Donald Trump, in the middle of the night, put on Truth Social that the reason that all these Democrats had won is because his name wasn't on the ballot. But in actual fact, his name was all over all of these elections and it was against him that people were voting. That is the common thread, along
with the economics. Hello and welcome to Trump World. I'm Anushka Astana and I'm in New York City. And I'm Matt Fry and I'm in London. And we've had quite a big night of elections, especially here in New York itself. We have a new mayor coming in, Zoran Mamdani. What do you make of it, Matt? Well, I'm very jealous that you're there and I'm here and I was following it all night long and this morning. It's an extraordinary story, as Mamdani said in his victory speech.
So Donald Trump, since I know you're watching, I have 4 words for you. Turn the volume up. And then the response from Donald Trump was in caps, of course, on social media. And so it begins. What's the IT Anushka? I think the, IT is a very ferocious back and forth between 2:00, you know, extremely forceful politicians who are going to love to hate each other and are going to try and take each other on. I think Donald Trump likes to attack city mayors.
He likes to attack. I think it's fine to say this, minority city mayors. We've talked before about how he's attacked Sadiq Khan endlessly, how he's attacked Brandon Johnson in Chicago. And he's really, really going to go for Mamdani. He's going to call him a communist. I wonder if Donald Trump thought maybe we would wake up today to a win for the Democrats in New York City, but not everywhere else. And so he could say, you know, this guy is going to scare the
rest of the country. And actual fact, the president has woken up to a terrible night all over. What I find amazing yet again, is that in my experience of American politics, the most outlandish scenario that you think will never come to pass often does. You know, Barack Hussein Obama becoming president, Donald J Trump becoming president, this guy becoming the mayor of the capitalist headquarters on planet Earth as a 34 year old, you know, democratic socialist. I mean, this would have been
unthinkable even six months ago. But, you know, when these things do happen, they show you that America is at some kind of inflection point. So the question I guess we're going to try and answer in this edition of Trombolism, does this guy represent the new voice of the Democratic Party? Because as you know, Anushka, not all Democrats are happy
about him. And Chuck Schumer, the Senate Minority Leader, did not endorse him, even though he is the senator from New York State. So, you know, there's a there's a civil war going on within the Democratic Party that, you know, that has just gone to another level. And then, of course, you've got the ongoing war between Trump, the MAGA movement and what the Democrats are. Yeah, and, and I had a moment last night where I really felt the sense of how far Zoram Mamdani had come.
But obviously last night I decided to go to the Hot Girls for Zoram party, man, and the Gays for Zoram Party. And for for those people who don't know what those movements are, there was a kind of Hot Girls for Bernie movement. It was meant to be a kind of tongue in cheek movement, this idea that, you know, there are women on the left whose voice should be amplified and they can get behind, behind, you know, the candidates who they want to get behind.
And in this case, they got behind Zoram Mandani, and they helped to knock on something like 3,000,000 doors in total. And this night began with an act by two drag Queens. And I was talking to one of them who's been very, you know, involved in organizing from the start. And she was describing this moment much earlier on in the campaign where there was a big event for trans people and loads of politicians were going to come and speak.
And then they decided that the only people who would speak from the stage were trans people. And so she said 1 by 1, by 1, all the politicians cancelled because they wanted to speak by the stage. But Mamdani cleared his diary, she said. And she turned up. And at that point, he was at 1% in the polls and. That's when I started believing in him, and that's the first time I ever had faith in a politician like that. And now he's not just that 1%, he's actually going to be the
mayor. It's crazy. I'm sorry. That is how far he has come. Rank outsider? No chance at all. He totally, totally stunned New York by winning that primary. As we know, his opponent, Andrew Cuomo, former governor of this state 3. Time, Governor? Yeah. Yeah, and establishment man who and in the end had to go in disgrace because of complaints
about sexual harassment. And, and I think in a way embodies his story, embodies what people are fed up with, which is this idea that, you know, somebody who, by the way, there's a dynasty there. His dad was governor of the state. Mario Cuomo should be pushed out in disgrace and could just come back and assume he was going to win. He ran as an independent and he
got very thoroughly beaten. And this drag queen who I was speaking to last night, she, she couldn't stop crying at the result at the moment that she found out. And it was just an example of the kind of, you know, the coalition that has come together to back him, which has had to go far beyond, even in New York City, far beyond what you would consider the socialist wing of the Democrat Party. And you know what's so extraordinary?
