AOC and Zohran Mamdani face sharp criticism at a New York rally, where the host mocks the crowd's diversity and refutes claims that slaves built the White House. The debate intensifies over Mamdani's mayoral bid and his $600 million annual free bus proposal, which the host argues will destroy the city despite a 32% ridership spike during a pilot. Citing MTA data linking fare-free pilots to increased assaults on drivers and contrasting this with Curtis Sliwa's dismissal of the plan as a gimmick, the host concludes that such socialist policies ignore financial realities and federal cuts, predicting inevitable failure for Mamdani's vision. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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House Belongs to Freemen00:03:33
So ALC and Mamdani had a rally this weekend.
And look at all this diversity.
That is a nightmare.
David got three guys wearing turbans.
No matter what he's doing, that house doesn't belong to him, New York.
It belongs to us.
It belongs to the people of this country.
And I want us all to remember and to know that the future...
Our future is not determined by a despot in a house built by enslaved people.
Oh, Jesus.
We're still talking about slavery.
I hate to take the Lord's name in vain, but man, he's a despot.
He's a duly elected president.
He won in a fur election by landslide.
He's not a tyrant.
He's not a despot.
And now you're talking about how slaves built the White House?
They probably did, but hell, that happened a long time ago.
Need to get over it.
What you going to do?
Turn it out in the White House and have a bunch of white people build it?
It's just stupid.
Our future will be determined not in a house built by slaves, but in a city built by freemen.
In a city built by unionists and immigrants and suffragists.
Legal immigrants, you should say that.
Hey, D A. Seamstress paid the price by blood.
Hey, Kevin, you see these three guys wearing turbans?
I don't think they even understand what she's saying.
Look at there.
There's no reaction.
It's almost like they're like suicide bombers.
This city was built by the Irish escaping famine, Italians fleeing fascism, Jews escaping Holocaust, black Americans fleeing slavery and Jim Crow.
Latinos seeking a better life.
Native people standing for themselves.
Asian Americans coming together in Queens.
Look at that.
Brooklyn in the Bronx in Manhattan.
It's Staten Island in this country in a vision.
Man, y'all could use some more white people back here.
I mean, the country is 70% white.
I don't think New York City is, though.
Well, this is New York City.
Y'all deserve Mamdani, actually.
You know, I'm pulling for him.
Y'all actually deserve him.
No, I'm pulling for him.
Maybe he is what this country needs.
Maybe we need to resort to democratic socialism.
Capitalism is not working.
We poor as hell.
Majority of people living paycheck to paycheck.
I mean, I'm not poor as hell, but a lot of people are.
I mean, let's give this guy a chance.
That's all I'm saying.
And it's New York City.
It'd be a great place to test out his policies.
I mean, it's a great place to test out.
Far and away from us.
Yeah, I'm actually hoping that he gets.
I hope he wins.
I think he is going to win.
I don't think you even have to hope.
He's going to win.
Yeah.
This is the future of the Democrat Party.
And sometimes I think you got to take two steps back before you can take a step forward.
Mamdani needs to win.
Testing Policies in NYC00:08:20
Destroy that city.
Man, it's going to be crazy.
Let's say he does destroy the city, right?
That's great leverage for Republicans.
Exactly.
But what if he builds a great city behind him?
How the hell you going to, ain't nothing's been built with socialist communist parties.
Nothing.
Well, I understand that, but.
No, no, you don't understand it.
Yes, I do.
Nothing.
There's no example of a communist regime or a socialist regime where it's outdid capitalism.
Never, ever.
He's going to destroy.
The city already sucks.
Now he's going to nuke it to build the freest, toughest, and greatest city on earth.
And we will not stop now, New York.
It's already free.
It is no surprise.
This video sucks.
NYC, baby.
NYC.
All right, enough of her.
I'm going to go to Mom Danny.
Look at that stupid look on his face.
Yeah, AOC is still an idiot, but he's an even bigger idiot.
Check out his impossible.
No, he is.
He's a bigger idiot than AOC.
Yeah, I don't believe you.
Yeah, check out his plans for New York City.
For nostalgia's sake, the BX10.
Long before he was running for mayor, Zoran Momdani would run for the BX-10 bus.
I used to ride it to get to high school, coming off the one train at 231st Street, two stops away, and knowing that if I ran fast enough, I could still catch up to her.
Because it was so because it was so slow, which is good for me, bad for the city.
Mamdani says as mayor, he'd make buses free.
Riders could skip the lines.
Think about the trash you're going to bring on public transportation in New York if you make buses free.
Yeah.
All the doors to board quickly and finally get moving.
Without hyperbole, the slowest buses in the country, eight miles an hour.
We could have this interview walking alongside it and still get there before the bus.
We might be able to outrun the bus.
I don't know if I could outrun the bus.
Poor people don't make a lot of money, and then you're taking out what, $290?
$290 for a bus is crazy.
Some think it's crazy for the city to pick up the fare.
A cost Mamdani estimates between $600 million.
Currently, more than four in 10 bus riders don't even pay their fare, according to the MTA.
Right now, people are hopping the bus, getting in trouble for the bus, getting tickets for the bus.
If the train or the bus suck, I don't pay.
