Latest / The Nation Podcasts / How is Mamdani Doing? w/ Don Guttenplan | The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer

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How is Mamdani Doing? w/ Don Guttenplan | The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer · The Nation Podcasts

• 0:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: The old world is dying, the new world struggles to reborn.
• 0:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now is the time of monsters.
• 0:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, regular listeners for the program, the time of monsters, although that we use a focus on very dire news, I'm detail of the nation and we cover this horrible era of rising authoritarianism
• 0:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: and war, but sometimes it's good to like have at least a little bit positive or more positive news in terms of a more hopeful development in this era when everything is in black.
• 0:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think like for many listeners, one of the positive developments of the last year has been the election of Zoran Memdani as mayor of New York.
• 0:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: And now the nation which has a long history with Memdani,
• 0:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: But then, subsequently, it dorsed his burial candidacy, and now has a regular city hall reporter.
• 1:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: And this is a period where some of our competitors, like the New York Times, have been cutting back on their coverage of municipal politics, but we have a former nation editor, Dunn Bootin Plan, is covering the city hall beat, you know, weekly column, and I think it's been a
• 1:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: be reading regularly, because it's trying to track how Zoran Mendenni has been doing as mayor on a week by week basis, and I towards the balance between his expansive Democratic socialist hopes and the pragmatic reality of being a big city mayor.
• 1:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, first of all, Dawn, welcome to the program.
• 1:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, Jade, it's great to be back with you and always get to talk to you.
• 1:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so let's get started on the, um, uh, about your column in general, a little bit like, what's your thinking in terms of, uh, because I actually, I don't think we've had a, uh, a city hall column in the, uh, the nation for a while.
• 2:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't think the nation has, has ever had a city hall column.
• 2:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: Uh, and I say that is the author of the nation's history, but the mom Donnie beat, um, which is the name of the column and which, uh,
• 2:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: Uh, if your listeners want to look for it, they'll have to look for it on Google because if you put mom Donnie beat into the nation search engine nothing turns up so use use a better search engine than the internal search engine on the network.
• 2:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then you get all the columns in a nice, consecutive work.
• 2:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, we've got, yeah, we've got this rubric that I'm done, E.B.
• 2:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: So that's nice.
• 2:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then there's a nice little graphic.
• 2:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: For those of us who remember the Beatles, it's a little bit retro, but I like it.
• 2:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: Anyway, so what am I trying to do?
• 2:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: Why am I doing this?
• 2:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: Because when I was assigned as editor of the nation in July, I did not have it in mind to do this.
• 2:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: But then in July, it's
• 3:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: look far from certain that my god he was going to be the mayor and what I realized along with probably a few other people is that in a time of monsters and a time of extremely bad news politically this represented something unique you know a chance to at least spend a little time on the sunny side of the street and and at the same time um
• 3:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: This is not my first city hall rodeo.
• 3:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: I covered the Koch, the last Ed Koch budget for the village voice in 1987.
• 3:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I was a member of the city hall press corps for the first year of the Dinkens administration in 1990.
• 3:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: So there's been a little bit of time elapsed since I had a desk in room nine, but everybody there has been which is the room nine by the way for far-flung listeners is the city hall press room and when you walk into city hall and this is I suppose guidance for tourists
• 4:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: If you've got a lower Manhattan, and you get off the subway at City Hall, you'll see this enormous neoclassical building with a tremendous statue of civic virtue on the top in gold.
• 4:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: That is not City Hall.
• 4:17
  [SPEAKER_03]: That is the municipal building, or a one-centre street, which is where most of the city's offices are.
• 4:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: City Hall itself is a relatively small,
• 4:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: federal 18, 20's white building in a park, it's very beautiful, and if you walk into the lobby, you turn to the left, you're in the mayor's half of City Hall where the mayor has his offices.
• 4:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: If you go straight up the very grand staircase, you're at the council chamber where the city council meets, and if you turn to the right, you're in the council half, but right before you get to
• 4:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: full of city looking people sitting at desks with left-top computers.
• 5:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: And that is room nine, which has from time immemorial, been the press room at City Hall.
• 5:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, actually, before we proceed, yeah, it's, it's, it's, you do have a history of like covering the City Hall off and on.
