Latest / None of Your Business Podcast / Power Broker: How To Get Big Things Done - With David Greenfield

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Power Broker: How To Get Big Things Done - With David Greenfield · None of Your Business Podcast

• 0:00
  Welcome back everybody to our next episode of the None of Your
• 0:03
  Business podcast. We love your feedback and we are
• 0:06
  listening. We're paying attention.
• 0:08
  Please like subscribe, follow, get involved, make some
• 0:12
  comments, whether positive or negative, we don't care.
• 0:15
  We just want to hear your feedback.
• 0:16
  We want to get better at what we do and we love hearing the
• 0:18
  feedback from people. I am stoked.
• 0:21
  That's the best word. I could use a sheet for this
• 0:24
  coming podcast because we spoke last time about getting my
• 0:28
  brother David, who is a very well known ex politician but
• 0:32
  really influential in the political world and the CEO of
• 0:35
  Met Council, which is a very large organization which I hope
• 0:38
  we're going to learn about in this podcast coming up.
• 0:42
  David, most of the world does not know is actually my twin
• 0:47
  brother. And, you know, he might be my
• 0:50
  younger twin brother, but I have to tell you, I look up to him
• 0:53
  and I have been looking up to him for quite a while.
• 0:56
  He's probably going to call me by my Jewish name, Hiam.
• 0:59
  Because for those of you that don't know, I have a middle
• 1:01
  name, Mikhail, which is the Angel Michael, as we learned in
• 1:04
  the last podcast. So my full name is Chaim
• 1:07
  Mikhail. So he'll probably, you know, use
• 1:09
  that name because, you know, it's common for him to use that
• 1:11
  name. So, but we know him as David.
• 1:14
  And I'm excited because we're going to learn about probably a
• 1:18
  little bit about our relationship, our background,
• 1:21
  his entry into politics and why he went into it and so on.
• 1:25
  But I, I just have to make a quick mention.
• 1:27
  My parents, our parents were both immigrants, they were
• 1:30
  Israeli. They were, and you know, the
• 1:32
  fact is that it was difficult growing up, even though we were
• 1:36
  in the middle class, right? But persevering in an education
• 1:40
  system that was failing us when we were younger and trying to
• 1:43
  figure out how to make waves in the in in a area where it's not
• 1:48
  so simple, you know, you really have to work hard.
• 1:50
  I'm hoping we touch upon all those different topics.
• 1:53
  I'm really excited. Was she.
• 1:54
  Do you know anything about my brother David So?
• 1:56
  I heard of David Greenfield even before I met you.
• 2:01
  And I heard of him as a politician, as a Councilman in
• 2:05
  New York. And I was telling my brother, my
• 2:08
  older brother, that, you know, we're probably going to have
• 2:11
  David Greenfield on him. He knew him.
• 2:13
  He knew who he was. So he's a pretty well known
• 2:15
  person. Even though it's not a politics
• 2:16
  anymore, from what I understand, he is still very influential in
• 2:20
  politics. But I always knew the name.
• 2:22
  And funny enough Michael, when I got to know you, I never even
• 2:26
  connected the dots that you and David were related, let alone
• 2:29
  brothers, let alone twin brothers.
• 2:31
  I only found that out much later, but, and I've met David a
• 2:35
  few times through you and I could tell that he is an
• 2:39
  interesting person. He's accomplished a lot.
• 2:42
  And I think that, you know, when it comes to politics, he's
• 2:45
  probably very suited to have that discussion with us and give
• 2:48
  us the insights and how it all works behind the scenes.
• 2:51
  And I think you can make it for a great guest.
• 2:53
  Especially with what's going on now in the world, it's going to
• 2:55
  be exciting. But I have to tell you one quick
• 2:57
  story that happened with me and David is we were sitting in our
• 3:00
  car during the winter storms in New York City, in Brooklyn, one
• 3:03
  of the worst winter storms that ever hit New York.
• 3:05
  Was it 1996 by Oh my goodness. You know what I'm talking.
• 3:08
  About I don't know the story, but I when you said the worst
• 3:11
  ever form in New York, I remember 1996 was, you know, I
• 3:14
  was a little kid then. I was probably like 7 years old
• 3:16
  but I remember that story. Yeah, Now I think, I think it
• 3:19
  was a little bit afterwards because, because he was already
• 3:21
  married at the time. But so we had.
• 3:23
  We had. We were sitting in front of
• 3:24
  Goldberg's Grocery in in Brooklyn.
• 3:27
  I remember Goldberg on 18th Ave. Yes they used to sell the four
• 3:31
  for 1/4 for a dollar. Donuts.
• 3:33
  Those are the black. Oh, nuts.
• 3:34
  Delicious. They were the best.
• 3:35
  Delicious. Yeah.
• 3:36
  Are they still around Goldberg so deep?
• 3:38
  Fried, by the way. Yeah, they are.
• 3:40
  They're, yeah, fantastic. They've already, you know,
• 3:42
  expanded their supermarket and they're doing fantastic.
• 3:45
  So I have to tell you. So David, one of the reasons why
• 3:48
  I think he was so successful is, and, you know, we're going to
• 3:51
  learn a lot about it, but I have to just mention one thing is he
• 3:54
  listens to the people and he really pays attention to them
• 3:57
  and he gives them the attention. You know, he had implemented a
• 4:00
  new hours for his office where after hours where he, you know,
• 4:05
  allowed people to come and, you know, talk about their
• 4:07
  challenges as a local politician.
• 4:09
  And we were sitting in front of the grocery and he got a phone
• 4:12
  call to bring back 2 green Peppers to his house.
• 4:16
  You know, you just, you know, I guess someone was cooking and
• 4:18
  needed some Peppers. So I said, hey, let's just go
• 4:21
  into Goldberg's and get some Peppers.
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  And he's like, you know, call me.
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  If we go into Goldberg's to get 2 Peppers, it's going to take us
• 4:29
  an hour. I would rather drive 10 minutes
• 4:33
  to ShopRite and get 2 Peppers from there.
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  And I'm like, what are you talking about?
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  It's right here. We'll just go in and get to you
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  don't understand. It's going to take, I'm like, I
• 4:41
  don't know what you're talking about.
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  Let's just go in. And he was laughing.
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  He said, OK, let's go. And we walked in an hour and 20
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  minutes later, we walked out every step of the way.
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  Councilman Greenfield, David Greenwood, thank you so much for
• 4:54
  everything you're doing for our community.
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  We love you. Oh, we're so happy.
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  Oh, I want to talk to you about the garbage.
• 4:58
  I want to talk about the pothole.
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  I want to talk about the park. I want to talk about my taxes.
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  And he paid attention to every single one of them.
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  And there's a reason why he was successful.
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  And I saw it that day and it and it was just amazing to see.
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  Wow. There aren't that many religious
• 5:13
  Jewish religious politicians in the game, but a lot of
• 5:16
  successful, yeah, a lot of Jews in politics, but religious Jews
• 5:19
  is hard to come by. So, and unless maybe local
• 5:22
  politics, you have a little bit. He was on Senator Lieberman's
• 5:25
  campaign for presidency. He made waves.
• 5:27
  He really made waves. Took over some Kafelder and made
• 5:29
  laws that I mean every. Man ran for the president at one
• 5:33
  point. He was on his campaign.
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  Yeah. And and he made a name for
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  himself, a graduated Georgetown University, top of his class.
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  Political science in Touro College really made waves.
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  I mean, super impressed. Very excited to get on with it.
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  And now he leads, not from my understanding is he's the CEO of
• 5:49
  the largest charitable organization in the country,
• 5:54
  Jewish organization in the country.
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  Yes, yes, the organization that gives out the most food the most
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  interestingly enough. And I, I think we'll find out
• 6:01
  more about that. So I'm excited to get on with
• 6:03
  it. This episode, like every single
• 6:05
  one so far, has been sponsored and funded by Prime Source.
• 6:08
  So, you know, we must mention that.
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  And I love the road that we're taking, learning from our
• 6:13
  experiences, learning from our journey, understanding and
• 6:16
  adopting ways to grow from what's happening in the world
• 6:19
  around us, current events. And it's happening and I'm super
• 6:23
  excited. OK, as am I.
• 6:24
  Let's go. Let's do it.
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  Welcome, David, my dear brother, it is so.
• 6:30
  Exciting for me that you're here with us.
• 6:32
  Thank you. None of your business podcast.
• 6:33
  I love the podcast. I've been loving the clips that
• 6:35
  have been coming out. You know, the stuff that has
• 6:37
  gone firewall on Instagram and TikTok and Twitter has been very
• 6:40
  cool. So happy to be a part of it.
• 6:42
  OK, I'm, I'm happy for you to be here and.
• 6:46
  Michael, could you tell me a little bit about David?
• 6:48
  Could you introduce him, his background?
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  I know he's a Councilman. That's about the only thing that
• 6:52
  I know. Which, by the way, I'm going to
• 6:53
  want to ask you what a Councilman is because I'm not
• 6:56
  quite sure. Sounds like you give counsel to
• 6:59
  people. And that's what we do.
• 7:00
  You give counsel to the city committee people.
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  We're councilmen, so we counsel men, not women.
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  But. If you would tell me that, I'd
• 7:09
  believe you. So be careful as.
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  But he's not a Councilman now. He, it's of course a prestigious
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  position that he had and he now is the CEO of Met Council, which
• 7:18
  we just, we'll get into it more hopefully.
• 7:21
  But one thing I want to tell you about David is that we used to
• 7:23
  go to the bar Park Y together. Do you remember?
• 7:25
  You don't know what the bar Park Y is?
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  I don't. Because you're from Muncie, so I
• 7:28
  like the JCC. The JCC exactly the bar Park Y
• 7:30
  is. AC for karate people right?
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  The JCC is like more of a modern Orthodox crowd or a secular
• 7:36
  crowd. This is like the JCC for the
• 7:38
  very From world. I love that, by the way.
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  That's great. Why don't we have that here?
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  We have that. Is it not around anymore?
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  Do I? It's around, it's in disrepair.
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  They actually sold interestingly enough to Bubba so they can
• 7:50
  build a new facility because it's been a struggle for them
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  financially and hopefully the next two years they're going to
• 7:56
  re establish. But so if you think about it
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  like they had separate swimming, they had programs for men,
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  programs for women, so very similar to a JCC, but really
• 8:03
  targeting the firm community. And on Sundays when we had 1/2
• 8:07
  day yeshiva, we went to target us.
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  When we had 1/2 day yeshiva, we would go to the borough Parkway.
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  So tell me you can tell me about how what a great swimmer I was.
• 8:13
  What's the, the, you never know what Kai was going to say about
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  me. So I'm excited like Michael
• 8:17
  Phelps. Of the Jewish Michael Phelps.
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  Exactly, exactly. What's the story?
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  I'm not going to get into all the karate classes that we took
• 8:24
  together. Yes.
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  Do not mess with us, by the way. We are.
• 8:27
  We're serious. I mean, we're brother.
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  We fight, you know, so we prepare.
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  To have a fight. Yeah, but Michael, you're not a
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  fighter. You're not that type.
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  No, I'm a. Fighter.
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  He's not a fighter because after the one thousandth and first
• 8:37
  time that I beat him, he's like, I probably shouldn't be in the
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  fighting business. Headache.
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  I see where this is going. OK.
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  Every single Sunday, I'm not joking.
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  I have to say this, David, I got AI, got a background.
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  I'm going to say it was a background, a little bit of a
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  context of who David Greenfield is to me and who he was for the
• 8:55
  community and who he was to the world.
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  When he was 13 years old, we used to go to the Bar Park Y
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  every Sunday and I would stand at the end of the day at the bus
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  stop at the B11 on 14th Ave. and 5th and I would wait for the B11
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  to come. I had my $0.75 in my pocket.
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  He would take the same $0.75 every single Sunday and he would
• 9:17
  go to the corner and he would buy the New York Times Sunday
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  edition and literally in my face and all of Bar Park space was on
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  the B11 would read the newspaper as he walked home and beat me
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  home every single Sunday, really.
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  And he would just read the New York Times.
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  He would go one section after the other and he would laugh and
• 9:37
  every you know that B11 stops at every block.
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  And I've been on the B11. Longer to go on the bus than it
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  is to walk. And David proved that to us at
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  the tender age of 13. And he would just open that
• 9:46
  paper and walk and he would laugh.
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  He would say, I I just finished the sports edition, just
• 9:50
  finished the politics every. Block buy that paper for the
• 9:52
  politics. Is that what you enjoyed early
• 9:54
  on or just general the? Interesting thing about the New
• 9:56
  York Times Times is that the New York Times, even though we don't
• 9:58
  like the coverage, right, because the coverage is very far
• 10:00
  left and it's certainly biased against Israel.
• 10:03
  It is by far the best quality newspaper in America, right?
• 10:07
  Qualitatively, in terms of the product that they put out and
• 10:10
  the information that they have in that paper, it's better than
• 10:13
  any newspapers. So, yeah, when I was young, I
• 10:14
  was interested in government and politics and news.
• 10:16
  And so we weren't super rich. We were comfortable, and we had
• 10:20
  a budget just like everybody else.
• 10:21
  And part of the budget was, OK, I'm giving you a dollar to buy a
• 10:25
  slice of pizza and a soda from Mendelssohn's, which was the
• 10:28
  package, right? It was a pizza and a soda for
• 10:30
  $1.00. It was Mendelssohn's and
• 10:32
  Mendel's. Those were to competing pizza.
• 10:34
  No, this is you're right. But the truth is Mendel's wasn't
• 10:36
  open before Mendels point, right?
• 10:39
  Exactly. It was Mendelssohn's Omnos and
• 10:41
  then Mendels open, which by the way, I'm not sure is really fair
• 10:43
  of another pizza shop to open named Mendels, even though his
• 10:46
  name was Mendels, right? You had Mendelssohn's down the
• 10:48
  block. A little tricky if you ask me.
• 10:50
  But it was good PR for both of them, yeah.
• 10:52
  Yeah, yeah. But let's put that aside.
• 10:54
  The bottom line is we were going up for a dollar, you could get a
• 10:56
  soda and a slice of pizza. And so we had $1.75, which was a
• 10:59
  dollar for a soda slice of pizza, which is Barsham, very
• 11:02
  nice, very comfortable, middle class upbringing, $0.75 to pay
• 11:06
  for the bus. And the reason was because on
• 11:10
  Sundays I didn't take the bus passes, right?
• 11:12
  So you have to pay the actual cash.
• 11:13
  I thought a better use of $0.75 was to read the paper.
• 11:16
  I was interested in the news. And so, yeah, every Sunday I did
• 11:19
  read the New York Times. And the funny part was that I'd
• 11:21
  rather make fun of me and say, oh, wow, you're never getting
• 11:23
  home. But the bus was so slow that I
• 11:25
  could read the paper, beat him and get home.
• 11:27
  And I beat him. And honestly, I got a couple of
• 11:28
  miles in, so it's good for my fitness.
• 11:30
  And you got smarter as well by reading the paper.
• 11:34
  You learned a lot on things. You know, you know, what's
• 11:35
  interesting is, you know, we'll talk about, you know, I guess
• 11:38
  we'll talk about my background, right?
• 11:39
  So I'm a CEO of a large Jewish charity with the largest Jewish
• 11:43
  sedaka in the United States fighting poverty.
• 11:45
  And obviously I was an elected official and I'm a political
• 11:46
  strategist. And I always tell people who
• 11:48
  come to me for advice. And I think it's actually is
• 11:50
  very relevant to what we're saying, which is do what you're
• 11:53
  passionate about, right? Think back to when you were a
• 11:55
  kid, when you were 12131518. What were you excited about,
• 11:58
  right? For me, news, government,
• 12:00
  politics, law was always very interesting, right?
• 12:03
  And so it's easy to be successful at something if you
• 12:06
  are passionate about, right? Because it is very difficult to
• 12:09
  be the world's best wood maker, right?
• 12:12
  Or the best chair maker or the best artist.
• 12:14
  You don't like art. It's very difficult to be very
• 12:17
  good at singing if you don't like to sing, right?
• 12:20
  You've never met a singer in your life and you've had singers
• 12:21
  on your podcast like, oh, I hated singing, but you know, one
• 12:24
  day I woke up where I was, this is how I'm going to make a
• 12:26
  living. That's crazy, right?
• 12:27
  No, you love singing since you were a kid and you became a
• 12:29
  professional singer. I think similarly for me,
• 12:32
  Bharath Hashem, the reason, among other things, with siata
• 12:36
  the shmaya, why I've had a sloth in government of politics is
• 12:39
  because I feel passionately about it.
• 12:40
  I've been doing it since I've been a kid.
• 12:42
  I've been interested in government news and politics.
• 12:44
  What is it about politics that drives?
• 12:45
  What do you like about politics? I think it's the way the world
• 12:48
  runs. To me, it's so fascinating,
• 12:50
  right? Like, you know, the world runs
• 12:52
  on politics, right? So if you're curious about what
• 12:54
  makes the world go round and round, why do we have highways
• 12:58
  instead of roads? Why do we have smaller houses
• 13:00
  instead of big buildings? Why are some people getting help
• 13:02
  and other people are not? Why are certain people out of
• 13:04
  the country, other people are not?
• 13:06
  Why are some people going to jail and other people are not?
• 13:08
  Politics runs the whole world. So to me, it's a very
• 13:10
  fascinating topic, right? The topic of power, influence,
• 13:14
  operations, who's in charge? So I've been saying this my
• 13:17
  entire life, as Kai will tell you, right?
• 13:19
  For over 30 years, since I was kid, I was studying this and
• 13:22
  reading about it. And so for me, it's a
• 13:24
  fascinating thing. And then to take that and try to
• 13:26
  use those skills to help the community, which is what I've
• 13:28
  been doing for the last 20 plus years.
