Wake that ass up in the morning. Breakfast Club Morning.
Everybody is the j en Vy Jess Hilarious, Charlamagne the guy. We are the breakfast Club. We got a special guest in the building. He's running for mayor of New York City. We have Zoran Kwame. Mam Donny nailed it.
That's that.
You gave him a great victoria right before we started.
As I was gonna say, it was off the top of the dome.
But I did see a video before we get into politics. I did see a video.
You were a rapper, you got a buyt.
I was an aspiring rap. Aspiring rap.
Nobody will vote for you based off what I heard.
And that's why I'm not a rapper. Nobody you see to be to be the mayor, you have to know what you know and know what you don't know. And I learned quickly what I didn't know.
You really wanted to like pursue a rapper.
At one point, there was a point. There was a point, I mean it was it was at the level. So I was born in Kampala, Uganda, okast Africa, and there was a point where there's a guy grow up with he's like my brother. The two of us were rapping together, and I was trying to sell mixtapes on a public bus which doesn't leave until it fills every single one of the fourteen seats. That's how much we were trying. Wow and here I am. Because it didn't really work out all that well.
It was kind of like yin Twins.
Was the inspiration for you and Yan Whisper.
I have to say that was an inspiration for the song I made called Nannie, but I think you know, for me it was It was also a way of just telling the different stories of what I grew up with, gotcha and and especially in Kompala. You know, I'm I'm Uganda and of Indian origin. The guy that I grew up with, his name is Abdul. He is Ugandan by way of South Suddan. It's all these different cultures coming together. We were trying to mix it all in and then when I was here in New York City just trying
to kind of this. The song that I made was the testament to my grandmother. Now she's a real badass. And how so often when we talk about our elders, we put them in a box of a nice, gentle person who you know, is very much constrained and how we imagine them. And I wanted to just be a little more absurd in the celebration of a woman who gave me a sense of the world and was a social worker and should be a little more celebrated.
And discipline. You have discipline, you know.
A few Slash Jason video discipline, Yeah, in that video, not by my Grandmother's.
A question in real life when you do make the pivot to, you know, do what it is you're doing now, do you say to yourself, I scrub all that shit off the internet.
We got to get rid of that.
No, because I think that it's it's about being a real person, you know, like I I enjoyed that time in my life, and ultimately I actually see it through line between that work and this work and that you're trying to tell a story, and you know, when you're trying to sell a mixtape or you're trying to get
somebody's signature to get on the ballot. At six point thirty in the morning, you know, at the Broadway stop of the NW in Astoria, it's the same thing where you're asking someone can I have a moment of your time to tell you about my story or our story. And it also means learning how to deal with a rejection very quickly, because once you've once you've tried to be an artist, once you try to be a rapper,
you know what it means to be humbled. Yeah, it was on a regular basis, right, Like you know what it means to be the opener to the opener, to the opener to the opener to the opener. And I think too often in politics there's a real sense of self, as if people should be excited to see you, when in fact, you should be excited to see them. Right. We shouldn't be lecturing people as much as we should
actually be listening to them. And I think that, you know, struggling through being an artist, it was very helpful in learning that.
I thank god nobody told you to do you use any of that hip hop stuff for your campaign.
That's what they do, just how you reach certain demographics. They're complete. Oh, I thank god didn't tell you to do that.
Don't worry, it's not coming now.
How did you get into politics? What got you into politics? Because some of your policies that you want to we'll discuss, I don't see happening but I love it. So let's start how you got into politics at first.
So the first time I knocked on doors was in two thousand and eight for Obama. The first time I knocked on doors in New York City was when I picked up a copy of the Village Voice and I saw that one of my favorite rappers, Hemes, had endorsed his childhood friend for city council. And I was like, oh, this guy would be the first South Asian elected official in New York City's name was Elli. Nudge me, and so I got on the F train, I went to one sixty ninth and I knocked on doors for Ali.
And that was the moment where I started to get involved in local politics. So I joined a club called the Muslim Democratic Club in New York. And then in twenty seventeen, I worked on my first race. That was for a Palestinian Lutheran minister in bay Rich called Color Eliot Team. And that just changed my life because you know, I moved to the city when I was seven. This is the city I fell in love with, the city
where I got my citizenship, where I got married. And yet there was also a point where I knew I was a New Yorker. I didn't know if I had a place in New York City politics. I thought those two things were separate. And then there was this campaign which showed me that there was room for all of us and you didn't actually have to give up any of yourself to be a part of it. And that inspired me to understand that politics isn't just something that you believe in, it's also something that you do as
an active thing. And from there I kept working on campaigns and then in twenty twenty I ran for the State Assembly and I represent a story in Long Island City.
Wow THEA.