We always think that, you know, a very quintessentially metropolitan candidate like Zora Nandani would be very easy to defeat. And he's far too metropolitan and far too New York in order to make an impact, you know, outside the city. And, and let's see if that's true. But, but let's dwell just for two seconds on how metropolitan he is. I mean, his father, Mahmoud Mandani, is an academic, I think currently teaching at Columbia University near colonial history. His mother, Mariner, is an
Indian born filmmaker. His wife, Rama Duaji, is an 28 year old artist. He, by the way, is the first mayor of a major city who met his wife on Hinge, which is quite interesting as well. I love the fact about his mum that she actually, I mean, she's a very, very big famous director. She actually directed Monsoon Wedding. Exactly.
And but The thing is, the point is he is so metropolitan that you would think that he would be low hanging fruit for establishment Democrats like Andrew Cuomo, who was just defeated, or indeed for Republicans.
But as despite his metropolitan roots and, and, and identity, which he's incredibly unapologetic about, he has done that thing that no other Democrat has managed to do, but that Trump managed to do on the other side, which is to find a voice that appeals to ordinary people on issues like the cost of living, you know, on being fleeced. You know, he's keeps referring to the unbelievable greed and corruption of the Trump family, which you could argue is perhaps
their Achilles heel. Look, Republicans need to be worried if they have any capacity for being worried. Trump should, you know, be alert to the fact that this guy in the way that he connects to people is quite similar to Donald Trump. But on the other side. And by the way, there were, as you, you know, reflected in all your pieces this week, which were brilliant. You know, there are lots of Trump voters in New York. You know, of ethnic minorities voted for Mamdani, having voted
for Donald Trump a year ago. But the other thing is the civil war inside the Democratic Party. This is an unresolved issue that, you know, the voters of New York has just said, no, thank you. We're not interested in the Cuomo dynasty. We're not interested in old people who think they're entitled to office. But then I also, you know, remind you of the quote of Mario Cuomo, the father of Andrew, the defeated candidate, perhaps his most famous quote. You campaign in poetry and you
govern in prose. And for Nandani, that prose starts in about 57 days from now governing a city with a $140 billion budget, you know, with, with Wall Street and all the rest of it. Can he do it? Can he make the difference? He will be judged on his record, I'm sure. Let's listen to what he said when he won to a crowd of 3000 supporters in Brooklyn I. Must say this. Thank you.
Thank you to the next generation of New Yorkers who refuse to accept that the promise of a better future was a relic of the past. You showed that when politics speaks to you without condescension, we can usher in a new era of leadership. We will fight for you because we are you, as we say on Steinway and a Milkum Waileikum. So look, I think there was something quite interesting in that speech, which was talking to New Yorkers who were going to vote for Mandani, what they wanted.
And that was someone who would take on Donald Trump. If you look at the American map for last night, if you look at the victories in New Jersey, in Virginia, in a California redistricting ballot for the Democrats. And you could argue that it's ideologically all over the place. And look, Democrats will, I can't tell you how many Democrats in Washington, DC say to me, Mamdani's not right for the country.
Socialism will work in New York. It's not going to work in Pennsylvania. And what is true is that he has won here from the left. Yeah. And I would like to talk a bit about his policies later. You know, Abigail Spamberger and Mikey Cheryl in Virginia and New Jersey, respectively, both basically one from the centre.
But when I look around the country, I see something that is the same everywhere, and that is 2 parts of their campaign #1 all of them focused relentlessly on the economy that was at the centre of all of this. It was about affordability. It was about recognizing people are feeling the squeeze, they are feeling poor. They wanted people to talk about
that. Even Mandani, who gets a lot of criticism for his positions on foreign policy and particularly around the Middle East, you'll notice that wasn't what he
focused on in this campaign. It was all about, you know, bus fares, groceries, rent and so on, as it was in New Jersey and also in Virginia. And then the other thing they all put set themselves up as somebody who was ready to take on Trump. You know, Donald Trump in the middle of the night put on Truth Social that the reason that all these Democrats had won is because his name wasn't on the
ballot. But in actual fact, his name was all over all of these elections and it was against him that people were voting. That is the common thread along with the economics. The debate that is about to blow up inside the Democratic Party is okay. People are feeling the pinch. People are fed up with Donald Trump. So what is our answer?
Is it some of the radical ideas that Mamdani has put forward, which I think we should just be clear is a long way from communism actually, and not that far from a lot of policies we see in European countries? Or is it something from the center? Whatever it is, Matt, and I wonder if you agree with this. It has to feel radical because Donald Trump has upended politics. And you know, I remember Emmanuel Macron, you can't even believe now, but remember when he was elected, it was radical
centrism. It's got to be radical in my opinion, wherever it comes from. Well, it's got to it's got to have a voice that punches through. And I think if Donald Trump has shown us anything, it is that tacking inevitably to the centre ground is not the way that you
win an election. You remember how he took on, you know, the Bush dynasty when he first ran in 2016, he said, you know, low energy Jeb and Jeb Bush, that then the governor of Florida was the anointed leader of the Republican movement. And that didn't go so well. And, you know, that sort of centrist attitude, whether it's from the Republican side or the Democrat side, doesn't really work.