• 13:31
  I think that's very impact, right?
• 13:32
  So take these skills as relates to government and politics and
• 13:35
  use that to help the community. To me, that's really
• 13:38
  interesting. You know, David, when he was
• 13:40
  younger, I asked him why he got into politics and besides the
• 13:43
  fact that he loves it, which was the first thing he said.
• 13:46
  The other thing that you told me, and I remember and I've
• 13:48
  mentioned it quite a few times that, you know, I've quote, I've
• 13:50
  quoted you quite a few times in my life.
• 13:51
  Me too. I appreciate that.
• 13:52
  Wow, I appreciate that too. Look at that.
• 13:56
  We're getting along. You told me that, you know,
• 14:00
  imagine you have a message to say and you have an impact that
• 14:02
  you can make on the world. And you know, if you do
• 14:05
  something in your local community, you can have an
• 14:07
  impact in your local community. But if you could do it broader
• 14:08
  and bigger and better, you know, when you have a voice and you
• 14:11
  have something that you can make a real impact on life and the
• 14:14
  people around you, you have an obligation to do so.
• 14:16
  And you know, you took your talents and, you know,
• 14:18
  congratulations to everything you've done till now.
• 14:20
  It's. Amazing.
• 14:20
  I appreciate that. Thank you very much.
• 14:22
  Are you still embedded in politics right now in a big way,
• 14:24
  or have you taken the step back from that?
• 14:27
  Yeah, You know, I, I think the the very big difference is
• 14:30
  right. I'm no longer a politician.
• 14:32
  I've left elected office as of six years ago.
• 14:35
  I'm more of a strategist and an influencer, right?
• 14:38
  So I'm very involved in political issues, have a lot of
• 14:41
  deep relationships with elected officials.
• 14:43
  I work with people around different policy issues that I
• 14:45
  care about, especially issues that I care about for me, which
• 14:48
  is I'm very focused on being pro Israel, pro New York and
• 14:53
  fighting on behalf of people who don't have resources, right?
• 14:55
  Those are the three issues that I'm passionate about.
• 14:57
  I, I don't feel like you can do 1000 things in politics.
• 14:59
  One of the lessons that I learned over the years is that
• 15:02
  you really want to make a difference.
• 15:03
  Don't focus on 100 issues. Pick two or three issues that
• 15:05
  you care about. I care about New York.
• 15:07
  I care about the community, I care about Israel, I care about
• 15:11
  helping people who are struggling.
• 15:13
  Those are the issues that I care about.
• 15:14
  And I spend all of my time focus on those issues.
• 15:17
  I spend that operationally running an organization with
• 15:19
  hundreds of staffers, about hundreds of thousands of people
• 15:22
  a year. That's very important to me.
• 15:23
  But also on a policy issue, fighting on behalf of Israel,
• 15:26
  fighting on behalf of the community, fighting on behalf of
• 15:28
  making New York a better place to live, fighting on behalf of
• 15:30
  people who are struggling to make ends meet.
• 15:33
  That's where my focus is. And I think there's a value of
• 15:37
  that, right? I think one of the big mistakes
• 15:38
  he'll make, not just in politics, but in business,
• 15:40
  right? The name of the podcast is none
• 15:42
  of your Business, right? I think a big business mistake
• 15:44
  because people are generalist. I was telling my students I
• 15:46
  happened to be a law professor. In my spare time, I teach at
• 15:48
  Brooklyn Law School. I always tell my students today,
• 15:51
  do not become a generalist, right?
• 15:53
  The guy who has a sign that says Yankle Smerlovich, attorney at
• 15:57
  law. And then I say, what do you do?
• 15:58
  I do everything. He's not making any money.
• 16:00
  People want experts today. You have to be an expert in your
• 16:03
  field, do contracts, do real estate, do business, do
• 16:06
  litigation, find an expertise and do that.
• 16:09
  That's what people want to pay for today.
• 16:10
  Similarly, my work in government and politics, I focus on a very
• 16:14
  specific few areas and I just focus on those errors.
• 16:18
  If you came to me and said, hey, look, David, you know, I want
• 16:20
  you to get involved in environmental issues.
• 16:21
  Look, I hear that and it's important, but that's not my
• 16:23
  issue. I got people calling me a lot
• 16:25
  about this, like you should get involved in X and YS and like
• 16:27
  Nope, Nope, and Nope. And they're like, why not?
• 16:29
  That's in general, don't spread yourself thin, you know, in
• 16:31
  general, just try to focus on something, get really good at it
• 16:35
  100% and I think it'll have a better result.
• 16:38
  I'm curious, do you guys think that today more than ever,
• 16:42
  people are much more aware politically of what's going on?
• 16:46
  I think people are very in tune. I myself, I could tell her just
• 16:49
  from my own perspective. You know, growing up, even up
• 16:51
  maybe 10 years ago, I didn't really care about politics.
• 16:54
  I didn't even know what's going, who the president was.
• 16:57
  I knew who the vice president was, but I had my limitations as
• 16:59
  to what I cared about and what I knew.
• 17:01
  I feel like today, me as a true average political consumer,
• 17:05
  taking it all in, I think I know a decent amount.
• 17:07
  I think I know a fair amount of what's going.
• 17:08
  I'm pretty educated. I can have an intelligent
• 17:11
  conversation with someone. I I know, you know, about the,
• 17:14
  you know, the three different branches of government, which I
• 17:16
  probably didn't know about 10 years ago, how the Senate works,
• 17:18
  how the House works. I watch all the committee
• 17:20
  hearings. I'm actually very intrigued by
• 17:22
  them. I watch all the highlights.
• 17:23
  Like I know a good deal amount. And I think a lot of people are
• 17:26
  like that right now. And it wasn't always like this.
• 17:28
  What was what happened in the last period of time, five years,
• 17:32
  10 years, and all of a sudden people are invested in what's
• 17:36
  going on in politics. It's very simple.
• 17:37
  Social media changed everything. That's the answer to your
• 17:40
  question, right? It used to be that politics was
• 17:41
  a secret business, right? So meaning unless you could take
• 17:45
  the time to go to DC and to wait online two hours and go to
• 17:47
  security and stand in the back and waiting for a hearing to
• 17:49
  start, then wait throughout the entirety of that six hours to
• 17:53
  hear the one person you care about testifying, there's no way
• 17:56
  that you're an expert anymore. Social media has changed
• 17:58
  everything because what happens now is instead you have it's all
• 18:01
  being produced online and someone just takes a 32nd clip
• 18:04
  of that six hour hearing. So now you don't have to go down
• 18:05
  to DC, you have to wait security, you have to wait
• 18:07
  online. Someone takes a 32nd clip and
• 18:10
  boom, they put on that 32nd clip and it goes viral.
• 18:13
  So social media has made politics a lot more accessible
• 18:16
  and interesting to people. And the truth is, the person who
• 18:18
  invented that, if you know, for better or for worse, the person
• 18:21
  who really has utilized social media most successfully in our
• 18:24
  time is actually somebody in his 70s, which is kind of
• 18:26
  remarkable, which is Donald Trump, right?
• 18:28
  The entire reason why Donald Trump was elected president of
• 18:31
  the United States is because of social media.
• 18:33
  Wow. And so he understood how to
• 18:34
  capture this new technology. And ever since that has
• 18:37
  happened, things have really spiraled, I would say, out of
• 18:41
  control. And I'll tell you why, right?
• 18:43
  You're looking at it as a good thing.
• 18:44
  It's a good thing and a bad thing, right?
• 18:46
  When you're not an expert, you have too much information.
• 18:48
  It can easily lead to misinformation and conspiracy
• 18:50
  theories, right? Because to your point, you're
• 18:52
  not an expert, right? But you spend, let's say, 2-3
• 18:54
  hours a week and this is cool and it's interesting to you,
• 18:56
  right? It's kind of like when someone
• 18:57
  shows up to the doctor and says, Hey, doctor, I, I think I'm
• 19:00
  having a headache. But let me tell you what's wrong
• 19:01
  with me. Like, what do you, what are you
• 19:03
  telling me? What's wrong with you?
• 19:04
  Like I'm a neurosurgeon. No, no, no.
• 19:05
  I read on the Internet, I saw on TikTok, Google.
• 19:08
  Yeah, people are doing the same thing with politics.
• 19:10
  And that's very dangerous, right?
• 19:12
  Because now you have people who are not experts, but they're
• 19:14
  interested. And that's how you get
• 19:16
  misinformation. That's how you got conspiracy
• 19:17
  theories. Now.
• 19:18
  It's good, well informed voters, a flow of ideas voters.
• 19:21
  Yes, I agree with that. But we're also living in a very
• 19:24
  dangerous time because as we've learned in recent history, we
• 19:28
  can very easily manipulate social media.
• 19:31
  And that's what Russia, Iran and China are all doing right now.
• 19:35
  Whether you know it or not, they're manipulating the
• 19:38
  information that you're getting. Wow, that's a scary thought.
• 19:43
  Because news information is power.
• 19:45
  If that's everything, and if they have the ability to twist
• 19:49
  and turn and to get their narratives out there, that's
• 19:52
  like, that's cyber warfare. It's exactly what it is.
• 19:54
  Yeah, that's what's. Happening, I mean, it's one of
• 19:56
  the biggest unspoken stories that's happening in this
• 19:59
  election cycle, right, is that you have a situation where the
• 20:03
  most obvious and blatant example, this is TikTok, right?
• 20:05
  People are upset, like, why was TikTok forced to sell its
• 20:07
  business? Have they sold?
• 20:09
  No, they're forced to. They have a certain timeline
• 20:10
  that they have. Oh, they have.
• 20:11
  To have that still happen or what's gonna happen if they
• 20:13
  don't, they're gonna ban it we'll.
• 20:16
  We'll see. I mean, it's tough to see how
• 20:18
  it's not going to happen, but the reason why TikTok is being
• 20:20
  regulated and think about what I'm saying right now, which is
• 20:22
  that any government employee in America is not allowed to have
• 20:25
  TikTok on their phones. Like why?
• 20:27
  Why is that any government employee in America is not
• 20:28
  allowed to have TikTok on their phones?
• 20:30
  Why? Because TikTok is a security
• 20:31
  threat and the US government knows that China controls
• 20:34
  TikTok, which means they can potentially control your phone.
• 20:37
  TikTok has been weaponized and the most obvious way it's been
• 20:39
  weaponized is look at the war between Gaza and Israel, right?
• 20:42
  Which is that if you go on TikTok, the Chinese have an
• 20:45
  arrow that they want to keep going.
• 20:46
  The comments that are anti Israel are 1000 to one for pro
• 20:50
  Israel, 1000 to one. That's an algorithm that TikTok
• 20:52
  creates where they push a certain narrative.
• 20:55
  They want people to be anti Israel intentionally.
• 20:57
  So that's one of the fascinating things.
• 20:59
  So getting back to your point, it's the best of times and it's
• 21:02
  the worst of times. It's the best of times because
• 21:03
  people are super informed. It's the worst of times because
• 21:06
  when people are super informed but they're not experts, you can
• 21:11
  have people manipulate them into all sorts of things, including
• 21:13
  trying to tell them what to think and try to have them bind
• 21:16
  to conspiracy theories, and that leads to a very dangerous time.
• 21:21
  I want to make sure that Michael usually has a lot to say as a
• 21:23
  piece of this. Michael, what do you think about
• 21:24
  all this? I mean, Michael, I mean, how do
• 21:27
  you respond to like half the things you just said?
• 21:30
  No, I, I don't think there's a lot to respond.
• 21:31
  I think he's educating us on a very fascinating topic in
• 21:34
  general. I mean, we use social media to
• 21:36
  promote good and it's a very tough battle.
• 21:39
  I've heard recently that X formerly known as Twitter, is
• 21:41
  also a cesspool of anti-Semitism and hatred.
• 21:44
  Also 1000 to one. And it's kind of alarming
• 21:46
  listening to all my friends that are, are promoting their brand
• 21:50
  or their thoughts on X and how it really effects, you know,
• 21:54
  people in a terrible way. I want to go back to what you
• 21:56
  said earlier. I think one of the reasons why
• 21:58
  we're also more aware of politics is, first of all, as
• 22:01
  you get older, you start paying taxes and you know, you'd start
• 22:04
  making a difference to your pocket.
• 22:05
  So the second it starts making a difference to your pocket, so
• 22:08
  you say, whoa, one second, what's going on here and who's?
• 22:10
  Making these decisions, exactly how is this even happening?
• 22:12
  And the second thing is, you know, and I'd love, David, your
• 22:14
  perspective on this Democrat, Republican New York.
• 22:18
  Does it matter? Why does my vote matter?
• 22:20
  What am I getting out there for? The one thing I could tell you
• 22:23
  is that after leaving Brooklyn for so many years, being in a
• 22:26
  community where, you know, your local mayor and your local
• 22:29
  government actually can make a difference.
• 22:31
  Forget the Democrat Republican war in New York or the
• 22:34
  challenges with the unions and you know, all the the voting
• 22:38
  going to one way. When you go out of Brooklyn, NY,
• 22:40
  out of the five boroughs, your vote actually makes a
• 22:43
  difference. It makes a difference on your
• 22:44
  school taxes. It makes a difference on your
• 22:46
  local roadways. So as you get older and you move
• 22:48
  out of the five boroughs, you become more familiar with it.
• 22:50
  Politics does make a difference, and I'd love your perspective on
• 22:52
  New York. I'm going to say something very
• 22:54
  controversial, which is. Can you look in the camera when
• 22:57
  you say it? No, I'm joking.
• 22:58
  And can you also speak up please, I'll.
• 23:00
  Tell you what's interesting, actually, thank you.
• 23:01
  Which is, you know, when when you go on TV shows, I've been on
• 23:05
  Fox, CNN, other TV shows, they generally want you to look at
• 23:08
  the host. If you want me to look at the
• 23:09
  camera, I'm happy to look at save the message to the world
• 23:12
  you have. You want me to look at the?
• 23:13
  Camera You have a controversial, inspiring message.
• 23:15
  Look at the camera and say it. So let me tell you the
• 23:18
  controversial idea, which is your individual vote doesn't
• 23:23
  matter. Whoa, David, that's crazy.
• 23:24
  If that's the case, I want my vote.
• 23:26
  But the answer is because your collective individual vote does
• 23:29
  matter. And that means that if people
• 23:31
  who think like you are not voting as a group, you're not
• 23:34
  going to be successful. And the problem is that it's
• 23:36
  usually the extremes, the radical right and the radical
• 23:38
  left, who are voting. The people in the middle are not
• 23:41
  voting. And that's why your vote matters
• 23:42
  as part of a group. Now let me explain, looking
• 23:45
  towards you right, which is one person's vote.
• 23:48
  It's very rare that one person's vote actually matters in an
• 23:51
  election where one vote matters. What happens, however, is a
• 23:53
  community's vote does matter, right?
• 23:56
  You have a community of people now.
• 23:57
  It could be a community of people, like community of Jewish
• 23:58
  people. It could just be a community of
• 24:00
  people who think alike, who say my taxes are too high.
• 24:02
  It could be a community of people who say I'm sick and
• 24:04
  tired of crime, could be community people say I'm sick
• 24:07
  and tired of quality of life issues, right?
• 24:09
  When you combine a community of a few 100 people, that's when
• 24:12
  you see results, right? And so as a political
• 24:15
  strategist, what I think about is when I organize and when I
• 24:17
  get people together, I want to get like minded people.
• 24:19
  So if you care about Jewish issues, great.
• 24:22
  So for example, we've seen recently an election to defeat
• 24:25
  Jamal Bowman. The Jewish community came out in
• 24:27
  huge numbers and they were organized around those issues.
• 24:30
  And it was specifically two groups, APAC and the Orthodox
• 24:33
  Union, that work to get the message out there.
• 24:35
  When the Jewish community came out in big numbers, they were
• 24:37
  able to defeat someone who is anti-Semitic and anti Israel,
• 24:40
  right? So when one vote doesn't matter,
• 24:42
  but one vote is part of a community, matters a lot, right?
• 24:45
  So if you're really a hermit and you're not part of any
• 24:47
  community, you don't have any beliefs that are strong, OK,
• 24:49
  They don't vote. But if you're part of any
• 24:51
  community, if you go to school, if you live in a community or if
• 24:53
  you're part of the Jewish community or pro Israel
• 24:54
  community and you have an opinion, you must vote because
• 24:57
  of the only way you can get things done is together as part
• 25:00
  of that community. And that's how you can combat
• 25:02
  other crazy communities and say, well, OK, let's have no police.
• 25:06
  It's actually a sheet that that's out there.
• 25:07
  Let's have no prisons. That's actually a belief that's
• 25:10
  out there. Let's actually have no laws on
• 25:13
  the books to prevent people from doing criminal activities.
• 25:15
  It's actually a second that's out there.
• 25:17
  You want to push back about that.
• 25:18
  Your community has to organize, and that's what makes it.
• 25:20
  Different. I have to say, when living in
• 25:22
  Brooklyn, one of the biggest pains of getting a parking
• 25:25
  ticket when you parked illegally was getting that infamous yellow
• 25:28
  sticker on your window that you can never ever get off.
• 25:31
  Right. It's almost like they did it on
• 25:33
  purpose. They did it on purpose.
• 25:34
  It's like part of the punishment.
• 25:35
  And you know who's? Not able to even peel it off.
• 25:37
  And if you do peel it off, you still have remnants that's there
• 25:39
  forever. I remember those that was like,
• 25:42
  you know, that was a little harsh, those little.
• 25:44
  You know why it stopped? There had to be a better way.