They asked a question, and the question is simple, can an AOC back socialist upset Andrew Cuomo in the New York Cities may or race.
I want you, I want you to answer that question.
There's a short answer, which is yes, okay, and there's a longer answer, which is the fact that New Yorkers are hungry for a different kind of politics. We have seen the same politicians with the same ideas lead us to the same results for decades and this is in many ways a question of whether we want to go back to the past or whether we want to go to the future, and our campaign is one that sees
this city under attack in two ways. An affordability crisis on the inside, where the most expensive city in the United States of America one in for New Yorkers are living in poverty, the rest are living in a permanent state of anxiety about whether they can keep affording the city. And then we're under attack from the outside from a Trump administration that is hell bent on going after not only New Yorkers, but frankly democratic cities across the country
like we're seeing in Los Angeles right now. And I am going head to head with Andrew Cuomo, a former governor who's the son of a former governor, whose super pack is funded in large part by the same billionaires who put Donald Trump back in the White House. That's not the kind of person who can stand up to authoritarianism without seeing a reflection of themselves. We need someone who will actually fight both of these crises at the same time. And that's why I believe that that I
can win. And I'm so excited to have Congressman Ocosio Cortez's endorsement and doing.
That, I wanted to ask, you know, some of the policies that you stand on is a free bus service in New York City? Yes, sir, could that actually work?
Absolutely? You know? So, I grew up in Morningside Heights. I would take the one train. We set the nine train back then, but I would take the one train to two thirty first get on the BX ten to go to Wrong Science. And I remember when I get off the one train, if I could still see the bus, even if it was two stops away, even if I had missed it, I knew I could catch up to it because that's how slow that bus was. I'd be slapping the back of the bus and I could get
there in time. It was good for me, it's bad for New York City. You should not be able to catch that bus if you missed that bus, but the buses are so slow. So as a status Semmember, I won the first of its kind fair free bus pilot. We made one bus route free in every borough of New York City, and we secured fifteen million dollars to
do so. And it showed that ridership went up by up to thirty eight percent, assaults on bus drivers went down by thirty eight point nine percent, and of the largest increase of riders came from New Yorkers making twenty eight thousand dollars a year or less. And this is critical because it's not just about economic access, it's also about public safety. It's also even about environmentalism because we're seeing that eleven percent of the new riders they were
previously driving a car, taking a taxi. Now they're off the road, they're on public transit. And the cost of doing all of this is about seven hundred million dollars a year. Now that sounds significant, which it is, but just want to put it into context. We're talking about that in the context of a city budget that's about a one hundred and thirteen billion dollars a year, state budget about two hundred and fifty two billion dollars a year. There is money, The question is what we spend it on.
And what I've proposed is that we raise ten billion dollars to pay for our entire year economic agenda and start to Trump proof our city because we know he'll use federal funding as leverage over this city, and we will do so in two key ways. The first is to match the state's top corporate tax rate to that of New Jersey. We are at seven point twenty five percent, they're at eleven point five percent. Corporations can pay it
over there, they can pay it over here. And the beauty of it is that it doesn't just apply to corporations headquartered in New York City, because when you say this, people will say, well, they're going to go to Florida. Wherever you are headquartered, as long as you do business in the state of New York, you are taxable for that corporate tax. We're talking about corporations that are making
millions of dollars, not in revenue but in profit. And the second is taxing the top one percent of New Yorkers. We're talking about people who make a million dollars a year more, taxing them just by flat two percent tax increase. And I know if fifty cent is listening, he's not going to be happy about this. Intense to not like this tax policy, but I want to be very clear,
this is about twenty thousand dollars a year. It's a rounding era, and all of these things together they make every New Yorker's life better, including those who are actually getting taxed.
Now, you also want to cut the police budget, and people are upset about that. Right, feel that crime is all over the place. I think a couple of days ago, two people got shot in Times Square. The other day I think another girl got shot in the face in the Bronx. So people are very scared. It seems like New York is getting worse than getting better. So what do you say that you know at a time like this, cutting the police budgets that seems like that is taking more police officers off the street.
I want to be very clear, we are not defunding the police. What we are talking about is sustaining the number of police that we have within the police department. And when I talk to those police officers themselves, they tell me they signed up to join the police force to tackle serious crimes, and yet what they're being asked to do today is serve as mental health professionals and
social workers. The same officers who thought they'd be responding to shootings are picking up the two hundred thousand phone calls a year of mental health calls. And what we've seen elsewhere in the country is you can actually move mental health calls out of the police department. That can reduce the calls that police have to deal with by twenty percent. And in doing so, you can increase police
response time to those major categories of crime. I think that's important because police have a critical role to play in public safety, and we also need to ask them to just focus on their job and not ask them to do every job. Because what we're seeing right now is these same politicians who have given us this lack of public safety over so many years, telling us that their only answer, no matter the question, is to ask
police to do more. I want them to do the thing that they signed up for and to have a Department of Community Safety with teams of dedicated mental health outreach workers at the top one hundred stations with the highest levels of mental health crisis and homelessness. We have to deliver public safety.