• 5:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: I haven't been curious about those sort of like press culture because I think you know and we're talking about the end Culture like there was a robust municipal press at that point.
• 5:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: You don't think the village was Obviously, but then you know like the sort of storied year of that New York Daily news
• 5:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: and the New York Post and I think at that point the New York Times C3 more committed to municipal coverage that I think it has been more recently.
• 5:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: So like any sense of like how the sort of press culture covering the city has changed.
• 5:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: Sure, I could, you know, I could join on about this for a long time, but the short version is that in the 90s there were actually two press rooms at City Hall or maybe three there was a wire room where there's sort of people from
• 6:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: the associated press and UPI would file their breaking stories and a radio room where the reporter from WNYC, but also WABC, WCBS, WINS, all the radio news stations at the time would file from.
• 6:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then there was also a room downstairs, the overflow room, where the kind of second string reporters for the various outlets would have their desks.
• 6:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: That was where I had my desk as a young correspondent for New York News Day.
• 6:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: At the time, the New York Times bureau chief was Todd Perdem, who went on to some fame covering the
• 6:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: the Clinton White House, and now writes for Vanity Fair from the West Coast.
• 6:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: And the dean of the city hall press court in those days was the person who I realized his kind of my patron saint.
• 6:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: And that's a woman called Andy Logan, who was the New Yorker's
• 7:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know, I mean in those days the only way you could read the New Yorker was to buy it in Prince.
• 7:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: But her column was called Around City Hall, and she would write a kind of witty summary of whatever had struck her as interesting that week.
• 7:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: And she'd been there when I got there in 1990, she'd already been there for 25 years.
• 7:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: And she knew everything and had a vast institutional memory, and was also a fantastic
• 7:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, she, she's kind of my hero in, in the card incarnation, we've been, we've been reduced to one room.
• 7:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: So the premises have shrunk, or I suppose the city council in mayoral bureaucracy has expanded.
• 7:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: And also,
• 7:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: When I was there in the 90s, you would have a computer terminal that was, you know, wired to your home bureau now it seems like we all, it's interesting city hall does not provide Wi-Fi access there's there's no there's no public Wi-Fi network that you can use, but and maybe I shouldn't admit this on the earlier we're all free loading off of Rupert Murdoch because the New York Post has Wi-Fi and they're very generous with the past.
• 8:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: So that's the best thing I've ever heard about the Burdock.
• 8:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, when you're reading my dispatches in the nation, be sure to tip your hat in the direction of the Burdock wherever he is.
• 8:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: But yeah, I mean, you know, like there's a lot more going on.
• 8:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: The nature of the
• 8:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: The media has changed a lot, so for example, AM New York, which didn't exist in my first incarnation at City Hall and which a probably a lot of listeners and readers will have never heard of, they have three desks there, the city, which is of course run by our former executive editor Richard Kim, their correspondent, Katie Hone in his probably the kind of
• 9:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: knowledgeable reporter from the Daily Press there, and you know, and she doesn't write for newspapers, she writes for a website.
• 9:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: So in that sense, it's changed a lot, but you know, the times in the Daily News are still there, W P I X, although no longer owned by the Daily News, the TV station still has somebody there.
• 9:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: It probably depends on when you go.
• 9:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, if if you go on a day that the mayor is having a city hall press conference,
• 9:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: then the place is full, and you've got to get there really to get a seat, not at the press conferences, but at the room nine to file afterwards, if you're still trying to file quickly.
• 9:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: But you know what I don't think, because that's one of the reasons I went to ask, because I mean, it does seem like even though, you know, we're in an era where media is struggling more, there's a lot of interest in, I'm down these,
• 10:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think that's true.
• 10:04
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• 10:05
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• 10:07
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• 10:09
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• 10:09
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• 10:10
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• 10:11
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• 10:12
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• 10:13
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• 10:13
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• 10:14
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• 10:15
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• 10:15
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• 10:16
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• 10:17
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• 10:17
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• 10:18
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• 10:19
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• 10:20
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• 10:20
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• 10:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think that's true.
• 10:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think that's true.
• 10:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think that's true.