• 25:45
  Do you know why it stopped? I don't know why, because I mean
• 25:48
  you don't see them anymore. Because of David.
• 25:50
  Because of David. I passed the law banning them.
• 25:53
  It was very it was a very tough fight because the sanitation
• 25:56
  department, to your point, they wanted to punish people.
• 25:58
  And my point was you're guilty until proven innocent.
• 26:00
  Like now I can't take it off. What happens if a situation
• 26:03
  where I really it wasn't my fault my wife is pregnant, I
• 26:06
  went to the hospital or the person who's giving out the
• 26:08
  tickets was wrong or I thought it was an alternate side right.
• 26:11
  It's it's a miscarriage of justice.
• 26:13
  So when I was in the City Council for eight years, I
• 26:15
  passed over 30 pieces of legislation.
• 26:17
  Most of them were focused on common sense quality of life
• 26:20
  issue to make people's lives better because that's what my
• 26:22
  constituents wanted in Brooklyn. I love that.
• 26:24
  So that was a law. I'll get another one of my laws.
• 26:26
  I don't know if you know this, but the the the Muni meters
• 26:29
  today that have an app that was my law as well.
• 26:32
  I forced the city to create an app so that you can actually use
• 26:35
  an app because who has quarters these days, especially now who
• 26:38
  exactly? So you know the the parks, it's.
• 26:40
  Regulated that there has to be an app available for any city
• 26:43
  meter. I created that law to allow for
• 26:45
  an app. So the Park NYC app that people
• 26:47
  use, that was a law that I passed.
• 26:49
  People, on behalf of all of us, fellow New Yorkers, thank you
• 26:52
  very much. Those are actually very much
• 26:54
  common sense laws. And I love that you took that
• 26:57
  initiative of common sense things that, by the way, they
• 27:01
  didn't even realize that they were strategically putting those
• 27:03
  yellow stickers to punish. I just thought it was just
• 27:06
  because, you know, government is usually very, you know, they
• 27:09
  don't know what they're doing and they just didn't come up
• 27:11
  with a better way to do it and they were too lazy to change it.
• 27:15
  And that's what it was. But you're telling me that they
• 27:16
  were like, hugely doing this? Absolutely, yeah.
• 27:19
  So for example, another common sense law that I passed was
• 27:22
  public schools have security guards and she was did not.
• 27:25
  And I saw a big rise at a semitism a few years ago, and I
• 27:27
  passed a law requiring the city to pay for security guards for
• 27:31
  yeshiva. This is no church state issue,
• 27:32
  right? It's not about what you're
• 27:33
  teaching in the school. There all sorts of legal issues
• 27:35
  about what you can and can't teach and can and cannot fund as
• 27:38
  it relates to Shiva's in private schools.
• 27:40
  But security is not a church state issue, right?
• 27:42
  Every child is entitled to be safe.
• 27:43
  So because of my law, New York City is the only city in the
• 27:46
  world, even in Israel, I don't have this that requires the
• 27:49
  government to pay for security guards for yeshiva's and other
• 27:52
  private. That's amazing.
• 27:53
  I have to tell you a quick story at Over a decade ago, someone
• 27:56
  came over to me on the street and said you're David's brother.
• 27:58
  And you know, it used to be the opposite.
• 28:00
  You're Michael's brother. And these days it's you're
• 28:01
  David's brother. And you know, I'm trying to
• 28:03
  reverse that. You have a podcast.
• 28:04
  Everyone's like I heard Michael's podcast.
• 28:06
  He's. Amazing.
• 28:06
  But it's good because you guys are going to grow this way and
• 28:08
  they keep trying to one up each other.
• 28:10
  You're going to be vice president and president one day.
• 28:13
  I like that. Who's him?
• 28:16
  Who's the vice president? I thought you were upset.
• 28:19
  We'll get back to that in a second.
• 28:20
  So over a decade ago, someone came to me on the street and
• 28:22
  said, I just want you to know, in Brooklyn.
• 28:23
  And he said, tell your brother, on behalf of all the mothers in
• 28:27
  Brooklyn, thank you. And I'm like, what are you
• 28:29
  talking about? And she says, let me tell you a
• 28:30
  story that happened to me. She said my son was in school
• 28:34
  and he was getting dismissed along with hundreds of other
• 28:36
  kids. And a gentleman pulled over in a
• 28:39
  van and looked at him. And he said, Haim David, Haim
• 28:43
  David. And the guy looked at the kid,
• 28:44
  looked up and he said, yeah, your mother said you should come
• 28:46
  with me and the kid, like, oh, he knows my name, let me go with
• 28:50
  him. And the And the kid almost got
• 28:51
  in the car and there was a security guard on site that was
• 28:55
  funded thanks to David. And who stopped it?
• 28:58
  And the reason why this person knew the name is because all the
• 29:00
  children used to have their names on their keepers.
• 29:03
  Did you know that it stopped? Kids don't have their names on
• 29:05
  the Keep Us anymore for that reason.
• 29:07
  That's when it started. It started then it was such a
• 29:09
  big deal. All the children in Brooklyn
• 29:11
  used to have their like a cool thing at a Teenage Mutant Ninja
• 29:13
  Turtle and you had, you know, most.
• 29:15
  Growing up we had it in Hebrew though.
• 29:18
  And then what happened was is this kid almost got abducted and
• 29:23
  she literally was in tears saying thank your brother David.
• 29:25
  I mean how? Does this make you feel, by the
• 29:27
  way, that you're what you did really had an impact, possibly
• 29:31
  saving someone's life? We don't know what could have
• 29:33
  could have been. We shudder to think.
• 29:35
  How does that make you feel you? Know it's an interesting
• 29:37
  question and and I'll tell you what's an interesting question,
• 29:39
  right? Because the nature of doing
• 29:41
  public service, right when you're trying to help the
• 29:43
  community is you can never enjoy your accomplishments too much.
• 29:48
  Because if you do, then you become what I like to call up
• 29:51
  the one hit wonder, right, which is you're like, oh, yeah,
• 29:54
  exactly. You're like, oh, you know, you
• 29:56
  know, Yonkel, back in 1976, you know, I organized a big rally in
• 30:01
  the DC where we protested, you know, the embassy opening.
• 30:06
  And I was a guy to that. You're like dude, like that was
• 30:08
  1976. Exactly what have you done
• 30:09
  lately? It's a very big danger.
• 30:11
  It's a very big danger. And, and by the way, I vacillate
• 30:13
  back and forth in that and in my older age, now that I'm in my
• 30:16
  40s, I always tell my staff, because I used to be, I didn't
• 30:18
  even enjoy the win. I tell myself, look, let's let's
• 30:20
  take a day, one day, not, not more than a day.
• 30:22
  Let's take one day, let's enjoy the win.
• 30:24
  And that's it. And after the one day of
• 30:26
  enjoying the win, you move on to your next one because otherwise
• 30:28
  what happens is you get stuck. So certainly hearing about it
• 30:32
  right now and hearing the feedback, I feel great.
• 30:34
  But the risk in that, the risk in letting that get to your
• 30:37
  head, as you say, well, I have a great accomplishment and I'm
• 30:39
  done. So when I wake up and it's a
• 30:41
  new, it's really is a new evolution for me, right?
• 30:44
  I take my wins down. I take 24 hours.
• 30:46
  And by the way, I used, I used to not even take an hour.
• 30:48
  I'd be like, oh, that's great. OK, what are we doing next?
• 30:49
  Right now I take 24 hours. And I think it's important to
• 30:52
  enjoy the wins because there's so many challenges in life,
• 30:54
  Barack Hashem, that you have to enjoy the wins when you get them
• 30:56
  and then you move on to the next item, right?
• 30:59
  So for me, for example, right in my current day job, right where
• 31:03
  I run an organization called Met Council, I've been focused on a
• 31:06
  lot of different things. And one of the things that I've
• 31:07
  been focused on since I came in was increasing the amount of
• 31:10
  food that we give out to people who are in need.
• 31:11
  And why do I do that? And we've quadrupled the amount
• 31:14
  of food distributions that we've done in Met Council.
• 31:16
  And if you look throughout the New York area, you see before we
• 31:18
  emptive what? What is exactly does Met
• 31:20
  Council? Can you elaborate?
• 31:21
  And what Met Council does? So I've heard of Met Council.
• 31:24
  I see you're in the paper lie with the Jewish press.
• 31:27
  And there's always something about Met Council over there, a
• 31:29
  picture of an article and I read but I don't know.
• 31:31
  I know what time is, but what does Met Council actually do?
• 31:34
  So Met Council is the the largest Sedaka that's fighting
• 31:37
  poverty in the Jewish community in the United States and what
• 31:39
  makes us big as we have 10 different departments doing 10
• 31:41
  different things. I'll talk about that in a
• 31:42
  minute. But one of our largest
• 31:44
  departments is food. And so when I came in, when I
• 31:46
  realized was food is a way you can help people without barriers
• 31:50
  to entry. I'll explain to you why we
• 31:51
  actually a lot of people don't know this.
• 31:53
  We're the largest owner and operator of affordable housing
• 31:55
  in the Jewish community. And we don't advertise this
• 31:57
  because it's very complicated getting an affordable housing
• 32:01
  unit. You have to apply, you have to
• 32:03
  be on the list, you have to have a certain income.
• 32:04
  It's a very complicated process. Now we do that.
• 32:06
  We have over 1000 people living in beautiful affordable housing.
• 32:09
  People was asking what's affordable?
• 32:10
  What should you tell me? What's affordable for rent and
• 32:12
  utilities for a month in Manhattan?
• 32:14
  What's affordable price do you think in Manhattan, Manhattan,
• 32:16
  We have, we have multiple buildings in Manhattan,
• 32:18
  Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn. What's affordable?
• 32:19
  A couple of grand 3000 What's affordable?
• 32:22
  Time. I would say also, yeah, 330.
• 32:24
  So the average rent for our units in New York City is $410.
• 32:28
  To stop it what? Including utilities.
• 32:30
  Doorman building. I'm actually upset to hear this.
• 32:34
  This is not, by the way, I'm not impressed by that.
• 32:36
  Why is it so little? How's that possible?
• 32:39
  It's being funded. It's little because.
• 32:41
  But why do they have to live in Manhattan then?
• 32:43
  Why can't you get an affordable housing in Brooklyn or somewhere
• 32:45
  else around it's? A great question is she.
• 32:47
  And the answer is that we generally believe Bashita,
• 32:50
  right? If you're struggling, you know
• 32:52
  the Rambam says that if you lost your job and you were a
• 32:54
  millionaire, we have to keep you at the same standard.
• 32:57
  I've heard that very. Frustrating.
• 32:58
  Why is that? The answer is because it's
• 33:00
  embarrassing think for someone to take them when they were at
• 33:02
  this station to have them operated this station.
• 33:04
  And also, but there's a second deeper part to the round moment.
• 33:06
  It's not just that. If you ever want to make sure
• 33:08
  the guy has a chance to be more successful again, you got to
• 33:10
  keep him at that level because otherwise you can't network, you
• 33:12
  can't dress normally, you can't drive normally, right?
• 33:15
  And you see a lot of people even in business, right?
• 33:17
  They they have a slack and they have no slack.
• 33:18
  They lose their money, but they come back.
• 33:20
  And when they come back because they're able to maintain those
• 33:22
  relationships in that level. If you told the guy, look, go
• 33:24
  live in a hovel somewhere, right, you know, you go, go
• 33:27
  leave the city. He's never going to network.
• 33:28
  He's never going to get back. Similarly, when we do housing,
• 33:32
  if someone is a senior and they have no money and they live in
• 33:35
  Manhattan, you don't want to throw them and say, OK, you got
• 33:36
  to go to Queens. So intentionally as where does
• 33:38
  it sell is we have housing in Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, the
• 33:41
  Bronx for people who live in those communities.
• 33:43
  And our sheet is if you live in the community, you should be
• 33:45
  able to continue living in that community and be able to retire.
• 33:48
  But the point that I'm making, which is a bigger point, is the
• 33:51
  reason why I don't talk about this a lot is because it's very
• 33:53
  complicated and it's very difficult to build affordable
• 33:55
  housing. Takes a lot of time, many years,
• 33:57
  and a lot of money. But we do it anyway.
• 33:58
  We have a couple projects that are working on right now.
• 34:01
  It's also you can't save the whole world while you're doing
• 34:04
  it. And there are a lot of barriers
• 34:05
  to entry because you have to make a certain amount of money.
• 34:07
  You have to be a certain age of live in a certain neighborhood,
• 34:09
  right? You can't come from Chicago and
• 34:11
  come to New York. The reason, one of the reasons
• 34:13
  why that we very much focus on food is because we can do that
• 34:16
  in a large scale, right? So for example, the last year we
• 34:19
  gave out nearly 20,000,000 lbs of food.
• 34:21
  And so when you go through the community, you see people giving
• 34:23
  out huge amounts of food before Yum Tip.
• 34:25
  We're doing that. We're helping a lot of people.
• 34:28
  £20 million. Why am I using this as an
• 34:30
  example? Because this goes back to the
• 34:32
  previous conversation. It's very easy.
• 34:34
  And I think this is a big mistake.
• 34:35
  A lot of people in politics making and government making and
• 34:37
  life making, even quite frankly, in community work where a guy, a
• 34:43
  guy's an asking, oh, I did something good Once Upon a time.
• 34:46
  So what if you're here on this earth and God gave you more
• 34:49
  years? He gave you more years to keep
• 34:50
  doing good work. Not to say, oh, back in 1976,
• 34:53
  they did good work, right? There's a famous episode.
• 34:55
  I don't know if you guys watch The Simpsons, but I do.
• 34:57
  I haven't watched all the episodes.
• 34:58
  You still watch it till today? Occasionally.
• 35:00
  Yeah, I. Mean they predict.
• 35:01
  They predict the future of this. Yeah, because they have
• 35:03
  thousands. They do have that.
• 35:04
  They have with, yeah. There's a famous episode in The
• 35:07
  Simpsons where Homer is about to die.
• 35:10
  And it's like the equivalent of the Angel of death is like, what
• 35:12
  have you ever done that was good in your life?
• 35:13
  And he's like, well, he says, you know, Once Upon a time,
• 35:16
  somebody came to Springfield and asked me for directions.
• 35:19
  And I don't really know where he was going, but I'm a good guy.
• 35:21
  So I gave him directions anyway, right?
• 35:23
  And that was his big and that was his big accomplishment.
• 35:26
  That was his big accomplishment. So I think that, you know, if
• 35:29
  you're trying to do good work, you got to keep hustling.
• 35:31
  And my point over there is that we're constantly coming up with
• 35:34
  ways on how can we help the community?
• 35:35
  How can we make things better? How can we do initiatives that
• 35:38
  will be beneficial to people in the community.
• 35:40
  And so while I feel good about hearing that, I don't ever want
• 35:43
  to let it get to my head. It's a very big danger and
• 35:45
  letting that cut to your head. David, can we pause for a
• 35:46
  second? Yeah, sure can.
• 35:48
  We pause for a second are. We pause to figure out why we
• 35:50
  have these mega cards there. What?
• 35:52
  What's happening over? Here it's just for decoration
• 35:54
  purpose. Oh, that's it.
• 35:54
  That's it. I thought you guys play.
• 35:55
  Cards. No, no, no, we don't play.
• 35:57
  We don't play with gigantic cards.
• 35:58
  We play with normal cards. But David, I have to tell you,
• 36:01
  I'm like listening to all this and I'm fascinated by you
• 36:04
  because you're like spewing information like as if this was
• 36:07
  all prepared. And clearly this is coming from
• 36:10
  a place of passion for you, but it's not.
• 36:12
  A lot of people are passionate about things and it doesn't mean
• 36:14
  they're good at it just because they're passionate about it.
• 36:16
  I love to play baseball. Am I going to be a professional
• 36:18
  baseball player or no, Right? You, you honestly have to hone
• 36:21
  in your craft and do this for a long time.
• 36:23
  But the energy that you exude, and you're giving a lot of
• 36:27
  worldly advice now, it might sound like you're just talking
• 36:30
  about politics, but a lot of the things that you said, like don't
• 36:32
  celebrate your wins for too much because that's very dangerous,
• 36:35
  right? That's such good advice in
• 36:36
  general. Teachable moment at the
• 36:38
  teachable moment, move on to the next thing.
• 36:40
  I'm a big celebration guy. I want to sell.
• 36:42
  I'm in sales. So for me, when I get a sale
• 36:45
  done, I feel good about it and I carry it with me for a while.
• 36:48
  And I feel like that's kind of what propels me and gets me
• 36:50
  excited about the next one, you know?
• 36:52
  But you're just like moving on to the next thing.
• 36:55
  I just told you a story about a boy that basically could have
• 36:58
  gotten into a van and who know we, you know, we started to
• 37:00
  think what could have happened. And you're like smiling
• 37:03
  beautiful, love to hear it. And you're generally moving on
• 37:05
  already. You're like, what's the next
• 37:07
  thing you're accomplishing so much?
• 37:08
  Where is this coming from? Like where did where do you have
• 37:11
  this energy to just keep going and going?
• 37:14
  And I imagine you have a lot more that you want to cut, you
• 37:16
  want to still accomplish in your life.
• 37:18
  What happened in your growing up.
• 37:20
  And early on something triggered this because this is not normal.
• 37:23
  This is not what everyday people are like.
• 37:25
  This is like this is an anomaly. Look, I think, you know, in the
• 37:29
  end of the day, and there's also some truth to this as well,
• 37:32
  right? Everything in your life is a
• 37:33
  combination of, you know, three things, I think.
• 37:36
  See after the Shmaya nature. See after the Shmaya just the
• 37:39
  people that are listening should know his help from God.