And when those calls come in, you know, and people are saying, hey, somebody's over here having an episode, the police, I think, should be going out there with the mental health professional. Let the mental health professional be the person who tried to defuse that.
They're backing them up.
And you know, even if even if you want I think a better I don't want.
I can't tell you how to say things.
But no police, if the NYPD got a budget a ten point eight billion dollars. Does all of that really need to go to the police. They're already super under page. Where's that money going anyway? So why not take someone that money and invested into other alternatives to respond to things like mental health crisis?
And that's what I've said, which is that we have to work backwards from does every dollar we spend go towards public safety? The critiques that I've said of the NYPD have been that they don't need an eighty person communications department that doesn't actually deliver public safety, that delivers us drone footage. We can actually rapidly downsize that, and I've I've been heartened to see the current commissioner took
that eighty and made it forty. And I've also said that we don't need to have a more than billion dollar police overtime budget. And usually when you say that, people frame it as if you are going after the police. But when you ask the police, there are two hundred officers leaving the department every month, and one of the leading causes is forced overtime because of quality of life. They don't know when they're going home, They're working doubles
and triples. This is actually something that can make it easier to do that job and ensure that we're actually responding to this because what we have right now is not working. You know, I sat with the family of a New Yorker named Win Rosario, who's a young New Yorker who was going through a mental health crisis. He
called nine one one himself asking for help. Two police officers who were trained in mental health assistants were dispatched to his home and they killed him within three minutes on camera, in front of his mother and his brother.
So the tined he they were trained.
And my point here is that that serves no one. That family grieves him every single day, and we all know that that was not the way to respond to this. So why don't we actually look at what works elsewhere in the country and bring it here. And that's what we're talking about, evidence based policy solutions that will deliver real public safe.
Oh maybe we step on our own point.
If they were trained, they were trained when you say trained in mental health, would they've trained and did not know how to respond to people dealing with.
These police officers were given the training that right now we're being told is sufficient. And my point here is that we should not be training police officers for mental health response. We should have mental health responders be the ones who are actually the ones there. And this this this addiction to asking them to do everything, it's one that leaves them unable to do many things. Because right now, as you were saying, New Yorkers, when they're worried about safety,
they want to know what's your plan. Sixty five percent of crimes from the first quarter of this year are currently unresolved. That's partially because we're asking the police to do everything.
So you know, they should do they should.
Police officers should be having their own mental health evaluations like that should be part of them.
It's important and I think that's also part of why when you when you ask an officer to work triples, right, the longer you are on your shift, the harder it is to make the same level of decisions throughout the entirety of it. We need to ensure that we are creating the conditions where we can actually deliver that public safety.
I want to ask about congestion pricing as well. You know, you talk about free free busses, which is which sounds great, but now you got free buses but then when you drive to the city, you charge me thirty dollars to get to the city. So what's your your thoughts on congestion price and how it's affecting businesses in New York.
So I believe that the one thing New Yorkers hate more than a politician they disagree with is one they can't trust. So I'm going to tell you the answer I say in every room. I am somebody who has supported congestion pricing, and now I wanted to tell you
the truth. I want to say to your face though I've supported it for a few reasons, because I believed it would reduce congestion, it would increase bus speeds, it would raise revenue for the MTA, and it would improve air quality, and that's what we've seen it be able to do. At the same time, I have always believed it needs to be paired with immediate public transit improvements.
I launched a campaign called Get Congestion Pricing Right with the Deputy Majority Leader of the State Senate, Mike Gennares. The two of us won about twelve million dollars a new bus service. I'm proud of it, but it's not enough. And the reason I fought for. That is when you look at the implementation of congestion pricing in places like Stockholm, London. The first day they had it, they had increased public transit.
Because I think it's important to tell New Yorkers that it's not just about raising revenue for public transit, it's also about giving them a better option. Right there, there are some people who need to drive. There are also others for whom that's the most convenient option. We need to make public transit the most convenient one. It's hard when you look at your app and you're told the bus is coming in ten minutes, and then you wait ten minutes, and then that bus doesn't actually show up,
and so we need to earn that trust. That's that's from my position.
How is it affecting businesses in New York City though? I mean, I know a lot of restaurants are charging a congestion fee tax, and you know, prices at everything is expensive. I mean the other day I went to McDonald's. I got my kids one meal, and that one meal is usually two ninety nine when I was a kid, is now twelve dollars.