And the environment, and we've talked about this before, you know, of cable television, of the primary cycle, which always rewards the candidate, you know, who's got the loudest voice on the margins. That has changed the nature of American politics. But even though Mandami is very much, you know, of one side of the Democratic Party, he's a self avowed, proud democratic socialist in the capital of capitalism, which is which of course is, you know, unheard of.
He's also very pragmatic. So if you look at the kind of the things that he's done during the campaign, he has had a meeting with police officers where he is bent over backwards to apologise for tweets that he put out after the George Floyd murder where he basically called for the defunding of the police. Now, they may not all believe him, but the fact is he's gone
out there and he's apologised. Crucially, he then added on to that by saying that he would keep Jessica Tisch as the police commissioner of New York. Jessica Tisch is, you know, is an heiress from a billionaire's family, the Tisch family. And she's been very popular apparently, as a police commissioner. He will keep her on. Now, this goes against the grain of kind of a lot of things that
he says he believes. You know, at the same time, he says, well, you know, I'm not sure if I'm going to raise taxes on on billionaires in New York. And not all the billionaires believe that. But he's saying I'm open to all sorts of suggestions about how we reduce income inequality. And guess what? Those Wall Street billionaires who were horrified at the idea of Mamdami becoming their mayor, they are, they do what billionaires do, which is that
they bow to the inevitable. They reposition themselves. So even Bill Ackman, very pro Israel, you know, very anti, he led the fight against Harvard University, you know, a rich dude, you know, who was incredibly nice about Donald Trump and friendly with Donald Trump. Even he came out and said, let's give this guy a chance, you know, let's see how he's doing. And then other billionaires on Wall Street have been saying, you know, we've got to help this
guy. We're going to make we've got him help him win because the city needs to succeed. So again, because everything these days is transactional in politics, including someone as ideological, you know, as Zoram Mandami to the Democrats and to Donald Trump, I would say watch him. Watch that pragmatism. Watch that transactional state of mind that has served you so well in the past. Yeah, you know what?
Last night I was talking to these supporters who were dancing and crying and they were so happy and they'd campaigned for him day in, day out. And, and they describe themselves as being from the hard or the far left, whatever you would call it. And they said we're the ones who might be disappointed because because as you say, he has moderated on the issue of Israel, which, by the way, you know, has really divided New York's Jewish community.
You know, I witnessed UMM, which we put out on them the program. You had that amazing scene of two people, 2 New York Jews, arguing with each other on the bus. It's fantastic. Yeah, one of them was back in Cuomo and saying, look, you know, he was really upset about things that Zoram Mandani has said about. He does recognize umm and think that the state of Israel has a right to exist, but he's talked about whether it should exist
with any hierarchy on religion. Umm and this was saying he to him, that means he, he doesn't think Israel has the right to exist. And he, he was genuinely scared about this. And then the guy next to him suddenly said, I'm Jewish too. And I think these attacks of anti-Semitism are a nonsense. Umm in terms of the policies, though, just to go through them. They're not, you know, like I say, they're certainly not communist.
If you look at the idea of rent freezes for 2 million New Yorkers who live in certain types of apartments that the mayor actually is able to control because of the way the structures work, you know, Bill de Blasio did that three times. So it's not like it's never been done before.
If you look at the idea of subsidising childcare, I mean, it became an arms race of a policy in the UK where the Conservatives won and it was Jeremy Hunter's chancellor who put in a massive package of subsidised childcare, grocery run, city run grocery stores. I mean, they actually already exist. And then free bus fares.
I mean, the question I think that is going to be difficult for Zoram Mandani is, is he actually going to get these things in because they require the state in many cases to vote for them, including the idea of increasing taxes. And he says that the bus fares would cost $700 million.
If you actually think about the impact potentially of so many more people traveling by bus of needing more members of staff to, you know, be on those buses actually, then you might question whether his 700 million is realistic. And then you might ask for more money than that. I mean his argument is mayors of ended up spending much more than that on other things in the past. Why shouldn't they be able to spend that? I mean, listen, there's lots of things that can go wrong.
And, you know, guess what, governments promising never to raise taxes and then doing it. Well, that sounds very, very familiar, you know, talking from Britain at the moment. But I think what what would be intriguing is to see whether he can use his undoubted skills, campaigning skills, which he did so brilliantly on TikTok and other social media, and his ability to go into the lion's den of Trump voters in New York and speak to them, you know, and get them on side.