• 37:42
  That's right, divine intervention Nature.
• 37:45
  And nurture. And what does that mean?
• 37:46
  Let me let me break it down for you, right?
• 37:48
  It means that everything in your life first comes from God,
• 37:51
  right? Because in the end of the day,
• 37:52
  we wouldn't be here, right? The odds of us being here, as
• 37:54
  opposed to some third world country where we don't have
• 37:56
  running water, the odds are actually in your favor that you
• 37:58
  probably would have grown up in some third world country.
• 38:00
  And that's a godly act. United States of America, the
• 38:02
  fact. That you're living in America,
• 38:03
  that's already the advantage of God, that's what.
• 38:05
  I always tell people, you know, despite our complaints, people
• 38:07
  have complaints about politics and government.
• 38:09
  It's a big fundamental mistake. I really believe this is a
• 38:12
  Jewish American not to understand that we live in
• 38:14
  Medina, which is in a country of generosity that allows Jews to
• 38:19
  succeed. If you look at our history, for
• 38:20
  3000 years, there haven't been that many countries like United
• 38:23
  States. I would argue it's the first
• 38:25
  country we've lived in. They've given us so much ability
• 38:27
  to succeed, and we have to be grateful for that.
• 38:29
  Even if we want to participate in democracy, we want to
• 38:31
  complain. You have to remember the
• 38:32
  baseline. The baseline is we're very
• 38:34
  fortunate to be here. By the grace of God.
• 38:37
  I believe that that's number one.
• 38:38
  Number two is you deal with the concept called nature.
• 38:42
  Nature really is the environment that you live in and also
• 38:45
  genetics and who your parents are.
• 38:47
  It may not be fair, but the reality is if you come from a
• 38:50
  family where things are challenging, it's not always as
• 38:52
  easy, right? To be focused and to be
• 38:55
  successful. That's why whether it's fear or
• 38:57
  not, in the shit of world, people look at stuff and say,
• 38:59
  OK, who are the parents? Who's the family?
• 39:00
  Why they care? Take care of where?
• 39:02
  You come from. What are your values?
• 39:04
  Background is and in terms of understanding that and there was
• 39:06
  some sort of understanding of that as well, right And then
• 39:09
  finally, finally that piece of it as well also comes down to
• 39:13
  things which are genetics, right?
• 39:14
  Your parents. There's a reason why we all look
• 39:16
  like our parents. I'm and I somewhat look alike.
• 39:19
  I actually look more like another one of my brothers, but
• 39:21
  it doesn't matter. The answer is that we think
• 39:23
  alike in certain ways. It's genetic as well.
• 39:25
  So let's just break these three things down to answer your
• 39:27
  question in terms of I thought about this question and what I
• 39:29
  really believe, what is, I firmly believe Hashem has
• 39:32
  blessed me as He's blessed all of us.
• 39:33
  By the way, if we're listening to this podcast and you live in
• 39:36
  a place where you've got electric and running water and
• 39:38
  air conditioning, wow, Can you imagine the world before we had
• 39:41
  air conditioning? It was 100° this week and we're
• 39:43
  all sitting. Around thinking about that all
• 39:44
  the time. What was the world like before
• 39:46
  air conditioning? Just sitting in an air
• 39:48
  conditioned room, it's like, wow, I'm a hi.
• 39:50
  It's amazing, right? We're living in the best times
• 39:53
  in the world. So first of all, appreciate that
• 39:55
  God has given you a lot. Could you get more?
• 39:57
  Of course you can. We'll talk about that in a
• 39:58
  minute. Then I think there comes the
• 40:00
  concept of genetics and where you were born.
• 40:03
  We have parents, Barf Hashem. Our parents were very hard
• 40:07
  working, very smart, incredible people who have an amazing story
• 40:09
  about how they met themselves at the Five the Odds.
• 40:12
  They instilled in us this value, which is nothing's impossible.
• 40:17
  Keep trying, keep pushing, keep getting things done.
• 40:20
  That was in our family, which is why everyone in my family, all
• 40:22
  four of our brothers, myself, I'm my brother Yitz, my brother
• 40:25
  Yossi, we're all doers because we have that instilled in our
• 40:29
  values in different ways, right. Time with his entrepreneurship,
• 40:32
  with his successful business, the group purchasing business
• 40:35
  that you have that saves people millions of dollars a year,
• 40:37
  where people are like, well, I never knew I could do that.
• 40:39
  Yeah, that's a great idea, right?
• 40:40
  You know, instead of a nursing home, buying products for one
• 40:45
  nursing home and you're paying full price.
• 40:46
  Well, if I can do that for 1000 nursing homes, I can probably
• 40:48
  save 30%. You're hired by the way.
• 40:51
  By the way, I was my brother, you know, I was bragging my
• 40:53
  brother be like, what does your brother do?
• 40:54
  I was like, he's so good that he as chefs to come up with model
• 40:58
  meals that make the food taste better with healthier foods with
• 41:03
  cheaper products so that you actually are getting healthier
• 41:06
  foods in the nursing homes that taste better and you're spending
• 41:09
  less money. That's a hop as well.
• 41:10
  I kind of come up with a hop. That was his hop, right?
• 41:12
  That was his invention. Everybody can have an idea.
• 41:15
  Everybody got decreased the cause exactly decrease in the
• 41:17
  quality. Right.
• 41:18
  That's right. That's right.
• 41:19
  We have a brother. Yes, he's a very well known
• 41:20
  marriage and family therapist. He does tremendous worker
• 41:23
  brother Yasi, who's tremendously successful in the e-commerce
• 41:26
  world, right. So there's there's a message at
• 41:29
  home that says you got to do things, you got to accomplish
• 41:31
  things and obviously have to be part of the Jewish community,
• 41:34
  which was critically important to.
• 41:35
  So God and parents, parents. Yes, genetics matters as well in
• 41:39
  the sense that they were doers. Everyone who knew my father, all
• 41:42
  of a Shalom, knew that he was a doer.
• 41:43
  He always used to say don't do tomorrow what you can do right
• 41:47
  now. Think about that.
• 41:49
  We'll do what we can do right now.
• 41:50
  So he would be like, let's get something done.
• 41:51
  He had an idea. It's like, OK, we're getting on
• 41:53
  a plane right now. We're going to go have a flight.
• 41:54
  We're going to have a meeting like no, no ABBA, like it's
• 41:57
  12:00 in the afternoon. We're not going to get to
• 41:59
  Florida till six. No, we have an idea getting on a
• 42:01
  plane. We're going to go.
• 42:02
  He was a doer. My mother was someone who had
• 42:04
  tremendous faith. She's really, it's Adakis, a
• 42:06
  righteous woman and she is still that in us as well.
• 42:08
  Those are three important things.
• 42:10
  Now, the final thing, which is the most important thing, and
• 42:12
  nobody wants to talk about it. This is critical.
• 42:14
  This is especially a message for a lot of the younger people out
• 42:16
  there, right? You live in super privileged
• 42:18
  lifestyles, right? You have great parents.
• 42:19
  Your father's amazing, your mother's amazing.
• 42:21
  They have a great job as a part of a great community.
• 42:23
  You're going to a great yeshiva. You're lucky.
• 42:25
  You're living in New York and Brooklyn and Lakewood and
• 42:27
  Teaneck and the 5000 Muncie. It's amazing.
• 42:30
  And you have everything. Now you're going to say, OK, So
• 42:32
  what separates the boys from the men or the girls from the women?
• 42:36
  It's very simple. Final thing comes down to his
• 42:39
  shotless. You have to make an effort, an
• 42:41
  effort. It's a lot of effort.
• 42:43
  You want to be an expert. You want to be a, a, a baseball
• 42:45
  player in the Major League Baseball.
• 42:47
  You have to wake up early. You have to work out, you have
• 42:49
  to eat the right foods. You're going to sleep at a
• 42:51
  certain time. You are doing certain exercises.
• 42:53
  You're spending hundreds of hours in the bat cages.
• 42:56
  That's not the bat caves a la a la Batman Bat cages.
• 43:00
  You know where you're practicing your batting, right?
• 43:03
  That's what makes them experts. I always tell people, I tell
• 43:06
  this to my friends, the reason I beat my competition is very
• 43:09
  simple. Yes, I'm fortunate.
• 43:11
  Bar Hashem sham has blessed me. Great family, good genetics,
• 43:16
  great environment. But I will not hustle anybody
• 43:19
  waking up early. I'm going to sleep late.
• 43:22
  I'm thinking about the issues. I'm going the extra mile.
• 43:24
  I'm working 8090 hours a week. Now you may say that's crazy,
• 43:26
  dude, that's crazy. You shouldn't work 8090 hours a
• 43:28
  week. That's OK for a regular guy who
• 43:30
  doesn't want to be a Major League Baseball player, someone
• 43:32
  doesn't want to be an actor. Someone who doesn't want to be a
• 43:36
  professional at the best of their level, sure, that's no
• 43:38
  problem. You've never met someone in your
• 43:41
  life who is a professional baseball player, athlete, actor,
• 43:46
  who works. Nine to five doesn't exist,
• 43:47
  right? So people were like, oh, wow,
• 43:49
  you're so lucky. It's not about luck.
• 43:50
  The last part about it is a shotless.
• 43:52
  You need the luck. You need a shem, you need your
• 43:54
  family, you need genetics, but you need to hustle.
• 43:58
  And the answer is Heim will tell you, let's be honest, What?
• 44:00
  We were kids. Heim used to go out with his
• 44:02
  friends. What was I doing when I was
• 44:03
  friends? We were teenagers.
• 44:04
  I was like, hey, Dave, we're going out with my friends.
• 44:05
  We're going to go hang out right now.
• 44:07
  What was I doing? Climb.
• 44:08
  You were giving the answers to Jeopardy before the contestants
• 44:11
  were. No, that's a very education.
• 44:14
  But the plan that you learned how to be do that because.
• 44:16
  He was reading and he was studying that.
• 44:19
  Was he was studying cover to cover?
• 44:20
  That's the answer. The answer is that I was
• 44:21
  studying the answer. Absolutely.
• 44:22
  He was reading, reading. He did so much reading.
• 44:25
  And that's probably why I don't read today, because you did
• 44:27
  reading for both of us. There you go.
• 44:29
  That's why we have podcasts you don't have.
• 44:30
  To read, get your. Information.
• 44:33
  You mentioned something in that, in that very eloquent answer, I
• 44:36
  might say, and it was inspiring. I agree with you.
• 44:38
  No one ever got good at something without putting the
• 44:41
  worker. You know, you're looking at all
• 44:42
  the successful people and you say, oh, they must have, you
• 44:45
  know, gotten lucky. And sure, luck played a role in
• 44:46
  it, but what people don't always see is the amount of effort and
• 44:50
  work and those early mornings and those late nights, night,
• 44:52
  right? It takes a tremendous amount to
• 44:55
  get good at anything. I don't care what it is that you
• 44:56
  do. If you get good at it, you do it
• 44:58
  professionally. Comes a lot of effort for sure.
• 45:00
  The effort, by the way, one final point to where you're
• 45:02
  saying is I think it's so important is the hustle brings
• 45:04
  the luck. People don't understand that,
• 45:06
  right Put. Yourself in a position. 80 hours
• 45:08
  a week and you're going out there and you're meeting people
• 45:10
  and you're hustling and you're doing your stylist and you're
• 45:12
  talking to people and you're on the phone.
• 45:13
  Then you get your big break. People are like, oh, you know,
• 45:15
  there's a crazy story. We have a friend of ours.
• 45:17
  He, he did business with Donald Trump.
• 45:19
  And people like, how did he do business with Donald Trump?
• 45:21
  And wow, well, he must have gotten lucky.
• 45:22
  He didn't get lucky. The guy makes 1000 phone calls a
• 45:24
  week, right? And at the course of making 1000
• 45:27
  phone calls a week, literally for 52 weeks a year and taking
• 45:31
  no vacations, 52,000 phone calls.
• 45:33
  He had a lucky break. Lucky break.
• 45:36
  That's not a lucky break. He didn't win the Lotto.
• 45:37
  He worked hard so that he should get a lucky break.
• 45:39
  Who am I talking about here? You're talking about magic, you
• 45:42
  know, And the fact is, he used to hang out at the restaurants
• 45:44
  every single night. Doing what?
• 45:46
  Getting drunk. Hustle.
• 45:48
  That's right. Hustle people.
• 45:50
  He he had a brilliant idea similar to Jason, Jason Lippman
• 45:53
  Mendy. He had an idea when he was
• 45:55
  looking for a job in a certain area, he would go on the trains
• 45:59
  in New York City on the F train and he would have his resume and
• 46:02
  he would scream out loud, I'm looking for a job in finance.
• 46:07
  I don't know about that. No, no, no, no, no, no.
• 46:09
  People can very easily get the wrong impression about it.
• 46:12
  Absolutely. Not hear me 20 years ago, hey,
• 46:14
  today that would be dangerous to do that on the train 20 years
• 46:16
  ago, you can do that. But hear out the concept for a
• 46:18
  second. He was saying, he was mentioning
• 46:19
  and he said it was really said. People like Michael Bloomberg
• 46:22
  take the train every day and I'm here to get my resume out to
• 46:26
  anyone in finance. He got a job at Merrill.
• 46:29
  That's what happened, yes. I guess there was no social
• 46:32
  media back then. There was how do you get 50
• 46:34
  people? You go on a train.
• 46:35
  In one place you go on the train.
• 46:37
  Yes, he did it. That's the hustle, that's what.
• 46:39
  He increased his on. I'm calling him Magic.
• 46:41
  It's motion. We should get him on the show,
• 46:42
  by the way. Yeah, we should get, but it
• 46:45
  sounds like if you want to get lucky is just put yourself in a
• 46:47
  position where you're increasing your chances of having more
• 46:50
  people. I tell young people all the
• 46:51
  time, I just had this conversation with a, a woman
• 46:54
  who's wonderful and single and I, I, I really, you know, I saw
• 46:57
  her over a Shabbos and, and, and she was talking to me.
• 47:00
  It's like, you know, the great guys.
• 47:00
  I was like, look, I said, what are you doing this summer?
• 47:02
  She's like, I don't know, I'm home.
• 47:03
  I was like, go, go where? Go, just go somewhere, go, go to
• 47:05
  LA, go to Miami, put yourself out, get out there.
• 47:08
  Like why? What's that going to have?
• 47:09
  Like things are going to happen and most of them will be good.
• 47:12
  By the way, not everything will be good.
• 47:13
  Just to be clear, right? You know, sometimes you put
• 47:15
  yourself out there, things are uncomfortable, but mostly on
• 47:19
  balance, you've ever asked anyone who's gone out there,
• 47:21
  mostly good things will happen to you.
• 47:23
  I think the most important thing that you can do is do something.
• 47:26
  That's it. And we live in a generation of
• 47:28
  people who don't want to do anything.
• 47:29
  And they're like, I'm sitting at home.
• 47:30
  And and that's where, by the way, you end up with this
• 47:32
  disconnect. And by the way, that's why
• 47:33
  social media has been so destructive.
• 47:35
  And the surgeon general recently said that it's actually more
• 47:38
  addictive than cigarettes and very bad to our mental health.
• 47:40
  Because now let's go back to that from kid who's living in
• 47:43
  the five towns, right? And that kid is going to the
• 47:45
  best of Shiva's with the best, with the best teachers at the
• 47:48
  best parents, and he's not successful or he is doing drugs
• 47:52
  or is doing alcohol or is doing nothing.
• 47:54
  Why is that? Because social media, in many
• 47:57
  ways we discussed before, has warped our brains.
• 47:59
  We're like, oh, I can do everything online, but no, you
• 48:01
  can't do everything online, right?
• 48:03
  The answer is you're missing one important greeting, which is the
• 48:06
  Histadlas, which I translate as hustle, right?
• 48:10
  People say shot is effort is not an effort, it's a hustle.
• 48:13
  Right now, this means hustle, go out and.
• 48:16
  Not just effort, it's your maximum hustle, it's how much
• 48:20
  effort are you putting in? For you and by the way, that's
• 48:22
  the most important point. It's an excellent effort for you
• 48:24
  people like, well, I'm never going to be in the NBA, OK, No
• 48:27
  one said that you have to be Michael Jordan, right There is a
• 48:29
  be the best of you. People who played in the NBA,
• 48:32
  who made millions of dollars, whose names that you don't know,
• 48:34
  but they still made millions of dollars.
• 48:35
  They're in the NBA, but they're not Michael Jordan.
• 48:37
  Not it was going to be Michael Jordan.
• 48:38
  People like, well, I can't be Michael Jordan.
• 48:40
  It's OK, You might be able to be a player in the NBA.
• 48:43
  You might be able to be a player in the minor leagues.
• 48:45
  Do your best effort, which is what we call this job.
• 48:47
  We call a hustle. Go out there and hustle.
• 48:50
  Social media has broken that for us because we think, oh, I'm
• 48:53
  just going to a tweet. I'm doing something.
• 48:54
  You're not doing anything by tweeting.
• 48:55
  I'm going to say this again. I'm a huge tweeter.
• 48:58
  I've been doing this. I was in the meeting before
• 49:00
  anyone. They did a newspaper article
• 49:01
  about me when I was an elected official, I was the first person
• 49:03
  on Twitter, now known as X, the first elected official in New
• 49:06
  York. People were fascinated.
• 49:07
  Wow, David Greenfield's on Twitter.
• 49:08
  What's going on over here? I like to embrace technology
• 49:10
  early, but I didn't think I was doing things instead on Twitter.
• 49:15
  Twitter was just a way of communicating everything else
• 49:16
  that I was doing. Now people are like, I'm going
• 49:18
  to sit at home in my basement and tweet all day.