You know, in all your kids one meal times that are absolutely, they got to split it split.
That's an expensive about that, right.
You let me sell.
But so you know, so how is it affecting business? You know, especially small businesses? You know, the main businesses, Yeah, you know they can get over, but you know, you got that mom and pop store that just can't do it.
You know. What we've actually seen is that since it's been implemented, foot traffic has increased in the in the Central Business District. And I think that's a big part of it, is that actually, when you make it easier to get around that same neighborhood, you actually can facilitate more business. And an interesting thing that I've also seen is that noise complaints are down by a significant amount because you have reduced congestion, and that's a difference also
in quality of life. But I think to your point, small businesses, small businesses are struggling in New York City. They employ a majority of all New Yorkers who are working in the private sector. We put forward a small business proposal where we would cut fines and fees for those businesses by fifty percent across the board. And we would do that because the city has one hundred and thirteen billion dollar budget. It is not funded through these
fines and fees. It doesn't mean that much to the city if it gets one hundred dollars from a restaurant because they have a refrigerator every year. But for that restaurant, those are the kinds of things that can add up, and so we're going to cut that in half. And we're also going to make it easier to open them because right now, I'll tell you want to open a barbershop in New York City, you got to go to seven different agencies, fill out twenty four forms, and then
attend twelve activities. That does not make it easy to open a barbershop. We need to actually follow the example of Pennsylvania where they took an eight week permitting process and made it just a couple days. And that's why we said we're going to have a mom and pop zar.
We're going to increase fun for one to one small business services because we have to make it easier to survive in the city, and city government has to understand its role and responsibility in that because I'm tired of politicians pretending like we're just bystanders to all these crises. You know, I'm texting out thoughts and prayers to the small business just closed. But actually my policies are helping it to close. We need to make sure that that's not the case any longer.
You know, I want to ask you, I want you. I'm asking you to define something. But when you answer it, I want you to, you know, think about how you would define it to somebody if you was writing a rap.
Now, I don't want you to wrap up it.
Look, I know you don't like the reps.
I'm just saying that the way you would approach your wrap you know the audience you're trying to talk to, and you would probably keep things on the ground.
This is where I lose the election right here.
How would you define being a democratic socialist to just to just somebody.
So you know, some of my favorite songs that they start with with an old quote, that's how that's how a song might begin, and so for me, one of them is from doctor King. Call it democracy or call it democratic socialism. There must be a be distribution of wealth for all people in this country, for all of God's children, and ultimately to me, it's about dignity for
each person. You know, the person who gave me this language of calling myself a democratic socialist is Bernie Sanders when he ran in twenty sixteen and his relentless focus on income inequality. It taught me that things could be
better than they were. So often, when you're voting, it feels like you're voting between somebody who wants to wipe you off the face of the earth and someone else who wants to tell you to celebrate the crumbs that can't feed your neighbors, and to know that it could be more, that you could be voting for something that has inspired me. And I think that you know, as a Muslim democratic socialist, I am used to bad pr and having to explain what all of these things mean.
And what I've found, though, is when you actually get into a conversation, a lot of this is common sense. Right If I believe that every New Yorker should be able to live a dignified life, and that it's city government's job to ensure that New Yorkers will agree with me when I bring up example of public education free so.
Free education, free healthcare, what else I mean?
Anything that's necessary rights. It's like when people whatever you need to live in this city that should not be something you can be priced out of. And we agree with that when it comes to school, we agree with that with libraries, with sanitation, with the fire department. But there are certain things we've picked and chosen and said, you know what, you don't need that for housing. You know what, you don't need that for food, And I think that we can't let the market determine who gets
to live that dignified life. This is not to say that it's city government's job to deal with everything, but for that which is necessary, we have to ensure that we are doing our part. And that's why I have said I'm going to freeze the rent for more than two million rent stabilized tenants, because that's the mayor's power. The last mayor did that three times. This mayor raised the rent nine percent. He wants to raise it again
up to eight percent. We have these tools. It's just a question of do we want to do this, And I know why politicians don't because there's a lot of pressure. You know, I'm the candidate wanting to freeze the rent. Cuomo was the can did it run to raise the rent. That's why the landlords of those same units just gave Cuomo two and a half million dollars the same landlords to say they don't have enough money to be able
to freeze the rent. Just found two and a half million to give it to him, the single largest check in this entire race. But it helps let people know that's what's on the ballot. It's straightforward. It's do you want your rent to be the same or do you wanted.
To raise I saw your rent was twenty three hundred a month.
Yes, sir, twenty three hundred for one bedroom in a storia Jesus Christ.
Yeah, was five hundred square feet.
It's not too much more than that. Let me tell you.