Excuse my fridge.
Unlike on the subway, when you...
Yeah, that's the typical New York City voter.
He's going to win.
You don't got $2.90 for a bus?
Well, they live in New York City.
It's expensive there.
$2.90?
Yeah, well, your rent is $10,000 a month for 100 square feet.
You spend $3.
You work five days a week.
That's $15.
One way.
Who the hell ain't got $15?
You don't have a car.
You don't have car instructions.
Y'all bitching about $15.
But you're dead.
Bunch of deadbeats.
When you pay your fare, you're doing so on the bus.
The act of doing so or not doing so, it impedes and impacts the ability of the bus to actually make buses faster!
The Momdani movement has shifted boring buses into a controversial new lane.
While some critics don't seem to mind the idea of fast buses, nothing is sweet here, y'all.
The idea of free buses is triggering some rage about socialism.
I don't believe in communism.
And that's what's coming to Staten Island.
I didn't hear Staten Islanders protesting when they made the ferry spree back in the 1990s.
Noted socialist Rudy Giuliani.
And who says you don't get something for nothing?
Mayor.
Rudy Giuliani are doing a great service to Staten Island.
Actually, when we made five bus routes free, one of them was on Staten Island.
Mom Danny's referring to a one-year free bus pilot.
You're going to see a free bus route in every single borough.
That he pushed through Albany with help from Mayor Eric Adams back in 2023 before they were rivals.
I think we'll make a major impact.
According to the MTA, Mamdani's free bus experiment boosted ridership 32%, with the lowest income riders taking trips they had previously avoided.
But the free buses did not become fast during the pilot, in part because they did not use backdoor boarding.
If you talk to bus drivers, you'll hear again and again that a significant number of assaults were tied to fair pilots.
We found that we decreased exact change.
He owe me another dollar.
He ain't got it.
So he beat up the bus.
But he keeps saying it's free.
It's not free.
Somebody's paying it.
Somebody's paying.
You're going to pay for it.
They're going to raise your taxes.
It's not free.
They keep saying it's free, but it's not.
Assaults on bus drivers by 38.9%.
Can the city afford this right now with the federal cuts lump?
I think we absolutely can.
Mamdani says he'd bring in $9 billion by raising the state's top corporate tax rate and personal income taxes on New Yorkers making a million dollars a year.
I will not raise income taxes.
But what if Albany won't raise those taxes?
Mamdani says he could find another billion dollars in part with more aggressive collection of unpaid water bills and local taxes to the city.
I think it should be going after poor people.
I'm telling you, if he gets elected, it's going to blow up in their face.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because you can't promise people all these great things to not deliver.
It's going to blow up in his face.
Yeah.
And that's free.
At the one-year mark, the pilot was not renewed.
Mayor Adams suggesting in an interview it was Mamdani's fault.
He came and met with me.
I said the concept is a good concept.
I'll support it.
I'll help.
He didn't move it through.
He couldn't land a plane.
He didn't land the plane like I land the plane.
He didn't do it.
Well, I was thankful for Mayor Adams' support.
Mamdani and the Assembly Speaker deny reports that he botched the renewal of his own pilot by casting a symbolic protest vote on their budget deal last year.
That had no impact on his promises for bus lanes.
The mayor touts numerous bus lane projects that improve street safety and his approval of the new car-free busway on 34th Street.
There is an affordability crisis, but I think what's driving that crisis is not the bus.
The evidence from the pilot, I think it's encouraging, but I don't think it is the runaway slam dunk.
Andrew Cuomo has praised Mamdani's free bus pilot and says he would consider expanding it.
Cuomo wants to get more low-income riders signed up for the city's existing half-price fare program, which is underenrolled by 60%.
Why should New Yorkers subsidize the bus fare for rich people?
Governor Kuang said, why should we be paying the fare for people who are wealthy?
You know, I don't see all that many of Governor Cuomo's donors getting on the bus.
This is the kind of logic that would have prevented us from having public education, wouldn't prevent us from out of public library, sanitation, you know, the fire department.
How about providing service?
I don't see the service there.
Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa called Mamdani's free bus plan a gimmick.
He wants to enforce penalties for fare evasion.
Mamdani says he has no future plans to make subways free, just buses.
Republican Gimmick Critique00:01:09
We take very seriously that this is a promise we have made, and it's our job to uphold.
These buses could be a shining light of public transit in New York City.
And yet, right now, I could likely outrun this bus.
It'll be a major test if he continues to outrun his rivals.
Melissa Russo, News 4, New York.
What is the point he's trying to make?
I can go fast in the bus.
Yeah, you can, of course.
But when you get to work, you're going to be all sweaty and tired.
So, what's the point of making that argument?
It's asinine.
And he's just bold-facedly bold-faced lying to everybody.
It's free.
No, he's going to charge everybody.
That's just part of his sales pitch.
Well, I hope he wins.
Either I want him to win or silver.
Well, I want the Republican to win.
I want the Republican, but if he loses Republican and he wins even better.
Yeah, y'all deserve it.
I'm going to watch that place blow up.
Yeah.
Well, sometimes you got to take a couple steps back before you can take a couple steps forward.
Unfortunately for New York, little like y'all are going to take about 500 steps back.