• 49:20
  You're not doing anything right. You got to make your.
• 49:23
  Enhancement, you're using it to supplement for other, you're
• 49:26
  just adding on as one thing. That's right.
• 49:28
  So I'm very curious about this. I know that people, you know,
• 49:31
  politicians, in order to get their position, they have to
• 49:34
  earn the vote of the constituents.
• 49:36
  They have to put you into office.
• 49:37
  So you were probably running against someone at the time.
• 49:40
  So I'm just curious, the last elected position that you had,
• 49:44
  which was a Councilman, is that right?
• 49:46
  OK, you were running against someone.
• 49:47
  Do you remember who that person was that you were running
• 49:49
  against? And I'm mostly curious about
• 49:51
  what do you think you did? Are you, do you know that person
• 49:54
  still? Are you in touch with that
• 49:55
  person? And I'm curious, what do you
• 49:57
  think you did your hustle, your establish, what did you do
• 50:01
  different than then that you were able to beat your opponent?
• 50:04
  I just have to answer the direct real quick because I have to
• 50:06
  mention that the day of the voting in Borough Park in
• 50:10
  Brooklyn, I was there. I was so proud.
• 50:12
  I didn't sleep for 24 hours. I went around with my red pickup
• 50:15
  truck and I had flags and had announcements.
• 50:17
  Vote for David Greenfield around an hour after the voting closed.
• 50:23
  One of the big politicians in New York, I'm not going to
• 50:25
  mention his name, comes over to me and he goes, hey, Michael,
• 50:29
  your brother tried really hard. He really, really gave it his
• 50:32
  effort, huh? You did good.
• 50:33
  You went around with your truck all day.
• 50:34
  You feel good. He did good here before, before
• 50:37
  they announced. They announced his winning an
• 50:38
  hour later. David Greenfield, the winner,
• 50:41
  who took over the new council position.
• 50:43
  I couldn't be more proud. And I'd love to hear your
• 50:44
  answer. I appreciate it.
• 50:46
  Thank you. Right.
• 50:47
  So once again comes back to those three big issues.
• 50:51
  God's help community genetics, the ability to do it.
• 50:55
  But let's talk about the hustle in a second, right?
• 50:56
  When I ran, I ran against the establishment, right?
• 50:59
  The entire Jewish establishment decided we're supporting this
• 51:02
  guy. He's a retired guy.
• 51:03
  He's 70 years old. Why are they supporting him?
• 51:05
  Because that's what's funny about politics.
• 51:06
  They're supporting him because he was their guy, not because he
• 51:08
  was the best guy, right? I mean, we're having the same
• 51:10
  debate right now about Joe Biden, except that Joe Biden is
• 51:13
  already has 50 years of experience and at the top of his
• 51:15
  game here was a guy who was retiring just to start his
• 51:18
  political career. I guess it makes sense.
• 51:19
  Like what did you want someone young to start the career as
• 51:22
  opposed to someone who's older but doesn't matter?
• 51:24
  They didn't want a fresh thinker.
• 51:25
  They wanted somebody who's going to tow the.
• 51:26
  Line someone who's going to be their guy very good.
• 51:28
  So when you're looking at that and you're saying OK, how might
• 51:30
  being them they have the advantage and the name of the
• 51:31
  more money than you have the money, they have the resources.
• 51:33
  The answer is come back to you as a hustle.
• 51:35
  I said, you know what I'm going to do?
• 51:36
  I'm going to do something that no one's ever done in this
• 51:38
  community before. I'm going to knock on every
• 51:39
  single door and meet people. So now you're knocking the door
• 51:42
  and say hi, how are you? My name is David Greenfield.
• 51:43
  You're David Greenfield. Well, I heard XYZ about you.
• 51:46
  OK, cool. What do you hear about me?
• 51:47
  Ask me a question. Well, you know, I heard that.
• 51:50
  You know, you're somebody who is from the Sparta community.
• 51:53
  Yeah, it's true. I work for the Sparta community.
• 51:55
  But I went to Tarvatos, went to the Bar Park Y lived in Bar Park
• 51:58
  in Plabish my whole life. Oh, that's interesting.
• 51:59
  Yeah. Tell you what.
• 52:00
  Here's my cell phone number. Take my cell phone.
• 52:02
  If you ever have an issue, call me.
• 52:03
  Let me text me. Gave them your.
• 52:04
  Cell. Phone.
• 52:05
  I'll tell you something crazy. Oshi I'd 20 years later, I have
• 52:08
  the same cell phone number. People text me, they call me and
• 52:10
  answer the phones even today. Now, today I may not be able to
• 52:13
  solve that problem, so I'll refer them to somebody else, but
• 52:15
  if I can, I will help them. It changed the game.
• 52:18
  Think about that right here. For 25 years, we're telling you
• 52:22
  vote for somebody because the community is telling to vote for
• 52:24
  somebody. And I also told people, look,
• 52:26
  are you happy with the way things are?
• 52:27
  No. So give someone another chance.
• 52:29
  I went through three pairs of shoes.
• 52:31
  My phone number was ringing all day long.
• 52:33
  I was getting text all day long. I changed the game in the sense
• 52:36
  that I hustled, right. I worked a lot harder than the
• 52:40
  competition. That plus I had better ideas,
• 52:43
  fresh ideas how to solve things. I'll give you one example,
• 52:45
  something I did, one simple example just to show you how
• 52:47
  quality of life. When I ran for office, I said,
• 52:49
  look, I'm going to fix the parks In our district.
• 52:51
  We have a dozen parks, but none of them have been fixed in
• 52:54
  years. People like, no, you can't do
• 52:55
  that. By the time I left the office, I
• 52:57
  renovated every single park in my district.
• 52:58
  That matters to people, right? This isn't Muncie, where you're
• 53:01
  living in a huge backyard, right?
• 53:02
  You're living in Brooklyn. You're living on top of each
• 53:04
  other. You have no space in the
• 53:05
  community with more kids than anywhere else in New York City.
• 53:08
  To tell people I'm going to fix your parks and to actually do
• 53:10
  that and give them brand new parks.
• 53:12
  Borough Park, Flatbush, Bendsenhurst, That's a huge
• 53:15
  difference for people's lives, right?
• 53:16
  So my promise to people was give me a shot, let me do things
• 53:19
  differently and hold me accountable.
• 53:21
  You have my number. And we did that and that's how
• 53:23
  we won. We won because we worked harder.
• 53:25
  We gave them fresh ideas and we gave them a way to hold me
• 53:28
  accountable. It's great to tell someone I'm
• 53:30
  going to do something for you. Well, how am I going to hold you
• 53:32
  accountable? Hold me accountable because this
• 53:33
  is my phone number. Kind of happy.
• 53:34
  Let me know, right? And that's how we held ourselves
• 53:37
  accountable and how we got things done.
• 53:39
  And that's how I won. Obviously we had to see out the
• 53:41
  Schmia, but that's how I. This is the epitome of cold
• 53:45
  calling. I was just thinking that, right?
• 53:46
  This is like on on such a big level.
• 53:48
  He went door to door to door, knocked on people's doors.
• 53:52
  Let's have a conversation. It was very time consuming.
• 53:55
  You had to tackle a lot of different doors, right?
• 53:57
  And but that's what it took. And they have my favorite story,
• 54:00
  my favorite story in this process, 'cause you'll
• 54:01
  appreciate. It I'm sure people slam the door
• 54:02
  in your face. I'm sure you got a lot of.
• 54:04
  Those So I'm going through Flatbush, I'm ringing a
• 54:06
  doorbell. I'm like, hey, so woman comes
• 54:08
  out and she's like, nobody's home.
• 54:10
  Go. I said no, no, no, I'm I'm
• 54:12
  yelling because she's on the third floor.
• 54:13
  Remember, like this is Brooklyn, this walk up apartments.
• 54:16
  No, I, I, my name is David Greenfield.
• 54:18
  I'm there and she's like, just go away.
• 54:20
  I'm like, no, I need to do that. It's an old woman.
• 54:22
  She's like, fine. She comes back.
• 54:24
  Crazy story. She takes a plastic bag with
• 54:27
  four quarters and she throws it at me.
• 54:28
  She thought I was a Michelle. That you recollect, yeah.
• 54:31
  She gave me a dollar. That's very nice.
• 54:33
  And it's one of the Ziploc bags. She threw a Ziploc bag down.
• 54:36
  I mean, I had a Ziploc bag. I'm like, wow, that's great.
• 54:38
  Now I have an illegal cash contribution.
• 54:40
  I ring her doorbell and she's like, I already gave you a
• 54:44
  dollar. You want more?
• 54:45
  I said no, no, no, no, no. My name is David Greenfield.
• 54:47
  I'm going to the council. Really.
• 54:48
  I'm like, yeah. I'm like, can I give you the
• 54:49
  dollar back? She's like, fine.
• 54:50
  I come upstairs. This this whole operation, think
• 54:52
  about it, is I'm already a minute 15 now of the saga, which
• 54:55
  is very embarrassing, right? The woman throws a dollar.
• 54:57
  He says, go, get out of here. I woke up in three flights and
• 54:59
  says like, hi, how are you? So nice to meet you.
• 55:01
  Great Hazard all back. Thank you very much.
• 55:02
  My name is David Green. If I'm running for office, she
• 55:04
  tells me, you know, it's interesting because, you know, I
• 55:05
  heard from so and so community leader that I should vote for
• 55:08
  the other guy. I said, oh, cool, why you want
• 55:10
  to be the guy? I don't know.
• 55:10
  That's what I was told from great.
• 55:12
  Can we talk about it? I spent 15 minutes talking to
• 55:14
  her. By the time I left, it was 1/2
• 55:15
  an hour. It was a big investment.
• 55:17
  By the time I left, she had converted 16 voters to me.
• 55:20
  It was her, her husband, her five kids and all their eligible
• 55:23
  grandkids live in the bar park. And she called everybody and
• 55:26
  said, let me tell you something. This guy, David Greenfield, he
• 55:28
  has ideas. He's here, he's talking to me.
• 55:30
  He wants to get things done. 16 votes from one conversation.
• 55:33
  But it was very awkward and uncomfortable going back to our
• 55:36
  original conversation and to cold calling.
• 55:38
  If you want to get out there, it's going to be a little bit
• 55:39
  uncomfortable. It's going to be a little bit
• 55:41
  awkward, but it's a huge ability to try to change the game.
• 55:45
  And that's what I did. And that's where cold calling is
• 55:47
  valid. But but yeah, you can't get
• 55:49
  phased with the people who slammed your door yell you.
• 55:51
  All politicians are the same. All people call calling are the
• 55:54
  same. How did you get my number?
• 55:55
  You got to move on. It is what it is.
• 55:57
  Go back to magic, make 50,000 calls in a year, and then you
• 56:00
  get that one big break. That's how it works and that's
• 56:03
  how numbers getting business done.
• 56:06
  I'm just curious, what does a Councilman actually do?
• 56:08
  Like you want to pass a law, you want to you need funds to fix
• 56:12
  the parks. Like what's the process?
• 56:14
  How does that work? What's your position?
• 56:15
  I'm going to give it in a more generic way so people can
• 56:17
  understand this. So basically the way it works in
• 56:19
  the United States as a quick refresher is a three branches to
• 56:22
  the government, right? There's the executive branch,
• 56:23
  judicial branch, and the legislative branch, right?
• 56:26
  Digital branch is a whole other story.
• 56:27
  I'm a lawyer and a law professor, but we're going to
• 56:29
  put that on the side, which is that's really based on the idea
• 56:31
  of checks and balances. If you're not happy with
• 56:33
  something, you can always sue. Let's put that on the side.
• 56:35
  It's a much slower, more complicated, more costly
• 56:37
  process. So if you think about it,
• 56:39
  really, let's focus on the executive and legislative.
• 56:41
  Every jurisdiction basically has a mayor and a council, right?
• 56:45
  Or a governor and a legislature or the president and a Congress.
• 56:49
  Those two people have two different jobs, right?
• 56:51
  Which is the job of the mayor, the governor, the president is
• 56:53
  to focus on running things and making the decisions.
• 56:56
  And what if you're not happy with those decisions?
• 56:58
  The legislature has to pass laws and they're a check on that
• 57:01
  mayor or governor or the president.
• 57:03
  And so you can get things done for your small group.
• 57:06
  It's tough to influence the president or the mayor or the
• 57:09
  governor, but you're 1 legislator, your council member,
• 57:11
  your assembly member, your state senator.
• 57:13
  They can go and make a difference for you on that
• 57:15
  level. So they can do a few things.
• 57:17
  One is they can get funding and bring it back to the community
• 57:19
  like I did for parks and schools and Yeshiva's.
• 57:21
  One, Two is they can pass laws like I did to improve your
• 57:24
  quality of life. When you say pass laws, who's
• 57:26
  passing the law? The legislative body.
• 57:28
  How many people are part of the New York?
• 57:30
  It depends. It depends on the legislature,
• 57:31
  right? So in the city of New York, it's
• 57:33
  51 people. In New York State of cellmates,
• 57:34
  150 people. The larger the city, the larger
• 57:37
  the state, the more people they're going to have to
• 57:38
  represent. So you were one of 5051 people,
• 57:41
  51 people. So out of eight and a half
• 57:43
  million people in New York, there were 51 million.
• 57:44
  People and how much percentage of those 51 people do you need
• 57:47
  to approve a law? So you need 26.
• 57:49
  This is a whole nother partial right about being an expert is
• 57:51
  how do you convince 25 people to agree with agree with you.
• 57:54
  That's a whole other segment We can spend an hour.
• 57:56
  Which is what you had to do each time.
• 57:57
  Every time you wanted to pass your initiative.
• 57:59
  That's right, you had to whip the other people a lot.
• 58:01
  Of it honestly is horse trading meaning I'll help you.
• 58:03
  You help me, right? You have something you're
• 58:05
  passionate about that you make deals.
• 58:07
  If you vote for me, they make, they make shows about this, like
• 58:11
  House of Cards. I think House of Cards people
• 58:13
  said that that was a very accurate depiction of what goes
• 58:15
  on in a little. Bit of an exaggeration, but it
• 58:16
  was fun and fun is good fun is good.
• 58:18
  I'd say, believe it or not, you know the the probably one of the
• 58:23
  better shows on on on television is the original presidential
• 58:27
  show with the White House before House of Cards, which was West
• 58:31
  Wing. That's right, The West Wing is
• 58:33
  actually a more accurate depiction of of how politics
• 58:36
  works. But.
• 58:37
  Remember, that was all politics change.
• 58:39
  That's. True, That's true.
• 58:40
  But at its core, it's very similar.
• 58:41
  But the third thing I'll say which is important is the most
• 58:43
  important job I think of a local elected official is to solve
• 58:46
  your problems. Because it's a huge bureaucracy.
• 58:47
  I can't get to the governor or the county manager or the mayor.
• 58:51
  I can call my local elected official, say, hey, look, I got
• 58:54
  a tax. Doesn't make any sense.
• 58:55
  You're like, OK, cool, let me check in that for you.
• 58:57
  That was something was very important to me.
• 58:59
  The other thing that I did was I was the first elected official.
• 59:01
  I had evening hours. What a crazy idea, right?
• 59:03
  Government says I work 9:00 to 5:00.
• 59:04
  Well, here's the problem. Work 9:00 to 5:00.
• 59:05
  I always work 9:00 to 5:00. So I have a problem.
• 59:07
  I got a tax bill and I go to my job working for as an account
• 59:10
  for an accounting firm. I can't leave in the middle of
• 59:12
  the day to take care of my tax bills.
• 59:13
  I said, look, we're going to something that no one's ever
• 59:15
  done before, weekend hours and evening hours.
• 59:17
  So you can call me at six, 7:00 and I'll still solve your
• 59:19
  problems tomorrow. I can't solve it today because
• 59:21
  government's closed. Those are the kinds of things
• 59:23
  that matter to people. And I think those are the three
• 59:25
  things that you can do, the third of which is solve your
• 59:28
  local problems that you couldn't normally solve on your own.
• 59:30
  And that's what an elected official does.
• 59:32
  I started out as a regular council member.
• 59:33
  Then I became the chairman of the Brooklyn delegation, which
• 59:35
  gave me some more influence. Then I became the chair of the
• 59:37
  land use committee, a membership member of the leadership
• 59:40
  committee, member of the budget negotiating team.
• 59:41
  So by the time I left, I was one of the highest ranking elected
• 59:45
  officials in New York City. And that was also work, meaning
• 59:47
  even among elected officials. Think about how crazy this is
• 59:50
  now you win. You're like, oh, this is great.
• 59:51
  I want an election. No.
• 59:52
  Now you got to get to work. No, even more than that, I got
• 59:54
  to compete with other elected officials to be in the
• 59:56
  leadership because they all want to be in leadership too.
• 59:59
  Now I got to hustle against my other elected official.
• 1:00:01
  Never stops. It never stopped.
• 1:00:03
  So why'd you why'd you get out of it?
• 1:00:05
  Why are you still not in those, you know, going up the ranks?
• 1:00:08
  Why aren't you our governor yet? Because you have my vote, by the
• 1:00:10
  way, Just I, I, I, I really feel like this is all of it.
• 1:00:14
  It's genuine. Like you actually really care.
• 1:00:16
  Like you mentioned, you know, you helped, you know, with the
• 1:00:17
  parks and Brooklyn nonna blah place, not Muncie.