You know.
You know it's interesting, right because Democrats have created all his new politically correct language for everything, jender, sexuality, pregnant women. How come y'all haven't found a better way to discuss socialism? Why is socialism a dirty word when essentially all you want to do is take care of people?
I don't think it should be. I think it's actually a word that when you break down its meaning like you just have done. Is one that many Americans agree with, and we've seen that that despite all the attempts, Bernie Sanders continues to be one of the most popular politicians in America, Congressman Ocostio Cortes similarly, and they have both defined themselves in that same language. And I think it's that, But.
I think it's because they tell more so nowadays, instead of just leaning on the word socialism, they just tell people you should have free healthcare, you should have a free education, you should be able to make a livable wage. You know, they should increase the minimum wage. Like those are just simple concepts that are all so socialism. Well, for some reason, y'all still find yourselves tripping up over that word or letting the other side use to that.
I mean, I mean, I think it's it's because there are a lot of people making a lot of money in this moment who would want Americans to think that that's the only way life can be. And I don't hide this, you know, it's it's it's how I see the world. It's the world that I want is one of dignity. And it's funny. There's this one guy who comments under almost every one of my tweets and he's like,
he's a socialist. I'm like, yeah, it's in my bio, you know, this is this is who I am, And I think it's it's about being honest with New Yorkers because I've found, you know, Mayor Koch said this that if you agree with me on nine out of twelve issues, vote for me twelve out of twelve ce a psychiatrist, And I found that in New Yorker's an ability to say, look, maybe I wouldn't call myself the same word, but I want the same things. And ultimately, you have to have
a coalition that asks people of just one thing. We need to make the city affordable. We can have disagreement, we can have tension, but we have to have agreement on that one thing so that we can build a coalition that looks like the City of New York.
Now, sorry, but you want to please Why I'm in the polls like you just came out of nowhere, right.
Why do you.
Think the young people are rying with you?
You know, I think it's it's because people are hungry.
Forget they didn't throw your name in the hat at first.
It was just look, let me tell you I was. I was sitting in a coffee shop in a Storia. This is right before we launched the campaign. If somebody in politics showed me a poll. I was looking at the beginning of the poll and they were like, no, no, keep looking, keep looking. And then I was there at one percent.
They were like, that's what you said, right, How did you make the pool where?
Pause?
You know? I think, I think. I think. I think just by being consistent. You know, from the beginning of the race, from October twenty third, the first day, I said this was a campaign about affordability. I said, this was a campaign about New Yorkers who have built this city, who are being pushed out of this city. And I said that I was going to do three things. I was going to freeze the rent. I was going to make the slowest busses in America fast and free. I
was going to deliver universal childcare. And it got to the point where I can go to a rally and I can say I'm going to freeze the and the crowd will say rent buses, fast and free, universal childcare. People know, and I think for too long politics has become about a person as opposed to a platform, and New Yorkers see themselves in that. And you know, growing up in this city, so many of the people that have helped to raise me that I've grown up with.
They haven't always seen themselves in our politics. You know, they haven't voted in a lot of these elections. The last mayoral primary, twenty six percent of Democrats voted, and most New Yorkers and you ask them when's the election, they'll tell you it's in November, not in June. Most
people don't know about the importance of the primary. But I've been getting text messages from people that I've known for years and people that I've just met, just screenshots of voter registration that I'm going to vote for the first time. And that's meant the world to me. Because if we really want to protect our democracy, one of the best ways of doing so is that people see themselves in it. People see themselves as participants. You can't
protect it at an intellectual level. You have to protect it an everyday level. And ultimately, going back to your question about democratic socialism, it's about extending that democracy from the ballot box to the rest of our lives. If you get to choose your own leaders, why shouldn't you be able to choose the economic conditions that you're living. Why shouldn't you be able to ensure you have that dignity. And I think that what's so exciting is, as you said,
a lot of this is powered by young people. You know, young people who so often political analysts will say, don't worry about them, they don't vote at the same rates, they don't come out, And it's been so exciting to see those same young people be part of the thirty four thousand volunteers we have. You know, it took us months to knock one hundred and fifty thousand doors in this city. Last week we knocked that in seven days alone. That's the level of momentum we're at, where people are
just going all across the city. And my mother is one of these canvassers. She has her weekly canvassing shift on Sunday. She's paired up with a twenty five year old who she complains, walks too fast. They go up six floor walk up, and she goes through ten consecutive knotdoors, not homes, And then when she finally meets a voter and they say they're going to vote for me, she says,
that's my son. And it's that sense of everyone is a part of she don't She's like, you know, I have my concerns as well.