It'd be really fascinating to see whether, you know, he can make that big difference. By the way, just one small kind of wrinkle in his record in New York. If you look at the different barriers of how they voted, actually Staten Island, which is quite conservative and slightly further out and and really quite poor and also very working class, they voted for Andrew Cuomo and not for Zoran Nandani. So that was, that's quite interesting.
I mean, you know. Someone said to me today if Staten Island had had voted for Zoran Mamdani, it would be absolutely unbelievable. But indeed, and, and, and Cuomo did get quite a large chunk of the vote. So I think that that debate within the Democratic Party that is only just begun. I don't think that's over yet.
But, you know, I mean, I remember people close to Donald Trump telling me that if Hillary Clinton had not been the candidate in 2016, but Bernie Sanders and remember, they were they, you know, they were against each other in the primary, then Bernie Sanders, they thought this is Republican speaking might have defeated Donald Trump.
So the the kind of search is on desperately seeking a younger Bernie Sanders. And you could argue that Zoran Mandani is is a prime candidate for that as indeed as Alessandra Octavio Cortez, who AOC, you know, the Hispanic congresswoman from New York who's often mentioned as presidential
material. I mean, these are all people, you know, waiting to line up. And whether this strategy from the left works well, we'll find out, especially in this, you know, upcoming year, which is the year of the midterm elections. And, you know, in the last midterm elections when Trump was president, he lost the majority in Congress. Let's see if that happens again. I mean, judging from the result this week, I'd find it very hard to imagine the Democrats not doing well as a correction to
everything that Trump has done. And because Trump is having a such a good time being a disruptor, I didn't expect him to calm down anytime soon. And Muska? We've been focusing on New York for obvious reasons. It's New York City, and Zoran Mandami is a unique candidate in so many ways. But what about all these other races? They were pretty significant as
well, weren't they? Yeah, and also because they were more unexpected if you think just over the water from here in New Jersey, everybody said that governor race was incredibly tight, but the Republicans could win it. I mean, some people were worried about over interpreting that because actually although New Jersey votes Democrat in presidential elections, it does swing in terms of the governorship. It's been Democrat for 2 governors in a row. And actually, you know, Mikey,
Cheryl, the. Democrat really won comfortably, like, well, well, well ahead of her opponents. Yeah, double, double digits, Exactly. And then Virginia, we did expect to go to Abigail Spanberger, and that's the way it did go. But actually the attorney general race was also won by a Democrat candidate, Jay Jones. So that was seen as a bit of a surprise. And then if we just cut across the country to California, you know, in the background of all of this, we've had Donald Trump
trying to gerrymander. He's been forcing states, starting with Texas. I mean, it's forcing the right word, pressuring them to redraw Congressional District boundaries in order to give Republicans an advantage in the midterms. Well, Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, hit back and said, we've got to do the same in reverse. And I remember watching one of the early debates on this in in California, and, you know, people were saying, well, hang on, this is like cheating.
And he was saying we have to respond like with like, and the queues in California as people came out to say, yes, we are ready to redraw our districts in order to gerrymander too, so that we can take on Donald Trump. I mean, that's what I mean. And I think we both see this, don't we? What we're seeing is the beginnings of some sort of fight back from a party that has frankly been flailing many ways. The question is, how does that
fight back now move forward? I mean, we've had a situation that you mentioned earlier where Chuck Schumer wouldn't endorse Zoram Mandani, wouldn't say how he had voted in the election. And now he's meeting Democrats here who were saying, we will not go out and knock doors for Chuck Schumer, we will not support him anymore. He's got to watch out now and understand that the Democratic Party has changed.
I still think there's going to be this very first debate that we're about to see about whether whether this works elsewhere. Won't that be fun to cover? I think the other big divide here is not so much even between left and right within the Democratic Party, between young or youngish and old or very old. You know, Biden was the obvious example of a Joe and tocracy kind of out of hand. Chuck Schumer is 74 years old.
You know, Nancy Pelosi, I mean, I know she's no longer running Congress, but you know, she's very active politically and very ancient. I wouldn't dare mention her age in case I get some blowback there. But you know, you know, the Democratic Party has been run by very old people. Even Hillary Clinton is quite old now and her husband Bill is really seems very old indeed, as you know, as as a comedian in New York said in at a Mandani
rally. You know, it's so nice you have a Democrat who wasn't old enough to know Jeffrey Epstein. That kind of sums it up. He's so young, though. I said this to someone. They said it's a smear, but I was like, Zora Mandani was in high school when Barack Obama was elected. It's enough to make you feel extremely old, isn't? It he's, he's, he's got such good lines in, in the debate with, with Andrew Cuomo, Andrew Cuomo said, you know, you've got no experience.