• 1:00:19
  There's no backyards. I agree with you that you
• 1:00:21
  actually made a difference in people's lives, the quality of
• 1:00:24
  life. I would love to have more
• 1:00:25
  elected officials like this. I think most of our officials
• 1:00:27
  for the most part are, are very corrupt and they're very,
• 1:00:30
  they're very self motivated. Like they, they like the power,
• 1:00:33
  the influence, whatever it is. Very few of them are doing it
• 1:00:36
  for a real public service. They really want to help other
• 1:00:39
  people. And we as Jews, I think we have
• 1:00:41
  that naturally more than others perhaps, is that we care about
• 1:00:44
  the person next to us who we feel connected to them.
• 1:00:47
  We don't just feel like we're neighbour, we feel like we're
• 1:00:48
  really brothers, you know? Right.
• 1:00:50
  So we have that mentality already, and I think you exude
• 1:00:53
  that mentality. I appreciate I always tell
• 1:00:54
  people that in politics, like in life is an 8020 year old, which
• 1:00:57
  is that 20% of the elected officials are the ones who are
• 1:00:59
  genuine in getting the most of the work done and 80% are not.
• 1:01:02
  I'm not going to name who the 20% who the 80% are for obvious
• 1:01:04
  reasons, but there are good people out there.
• 1:01:06
  The answer to your question is this.
• 1:01:08
  The way I view my life in terms of what it is that I'm trying to
• 1:01:10
  accomplish is exactly that. How can I be most successful and
• 1:01:14
  making a positive difference? When I was an elected official,
• 1:01:16
  which I was for eight years and I was a senior member of the
• 1:01:18
  leadership, what I saw happening in New York was something very
• 1:01:20
  interesting, which is the city was sliding to the left
• 1:01:22
  politically. And I was correct, right?
• 1:01:24
  You had a more liberal mayor. You had people like AOC getting
• 1:01:26
  elected. When you're in the center, which
• 1:01:28
  I am, I'm a very pragmatic center of the road, elected
• 1:01:31
  official. When the city is shifting from
• 1:01:33
  you, it's difficult to accomplish things.
• 1:01:34
  So same thing. It was purely God, it was
• 1:01:36
  Bashar, right? And I had the opportunity to run
• 1:01:38
  a large charity and turn it around and create into a bigger
• 1:01:41
  charity. Have tripled the size of the
• 1:01:43
  organization in the last six years.
• 1:01:44
  We're helping three times as many people are making a much
• 1:01:47
  bigger difference in people's lives.
• 1:01:48
  To me, that was something exciting because I was able to
• 1:01:50
  leave government and do something else where I can help
• 1:01:52
  people and make a difference in their lives in a very real way.
• 1:01:55
  And that's where I saw it as being better able to use my
• 1:01:59
  efforts. And I think it's also a very
• 1:02:01
  important lesson. We talk about business and life.
• 1:02:03
  Never get too comfortable anywhere.
• 1:02:04
  If you're too comfortable, that should make you very nervous,
• 1:02:06
  right? If you're really trying to
• 1:02:07
  accomplish things, you're trying to make money, try to be
• 1:02:09
  successful. Trying to make a difference.
• 1:02:10
  Do the same thing for years and years and it's too easy.
• 1:02:12
  You should be like well. What's going on?
• 1:02:13
  Keep challenging yourself. Got you.
• 1:02:15
  Got to keep. Moving.
• 1:02:16
  That's how you grow. Pushing exactly.
• 1:02:18
  You know, you said something earlier.
• 1:02:19
  It reminded me another great quote that you told me, David,
• 1:02:22
  and I've repeated many, many times that we want to have
• 1:02:25
  influence more than power. It's something that you taught
• 1:02:28
  me and it's such such an interesting, you know,
• 1:02:31
  conversation piece of like, what's the difference?
• 1:02:33
  And why would you want influence?
• 1:02:34
  Why wouldn't you want the power? I have a question for you,
• 1:02:37
  David, that I've been thinking about as you guys were talking.
• 1:02:40
  And, you know, being that you've been out of the frontline of
• 1:02:43
  politics for a number of years, you must have things that you've
• 1:02:47
  been thinking about. You know what I wish perhaps
• 1:02:49
  that I can be in it to change XY and Z.
• 1:02:52
  Is there something over the past few years that you've been
• 1:02:54
  thinking about that you want to make change in?
• 1:02:56
  And what's the next thing that you would be passionate about if
• 1:02:58
  you get the chance again? What would be the first thing
• 1:03:00
  you'd be tackling? So, yeah, there are there are a
• 1:03:02
  few things that frustrated me, obviously.
• 1:03:03
  And then and the the downside of only focusing on a few things as
• 1:03:06
  you can't focus on everything, right?
• 1:03:08
  My current biggest pet peeve, if you really want to know what my
• 1:03:10
  biggest frustration is, I think that we as a Jewish community
• 1:03:14
  are not doing a great job of telling the story of Israel.
• 1:03:18
  And I think that we have a real communications crisis that's
• 1:03:21
  happening. And I spent a lot of time
• 1:03:22
  thinking about this. And I think one of the reasons
• 1:03:24
  is that the Israeli government, what people don't realize is all
• 1:03:27
  politics in the day. They're on this perpetual
• 1:03:29
  political cycle when the last few years have had multiple
• 1:03:31
  elections. So when they're speaking as an
• 1:03:33
  an Israeli government leader, they don't care about what
• 1:03:35
  people are thinking about in New York or Paris or London or
• 1:03:38
  Germany. They're worried about what
• 1:03:39
  people think about it. But a Brock, right?
• 1:03:41
  So they're speaking to a very small audience.
• 1:03:43
  So they're saying things that people in Pataktikva might
• 1:03:46
  appreciate, or Tel Aviv or Brenebach, but not DC, New York,
• 1:03:50
  Paris, LA, Germany. And it's a big world out there.
• 1:03:53
  The world has shifted. And part of the importance of
• 1:03:56
  doing the work that we do in Israel is we know that we're
• 1:03:58
  correct and we have the facts, but we're not articulating it
• 1:04:00
  correctly. So because we're speaking to a
• 1:04:02
  very small audience. So if you ask me like, what
• 1:04:04
  would I want to do? One of the things I really would
• 1:04:07
  love to do. And once again, it's just a
• 1:04:08
  question of time and effort and establishes focus on an effort
• 1:04:11
  of telling the story right? So take example, I'll give an
• 1:04:15
  example. Take a country like Qatar, what
• 1:04:17
  people call it Qatar, Qatar. Qatar is a fundamentalist
• 1:04:19
  Islamic country. Everyone's like, wow, they're
• 1:04:21
  such a great country and they have this beautiful airlines and
• 1:04:23
  beautiful high rises. Meanwhile, they're one of the
• 1:04:25
  most discriminatory countries in the world.
• 1:04:27
  You can't become a citizen of Qatar.
• 1:04:28
  It's impossible. And most of the people they use,
• 1:04:31
  they export cheap labor really to get what they want.
• 1:04:34
  And if you look at them in any Liberal Democratic scale,
• 1:04:36
  they're not liberal, they're not democratic, but they are paying
• 1:04:39
  good money for PR. They even have their own news
• 1:04:41
  media outlet, Al Jazeera, which pays to get good PR for
• 1:04:44
  themselves because they're smart and you can do that.
• 1:04:47
  Why? And this comes to the perhaps
• 1:04:49
  the final point that I'll make today on politics, which is
• 1:04:52
  democracy is a very messy business, right?
• 1:04:54
  Guitar is run by essentially authoritarian rules.
• 1:04:57
  There's no elections. We're in charge.
• 1:04:59
  So if I'm in charge, I can think long term, OK, so I'm going to
• 1:05:03
  talk about doing PR and I'm going to talk about building
• 1:05:05
  business. When I have to run in an
• 1:05:07
  election in democracy, it's messy, right?
• 1:05:08
  Because I have elections and I have to get re elected and I
• 1:05:10
  have to worry who's going to vote for me.
• 1:05:12
  And that's what makes a difference, right?
• 1:05:13
  The fact that Israel's a democracy is actually, in a
• 1:05:15
  weird way, hurting Israel's PR. Hamas is able to get, in some
• 1:05:19
  cases, better PR because they're an authoritarian run by a
• 1:05:23
  handful of terrorists. They don't have to deal with
• 1:05:25
  their internal. Worry, think about it.
• 1:05:27
  If Hamas was an if Hamas was a group that was really
• 1:05:30
  responsible to the Palestinians, they'd be out of power by now.
• 1:05:34
  The only reason the Hamas exists is because they haven't had
• 1:05:36
  elections in 15 years. If Hamas had to worry and says,
• 1:05:39
  Oh my gosh, November 5th, we're having elections too, the war
• 1:05:41
  would have been over on day one because they wouldn't want their
• 1:05:44
  people to suffer in the way that they as a leadership brought
• 1:05:47
  upon their own people. They're suffering by engaging in
• 1:05:49
  a crazy war with Israel that they know they're going to lose.
• 1:05:52
  They would never do that because they'd be saying, Oh my gosh,
• 1:05:54
  we're going to lose an election. They don't have to worry about
• 1:05:56
  that. They say, look, we're
• 1:05:57
  terrorists, we're dictators, we do whatever we want.
• 1:05:59
  We don't care about democracy. There are no elections.
• 1:06:02
  And if you suffer too bad because they don't care about
• 1:06:03
  the people, it Israel's the opposite.
• 1:06:06
  What happens is BB has to think about, say, hold on a second,
• 1:06:08
  what are the public going to think?
• 1:06:09
  What's my next election going to look like?
• 1:06:11
  And so I think we have a massive disconnect on public relations
• 1:06:15
  between where Israel is and other countries.
• 1:06:16
  And I think primarily that's because Israel has a very messy
• 1:06:19
  democracy where they have so many elections.
• 1:06:21
  And that's a frustration. I look at that and, you know, I
• 1:06:24
  think some people know I gave a speech that went viral on the
• 1:06:26
  floor of the City Council, right?
• 1:06:27
  I'm very passionate about the issue of Israel.
• 1:06:29
  I think we're not doing a good enough job explaining to the
• 1:06:32
  world why Israel is correct. Israel's a democracy.
• 1:06:35
  Israel is unique in the Middle East as democracy.
• 1:06:37
  Israel believes in democratic and liberal values.
• 1:06:40
  These other countries don't. I think we have that disconnect
• 1:06:42
  that frustrates me. Alas, I can't do everything, but
• 1:06:45
  that's an issue that frustrates me that people want to work on
• 1:06:47
  it. Contact me after the show and
• 1:06:49
  I'm happy to have. David, you just educated me and
• 1:06:52
  I imagine a lot of people that are listening to this like
• 1:06:54
  really the downside to a democracy and to because
• 1:06:59
  naturally people have to be concerned about how do I get re
• 1:07:02
  elected? And they want to please
• 1:07:04
  everybody. And what is up happening is they
• 1:07:05
  please nobody and their real agenders are not in everybody's
• 1:07:08
  best interest. It's really about the internal
• 1:07:11
  politics that have to be busy with and they can't, they can't
• 1:07:13
  think long term because I don't know I'm going to be around in
• 1:07:15
  15 years. Meanwhile, Qatar, the, the, the
• 1:07:18
  dictator there, he knows we're going to be ruling here for the
• 1:07:21
  next 50 years. So let's build something now.
• 1:07:23
  Strategically, they can do it the right way and build for the
• 1:07:27
  long. That's the outside, but there
• 1:07:29
  are upsides. Remember, the most important
• 1:07:31
  upsides and why I still think it's the best system that we
• 1:07:32
  have explored as it is, is that it represents the will of the
• 1:07:34
  people, right? Most of the people who are
• 1:07:36
  living in Qatar are not Qatar citizens and they have no rights
• 1:07:39
  and they can't vote and they're just getting exploited, right?
• 1:07:41
  They have a competitive edge, but.
• 1:07:43
  The reality is and, and there are ways to solve this, right?
• 1:07:45
  The problem with the Israeli system is that they have a
• 1:07:48
  system that doesn't guarantee you that your executives can
• 1:07:50
  serve the entire term. So your government can fall at
• 1:07:53
  any time because they're based on the European legislative
• 1:07:56
  model. the United States, we have elections for four years.
• 1:07:58
  And so therefore, a president always has a four year term,
• 1:08:01
  even if they're unpopular. What you see right now, the
• 1:08:03
  biggest debate that we're having in the United States, right?
• 1:08:05
  And this is a question that may or may not get resolved over the
• 1:08:07
  next few days, But the biggest debate we're having in the
• 1:08:09
  United States right now is should Joe Biden continue as the
• 1:08:12
  Democratic nominee or not? That's the biggest debate.
• 1:08:15
  So on the one hand, you tell people who say, hold on a
• 1:08:17
  second, he was elected, he was a Democratic nominee.
• 1:08:19
  People knew that he had issues. They voted for him anyway.
• 1:08:21
  And you have people, on the other hand, saying, well, we
• 1:08:22
  didn't really know. And also to be fair, he's
• 1:08:25
  probably going to lose. Maybe we should swap him out.
• 1:08:27
  Now, if you're in a European system, that's very easy to do.
• 1:08:30
  In the European system, you have a vote of no confidence, you
• 1:08:32
  knock out the leader and then you replace them with a new
• 1:08:35
  leader. That happens all the time in
• 1:08:36
  Europe. United States doesn't exist like
• 1:08:38
  that, except now we have a short window where in theory, it's
• 1:08:41
  possible that before the Democratic convention, that's
• 1:08:43
  going to start in approximately 30 days before the convention,
• 1:08:46
  you could in theory swap somebody out in theory, because
• 1:08:49
  it's never actually been done before, right?
• 1:08:51
  So that's where democracy is very messy because people are
• 1:08:53
  saying, well, hold on a second, Joe Biden, maybe he's not the
• 1:08:56
  strongest candidate, Maybe we should replace him with somebody
• 1:08:58
  else. And you have people saying,
• 1:08:59
  well, we voted for him already and he's the candidate and he is
• 1:09:01
  already popular. This is where you get to some of
• 1:09:03
  those very complicated issues of democracy where instead of
• 1:09:06
  governing for the last three weeks, all we're talking about
• 1:09:09
  today is should Joe run? Should he not run, right?
• 1:09:12
  Obviously, that was one of the big issues.
• 1:09:14
  The only reason that conversation got interrupted
• 1:09:15
  because unfortunately there was an assassination attempt on
• 1:09:18
  former President Donald Trump's life and therefore that got
• 1:09:21
  somewhat derailed the conversation.
• 1:09:22
  But it's still happening. That's the point you.
• 1:09:24
  Think it's going to happen? You think they're going to
• 1:09:25
  replace him in the very end? I don't I I don't think anyone
• 1:09:28
  knows the answer, and I'll tell you why.
• 1:09:29
  Because in the end of the day, certain things are predictable
• 1:09:31
  and certain things are not. This is something we're the only
• 1:09:33
  way they can do it is if Joe Biden agrees.
• 1:09:35
  And I don't know if Joe Biden is going to agree.
• 1:09:36
  It takes a lot to ask someone to step down from the pinnacle of
• 1:09:39
  power. He's the most powerful person in
• 1:09:40
  the world. I want to repeat that to you
• 1:09:42
  again. I want to imagine you're going
• 1:09:43
  to Elon Musk say Elon, you know what, do me a favor.
• 1:09:45
  You know what? Why don't you give away all your
• 1:09:47
  money and someone else should do what you do.
• 1:09:49
  Really. All my plenty of all your money.
• 1:09:51
  Former president doesn't have a lot of power.
• 1:09:53
  He has some influence, but a lot of power, right?
• 1:09:55
  We're talking about power. There is no more powerful person
• 1:09:57
  in the world than the president of the United States of America.
• 1:10:00
  Asking that person to voluntarily step away from the
• 1:10:02
  ability to do that for the four years is a tremendous ask.
• 1:10:05
  I don't know if he's going to agree to that.
• 1:10:07
  And therefore, I think it's an unresolved question.
• 1:10:09
  It could get resolved over the next few days by the time this
• 1:10:11
  podcast gets published. But it is a very messy and
• 1:10:14
  complicated question that we don't know the answer to.
• 1:10:16
  And the reason is the only person who's going to decide
• 1:10:18
  that is Joe Biden. People make the argument to him,
• 1:10:19
  but there is no mechanism to force Joe Biden out of this
• 1:10:23
  current election cycle like you have in Europe, where you can
• 1:10:26
  just say OK, but no confidence and the guy's gone.
• 1:10:28
  Now hypothetically, if he does step down, which I agree with
• 1:10:30
  you is a huge ask, he's almost got nothing to lose.
• 1:10:33
  Like what if he loses already, he loses, but to just give it up
• 1:10:37
  he's for sure losing. So it's really difficult.
• 1:10:38
  To ask. That's why it's so.
• 1:10:39
  Tough. So imagine that he does step
• 1:10:41
  down and he gets enough pressure and he wants to do the right
• 1:10:43
  thing. He wants to retain his legacy.
• 1:10:44
  He wants to stay in the good standing.
• 1:10:46
  His want to be remembered as the guy who didn't step down and
• 1:10:49
  messed it up for the Democratic Party.
• 1:10:50
  He has that risk that he wants to retain his legacy, but let's
• 1:10:54
  see that step down. What happens at the actual
• 1:10:56
  convention, DNC convention. There's like a a run off and
• 1:10:59
  like like American Idol now and like, let's let's let's vote
• 1:11:02
  for. This is the problem, and it's
• 1:11:04
  really not so clear. And people don't have the answer
• 1:11:05
  to this question. When someone tells you I want
• 1:11:08
  Joe Biden to step down, you have to ask for the following
• 1:11:10
  question. Otherwise, they're being
• 1:11:11
  dishonest with you, which is OK. Who should replace them?
• 1:11:12
  And nine times out of 10, they don't have an answer, right?
• 1:11:15
  Because naturally what you would think is it should be Vice
• 1:11:18
  President Kamel Harris. There are good reasons for that.