Let me ask you, you know, if you were the mayor and you see what's going on in LA, how would you handle that problem? If there was protesters, they were you know, breaking stuff, looting, smashing police cars, vandalizing things. Of course Trump sending the troops, how would you handle that if you were mayor of New York City and that actually happened here.
I think, first and foremost you call it what it is. It's authoritarianism. This is is the Trump administration looking to arrest enough migrants that they can say they've fulfilled their campaign promise of building the single largest deportation force in American history. And too often we think about it as just an attack on immigrants. It's an attack on the fabric of this country. And it's not just in LA. I mean, we have New Yorkers who have been arrested
and detained today. You know, a few days ago marked three months since sa Palestinian New York named Mahamud Khalil was arrested in his apartment building lobby, taken away from his pregnant wife nor and has since been in an ice attention facility in Louisiana. It wasn't able to even witness the birth of his first child, Dean. And we have another New York City public high school student named Dylan, who was snatched at a regular check in at Federal Plaza.
Is now hundreds of miles away from his mother and his two siblings. And this is personal for me because I got my citizenship just blocks from where those arrests are happening. Those blocks used to be my favorite part of New York Cities, where I got my citizenhip, where I got married, and those are now the same blocks where when I took my father for his immigration interview this year, I hugged him so tight because I didn't know if I was going to see him in the afternoon.
There are too many New Yorkers who are feeling that, and so I think you call this what it is. You also make clear that Trump is reversing historical precedent in that calling the National Guard is typically something a governor requests of the president. It's not something a president puts on a governor. And Kathy Hochel is someone who, as the governor of our state, has been able to fight Donald Trump and defend a lot of his potential
attacks on this state. One of The first things I would do is work with her to make it clear that this this has no room in our city and our police force should not be assisting ICE in what they are conducting. You know, we recently saw arrests where the NYPD was then arresting a pastor and other New Yorkers who were observing ICE arresting migrants coming in for their check ins. We don't need to be a complices to authoritarianism. We need to show that there's another way
of running this city, in this country. And that's who I'm excited to be.
Could you explain to people why federal overreaches dangerous?
You know, it's it's so funny to see Republicans, for whom so long their rallying cry has been states' rights, and now here they are they don't have a concern for that at all. It's the same way that they used to care about free speech. That's gone as well. Ultimately, these are principles they only hold when are convenient to them. And what's so dangerous about this is that we have a clear delineation of what is a federal responsibility what
is a state responsibility. But Donald Trump wants to make every responsibility his He wants to run a country in a manner that is more befitting of an authoritarian state. And I think what's so concerning is he's looking at the example of someone like Naib Bukele and saying that this style of leadership, of having mass prisons where we send so many people who we allege our criminals no matter whether we can find it or not, that's what
he wants to bring to this country. And I think what we need are Democrats who are willing to stand up and fight that. You know, we have a mayor right now who has wanted to fear monger around sanctuary city policy. This is a policy we've had in this city for decades. It's a policy that's been defended by Republicans and Democrats alike. It allows for the city to work with the federal government if someone is convicted on
one hundred and seventy serious crimes. What it says, however, is outside of those there should not be that collaboration. And you know, I'm sure you know you've heard of Kilmar, the man in Maryland who was taken to El Salvador. If the city he was arrested in by ice had sanctuary city laws, he would not have been able to
be picked up. That's what we're preventing from happening. And still with what we have in place, because we have a mayor who doesn't want to enforce it, because we have a mayor who wants to collaborate, still we see New Yorkers being picked up.
That's a question, right, Why is Donald Trump the Democrats boogeyman? Because none of you' all are running against Trump. And to me, the biggest hurdle to the Democratic Party is the Democratic Party.
An action of the Democrat Ccratic.
Party over all of these years is the biggest hurdle for the Democratic Party.
Now, I don't disagree with you. That's part of my critique of Andrew Cuomo is that he's the very kind of leadership that helped give rise to Donald Trump. You know, before Donald Trump was the president of this country, before he was a reality TV show host, he was a real estate developer in New York City, and he was someone who both parties had room for and time for.
And I think that our ability to accommodate the very kind of real estate developers that have broken law after law after law is also part of what has given rise to an era of politics with no accountability. I mean, Andrew Cuomo had a video of Donald Trump playing at his own bachelor party. Like, that's the level in which all of this is a mesh together. And I'm trying to chart a new course with this campaign, alongside thousands of New Yorkers for a politics that is clearly distinct
from that of Donald Trump. And I think when New Yorkers are shocked at Donald Trump's record of cutting medicaid, of trying to steal hundreds of millions of dollars from the MTA, of giving tax breaks to billionaires, of hounding the many women who have credibly come forward to accuse him, those are the same things you could say about Andrew Cuomo. We don't need a reflection of that in New York City.
