True Anon Truth Feed - Episode 470: Focus, No Distractions, and Grind
Aired: 2025-06-30
Duration: 01:35:38


=== Introducing Brace Belden (03:53) ===

[00:00:00]  Mayor Eric Adams, I'd like to introduce myself.
[00:00:03]  My name is Brace Belden.
[00:00:05]  Along with my partner, Liz Francak, I help run Forward Together Better Tomorrow, a strategy-style firm.
[00:00:16]  And we have put together some suggestions for you for your next speech.
[00:00:21]  Liz will take it from here.
[00:00:22]  Her voice has been described as more sonorous than mine.
[00:00:25]  And I unfortunately have gotten some feedback, a little bit critical that I do sort of a race accent when I have been doing these lines.
[00:00:33]  So Liz will be reading this.
[00:00:36]  He's making the video.
[00:00:38]  I'm making the city go.
[00:00:40]  He's at the masjid.
[00:00:42]  I'm at the mosque.
[00:00:43]  If he's at the mosque, then I'm with the boss.
[00:00:45]  That's right.
[00:00:46]  That would be God, the Most High, with whom none of this would be possible.
[00:00:50]  I'm running to be your mayor to run this city.
[00:00:53]  He's running to be gayer.
[00:00:55]  We call that DSAE.
[00:00:57]  They use the F word for profanity.
[00:00:59]  We use an F word, faith in his son that died for you and me.
[00:01:04]  But no more sons should be dead.
[00:01:06]  No more.
[00:01:07]  Gun violence has got to stop.
[00:01:09]  My opponent promises a handout.
[00:01:12]  I'm giving you a hand up.
[00:01:14]  When I was young, I couldn't read.
[00:01:16]  Now I'm literate, hitting it, and I'm sticking with it.
[00:01:19]  You elected me to get rid of the rats, invent the garbage can, and make New York City the New York City of New York State.
[00:01:26]  My opponent is a gay Muslim who hates Jews and wants to make your neighborhood into Ridgewood.
[00:01:31]  I've got God.
[00:01:32]  He's got Emrata.
[00:01:34]  I've got Faith.
[00:01:35]  He's got a podcaster who does impressions based on race.
[00:01:39]  He's in the news.
[00:01:40]  i've got the jews welcome to true enough hello Hello, everybody.
[00:02:09]  I'm Liz.
[00:02:10]  My name is Brace.
[00:02:12]  I'm producer Young Chomsky.
[00:02:13]  And like Brace already said, spoiler alert, this is Truan.
[00:02:17]  Welcome.
[00:02:18]  Welcome.
[00:02:18]  Hello.
[00:02:19]  Hello.
[00:02:20]  Brace.
[00:02:20]  Yes.
[00:02:21]  Did you have a nice election day?
[00:02:24]  I can't say that I frankly did.
[00:02:27]  No.
[00:02:27]  Wait, hold up.
[00:02:29]  Stop.
[00:02:29]  Yes.
[00:02:31]  Look, we are recording this from New York City in New York.
[00:02:38]  But lots of our listeners are not coastal elites like ourselves.
[00:02:44]  We need to break it down for them because there was a big election in this very city, the greatest city on the earth.
[00:02:51]  Just totally.
[00:02:53]  The greatest city.
[00:02:54]  I mean, can you imagine if that was the saying?
[00:02:55]  The greatest city on the earth.
[00:02:57]  It kind of is a version of it.
[00:02:58]  It's not really.
[00:02:59]  It's the same, but it's the same meaning.
[00:03:01]  Anyway, there was a big election.
[00:03:02]  We're going to talk about it.
[00:03:03]  Before we get into the details, you've already heard all about it, but it doesn't matter because you're listening to a fucking podcast and that's what we're talking about today.
[00:03:08]  I want to ask Brace a question about this election specifically and his personal time that he personally had with it.
[00:03:16]  So that's what I'm doing right now.
[00:03:17]  That's the context.
[00:03:18]  Brace, how was your election?
[00:03:20]  It was tough.
[00:03:22]  So they assigned me to go canvas the mitzvah tank.
[00:03:30]  For those of you who don't know, that is a large.
[00:03:33]  You don't know what those are?
[00:03:34]  No.
[00:03:34]  You've never seen the mitzvah tank?
[00:03:35]  What is?
[00:03:36]  I've seen it.