• 10:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think that's true.
• 10:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think that's true.
• 10:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, that's why I'm there because I, you know, because there's international interest in in the nation, although it would be wonderful if there was.
• 10:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: But because I think there's a lot writing on his morality, you know, a lot of people on the left, and I include myself in this number, have a lot invested in the notion that you can have if not socialism, certainly social democracy,
• 10:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: there are two, two bits of history that I think are worth, at least mentioning.
• 10:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: One is, of course, LaGuardia, the greatest mayor in the city, in the history of New York, and who was also a socialist, and who governed as a social Democrat and who pioneered many of the things that New Yorkers still take for granted and take pride in, including, you know, like a robust municipal hospital
• 11:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: The idea that the city could provide a dignified life for all its inhabitants was the LaGuardia ideal and you know in some ways we've been falling off ever since.
• 11:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: So there's something hugely exciting about a mayor who wants to not only restore that, but advance it.
• 11:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: So there's that.
• 11:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then this is a more obscure episode, but you know, we're not afraid of obscurity here at the nation.
• 11:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: Paul Blanchard,
• 11:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: who was a nation assistant editor in the 20s, wrote a book with Norman Thomas in 1928, who was the socialist party's standard bearer candidate for president.
• 12:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: And the book was called What's the Matter with New York?
• 12:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: And it was a kind of a socialist autopsy of Tamony Hall, Jimmy Walker, and political corruption in New York City, and then a series of
• 12:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's, of course, out of print and copies are hard to find.
• 12:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: I used to have one in my office at the nation.
• 12:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: And now I have it here in my study at home.
• 12:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: But when LaGuardia was elected, he appointed Blanchard one of his deputy mayors.
• 12:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so, you know, there was a direct nation line to policy.
• 12:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: And there was a direct,
• 12:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: effort in the Gordia's day to put socialist ideals into practice at the municipal level.
• 12:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: So it's not that it's never been done.
• 12:47
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's just that it hasn't been done for nearly a hundred years.
• 12:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, it's true.
• 12:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: It hasn't been that in a while, I mean, and outside of New York, I mean, I think the areas where democratic socialism has been most successful in the United States has been at the municipal level.
• 13:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: Right.
• 13:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then, and sometimes, after a good or in a territorial level, but I mean, certainly at the municipal level, there's been a lot of part-reaching reforms that the socialists move and entities used.
• 13:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, no, I think one of the interesting things about their color, and I think, in all good writing, yours,
• 13:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: within an argument that the writer is having within his or her own mind about a subject and I think that like in all your columns you're kind of like wrestling with both the you know pragmatic question how is he doing but also how is he balancing these kind of like aspirations of social democracy with this sort of practical realities of New York
• 13:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it might be useful if we run through like a few cases where he sort of made either compromises that are either good or bad or successful or unsuccessful.
• 13:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: So I think one thing that's maybe highly pregnant because the war in Iran is still going on.
• 14:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think we'll be going on for the foreseeable future, because there's no clear off-rap.
• 14:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, one of the things that Memdani did that surprised people, has had two visits to the White House that have tried to open up a bridge or a dialogue with a president who's not just a Republican, but like a virulent, the Red Wing Republican, especially hostile to socialism.
• 14:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: on the mom Donnie Trump unlikely.
• 14:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
• 14:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
• 14:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, I mean, there are a couple of thoughts and as you pointed it, you know, I think I'm still kind of wrestling with it my own mind because.
• 14:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's certainly true that the first visit to the White House, which was not announced and where the two of them emerged kind of reached in smiles and then there was that wonderful clip on social media of Mom Donnie being asked whether he would still describe Trump as a fascist and
• 15:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, his good manners and instincts for candor were struggling with each other, and the president put him out of his misery by saying, it's okay, just say yes.
• 15:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: Uh, I thought that was a brilliant piece of political theater.
• 15:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: Um, I thought it was a very wise move.
• 15:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: Now, why was it a wise move?
• 15:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: Not because he was checking up to the president, because he wasn't.
• 15:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: explicitly sucking up to the president.
• 15:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: He didn't agree with anything, you know, that he wouldn't have agreed with in another setting.