We need someone who is the opposite of that, and as a progressive Muslim immigrant who's willing to fight for the things I believe in. That's what That's what makes me donald Trump's worst night Mayor.
But I saw you say that in the debate. You know you would be Trump's worst nightmare. Well, once again, why should that matter to anybody voting for you?
Now? Cut running against Donald Trump.
No, you, but but you are running against the authoritarianism that he's bringing to this city.
Authoritarian.
No. I think that there's too many commonalities between him and Donald Trump's record. And my point is that you don't want to have a mayor who has to pick up a phone call from someone who cut a two hundred and fifty thousand dollars check to both him and Donald Trump. You want to have a mayor who's willing to fight for the city and have that that be the thing that he's ultimately responsible for. And I think to your point, we also have to be honest about
how we lost this presidential election. You know, New York is the state that had the largest swing in the country towards Donald Trump eleven and a half points. And it happened far from the caricature of Trump voters. It happened in the hearts of immigrant New York City. I went to Fordham Road in the Bronx, I went to Hillside Avenue in Queens and when I asked New Yorkers there, almost all of whom were Democrats. Who did you vote
for and why? Many told me they didn't vote. Many told me they voted for Trump, and they told me they voted for him because they remembered having more money in their pocket four years ago for their rent, for their childcare, for their groceries, even for their metroplogan. And as insincere and ridiculous and horrific as we know Trump's policies to be, that is how people felt. Those are
the decisions that they made. And when I asked these same New Yorkers what would it take to bring you back to the Democratic Party, they said, a relentless focus on an economic agenda. I said, what would you say to a candidate running to freeze the rent, make buses fast and free deliver universal child care, that I vote for him. And that's when I introduced myself. And that's my point here, is that there are some Democrats like Andrew Cuomo, who think that we we went too far
left in how we ran a campaign. And my point is that we actually betrayed working class voters a long time ago, and it's time to own up to that and finally fulfill the promises that were made decades ago.
Well, I mean, that's interesting, right, because you know, you say, Cuomo and Trump have so many similarities, But Cuomo has been a career Democrat, and that's why I feel like anybody who is going to be the future of the Democratic Party, you do have to throw that old regime under the bus, because.
It's not just that bus is going to be free.
Sure, but it's not just Cuomo in the Democratic Party. It's a lot of old leadership.
List, the Chuck Schumers, it's the Bidens. You gotta throw all of that under the bus and run it over. And people have to hear you say that because I keep hearing y'all. You know, you keep talking about Trump, Trump, Trump, h Trump, but your party has been just as ineffective and just as corrupt in a lot of ways.
Trust me, I have I hear you because I've been critical about the style of leadership that gave rise to Donald Trump. He is also a style of leadership within the Democratic Party. And I think for too long it's been a party that has valued insider politics, pay your dues, the words and advice of consultants, over the people that are Democrats themselves. And I do think it's time for a new generation of leadership. You know, Cuomo would be the oldest mayor elected in New York City. I would
represent a completely new generation. And I think it's important for that because it's not just about age, it's not just about vision. It's also about what has your record been and who have you been fighting for? And is that distinct enough from what got us here?
Got a couple more questions.
You said, as the Blasio was the best mayor in your lifetime for New York, and you gave three reasons. You said, because he ended stopping for risks. Quote, yeah, he ran on endian, stopping for risk, taxing the rich, and funding universal pre k. You said he got a lot of that done. How much of it did he get done?
Universal pre k? I think is one of the most shining examples of what city government can do right. This is something that took tens of thousands of dollars off New York family's backs and made it easier to raise a family here. You know, I'm tired of hearing New Yorkers tell me that they're going to settle down, and I know that the next sentence is going to include the words long Island of the suburbs, because they just
can't make it work in the five boroughs. Part of making it work is making it easier to have childcare. You know today the average cost of childcare is twenty five thousand dollars a year. That's more money than it costs to send that same kid to Cune eighteen years later. Those, I think are accomplishments.
Now.
It's not to say that there is no critique of that time in office. I mean, I'm somebody who was on a fifteen day hunger strike alongside thousands of working class taxi drivers fighting that same administration for debt relief, and we were able to come to an agreement where we won four hundred and fifty million dollars in debt relief for those taxi drivers. And ultimately, I say this though, because we have seen what's possible if we have someone
focused on delivering it. And to me that the greatest mayor in New York City history is Firell LaGuardia, because he was someone who transformed our sense of the possible, and he put working people at the heart of his politics, and he did so while also confronting this rise in anti immigrant hate all at the same time. And I think we need a mayor who has that ability to fight multiple crises at the same time and show what it means to be a New Yorker.
You said, as your elected mayor, Israel wouldn't let you in, and you mentioned some legislation, but would that legislation apply to you if you're actually met.