And he and Mandami shot back and said, what I lack in experience, I make up for in integrity. And then he turned to Cuomo and said, and what you lack in integrity, you'll never make up for in experience. Bam. You know, that's the kind of line that Donald Trump comes up with, although not quite as elegant, but equally punchy. And and with Mandami, you know, that's what you're getting.
You know, you could feel the hunger, the thirst amongst Democrats to finally get a voice that even though they're they're a bit worried about what he might do to taxes or to their bottom line. You know, they feel finally as if they're punching back. And, and what an unlikely puncher, 34 year old, you know, Muslim American immigrant born in Uganda, you know, all the rest of it that we've discussed
it is it is so unlikely. But as I said before, the most unlikely scenario in America, the one that if you went to Steven Spielberg with a pitch, he would show you the door often becomes the the reality. And that reality then changes everything else. So let's see, you know, could he be the next Barack Obama? That's the question we're really circling around. Because he was born in Kampala, so he can never be president. Well, yes, absolutely. There's a Bertha campaign right there.
But, but in terms of in terms of energizing the party, you know, and who does he then hand that baton onto for president? Yeah, although like I say, Democrats outside of New York are very insistent that this isn't the answer elsewhere. So I do think they'll be that kind of battle for it.
I. Don't know San Francisco Democrats, you know, they're, I mean, they're, you know, the Chicago Democrats. I mean, you know, the debate will be between Gavin Newsom, incredibly good looking telegenic governor of California, who obviously wants to be president and is behaving as if he's already on the campaign. You know, Pritzker, the that, you know, the less telegenic but multi billionaire hotel air, you know, governor of Illinois. I mean, he's another contender.
You know, Josh Shapiro, governor of, of Pennsylvania, I mean, these are there's some really powerful voices there in the Democratic Party. You just want them all to make up their mind who's going to lead. I think one just final thought on this is about how you deal with Donald Trump. I mean, you mentioned San Francisco. The San Francisco mayor was actually, it was a bit controversial. Donald Trump was like, I rang him up. I spoke to him. He was nice and polite.
He said he'd work with me. So I'm not sending the National Guard in to San Francisco on on the final night of campaigning here in New York, I went to watch Zoran Mandani's last kind of rallying talk to canvassers. It was in a park in Astoria in Queens where he years an assemblyman. I was on my knees for quite a long time waiting for him to come to try and him ask him questions and listen to what he
had to say. And and Donald Trump had just put on Truth Social that voters should back Andrew Cuomo, not the Republican candidate in New York, because in his words, a bad Democrat was better than a communist. And Mamdani seemed to almost inflate that attack. That was the thing that he thought was going to help him. The idea that Donald Trump was endorsing the other guy was what was going to bring New Yorkers out to the polls and get them to
vote for him. And, you know, we had an absolute, you know, massive turn out here for this type of election, the biggest since 1969, so I think. It's an amazing question. How do you deal with Trump? Everyone who won last night dealt with Trump by taking him on and placing themselves on the opposite side of the debate. OK, let's bring in scholar. Doctor Christina Greer, political scientists and professor at Fordham University.
Also Co host of FAQ NYC podcast. Doctor Greer, thank you for joining us. How are you feeling waking up in a new New York? It definitely feels like a new New York. You know, it's been really interesting to see Mamdani's rise. This time last year, he was pulling at about 1% name
recognition. And through hard work and mobilizing people online and getting them into the streets and talking about a lot of issues that New Yorkers care about, he's been able to build this movement across the city that has put together so many diverse types of coalitions that
we have never seen before. So it feels like a new day, especially when thinking about what's going on at Washington, DC Instead of trying to pit Americans against one another, this feels like the antithesis of that. And it's really interesting that he he focused a lot on, you know, cost of living issues, you know, the stuff that really effects ordinary New Yorkers, including many of those who voted for Trump. So tell us a little bit about
that. His his strategy of going straight into, you know, the mini pockets of Trump heartland in New York to to bring people on side. Well, if you all remember in 2024, Donald Trump's case was, you know, affordability. The difference was he was saying he's going to bring down the price of eggs. He's going to bring down the price of groceries and gas. And the only reason why things are expensive in your life and things aren't working in your life is because immigrants are
taking things away from you. That's the Donald Trump philosophy. Very subtractive. This one in many ways, is the same populist message that deals with affordability. Can you afford your rent? Can you afford to get to work? Can you afford groceries? But collectively we can change that. And so instead of blaming your immigrant neighbor, then you work with your immigrant neighbor to try and get a better
life. And I think those two issues both hit at affordability, but from very different angles. It's, it's really fascinating. I spent, I went back to Hillside Ave. in Queens where Zoram Mandani had gone to try and talk to people who were voting for Trump. And I met a number of Bangladeshi voters who who would all everyone I spoke to had voted Trump the year before, even though they were all lifelong Democrats. And then they were voting for Mandani.