[00:03:37]  It's like a giant.
[00:03:38]  Yeah, it's like an RV done by the Chabad people with the Rebbe on the side.
[00:03:45]  Oh, and I don't know.
[00:03:45]  I've talked about it before.
[00:03:46]  I don't think I've ever seen it.
[00:03:48]  I saw one today.
[00:03:49]  It drove by when I was getting my glasses tightened.
[00:03:50]  I don't really hang out in Brooklyn very much.
[00:03:52]  They're all over.

=== Unexpected Voter Surprises (12:26) ===

[00:03:53]  Okay.
[00:03:54]  To be completely honest with you.
[00:03:55]  They kind of, I mean, maybe they just have the light.
[00:03:57]  You want to see it in Manhattan more.
[00:03:58]  Yeah, it gets around.
[00:03:59]  But maybe you just sort of have, you know, sort of publishing.
[00:04:03]  More of an indoor cat.
[00:04:04]  Actually, it's interesting.
[00:04:05]  You'd think you'd be able to spot it easier, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
[00:04:09]  Stacey Liz and they turned the other way.
[00:04:10]  It was hot as hell on election day.
[00:04:14]  Which, can I just say, this is another point I need to make, and I'm just going to keep interrupting Brace.
[00:04:21]  I need to make a call right now.
[00:04:24]  The song of the summer, it is not Addison Ray or Sabrina Carpenter or Tate McRae.
[00:04:37]  I heard there's a new clips record coming out.
[00:04:39]  It's none of that.
[00:04:40]  You know what it is?
[00:04:42]  It is Smooth by Santana featuring Rob Thomas.
[00:04:46]  Is it really?
[00:04:46]  It is.
[00:04:47]  And we need to play it right now because it was a hot one.
[00:04:59]  And if you're feeling too hot out there, you put this on.
[00:05:03]  I'm telling you, I can feel it right now.
[00:05:06]  You're kind of so smooth.
[00:05:08]  My Spanish Harlem, Mona Lisa.
[00:05:09]  Thank you.
[00:05:10]  That's what I'm saying.
[00:05:11]  It's a vibe.
[00:05:12]  I'm calling it right now.
[00:05:13]  It's a vibe.
[00:05:14]  Let me be clear.
[00:05:16]  I'm a 35-year-old man, a veteran of foreign wars.
[00:05:23]  I have been in, it's just, I've been on this earth for, you know, and twice this, I'll be 70.
[00:05:31]  I don't really, I don't believe in wearing shorts as a guy.
[00:05:38]  I'm not going to say I don't do it.
[00:05:40]  It does happen.
[00:05:42]  I own two pairs of shorts.
[00:05:44]  I think you should because you have nice legs.
[00:05:46]  I do have nice legs.
[00:05:49]  What?
[00:05:50]  Nothing.
[00:05:51]  It's just.
[00:05:52]  You want to argue with me?
[00:05:54]  No, it's.
[00:05:55]  I'm not the only woman who has said this.
[00:05:57]  I know.
[00:05:57]  I know I have nice legs.
[00:05:59]  I know I have nice legs.
[00:06:00]  And you're not the only woman that said this.
[00:06:02]  Many women have said this.
[00:06:04]  But I see you over there taking issue with my stance on shorts.
[00:06:10]  You should wear what makes you feel confident.
[00:06:12]  Nope.
[00:06:13]  Okay.
[00:06:14]  John Fetterman.
[00:06:16]  That's apples to orange.
[00:06:18]  Bam.
[00:06:18]  There you go.
[00:06:19]  Immediately crumbles.
[00:06:20]  His big thing is shorts.
[00:06:21]  Does it make him feel confident?
[00:06:22]  I think his big thing is hoodies more so than shorts.
[00:06:25]  Nope.
[00:06:25]  His big thing is shorts.
[00:06:26]  Actually, I think his big thing is Israel.
[00:06:28]  That's true.
[00:06:29]  But his big thing is shorts because he's a cold weather shorts guy.
[00:06:33]  Yeah, I wouldn't wear shorts in cold weather.
[00:06:35]  I think a man of his size probably heats up quicker than I have seen him in more different tops than I have seen him in different bottoms.
[00:06:42]  But that should be.
[00:06:43]  Also, he strikes me as someone who owns like one short.