• 15:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: They are both New Yorkers and also, you know, for us, for us hardcore materialists here, it's worth pointing out that to the extent that Trump owns any assets that are worth anything, the most valuable ones are in New York City.
• 15:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, if New York City was transformed from the capitalist paradise of the Bloomberg era,
• 15:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: to the smoking ruins of sort of John Carpenter's Hellscape, that would be bad for the Trump family business.
• 16:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so, and then, you know, beyond that, I mean, there's a material aspect, but every Trump has a real consciousness of himself as a New Yorker.
• 16:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, his sort of self-understanding is that, you know, New York was in the pits of the 70s, and then he was part of the revival of, you know,
• 16:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we still have faith in the city and, you know, we're willing to build in the city.
• 16:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, I mean, there's up, there's something that's important to Trump of like, you know, build back better in New York, if nor else.
• 16:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, no, I mean, Trump's, you know, there's a lot to be said about Trump's relationship with the city, both in terms of mythos, you know, he sees himself as a quintessential New Yorker and as a New York character.
• 16:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: And of course,
• 16:50
  [SPEAKER_03]: He succeeded in the one industry.
• 16:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, Europe has two real industries.
• 16:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: One is real estate and the other is public relations.
• 16:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: And he may not have really succeeded in real estate, pretty certainly made it big in public relations.
• 17:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: But it's also true that whatever success he had in real estate, and this is a topic for another day and a deeper dive.
• 17:12
  [SPEAKER_03]: But
• 17:13
  [SPEAKER_03]: came in in large part because of his family connections to New York's governing political establishment and the favors he was able to leverage out of them, which got him started as a builder.
• 17:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: So he's always had an eye on New York City politics.
• 17:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's always had an investment, not just emotionally, but
• 17:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: in terms of actual capital and in whose running the city at a given moment and how they relate to the family business.
• 17:41
  [SPEAKER_03]: And of course, you know, the president can do an enormous amount to now I'm trying to avoid the seven words, but one of the the word I'm avoiding is followed by up.
• 17:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: So the president can do an enormous amount to blank up
• 17:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, um, a mayor of any city as as poor as poor Jacob Fry could testify at great lengths.
• 18:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, and has, I mean Trump has actually like specifically gone after Democratic cities and done a lot of damage in Los Angeles Chicago.
• 18:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: You don't necessarily miss owed us.
• 18:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, if you're the mayor of New York, you kind of have to ask yourself, well, I mean, you have to ask yourself, I think if you're prudent, two questions, one is, why hasn't he done it here?
• 18:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: And two is, what will I do if he does?
• 18:31
  [SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, I'm hoping that there are wise heads into the hall who have gained out the second scenario, and my personal guess for the answer to why he hasn't in New York is what I said before, which is that he has interests in New York which go beyond government.
• 18:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, if you had 50,000 angry New Yorkers with torches at the basis at the base of
• 18:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: it would be bad for Trump.
• 19:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, he may not particularly be eager to pick a fight with Mayor Mamedani or New York City, but that doesn't mean that the mayor should be a jerk about provoking him.
• 19:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so, in going to Washington the first time and coming the way he had, I could see that he had every reason to consider that a success and that his advisors were pleased with what they'd pulled off.
• 19:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: I suppose one of the tensions that I'm alert to in the column is as it were between PR and governing or between the campaign and administration, and the temptation to go for another easy win.
• 19:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: which was clearly going on, you know, they printed up that fake daily news front page Trump to city, you know, let's build, um, oh, I'm with the real, um, with the real Ford to city drop dead.
• 19:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, the real, you know, to give Trump a flattering contrast with the previous Republican president.
• 20:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, you know, that might have seemed like a clever idea at the time.
• 20:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: It's certainly got the kind of press coverage they wanted.
• 20:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: On the other hand, some of those smiles must have curdled the next, you know, this was the Thursday.
• 20:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: By Saturday morning when American weaponry is, you know, killing school girls and Tehran,
• 20:32
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I mean, yeah, I know this is obviously a danger in terms of, you know, giving any sort of bearhack or association with Trump.
• 20:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: I was like, getting a sort of defense.