And I was trying to understand this shift in terms of the politics. And as you say, it was about affordability. Although interestingly, they weren't regretting their votes for Trump, which I think is also quite interesting in itself. I guess the question is that people keep voting for change. They keep voting for something new here in the UK as well, thinking, you know, maybe this will make my life easier. If it doesn't make their life easier, they then seek out another thing.
So in terms of Zoram Mamdani's policy offer, how realistic is it that he can actually get it done? I mean, quite a lot of it does rely on, you know, getting votes through the state legislature here, doesn't it? Right. So I'll take the first part of your statement first, though. I mean, I do think we have to be realistic about 2024. There's just certain people who can't vote for a woman no matter how qualified.
And not saying that the campaign was perfect and we know it was a very short campaign, but there are a lot of people who said it was the economy and it was not. So that's one piece. The second piece is, you know, affordability across the country. We just have these calcified problems that don't seem to get resolved. And even and in both parties, we have these lifelong politicians, these career politicians, 70 years old, 80 years old.
We just keep coming back and essentially telling the American people, well, we can't do it right. We we've tried, but this can't be done. So in Donald Trump's case, he says, why not? Let's try it. And the same with Zaram Abdani. Why do we have to accept the status quo? I think for immigrant communities who have sort of switched back and forth and maybe back again, because they are, you know, all Americans go to the the polls.
They based on pocketbook issues, we can say it's about immigration, we can say it's about, you know, whatever the issue is. But at the end of the day, people vote their pocketbooks and if you're promising them a better life, then that's very real. With Mamdani, he does not have citywide experience. It's a very little bit of time in Albany, which is the state capitol, where he'll have to get quite a bit done.
But the good thing working for him is that the governor, Kathy Hochul, is not only up for re election in 2026 in her general elections in November, but she's being primaried by her own Lieutenant governor for now. That's the only real primary she has, but there could be others who jump in. So she's going to need in the next six months to keep this mobilization in this groundswell of energy that comes out of New York City, because that's the bulk of her votes across a very
purple, if not red state. She's going to need Zaram Abdani, and something tells me he knows he's got six months before the left and the right turn on him. Those two are going to have to work in conjunction with one another, and I think it'll be for the better of New York City residents. And Christina, I mean, immigration is a massive issue in politics, both in America but also here in Europe. And most political leaders, as far as I can tell, are dealing with immigration in a kind of
semi apologetic way. They they don't really want to talk about it if they're incumbents. They want to shout about it if they're in opposition. But Mandani is the first candidate of this stature because he's of, you know, immigrant stock himself, I guess, who is unapologetically embraced the identity of immigration and the importance of immigration in New York City. I found that really remarkable. And it it seems to work.
It did. And you know, what's interesting is that, you know, we're a nation of immigrants. We're a city of immigrants. John F Kennedy famously wrote a book about the nation of immigrants. I'm a proud board member of the Tenement Museum that does nothing but celebrate the history of immigrants. But he didn't run on I'm an immigrant. Let's all be immigrants. It was I'm a New Yorker, and we all encompass what it means to be New York.
And a large part of what it means to be a New Yorker is also to be an immigrant. But his identity politics were a little different this time. It's not the traditional identity politics that you've seen. It's the I would argue that the identity of being a New Yorker encapsulates way more of New Yorkers than being an immigrant. And that's what he tapped into in the. Clever. Fantastic way. And I think a lot of, well, honestly, we're just excited
about the fact that he's young. We have almost 1,000,000 Muslims in New York City. We consistently undercount the South Asian population, which is politically active but largely ignored in polling. So there are a lot of different ways, to say nothing of a fantastically run campaign going to neighborhoods and communities who have never been talked to before. I think all of those things resulted in what we saw last. Night.