We've seen elected officials, even congress people of this country not be allowed into the state of Israel. And my point was, I've been asked this question many times, and I've said directly that I believe one need not visit Israel to stand up for Jewish new Yorkers. What I need to do is to meet Jewish New Yorkers at their synagogues, at their temples, at their homes, subway platforms, parks, wherever they may be, to hear their concerns, and actually
deliver on those concerns. And then, when I have been asked about this, what I've also said is that even if I was going to make that trip, there is legislation that does not allow anyone who supports a nonviolent movement calling for the compliance of the Israeli government with international law to be allowed into that state. And I say that to say that there has to be a greater recognition of what is going on. And the fact is, for me, my politics come back from the politics of
the universal. I believe that freedom and justice and safety, liberty, these things have to apply to everyone for them to be meaningful, and that also includes Palestinians.
Why does it also seem like elected officials care about what's going on in other countries more than they care about what's happening here in America? Because you know, you, you realize it's hard to think about starving kids somewhere else when your kids is starving.
Right, My focus is right here in New York City. This is a question that's been asked of me time and time again, and ultimately, I think it's actually a question that, as you're saying, is not actually in line with the top concerns of New Yorkers, not even in line with the top concerns of Jewish New Yorkers. You know, when you see in a poll, what are those top concerns? The number one is affordable. After that, it's childcare, it's
elder carets, discrimination. These are all New York City issues, and I think that we need to have a mayor who is focused on New York City. And that's why when I was asked in the debate, where is your first trip abroad going to be I said, I'm going to be here in New York City. And then I was asked, followed up, are you going to go to Israel? And I said, one need not go to Israel to stand up for Jewish New Yorkers. And then I was asked,
you know, it just continues to continues to continues. But for me, the focus has to be the Five Boroughs. I mean, you are running to be the mayor of this city. This is a city that is losing hundreds of thousands of people in the last few years alone because they can't afford it. They're going to Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Connecticut, anywhere their dollar can go a little further. And we
know that. You know, as the saying goes, when white America catches a cold, Black America catches pneumonia, that inequality is compounded. For Black New Yorkers. We lost two hundred thousand Black New Yorkers in two decades, about nine percent of the city's population of Black New Yorkers. From twenty ten to twenty nineteen, nearly twenty percent of black children
and teenagers had to leave this city. And that is a crisis that has to be focused on that would be that would be at the heart of what my administration would do.
Yeah, I don't understand why conversations about affordability, free healthcare, making buses, free freezing the rent on rent, stabilized apartments.
Why is that considered far left?
Come on, I'm just saying why it's common.
See, I can't y'all message that better. Like I think you got to get rid of that word socialism. You know, my man killer Mike used to tell Bernie Sanders to use the term compassionate capitalism, or maybe just talk about what it is you want to do constantly instead of getting caught up in those labels.
I mean, I think it's both important to tell people where this belief comes from. But what I always foreground is what this belief will mean for someone. You know, it's it's people want to know, how are you going to help them in their life, in their struggle. The reason we focus this entire campaign on affordability is that's what New Yorker's told us. When you ask them what are you struggling with, They'll tell you rent, they'll tell
you childcare, They'll even tell you public transit. Because I know to many people two ninety doesn't feel like a lot. One in five New Yorkers cannot afford a Metro card. That's the state of inequality in this city. While income inequality has declined in the country, it's in increased in New York City. This is the wealthiest city in the wealthiest country in the history of the world. And so
to what you're saying, these are common sense policies. And also when they're polled, they even sometimes have supportive majority of Republicans because they speak to what people are actually going through.
It's it all people wanted some more money in their pocket and they want to feel safe.
Look, that's it.
Well, if they want to support you, how can they go out and support you?
Well, what I would tell them has come to Zoran for NYC dot com. Don't donate to us. We've already raised the maximum we can spend in this campaign. But do give us something more valuable, which is your time. We're building a team of thirty four thousand people New Yorkers from all walks of life, knocking on doors, talking to their neighbors. Come on out canvas. It would be a joy to have you. And I would also say that the three of you want to come Canvas. We'd love to have you as well.
Thank you. Early residents in New Jersey, oh come.
So look, you know, just bring that corporate tax rate. Bring that corporate tax right over from New Jersey June twenty fourth. Early voting starts June fourteenth, and we're confident we go in this, but only with the help of New Yorkers.
Well, good luck.
Thank you so much, Joe, ron Kwalm and Mama Donny. I appreciate. We're all right, Zoran Kwame, Mam Donnie.
There we go.
Goodness, get the polls up.
There you go.
It's the Breakfast Club. Good morning, Wake that ass up in the morning.
The Breakfast Club.