• 20:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, wasn't there like an actual material benefit that he got out of it, which was that department I believe as the ace or moment security had gone after some students at Columbia, and Mamdan was able to get at least one of them at least.
• 20:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: He got, yeah,
• 21:00
  [SPEAKER_03]: who was arrested and, well, abducted really, but anyway, was in federal custody.
• 21:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: He did get her released.
• 21:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's good.
• 21:10
  [SPEAKER_03]: That might have happened anyway, or maybe it didn't.
• 21:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: There was a, the point of the, I mean, she was, she was abducted that morning.
• 21:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, it was kind of like it wouldn't really look bad if he hadn't raised her case.
• 21:23
  [SPEAKER_03]: And of course, it was, you know,
• 21:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: It was an easy boon for the king to grant his, his leg, but the theoretical purpose of the trip was to get which was to get Trump's backing for this project in sunny side yards, which is a massive railroad yard in Queens, where they're going to have to build a platform over the rails, much like Hudson yards, and then build housing.
• 21:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
• 21:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's a plan that the DiBlasio administration had gotten as far as Blueprint stage and then it had installed.
• 21:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: And yes, if Trump had decided to fund it, that would have been helpful, he didn't, he merely smiled about it.
• 22:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: And of course, the same political conflicts which stalled in the DiBlasio administration have resurfaced.
• 22:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I don't know.
• 22:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
• 22:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's less of a trick I win.
• 22:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think we'll be the thinking behind both meetings, though.
• 22:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: It just goes back to sort of Mbani's own origin stories.
• 22:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: Or in terms of running for Mbani's, he had interviewed a lot of people who both voted for Trump and AOC.
• 22:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to get a video about this.
• 22:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: And the idea is that there's a significant segment of the population.
• 22:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: that is just concerned about like affordability and economics and don't neatly map on to left-right spectrum.
• 22:52
  [SPEAKER_01]: And to the extent that Trump can be made aware that, you know, this is actually part of his political base.
• 22:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: It would act as a constraining factor.
• 23:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: on him, on the one hand, and it will also allow Democrats to have a bridge to win back those people who are open to AOC or Trump, and went for Trump rather than come out with Harris.
• 23:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, I mean, the political logic of these meetings with Trump seem to be less about Trump than about like, you know, kind of gain a legitimacy among those voters who would put their
• 23:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: and who now might be open to an argument, well, you know, yes, I see done the sort of, you know, affordability stuff that he promised, who put that in attendance till there.
• 23:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: I would buy that.
• 23:37
  [SPEAKER_03]: I would buy that if they didn't try and do that by producing these flattering media spectacles.
• 23:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: In other words, it's one thing to say, there are people who voted for Trump because they wanted to change the Hillary and Kamala were continuity candidates.
• 23:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: Trump was a change candidate.
• 23:58
  [SPEAKER_03]: But unlike Trump who didn't deliver on the promise of bringing more affordability, I am going to, but you can't do that while flattering the guy.
• 24:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I'm afraid I don't buy that argument.
• 24:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I mean, maybe the other way to think about it is like the flattery works both ways.
• 24:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think one of the things that Boundami has to like contend with is that he's seen as, you know, threatening or alien force.
• 24:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: hostile, brain-winged media, like Fox News and the New York Post.
• 24:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I mean, to the extent that Trump did show them, basically, in the two readings, particularly the first month, but even the second one, as, you know, like basically treating Mavdani as a legitimate politician, as someone who has some ideas that Trump, even if he doesn't follow through, is at least amenable through, or, you know, thanks, you know, in the abstract,
• 24:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a, you know, I mean, the danger is if you're, if the danger is your legitimizing Trump, yep, side is that you're also legitimizing them, Danny.
• 25:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, no, I, I hear you, but I just think it works both ways.
• 25:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: I guess I think that if, if you, if you go to Trump as a validator, then you're validating him.
• 25:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, he's one of the, or does he twice?
• 25:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's a validator that you could be.
• 25:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: It'd be very confusing because that's the right?
• 25:26
  [SPEAKER_03]: Like I said, if it weren't for the war, it wouldn't maybe, I mean, it wouldn't look as bad as I think it, I think it was a miscalculation, but you know, others, others may feel otherwise.