But what he did do, and I did find this completely fascinating and I think almost with a British perspective in Britain as an Asian woman growing up, there was a sort of almost separation between my Englishness and my Indian Ness. And I always looked to America and thought America was different because the assimilation was so much more
expected. So you became African American, you became Asian American, but what you were above everything else was American. And, and watching Zoram Mandani, I mean, he embraced his culture. He's not going to hold back and tell you what, you know, Asian food, he wants to go and eat
around the country. He's not going to hold back from eating that food with his hand if that's what his culture says he's going to do. And he's not afraid of speaking all these different languages, you know, playing on the Bollywood themes, etcetera. That must feel very different and fresh. I am interested in a, it worked here big time in New York. Do you think that can be
embraced elsewhere in the US? And I'm just want to ask you on the woman point that you made, you're absolutely right. You know, one of the men I was speaking to about why he didn't vote for Kamel Harris, he was like, you know, America didn't really want to vote for a woman. And I was like, no, you clearly didn't want to vote for a woman. But but you know, Mandani can't be president because he was born in Kampala. And I was speaking to democratic socialists last night who I was
saying, who's your person? Because it's not any of the candidates around the country that we've heard of. And they were talking about AOC. Can a woman win in this country? Sorry, two questions there. I think it's more than two questions in there, but I'm going to try and impact them. So let's take, let's start backwards. AOC is still young. You know, she is soon to be 35. She'll be eligible. You know, this is a very
conservative country. So I don't know how well she plays across the country, to be very honest. And we'll see. But it depends on her messaging and how she can galvanized people. I mean, it's so interesting. I look to London as to how you all have sort of assimilated in different ways because, you know, America seems as though it's this melting pot and, you know, gorgeous mosaic and, you know, fruit salad, all the
things. But for a lot of community, yes, we have, I wrote a book called Black Ethnics, right? You can become African American, but that prefix is mandatory. And you never get that complete American status. It's you're just, you're, you're an American with something in front of it. So Americanness means whiteness. And that's been the tension for a very, very long time.
So it's it's fascinating because I actually look to the UK because Mark Twain, our great satirist and and writer would always go to London to help him think clearly about America. I do think that Mamdani's identity works in New York because we are this city of immigrants. I don't know how it works in other cities. You know, we have such an exponentially large immigrant population and population of non whites. Other cities, I don't know how how they communicate and how
that really shakes out. I do think though, it will give people permission to be their more authentic selves because we have seen when you show up as your authentic self, that's what so many young voters are craving. So many voters who have been sitting on the sidelines who are coming into the process for the first time, that's what they're craving. And so we'll see if that becomes
a model. I think the larger take away though is when you ask voters what it is they want out of their politics, all the consultants said the main issue in 2025 is public safety because that was the big issue in 2021. That was not the issue on on the public's mind. The biggest issue in 2025 was affordability. And that's, and that's the message that mum Donnie came out with last November. That's the message he stayed with all the way through last night.
Because first of all, you don't get public safety if if people can't afford things, if they don't have a place to live and a place to eat and a place in a way to get to work. But instead of letting DC consultants, Washington DC consultants tell you what the message should be, he actually went to the people and asked them what the message should be.
I wonder also if the old labels of left and right are kind of redundant in the age of Trump and you know, the, the, the fledgling age of Mandani and whether the, the, the, the tacking to the centre ground, you know, the famous two-part strategy in the primaries you stick to the edges and then in the general election you go to the centre. Does that even work anymore? Is that still a thing? Not in a in. It's complicated.
I don't want to punt, but it's complicated because Donald Trump has dragged his party so far, right? He's just in the stratosphere. So many Democrats are just chasing that center and that center has moved far to the right. But there are a lot of Democrats who are saying if I'm voting for a Democrat, I want a Democrat. I don't want a weak leaning Republican who's disguised as a Democrat. And I think every city election is is it's own thing. Every congressional election is
it's own thing. And obviously statewide is it's own thing. And we've seen moderates obviously last night in New Jersey and Virginia win because states tend to be by and large, very conservative. And Donald Trump was not on the ballot. And so people behave a little differently when that's the case. But I do think that if you actually talk to people about issues they care about, you don't have to frame them in, you know, radical ideas.
You know, helping people stay in their homes isn't a radical idea. I think Republic will harp on democratic socialism, but let's not get caught up in semantics. Most Americans want to be able to afford their rent. That's not a socialist idea. That's just good politics. So I think the labeling is getting a little fuzzy since so many Democrats feel like, you know, a George HW Bush Republican from the the late 80s, nineteen 80s.
And so we'll see, you know, now that we've got this democratic socialist label that's on the rise, I'm very interested to see how the Democratic Party situates itself because it's such a large tent with so many diverse ideological Democrats in one in one space, I mean. What, what would you think is
the lesson of this election? In many ways, as you say, there was a commonality across the different victories in that it was about cost of living, it was about affordability and about taking on Trump. But these were ideologically very different politicians. Who won what? What does the Democratic Party learn from this? Right. I think for 2025 the issue was
affordability. I don't know what the issue will be in 2026. Something tells me it might still be affordability since the president is laying people off and firing them. But the key is to ask people what it is. I also think you know the common denominator is that Dharma Amdani is. A politician, but not a career politician. The same goes for Virginia and New Jersey. We have to have a regenerative politics.