• 1:11:20
  One, she is the vice president, so right, In theory, she was the
• 1:11:22
  number two. The second reason is that as a
• 1:11:24
  matter of law, she's the only one who can take over the 100 +
• 1:11:27
  1,000,000 dollars, right? The money account that is
• 1:11:29
  running as well. But there is no good answer.
• 1:11:31
  And some people are saying, no, we don't like Kamala Harris.
• 1:11:33
  We don't think she's strong enough.
• 1:11:34
  So now it's like, hold on a second.
• 1:11:35
  So maybe you don't really believe in democracy, right?
• 1:11:37
  Because if you believe in democracy, shouldn't you let the
• 1:11:39
  vice president take over? I don't know.
• 1:11:41
  So what you're saying, essentially is that you don't
• 1:11:44
  trust the people who voted in their primaries, and you want to
• 1:11:46
  put in the person that you think is best to win.
• 1:11:48
  Now you see why this gets to be very messy.
• 1:11:50
  And so it's not clear if he steps down, it could be that it
• 1:11:52
  could go to Kamala Harris. And it would be, I think if he
• 1:11:54
  designated her, if he said, I want Kamala Harris to be the
• 1:11:57
  nominee, she would be the nominee because he would have
• 1:11:59
  that kind of influence. Or it could be he would say, you
• 1:12:01
  know what, we're going to have an open primary.
• 1:12:03
  And that's going to be chaos because now you have all the
• 1:12:05
  delegates. All the delegates.
• 1:12:06
  Yeah. But I'm not sure that's better
• 1:12:08
  for the Democratic Party, right, Because there's a chaotic
• 1:12:10
  system. And the election effectively,
• 1:12:12
  people say elections in November.
• 1:12:13
  Election actually starts in September, right?
• 1:12:15
  You have early voting. In a lot of states, ballots are
• 1:12:16
  going out early. So election starts in September
• 1:12:19
  and ends in November, right? I don't know that that's
• 1:12:21
  beneficial to the Democratic Party.
• 1:12:23
  I think that's why it's such a complicated topic, not to
• 1:12:26
  mention that the Republicans, which you saw in this past
• 1:12:28
  convention over the last few days.
• 1:12:30
  Which was awesome by the way. Have consolidated the support of
• 1:12:34
  the Republican Party so look at what's happening in a very
• 1:12:36
  strange time in politics. The Republicans were very
• 1:12:39
  divisive until a few weeks ago. Crazy story, right?
• 1:12:41
  You know, people like Nikki Haley didn't like the president
• 1:12:44
  and others. They all came together, Tucker
• 1:12:46
  Carlson, big critic of Donald Trump, and they all came
• 1:12:48
  together and said, no, we have to unite around our candidate
• 1:12:50
  because we have to win. Meanwhile, the Democrats are
• 1:12:52
  fighting all day. Not good for the Democrats, good
• 1:12:55
  for the republics. Not to be fair.
• 1:12:56
  Something extraordinary happens which brought the Republicans
• 1:12:58
  together, which is made a very unfortunate assassination
• 1:13:01
  attempt. And I say unfortunate, of
• 1:13:02
  course, because it's bad for democracy, right?
• 1:13:04
  Like, you know, the, the, the principle of a democracy is we
• 1:13:07
  have a dispute, we settle at the ballot box, right?
• 1:13:10
  I can yell and scream at the end of day, we have Election Day.
• 1:13:12
  I can't settle in a democracy on a killing pill.
• 1:13:15
  That's insane. And then it would lead to chaos,
• 1:13:17
  right? So it was bad for America.
• 1:13:19
  But because the president survived, which was amazing,
• 1:13:22
  obviously, and certainly to me was a true nice, right?
• 1:13:25
  You know, an act of God that he survived that shooting, right?
• 1:13:27
  He just turned at the last minute and the bullet was by
• 1:13:30
  him. That unified the Republican
• 1:13:32
  Party in a way the Democrats are not.
• 1:13:33
  But that's also adding to the panic of the Democrats were
• 1:13:36
  like, Oh my gosh, what's going to happen right now?
• 1:13:37
  And that's where I think we're in a very uncertain time, which
• 1:13:40
  also I'll leave you with this final point.
• 1:13:42
  I always say politics is the only sports for adults, right?
• 1:13:45
  Golf is fun and pickleball's fun and football's fun.
• 1:13:48
  Politics is amazing. Look how exciting it is, right?
• 1:13:49
  It's always changing. It's something different in the
• 1:13:51
  stakes are real. It's very nice to get a medal,
• 1:13:53
  but it's much more important as to who's actually going to run
• 1:13:55
  the government in the world. And you're sitting in your town.
• 1:13:57
  And that's why, to me, politics is a very exciting business.
• 1:13:59
  For the record, this is the best podcast we've done so far.
• 1:14:02
  You, my friend, we need more time with, I mean, David, I knew
• 1:14:06
  you a little bit than I've seen you here.
• 1:14:07
  I've seen you, you there. But you're awesome.
• 1:14:11
  You're really awesome. You're amazing.
• 1:14:12
  Like, first of all, you speak very well.
• 1:14:15
  You deliver amazingly. Like, you're a storyteller.
• 1:14:18
  Yeah. You know, a lot of politicians
• 1:14:19
  don't speak well, and it's, like, hard to listen to them.
• 1:14:21
  Nancy Pelosi stutters through all of her.
• 1:14:23
  Sometimes you can't put a coherent sentence together.
• 1:14:25
  Yet she she rose to such fame and.
• 1:14:28
  And look at her position. From speech at the convention
• 1:14:32
  was a little bit too long and I think that he lost some of the
• 1:14:35
  momentum going in there and that's because he can't help
• 1:14:39
  himself. He likes to talk and he likes to
• 1:14:41
  go on. It was interesting about Donald
• 1:14:42
  Trump is that, you know, he's his best in short spurts, right,
• 1:14:45
  which is think about what was the best moment.
• 1:14:48
  And obviously it happened due to a crazy situation.
• 1:14:50
  But the best moment of Donald Trump's career was a three
• 1:14:53
  second moment. It was when he stopped and he
• 1:14:55
  turned to the Secret Service and said, I have to say something
• 1:14:58
  and he put up his arm and he said fight, fight, fight.
• 1:15:01
  Donald Trump is best in short spurts in doses.
• 1:15:04
  Exactly. That's right.
• 1:15:05
  But when he does things in a elongated way, he tends to
• 1:15:08
  ramble. That's what you saw at the
• 1:15:09
  convention too much. And I think it lost a little bit
• 1:15:11
  of the momentum. But that being said, he's still
• 1:15:13
  very talented and he's very smart and he obviously knows how
• 1:15:16
  to play the political game better than most people do.
• 1:15:19
  And I think what he has, and this comes to the point in terms
• 1:15:21
  of what you're discussing, and I appreciate the compliment.
• 1:15:24
  I think when it comes down to his authenticity, right, I think
• 1:15:26
  the biggest problem today in politics, and I think not just
• 1:15:29
  in politics, but in life, and this is what comes out to your
• 1:15:30
  rub and it comes out to your wife and it comes down to and
• 1:15:35
  whatever it is, I think the biggest problem is people are
• 1:15:37
  not authentic. People are not telling you what
• 1:15:38
  they think, right? And so I firmly believe if you
• 1:15:42
  believe in something, share that and then I'm happy to debate the
• 1:15:44
  issue with you. It's OK.
• 1:15:45
  We don't have to agree. In fact, I pride myself on the
• 1:15:48
  fact that there are people who disagree with me.
• 1:15:49
  That's how the truth comes out. That's the only way the truth
• 1:15:51
  comes out. What makes you more exciting
• 1:15:53
  when you get up and you hear a rabbi or you hear a speaker
• 1:15:55
  speak about something and you're like, they're giving you the
• 1:15:57
  party line and you're like, I don't know, right?
• 1:15:59
  Like, you know, you get up and you have a rub and a show.
• 1:16:01
  And this is right voice side. I want to talk to you today
• 1:16:03
  about a very important issue. We can't talk during that.
• 1:16:05
  And it was like rolling eyes, like come on, like and everyone
• 1:16:07
  talks during show. We're all in our 30s, forties,
• 1:16:10
  50s. We ask people not to talk, but
• 1:16:12
  he has to say it because there's a rule that says if you're a
• 1:16:15
  rub, you have to help people not talk on show.
• 1:16:16
  That doesn't inspire people, right?
• 1:16:18
  Instead, tell people, you know what, pick a mitzvah, do
• 1:16:21
  something a little bit better this week.
• 1:16:22
  Look out for your neighbor, right?
• 1:16:24
  But even you have us in every environment, right?
• 1:16:26
  I think people appreciate authenticity.
• 1:16:28
  I think actually that's why Trump does well.
• 1:16:31
  It's not that everyone agrees with his issues.
• 1:16:32
  Obviously people don't. It's very controversial issues.
• 1:16:34
  I don't agree with all his issues, but he is authentic and
• 1:16:38
  I think that's a value. The problem with being too
• 1:16:41
  authentic sometimes is that you tend to ramble and just go on
• 1:16:43
  and on and on and no one can control it.
• 1:16:46
  Because he really believes he's the smartest guy in the world
• 1:16:48
  because he has been very successful and he has thought
• 1:16:50
  about slaka and a lot of siasa shmaya.
• 1:16:52
  Talk about mazel, right? This guy has had tremendous luck
• 1:16:54
  on his side, right from business to scandals to legal issues to
• 1:16:59
  most recently cheating death by 1/4 of an inch, which is amazing
• 1:17:02
  hot Slaka and tremendous mazel. But I think I think he tends to
• 1:17:06
  ramble on and he doesn't have anyone in his corner he trusts
• 1:17:08
  to tell him, OK, stop talking Donald.
• 1:17:12
  Now, by the way, I think that's that's also why he's not as
• 1:17:16
  strong as he could be. And the weird way that's where
• 1:17:18
  the Democrats have an opportunity.
• 1:17:19
  They can come in and say, OK, we're going to have a little bit
• 1:17:21
  more focus. The problem is Democrats don't
• 1:17:23
  have that because now you've got Joe Biden who similarly is
• 1:17:26
  rambling and isn't so strong. And that's where people are
• 1:17:28
  like, hold on a second, what if we swapped out Joe Biden for a
• 1:17:32
  superstar Democrat? Well, the problem is a superstar
• 1:17:34
  Democrat is not on your vice presidential list, right?
• 1:17:37
  She's good, but she's not a superstar.
• 1:17:39
  And so I think that's the frustration.
• 1:17:41
  And that's where it's not so clear.
• 1:17:42
  So we're going to go into a backroom and pick who the next
• 1:17:44
  president should be. A lot of people are
• 1:17:46
  uncomfortable by that idea. It's very unconventional, No, no
• 1:17:48
  pun intended, but I think in like 1960s.
• 1:17:51
  Or something like that. In 1960s there was this
• 1:17:54
  situation where they did pick a new nominee at the convention.
• 1:17:57
  Is that right? It wasn't as a result of someone
• 1:18:01
  being forced to step down, which is what you're doing right now.
• 1:18:04
  So what happened? Circumstances were very
• 1:18:07
  different, running out of time. So I don't want to filibuster on
• 1:18:10
  this point. I want to tell you just my
• 1:18:12
  Donald Trump moment that for me, like when I was like, I bought
• 1:18:15
  into our, this guy's quick, he's fast on his feet and he's just
• 1:18:18
  wired differently than everybody else.
• 1:18:21
  One of the first debates that he did, Megyn Kelly, she was one of
• 1:18:26
  the moderators, so she asked him this question, which everybody
• 1:18:29
  was waiting for her to ask is, you know, Donald Trump.
• 1:18:32
  You've called women slobs, fat pigs, disgusting.
• 1:18:36
  Keeps going on. Like, that's not very
• 1:18:39
  presidential. Like, how do you expect the
• 1:18:41
  American people to vote for someone who speaks this way
• 1:18:44
  about women? And like, within a second, he
• 1:18:47
  looks at her and says only Rosie O'Donnell, Only Rosie O'Donnell.
• 1:18:53
  He turned around that question and he made it.
• 1:18:56
  It was, it was comedic. It was funny.
• 1:18:57
  But I think I'll tell you what's interesting, though, actually,
• 1:18:59
  he lost a lot of people though, Sir, right?
• 1:19:00
  I think the personal attacks that Trump engages and loses a
• 1:19:03
  lot of people who are in the middle who say, look, you know,
• 1:19:05
  like it. Should that really be our
• 1:19:06
  representation, right, in the end of the day, right?
• 1:19:09
  If the rub of your Shoal showed up in shorts and a baseball cap
• 1:19:12
  and was smoking a joint, you probably wouldn't want him to be
• 1:19:14
  the person leading and influencing your children,
• 1:19:16
  right? I think that that is one of to
• 1:19:19
  the point that I'm making is I think the the the downside to
• 1:19:21
  Trump and I think the reason why Trump hasn't been as successful
• 1:19:24
  actually as he could be, right? I mean, Trump should actually be
• 1:19:28
  far and away winning with all the polls right now.
• 1:19:31
  And he's beating, but not in a huge margin.
• 1:19:32
  But he's beating is because he can't control himself, right?
• 1:19:35
  You need to have but isn't. That what makes him relatable
• 1:19:37
  though. I understand that, don't you
• 1:19:38
  think? That he got to this point
• 1:19:40
  because of this. Without this, he may not have
• 1:19:43
  gotten this far. I hear your issue, but the
• 1:19:44
  people who do that still have lines, right?
• 1:19:46
  There are lines that shouldn't cross.
• 1:19:47
  And I do think the personal attacks, I really personally
• 1:19:50
  believe this. I think it loses a lot of people
• 1:19:51
  in the middle of like, I'm not really comfortable with someone
• 1:19:54
  engaging in those kinds of personal taxes.
• 1:19:56
  Just give you. I'm giving you the downside.
• 1:19:58
  I give you the downside. But I think the upside with him
• 1:20:00
  during the outweighs his I. Agree.
• 1:20:03
  So I'm saying imagine, though, here's my point.
• 1:20:04
  Imagine if it was Donald Trump and there were limits to Donald
• 1:20:07
  Trump, right? Like I said, think about their
• 1:20:08
  convention speech. Imagine if he would have gotten
• 1:20:10
  off that stage after 30 minutes instead of an hour and 30
• 1:20:12
  minutes. He didn't really add anything in
• 1:20:14
  the last hour that was all about I'm Donald Trump.
• 1:20:15
  I tell you about the way I think.
• 1:20:16
  No one's perfect. No one's ever going to be
• 1:20:18
  perfect. Everything.
• 1:20:19
  And that I'm just saying we're talking.
• 1:20:21
  But as analysts, we look at someone who said, how do they
• 1:20:23
  make them better? Like talk about talk about
• 1:20:25
  basketball. Like how could that guy be a
• 1:20:26
  better basketball player, right? How could it be a better
• 1:20:27
  politician? I could be a better actor,
• 1:20:29
  right? The answer is he would be a
• 1:20:30
  better politician if he had limits and if he trusted people
• 1:20:34
  who said get off the stage. Donald Trump had a whole speech
• 1:20:36
  prepared on teleprompter. He ignored half the
• 1:20:38
  teleprompter, right? And by the way, you want to hear
• 1:20:40
  something ironic, which is really funny and this is
• 1:20:42
  actually interesting, which is Donald Trump is actually best
• 1:20:45
  off of a teleprompter and Joe Biden is best on a teleprompter,
• 1:20:48
  right? They're different skill sets,
• 1:20:49
  right? Well, Joe's on a teleprompter,
• 1:20:50
  he's actually very good. But Donald Trump's on a
• 1:20:52
  teleprompter, he's not good because he prides himself on
• 1:20:54
  being authentic. And therefore he this is
• 1:20:58
  something fascinating to pay attention to his speeches.
• 1:21:00
  Donald Trump gives commentary on his own speeches.
• 1:21:03
  So he'll be like, yeah, we're going to make America great
• 1:21:05
  again. Then he starts talking about
• 1:21:06
  we're going to make America so great that America yeah, it's
• 1:21:08
  going to be really great. You're like, dude, like don't
• 1:21:10
  give commentary on your own speech.
• 1:21:11
  Like you're giving a speech and he's giving you the the parish
• 1:21:14
  on his own speech one. Comedian laughing at his own
• 1:21:17
  joke. Yeah, exactly, exactly.
• 1:21:18
  And I think that's sort of like takes him off of his his lane.
• 1:21:22
  But look, it's definitely the most fascinating election, I
• 1:21:24
  think in our American lifetimes. And I think that generally
• 1:21:27
  politics has become very divisive.
• 1:21:29
  I think part of that is because both parties are really being
• 1:21:32
  run by generally the more extreme elements of the party.
• 1:21:35
  I think that's why you see such clear differences.
• 1:21:37
  It used to be there wasn't a huge difference always between
• 1:21:39
  the Republican and Democratic nominee, right?
• 1:21:41
  They had some smaller differences.
• 1:21:42
  Now you're seeing massive differences in terms there's no
• 1:21:45
  similarities, almost one thing, build a wall, allow immigration.
• 1:21:49
  Like there's a huge differences in opinions, right?
• 1:21:51
  I'm saying there are a lot of big differences and I think
• 1:21:53
  that's what makes this such an interesting election cycle and
• 1:21:57
  also so impactful and also so unpredictable because like
• 1:22:00
  getting back to a previous point, social media means you're
• 1:22:03
  not getting things in very small bites and that's enforcing
• 1:22:06
  people. And like I said, the final point
• 1:22:08
  is keep your eye out for other state actors like Russia, Iran
• 1:22:11
  and China that are trying to manipulate this election.
