair law. So I would make an exception for that. I don't know why you wouldn't make an exception for that. Now, if you don't make an exception for that, and you're a mayor of a major city [00:08:33] in America, should you be arrested? Of course not. Of course not. And look at Donald Trump. Oh, I'm worried about lawfare, right? Then he's like, I want Mamdani arrested. I want people at CNN prosecuted. I want the former Homeland Department of Homeland Security [00:08:50] chief under Biden arrested. And I'm forgetting one other giant person he wanted. Elon Musk apparently either arrested or deported or denaturalized anyone who criticizes Donald Trump. Arrested. Arrested. Arrested. What happened to lawfare? And don't tell me what aboutism. Oh, well, they did it to Trump. [00:09:07] So is that is that your principle? If you're on the right. Oh, they did it to us. I think, even though he has an entire history of doing financial fraud. But. Okay. Whatever. Right. But let's say that you think that it was so unjust. So your answer is, let's go arrest them all for no reason [00:09:24] over political disagreements. How is that principled? That's the opposite of being principled. That's saying, you know what? I like government tyranny. As long as it's my guy doing it. So yeah, that's exactly that's exactly right. I mean, that's that's the doom loop that we're unfortunately stuck in in this [00:09:43] country when people are thinking about politics as if it's like a blood sport, when they're super tribal about their team, regardless of how much their team screws them over. We're endlessly in this doom loop that I can't stand. But getting back to Trump, Zoran is not taking kindly to Trump's threats. [00:10:03] He responded directly, saying, quote, the president of the United States just threatened to have me arrested, stripped of my citizenship, put in a detention camp and deported. Not because I have broken any law, but because I will refuse to let Ice terrorize our city. [00:10:19] It is rare to see a Democrat fight back, to be honest with you. But he also, he also says that Trump's statements don't just represent an attack on our democracy, but an attempt to send a message to every New Yorker who refuses to hide in the shadows. [00:10:36] If you speak up, they will come for you. We will not accept this intimidation. All right. Good. - So. Yeah. - Yeah. So we're asking we're going to give you the second half of the story now because establishment Democrats are coming after him too. [00:10:51] So in the live chat shows, live 6 to 8:00 eastern every weekday, we're asking, about who hates Mamdani more racist MAGA supporters, the ones that are coming after him for being Muslim, and all the things that they've said about him or establishment Democrats. [00:11:06] Every time you ring the bell below, an angel gets his wings. Totally not true, but it does keep you updated on our live shows.