I think a lot of Americans, but especially Democrats, are so tired of seeing septuagenarians and octogenarians who will not leave the office. They have not passed the baton. They've not created a pipeline of mentorship for other people to come in. If you notice, all these candidates are 55 and below. And so when you look at Congress and you look at the the average age of a senator is like in their 60's. The average age of a member of
the House is slightly lower. But we have, you know, my students say the March of the dinosaurs and here, you know, here we are. If you give people some young energy, new ideas, or at least something that's packaged as a new idea, I think that helps with turn out exponentially.
When I first heard Zoam, and I mean describe himself proudly as a democratic socialist, I was really, you know, quite surprised because socialism is normally the word that dares not speak its name in American politics. And it clearly, you know, didn't prevent him from winning in New York. And I've, you know, wonder whether that would be possible outside New York City.
But also explain to us, you know, why policies that are kind of quite reasonable on the centre left in terms of housing and transport, and you see them in many European countries are socialist in America. And why is socialism, Why is the S word so toxic in American politics over history? Right. I mean, it goes back to, you know, obviously the early 20th century. I mean, it's interesting. The president keeps calling him a communist, which is obviously not the same thing at all.
You know, democratic socialism, when you think about someone like AFC or someone like Bernie Sanders, I think they're essentially, you know, in the past, they would have just been Democrats. But because so many Democrats have moved so far to the right in the center, this new label to help welcome in people who have progressive ideas has emerged. I mean, I don't think that, you know, helping people have a cost
of living is a socialist idea. I do think that we don't talk enough about the donor class that is captured not just the Republican Party, but also the Democratic Party as well. And so many of them make it such that our elected representatives really reticent to start talking about redistributive politics in a way that will help millions of Americans. And so that's considered socialism. Let's be clear. Rich people in this country, in America have socialism every day.
They're not paying their fair share of taxes. They get tax breaks and sort of all types of free things that they argue, you know, the lessers will get. And so I think that this is a conversation to the, you know, to earlier point, I think this is going to open up a conversation about what it is that Americans demand and
deserve. And the, the key phrase that I keep hearing, whenever I would ask people about Mamdani, you know, my podcast and other places, everyone would say he awakened something in me almost akin to 2008, Barack Obama's candidacy, where so many people and a lot has happened since 2008. But a lot of people said, I just thought this is the way things had to be. And they're so beaten down by 2016's election, They're beaten
down by 2024 election. And they just thought that the status quo or worse was what they had to live under. And they said that he woke something up and reminded them that this democracy belongs to ours. It's active and living and breathing and if we fight for it, we can win. And that was a repeated message from the campaign. If we do it collectively, we can
win. And I think that's the piece that will be interesting to see moving forward, to see how many people recognize that this is it's a marathon and not a Sprint, and they have to sort of stick with it even through all the highs and lows and the wins and losses. Just really quickly, if I may, do you think he's a bigger threat to establishment Democrats or to mega
Republicans? I think establishment Democrats, just because establishment Democrats have gotten by quite a bit with saying what they can't do for the Democratic Party. And I think he is saying, well, we need to get creative and figure it out. And so I think is evidenced by the fact that Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, the two New York states or near US senators, did not endorse Mamdani. And I get it. They don't want to be accused
nationally. Hakeem Jeffries, who's the House Minority Leader, also from Brooklyn in New York, he gave a very tepid endorsement. And so I think that a lot of Democrats are thinking nationally. So they have not endorsed Mum Donnie, but I think the message is clear. And I think that message resonates across the country. I mean, especially in New York in a place where if you make $40,000 or you make $400,000 or she'll put it in pounds, you make £40,000 or £400,000, right,
you're feeling the squeeze. And I think that's a lot of Americans across the country. And so the framing of the message can work. I don't know if the package that it comes in will be something that everyone accepts, but I do think that the larger Democratic Party has to look at how this, these wins all crossed last night happened and really doubled down on the articulation of a message and not just trying to steamroll like, I'm working. Don't ask me what I need to do.
Don't. I'm just working on your behalf. The Democrats have struggled with stopping to explain why it is that they're actually working to keep this democracy afloat, working to make sure healthcare isn't taken away from millions upon millions of Americans, working to make sure that there are jobs that exist. But the the articulation and the explanation phase has always been like one of the weakest parts of the Democratic strategy.
Absolutely fascinating. Christina, thank you so much for joining us on Trump World. We really appreciate it. Thank you so much. And that is all we've got time for this week on Trump World. Next week I will be back in Washington, DC. I'll see you then. And I will still be in London. We'll see you then. Thanks very much for joining us on this edition of Trump World after the election results in New York and elsewhere.