• 1:22:14
  I know people don't like to believe in conspiracy theories,
• 1:22:15
  but it's not a conspiracy theory.
• 1:22:17
  There have been studies that have been done.
• 1:22:18
  I think it's been well, Doc. Congress has.
• 1:22:20
  Already on board. Actually knowledge, you know, we
• 1:22:24
  actually had a situation recently.
• 1:22:25
  It's amazing. Story very much underreported.
• 1:22:28
  The director of national intelligence for the United
• 1:22:30
  States came out a couple weeks ago and said I'm issuing an
• 1:22:32
  emergency alert. Iran as a country is trying to
• 1:22:35
  influence social media and is actually trying to get
• 1:22:38
  Palestinian sympathizers to protest and to undermine
• 1:22:42
  American democracy. Now people on the left in the
• 1:22:44
  past and saying that's outrageous, She said, hold on a
• 1:22:46
  second. I'm not saying that they're not
• 1:22:47
  legitimately in favor of Palestinians.
• 1:22:49
  I'm saying they were using those people to try to undermine the
• 1:22:52
  American democracy and to take down the system.
• 1:22:54
  Think about how crazy it is. The director of national
• 1:22:56
  Intelligence, which was a role that was created after 911 to
• 1:22:59
  ensure that America would be safe because before 911, there
• 1:23:02
  were so many competing agencies that no one had all the
• 1:23:04
  information. So this is an information
• 1:23:06
  sharing. She's now saying that in the
• 1:23:08
  middle of an election, Iran is trying to undermine an American
• 1:23:10
  democracy. That's crazy, right?
• 1:23:12
  And that's open and happening. We know that China is doing that
• 1:23:14
  through TikTok. We know that Russia is doing
• 1:23:16
  that through their information wars as well.
• 1:23:18
  Very weird place. And so that comes back to the
• 1:23:21
  point of privilege, which is, once again, I keep saying the
• 1:23:23
  final point, but I think this really will be my final point.
• 1:23:25
  And I'll just take last questions, which is this.
• 1:23:28
  Think about how fortunate we are to live in a country that the
• 1:23:31
  whole world wants to manipulate, right?
• 1:23:32
  Wow, there must be something good going on in America, right?
• 1:23:34
  No one ever wakes up and says, man, we really need to
• 1:23:36
  manipulate the elections of Iceland.
• 1:23:40
  Man, if only we could control Iceland, the world.
• 1:23:42
  No one cares about Iceland. I mean, it's a lovely place.
• 1:23:44
  It's all here, man. I've been there, I've been
• 1:23:45
  there. It's nice suggests to visit,
• 1:23:47
  it's really lovely, but America is the place to be.
• 1:23:50
  We're so fortunate we live in America, we can vote, we're
• 1:23:52
  citizens, we're part of the democracy.
• 1:23:54
  And this is my final pitch going back to the original .1 vote
• 1:23:57
  doesn't matter, but the collective vote does matter.
• 1:23:59
  Single thing that you take away from this podcast should be you
• 1:24:02
  must vote in every election. It takes 5 minutes.
• 1:24:04
  It's the most important thing you can do.
• 1:24:06
  Politicians know if you vote, they track who votes, they track
• 1:24:08
  which communities are voting. And then they tried it.
• 1:24:10
  Let's be honest, yes, they pander to those communities.
• 1:24:13
  People know, does the Jewish community vote?
• 1:24:14
  We know that. It's a black community vote, we
• 1:24:16
  know that. Does the gay community vote?
• 1:24:17
  We know that if you're part of this community, you must vote.
• 1:24:20
  If not, you're hurting the community.
• 1:24:21
  Your vote doesn't matter, just like your $1.00 that you give to
• 1:24:24
  Dhaka. And that doesn't matter either.
• 1:24:26
  Doesn't Your $1.00 is not saving someone's life or helping out
• 1:24:29
  Salah, or is really going to pay the bills for someone who needs
• 1:24:31
  the bills. But that's not how it works.
• 1:24:33
  It's your $1.00 and his $1.00 and his $1.00.
• 1:24:35
  Together we have millions of dollars.
• 1:24:36
  That's how we make a difference. Everyone said I'm not going to
• 1:24:38
  give a dollar system would fall down, right?
• 1:24:40
  Together, together we are stronger.
• 1:24:42
  The whole voting, exactly the whole voting is based on the
• 1:24:44
  idea that I vote and you vote and you vote and together we
• 1:24:47
  have power. And that's the most critical
• 1:24:48
  message. I'm just curious.
• 1:24:49
  Selfishly, I want to ask this question, Dave, because maybe
• 1:24:52
  one day I could put this to good use.
• 1:24:54
  Who's the highest level ranked politician that you have a
• 1:24:59
  relationship with that you know that you can call up on your
• 1:25:01
  cell phone and get a favor out of like the the most important
• 1:25:04
  person, like from the president and below?
• 1:25:06
  So it in New York, it's basically all the top level
• 1:25:09
  elect officials, the mayor, the governor of the TUI senators,
• 1:25:11
  like those are folks that I can get on the phone like right now
• 1:25:14
  if I wanted to get on the phone with right.
• 1:25:15
  As far as in DC, there are senior level members of Congress
• 1:25:19
  and I have relationships in the White House.
• 1:25:20
  But I'm being honest. I can't get the president on the
• 1:25:22
  phone. I can get the mayor on the
• 1:25:23
  phone. I get the governor on the phone.
• 1:25:24
  Do you know somebody who has the president on speed?
• 1:25:27
  I'm saying I can get one of the the governor's, sorry, one of
• 1:25:30
  the president's top aides on the phone, but I can't get.
• 1:25:32
  That's good enough. That's basically getting.
• 1:25:34
  Himself. OK, that's good enough.
• 1:25:36
  That's the short answer. The short answer is, in New
• 1:25:37
  York, basically every elected official.
• 1:25:40
  Amazing. We appreciate that we had a lot
• 1:25:41
  of fun with you. Before we finish off, we'd like
• 1:25:43
  to do 2 things at the end of our podcast #1 is the lightning
• 1:25:46
  round. And the second thing after we do
• 1:25:47
  the lightning round is like to ask you to pick someone who you
• 1:25:50
  think would be a great Co host. Like you were so great.
• 1:25:53
  And I have to call them now. We're going to ask you to make
• 1:25:54
  that call in front of those. That's OK.
• 1:25:57
  So she why don't we take away? Yeah, let's go through the five
• 1:25:59
  question random. Cards here just to ask you some
• 1:26:01
  questions and the purpose of this is to ask.
• 1:26:04
  Random cards. OK, yeah, Random got to answer
• 1:26:07
  quickly. Otherwise, you know you get to
• 1:26:09
  pass on one thing. You get to say none of your
• 1:26:11
  business. On you got to say none of your
• 1:26:12
  business on one answer that you don't want to, you don't want to
• 1:26:14
  answer. Otherwise it's got to be right
• 1:26:15
  off top. Let's do it fast.
• 1:26:17
  Question one. If you sold your Business Today,
• 1:26:19
  if you weren't working anymore, what would you be doing for fun?
• 1:26:22
  What would you be doing right now?
• 1:26:23
  I think I would be running a bed and breakfast.
• 1:26:26
  I love the idea of a customer service business where you focus
• 1:26:29
  on excellent quality and people leave and they're very happy and
• 1:26:32
  they had a great experience. OK, if you could have a lunch
• 1:26:35
  with one person in the world, alive or dead, who would that
• 1:26:39
  person be? I would love to have lunch with
• 1:26:41
  Vladimir Putin. I think that after the president
• 1:26:45
  of the United States, he's one of the most powerful people in
• 1:26:47
  the world, is very unpredictable.
• 1:26:49
  It's not really clear what his agenda is.
• 1:26:50
  He's obviously alter the universe by invading Ukraine.
• 1:26:55
  I'd love to really understand what he's thinking.
• 1:26:57
  OK, great. What was the most money you ever
• 1:26:59
  won or lost at a casino? I'm in 100 bucks.
• 1:27:05
  Not a gambler? Not a gambler, about 100 bucks.
• 1:27:08
  Atlantic City, playing blackjack, and that's my limit.
• 1:27:11
  By the way, when I make 100 bucks, I leave.
• 1:27:12
  When I make $100 or lose $100, I leave.
• 1:27:14
  I'm $100 plus minus guy. My Max ever lost in the casino,
• 1:27:18
  $100, was in about 30 seconds. What is your number one vice?
• 1:27:24
  Number one vice. Yeah, like smoking, drinking.
• 1:27:26
  Social media I spend way too much time on Twitter.
• 1:27:29
  I'm a little bit of addicted to the constant flow of news.
• 1:27:33
  I love news that love information you're getting in
• 1:27:35
  real time. And so I have to find times.
• 1:27:37
  And I've consciously tried to tweet a lot less lately because
• 1:27:41
  you can get really sucked into it.
• 1:27:42
  So that like, just like they say for teenagers, it's addictive,
• 1:27:45
  it's also addictive for adults. All right, cool.
• 1:27:47
  What is your proudest moment in your life?
• 1:27:50
  It's. A tough question.
• 1:27:52
  I think the proudest moment of my life is when my first son,
• 1:27:59
  Avram, was born. I was sitting there in the
• 1:28:02
  hospital and I felt like, you know, this is really what life
• 1:28:05
  is all about, right? I think it's very easy to get
• 1:28:07
  lost in, you know, the accomplishments and the power of
• 1:28:10
  the fame and money. But in the end of the day, you
• 1:28:13
  know, that what life is all about is really family and
• 1:28:15
  religion and community. And when your son is born, your
• 1:28:17
  first kid is born, that means like you've accomplished that,
• 1:28:20
  like you've actually got it done.
• 1:28:21
  BERKSHAM I can agree with that. Ayahara.
• 1:28:23
  That was something that was very meaningful to me.
• 1:28:25
  And I still remember that moment, right, Being in the
• 1:28:28
  hospital holding my son. I thought that was a very
• 1:28:31
  powerful moment that hasn't. Been that was a great lighting
• 1:28:33
  round. We appreciate that.
• 1:28:34
  I love that. No questions.
• 1:28:35
  We're none of our business. So it there weren't such tough
• 1:28:38
  questions. No, no.
• 1:28:39
  You got like his. Next time next time we'll pull
• 1:28:41
  out some more difficult cards. Who is that person that you
• 1:28:44
  think would be a great coast for?
• 1:28:45
  Us, you know, I think it's a really fascinating person and
• 1:28:48
  really very smart, very successful, very influential in
• 1:28:51
  the community. There's a prolific real estate
• 1:28:53
  developer. His name is Gary Barnett.
• 1:28:56
  And. Gary.
• 1:28:57
  Is the famous person. Very successful, takes a lot of
• 1:28:59
  risks, but calculated risks. Very smart.
• 1:29:02
  Have a lot of respect for him. I think he could add a lot,
• 1:29:05
  especially from a business perspective, risk taking
• 1:29:07
  perspective. He understands politics as well.
• 1:29:09
  Really dedicated to his family in the community.
• 1:29:12
  We can get Gary on the show. I think that.
• 1:29:13
  Can you try to get him on the Do we?
• 1:29:14
  Call him. Sure.
• 1:29:18
  After the show. David, thank you so much for
• 1:29:20
  being here. We really appreciate it.
• 1:29:21
  It was fun getting to know more of you, but it was even more fun
• 1:29:24
  sitting on the sidelines and watching someone like Ushi
• 1:29:28
  getting to know you and getting. I was blown away.
• 1:29:30
  I was blown away. I really wish we could do
• 1:29:31
  another five hours. I feel like I learned so much.
• 1:29:34
  From it, I'll be back. I'm at the Sham.
• 1:29:35
  We're looking forward to it. I will say this is a great
• 1:29:37
  podcast. Love what you guys are doing and
• 1:29:38
  I just love that it is so free flowing.
• 1:29:40
  I think a lot of times people are just sort of stuck with one
• 1:29:42
  issue. I think anyone will have looked
• 1:29:44
  at the past hour, we jumped to 20 different issues, right?
• 1:29:46
  You know how to make your life better, how to make the
• 1:29:48
  community better and make your world better, how to be
• 1:29:50
  successful. I think it's great.
• 1:29:52
  I think you guys have a great style.
• 1:29:53
  I think this is really awesome and I'm happy to be one of your
• 1:29:55
  first guest and I hope that once you guys get a million
• 1:29:58
  subscribers, you invite me back in honor of the one millionth
• 1:30:01
  subscriber and then I will be here much.
• 1:30:03
  Absolutely. Thank you very much, David.
• 1:30:04
  Have a great weekend. What an amazing episode that
• 1:30:08
  was. Ushi, I know you're looking at
• 1:30:10
  me. You have what to say, so I'll
• 1:30:11
  let you go first. I got to tell you, this was
• 1:30:13
  wild. And what I took away from this
• 1:30:16
  is I am friends with the wrong Greenfield.
• 1:30:19
  I have to tell you, I almost feel shortchanged.
• 1:30:22
  Michael, you and I were good friends.
• 1:30:24
  We know each other for a while now and I'm hanging out with
• 1:30:27
  you. And there is actually another
• 1:30:30
  version out there that may be slightly better.
• 1:30:34
  I mean, I don't want to get too, too offensive here, but you
• 1:30:37
  know, he's impressive. He has such a tremendous amount
• 1:30:40
  of knowledge about politics and how it all works behind the
• 1:30:44
  scenes. But more than that, he was so
• 1:30:46
  eloquent in his the way he delivered and the way he like.
• 1:30:49
  There was a lot of life lessons to be learned from how he was
• 1:30:53
  positioning things. That is not just exclusive for
• 1:30:55
  politics, but it's things that real Nuggets, real things that
• 1:30:58
  we could learn from in general about life.
• 1:31:00
  I'll give you one perfect example.
• 1:31:01
  You know, we always say that everyone is in sales.
• 1:31:04
  You're always telling someone you're always selling to, to
• 1:31:06
  something right to. Everyone has someone they need
• 1:31:09
  to talk to and communicate with. And we learnt that about him
• 1:31:12
  knocking on doors to do a sale. To be a politician is one of the
• 1:31:18
  most important parts of connecting with your community.
• 1:31:21
  And he showed us how important it is to learn how to
• 1:31:23
  communicate and knock on doors and really, really get to know
• 1:31:26
  people. And we are now understand more
• 1:31:28
  about why it's important, even when you're living in New York
• 1:31:32
  to vote and why each and every vote is important.
• 1:31:35
  So many teachable moments to me. That was two of my highlights.
• 1:31:39
  Yeah, it was definitely a highlight for me as well.
• 1:31:41
  I really appreciated the fact that we board up something where
• 1:31:45
  it was a major accomplishment for him.
• 1:31:48
  And he smiled, he smirked, and he said, OK, that's great, and
• 1:31:51
  let's move on. And I stopped him and I said,
• 1:31:53
  wait a second, what do you mean let's move on?
• 1:31:55
  Like this is a big deal, Why you're not appreciating this a
• 1:31:57
  little bit more? And his response, which was very
• 1:32:00
  genuine and it was don't celebrate your wins too long.
• 1:32:03
  Like it's great. Something was, you know, that
• 1:32:05
  was an accomplishment. But what's next way keep going,
• 1:32:09
  keep growing, keep striving for more and more.
• 1:32:11
  And that is for me, my biggest take away.
• 1:32:13
  My biggest take away from this is somebody like this who has a
• 1:32:17
  lot to celebrate and he's done a lot more than the average person
• 1:32:20
  has, and yet he's still not content with that.
• 1:32:23
  He wants to do more and he wants to keep growing.
• 1:32:25
  I think the genius of it was that he said give yourself and
• 1:32:28
  it's funny, he was vulnerable. He said that he used to give
• 1:32:30
  himself one minute to celebrate. Now he gives himself 24 hours
• 1:32:34
  to. Celebrate.
• 1:32:34
  He allows himself to celebrate. Which is amazing.
• 1:32:36
  I think the highly successful people actually live a lifestyle
• 1:32:39
  like that. We're successful, we're
• 1:32:41
  appreciative. We're thanking God for those
• 1:32:43
  moments and we're moving on to the next thing.
• 1:32:45
  We're not complacent. Right, right.
• 1:32:47
  Look, I think we're all guilty of it to an extent.
• 1:32:49
  You know, we, we appreciate our accolades, we appreciate our
• 1:32:52
  accomplishments and sometimes a little bit too much.
• 1:32:55
  And sometimes we, you know, we, we take a little bit too far.
• 1:32:58
  But not him. I mean, he was, it was, it was
• 1:33:00
  imminent and just the way he was, you know, presenting
• 1:33:02
  himself. And I took that really as a a
• 1:33:05
  lesson. And I think that is how you can
• 1:33:08
  reach greater heights is by really just appreciating what
• 1:33:11
  you've done, but not harping on it.
• 1:33:12
  Don't put too much stock in it. Keep going.
• 1:33:15
  And you did a great job with the Lightning Round.
• 1:33:16
  And I want to tell you, the feedback that you guys are
• 1:33:18
  giving us, all of our listeners, is so imperative to our growth
• 1:33:21
  because we heard feedback. We heard feedback from people
• 1:33:24
  saying the Lightning Round was great, but it was too long, make
• 1:33:26
  it shorter, sweeter, to the point we did that.
• 1:33:28
  We heard feedback, people saying tell us what the teachable
• 1:33:31
  moments are at the end of the show.
• 1:33:32
  We're doing that. So guys like subscribe, follow,
• 1:33:35
  get involved, give us your comments.
• 1:33:37
  Thank you for joining us in such an amazing episode.
• 1:33:39
  Looking forward to what's ahead.