• 25:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, no, no.
• 25:42
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think in some ways, some of these images show up in another issue, what you were to call them about, which is his relationship with Jessica Tish.
• 25:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: This is really fascinating and and I kind of stumbled into this.
• 26:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I don't want to I don't want to shock our listeners, but the nation does not pay me enough to go to City Hall every day five days a week.
• 26:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: So I go to City Hall on the days that I think there'll be something of interest and sometimes I go elsewhere.
• 26:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so I went one morning, I think it was a Friday a few weeks ago to the mayor's prayer breakfast, which was at the New York Public Library.
• 26:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, that was interesting and it was interesting to see the city's first Muslim mayor presiding over what is normally a relatively Christian forward gathering with a few rabbis thrown in, you know, as tokens of goodwill.
• 26:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: This was a much broader base of religions than usually a represented on the proteothesications.
• 26:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: Mamdaani was very eloquent and very welcoming.
• 26:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: But then after that,
• 26:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: I went to what's called the NYPD Foundation, which is a, you know, one of these things that we have in New York, even though it's the richest city in the richest country in the history of the world, we don't have enough municipal funds to do a lot of the things that New Yorkers would like to do particularly wealthy New Yorkers.
• 27:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: So they set up foundations where they can give directly.
• 27:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: to support causes like keeping central park, manicured, or keeping the 42nd Street library and tip-top condition, or in this case, giving the police department even more money than they can get from the city budget.
• 27:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: So this is more like, you know, not defund the police, or, you know, this is like extra fund to police.
• 27:48
  [SPEAKER_03]: And that, that, that.
• 27:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: That's this group, and Tish was speaking.
• 27:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: And so who is Jessica Tish?
• 27:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: She is someone who there are two very important things to know about.
• 28:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: Her one is that she is a member of the Tish family, who her grandfather founded the Lowe's corporation that owns hotels and movie theaters and you know, very, it's a 10 billion dollar Forbes estimates the family's net worth an excess of 10 billion dollars.
• 28:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, it's a kind of New York version, if you like, of the Pritzkers.
• 28:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: And they are Jews.
• 28:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: Her cousin is, or until last week, when his name showed up more than it should have in the Epstein files, was the CEO of the New York Giants.
• 28:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: you know and it's a it's a big diversified family holding company I think some of the money originally came from tobacco but anyway it's now it's very diversified and so that's one thing to know about her the other thing to know about her is that she's been a public servant for about two decades and for the bulk of that actually worked for the police department
• 29:03
  [SPEAKER_03]: in its kind of data management division, where she was an innovator in the use and implementation of various data collection and data management strategies, and then she was named IT Commissioner by DiBlasio.
• 29:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: or no, by I think maybe it was even Bloomberg.
• 29:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: Anyway, she was, she had a commissioner level appointment and then DiBlasio made her sanitation commissioner.
• 29:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: And she was very successful managing the sanitation department under DiBlasio.
• 29:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: And then,
• 29:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: Adams, who was in the process of going through three police commissioners, one because he undercut a authority, another because he was a subject of a federal corruption investigation and the third, for reasons that are still a little obscure, he picked Tish and made her police commissioner.
• 30:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: and she turned out to be a very canny choice, both because she had spent a lot of her career in the department and in its data division.
• 30:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: So she was as they say across all the NYPD data in a way that any other incoming commissioner would not have been.
• 30:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: And because she's a very competent administrator, you know, her, she does not seem like Franklin Roosevelt to be a traitor to her class.
• 30:29
  [SPEAKER_03]: She, she is not going on record as favoring taxing the rich or she was not an early booster of mom Donnie on the other hand.
• 30:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: When he won the nomination, and it became likely that he was going to become mayor, she had a series of meetings, which were reportedly organized by Catherine Wilde, who was then the head of the New York City partnership, which is the kind of big business lobbying group in the city, and she and the mayor got to know each other, and he was pressured
• 31:01
  [SPEAKER_03]: Fairly heavily by the governor, but also by various business interests to say he would keep her on.
• 31:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: And, you know, there are a number of constituencies in New York that were mistrustful of Mamdaani at the time.
• 31:16
  [SPEAKER_03]: One, of course, is the general run of the city's Jewish community who were mistrustful of a pro-Palestinian Muslim.
• 31:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: And he'd had to walk that back during the campaign.
• 31:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: But of course, talk is cheap, whereas choosing to keep tissue on his commissioner was a gesture that the people who care about public safety in New York and who do not want to defund the police took seriously.
• 31:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: So there was a way in which they entered into this relationship.
• 31:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's her boss.
• 31:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: at least nominally.
• 31:57
  [SPEAKER_03]: And I say that because as I say in the column last week or two weeks ago there was a snowball fight in Washington Square Park in which several police officers ended up getting pelted with snowballs, depending on your point of view of these things, it was a young people's stunts that got out of hand or it was lawlessness run wild.
• 32:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: Anyway,
• 32:25
  [SPEAKER_03]: The commissioner said it looked like a criminal and, you know, terrible behavior and they arrested two of the people who threw snowballs at the cops.
• 32:35
  [SPEAKER_03]: Now, if he's her boss, why do they arrest these people?
• 32:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: obviously because he decided he wasn't going to fight over this.
• 32:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: But also because she wanted to send a message to the public and to her officers that, you know, she has their back and that disrespect to the police will not be tolerated.
• 32:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, there's, there are in her intentions in their relationship irrespective of their very different class and political positions.
• 33:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: So what I'm curious about is like in terms of actually being out to implement any sort of, I'll say, maybe like one sort of practical, you know, we won't say defund the police because that's, you know, not politically correct.
• 33:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: But one way, I think that I think that any still committed to is moving some of the police services away from the police to social workers.
• 33:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like, you know, like, in issues like dealing with people who have mental health issues or even like some domestic
• 33:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, is he going to, what do you be able to implement that with someone like Test?
• 33:38
  [SPEAKER_03]: Well, that's, that's the $64,000 question, Jade.
• 33:43
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I will note and we are in March for people who are keeping score.
• 33:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: The city budget is not due, the final budget is not due until July.
• 33:55
  [SPEAKER_03]: No real substantive action will happen until the state passes its budget,
• 34:04
  [SPEAKER_03]: the Senate and the Assembly versions, which were both passed last week, both of which called for tax increases on the wealthiest New Yorkers and corporations, get their way or whether the governor who has said she's against such a measure gets her way.
• 34:21
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, that has yet to
• 34:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: finalize itself and even if it does, then the city council and the mayor have to decide what they're going to do about the state budget and how they're going to, as they say,
• 34:36
  [SPEAKER_03]: plug the gap in revenues between whatever the city wants to spend and what the state has promised to provide and what existing city revenues would provide.
• 34:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: So all of that has yet to play out, but with that caveat, it's worth noting that the Department of Public Safety, which is the new Department under which the mayor has proposed to shift
• 35:05
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, whether it's an emotionally disturbed person or domestic dispute or somebody having a psychotic break in public, which sadly happens, you know, with great regularity in New York City, that's not in the budget yet.
• 35:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: There are no funds allocated for that.
• 35:22
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, it may be that he's going to do it, but he's not going to do it this year.
• 35:28
  [SPEAKER_03]: It may be that he's never going to do it, but he certainly hasn't announced that he's doing it, and this is what we're going to spend on it yet, and when he does, you know, part of the question will be, well, is that let's say for the sake of argument billion dollars,
• 35:46
  [SPEAKER_03]: going to come out of the police department's existing funds, or are they going to be totally new funds?
• 35:52
  [SPEAKER_03]: Because the point of this department is, I mean, I'll give you an instance from this morning.
• 35:59
  [SPEAKER_03]: I was on the subway this morning going down to City Hall, and there was a man and woman on my subway car who were having a very large, loud domestic dispute.
• 36:11
  [SPEAKER_03]: and they were yelling at each other and and she was getting desperate and he was getting angry and it was clear that they weren't really listening.
• 36:19
  [SPEAKER_03]: They were just winding each other up and it was also clear that this would have been a great time to have somebody from a non-weapons carrying city department available on the other hand.
• 36:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: Speaking only for myself, it didn't reach the point where you would risk calling the cops and having either of these people shot, which is what happened just last week when some family called the police department because their son was having a psychotic break and their son ended up being killed by the police.
• 36:53
  [SPEAKER_03]: So, you know, it's like the need for this is clear
• 37:02
  [SPEAKER_03]: take some of the workload off the NYPD, but the path to getting there is far from clear, and the mayor has not yet even set out a roadmap for how he proposes to get there.
• 37:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, I mean, it does seem like this might be the sort of like note to end on, but I mean, it does seem like the budget is very like a lot of these issues are going to be sort of like play out and like if you have any like thoughts on that as a sort of like concluding note, in terms of how to measure lambda needs success or his ability to achieve his agenda.
• 37:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is it still like fairly opaque in terms of like the budgeting or we have any sort of clues.
• 37:42
  [SPEAKER_03]: I would say it's worse than opaque.
• 37:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, I would say two things.
• 37:45
  [SPEAKER_03]: First of all, in terms of the Ed Koch question, how's he doing?
• 37:51
  [SPEAKER_03]: I would say the mayor at this point is still deserving of an A minus.
• 37:56
  [SPEAKER_03]: He's terrific at the kind of signaling and symbolic part of being the mayor, which in the media capital like New York is an important part of the job.
• 38:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: I'll give you a small example.
• 38:09
  [SPEAKER_03]: two weeks ago, I think before the war in Iran began, the mayor posted a picture on his Instagram account of breaking the fast, a Ramadan fast.
• 38:24
  [SPEAKER_03]: And he was, he was eating a
• 38:32
  [SPEAKER_03]: And it was just so such a brilliant piece of semiology because it was like, you know, yes, I'm a muscle mare and yes, I'm doing this thing with my fellow Muslims and yes, I know that for some Jews, this is going to make you feel excluded.
• 38:49
  [SPEAKER_03]: But I see you and you know, and I'm still thinking if you even when I'm doing this and I just thought you know he he's he's just a brilliant communicator of inclusiveness and you know that's not a small thing and it was something that for example Eric Adams was terrible at.
• 39:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: But the budget is where you're going to find out what's what they're serious about.
• 39:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: And sadly, the mayor has allowed himself to be decoyed into this.
• 39:20
  [SPEAKER_03]: puppet show over the deficit, which has gotten a lot of headlines, but which veteran budget watchers don't take seriously.
• 39:30
  [SPEAKER_03]: In other words, yes, there is a deficit.
• 39:33
  [SPEAKER_03]: No, it is not new.
• 39:34
  [SPEAKER_03]: The, you know, Brad lander warned about it when he was still controller.
• 39:39
  [SPEAKER_03]: We knew it was coming.
• 39:40
  [SPEAKER_03]: And you don't actually have to raise taxes to solve it.
• 39:44
  [SPEAKER_03]: And in any case, proposing to raise taxes to solve a budget deficit is not something that's going to mobilize the masses to go into the streets for you.
• 39:54
  [SPEAKER_03]: If you said to people, you know, we're going to restore free tuition to CUNY and we'll do that because we've put a 1% search charge on the incomes of New Yorkers earning more than 2 million a year.
• 40:06
  [SPEAKER_03]: That would be pretty popular.
• 40:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: In other words, if you pointed to services that you will only be able to provide if you can raise taxes on the wealthy.
• 40:14
  [SPEAKER_03]: Great.
• 40:15
  [SPEAKER_03]: But to say, we need to raise taxes on the wealthy to take care of Eric Adams' bad bookkeeping.
• 40:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: It just doesn't seem serious.
• 40:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: No, no, that's more a Walter Wondell message that I- Exactly, then a Bernie Sanders one, yeah.
• 40:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: And everyone there was the last Democratic presidential candidate to run on.
• 40:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: deficit reduction, dispute tax cuts, but through tax rate raising taxes, but in any case, but I mean, certainly the story is going to continue to unfold and I would encourage listeners to read Don's poem in the nation, that I'm down the beat, and we'll continue to see how this very painful story that many of us are invested in, how it plays out.
• 41:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, thank you.
• 41:07
  [SPEAKER_03]: Thanks very much.
• 41:08
  [SPEAKER_03]: Thanks, Gita.