[00:06:47]  Or maybe he has many, but they're all indistinguishable, like Zuckerberg's.
[00:06:50]  No, I think he's got very few clothes.
[00:06:52]  I could see him having few clothes.
[00:06:54]  I think he's also one pair of John Fetterman shorts also.
[00:06:58]  Keep in mind here takes up a drawer.
[00:07:01]  That could feed a family girl.
[00:07:02]  Exactly.
[00:07:03]  You have to kind of unfold it a few times.
[00:07:05]  They use the whole sweatshop for that thing.
[00:07:07]  You know what I'm saying?
[00:07:08]  But I feel, let me just say this.
[00:07:10]  I'll use eye statements then if it makes you feel better.
[00:07:12]  I feel that when men wear shorts, it makes them look like little boys.
[00:07:17]  And maybe it's because sometimes I feel like a little boy.
[00:07:20]  I think that, yeah.
[00:07:21]  And, you know, but it does.
[00:07:22]  It makes you.
[00:07:24]  I do.
[00:07:24]  I do.
[00:07:25]  I wear them sometimes, and I feel I get in touch with that side of myself, right?
[00:07:30]  But I feel like a little boy when I wear them.
[00:07:32]  And I don't think it is, I don't think there's a lot of dignity that one can.
[00:07:40]  See, I disagree.
[00:07:41]  I think you should lean into your boyishness because as you get older, you're going to miss it.
[00:07:47]  I'm already too old to have it.
[00:07:49]  No, that's the thing about boyishness.
[00:07:51]  You either have it or you don't.
[00:07:53]  Do I have boyishness?
[00:07:54]  Yes.
[00:07:55]  And a bit of a, and like a, it's a puckishness that I, that is, you know, you know.
[00:08:00]  Do you think I suppress my inner child?
[00:08:03]  No, I don't know what you're talking about.
[00:08:04]  But like, there are certain people that are very boyish.
[00:08:07]  Like Matthew Broderick is very boyish.
[00:08:08]  Oh, great.
[00:08:09]  Even as a grown man.
[00:08:11]  He's like an old man.
[00:08:12]  Didn't he die of ketamine?
[00:08:14]  What?
[00:08:15]  Who's Matt?
[00:08:16]  No, you're thinking of Matthew from Friends.
[00:08:20]  Yeah.
[00:08:21]  Who's Matthew Broderick?
[00:08:23]  From Ferris Bueller.
[00:08:24]  Ferris Bueller.
[00:08:25]  Oh, we've had this conversation before.
[00:08:27]  I know.
[00:08:28]  In my head, Matthew Broderick was also in Friends.
[00:08:30]  Okay, this is not a good conversation.
[00:08:32]  But, okay, so on election day, I wore pants.
[00:08:35]  I'm just going to be real with you.
[00:08:36]  I wore a pair of slacks out because I had to talk to people.
[00:08:41]  Not that I was, now I'm nonpartisan.
[00:08:43]  For that day, I decided to do a ride along with some canvassers and handout literature.
[00:08:47]  I don't think I changed anyone's mind.
[00:08:48]  For Curtis Hola.
[00:08:50]  Curtis, I do know him.
[00:08:52]  I do have his number.
[00:08:53]  Did you see that picture of him without the beret?
[00:08:55]  I did.
[00:08:56]  Yeah, the crazy headline.
[00:08:58]  It was so hot that genuinely, I was getting punchy towards like 3 or 4 p.m.
[00:09:07]  I was like, and I was in, I was just, I was sweating my ass off.
[00:09:12]  But I was like, you know, just sort of querying voters on who are you going to vote for?
[00:09:17]  You know, outside of polling place.
[00:09:19]  With a gun.
[00:09:20]  Not with a gun, but implied I had one.
[00:09:22]  I was sort of sticking my hand down my pants.
[00:09:24]  And whatever I'm bringing out of there, you're not going to like, whether it's a gun or my penis.
[00:09:30]  But I was sort of creating an internal airflow in there by jostling.
[00:09:34]  I hope that Bill Ackman is listening because this is great.
[00:09:36]  He needs to know that Mamdani canvassers were approaching voters with their hands down their pants.
[00:09:42]  He should be used to it.
[00:09:43]  That's what I do to his wife.
[00:09:45]  I've hooked up with her.
[00:09:46]  I'm not going to say I've done that to her, but we've like fooled.
[00:09:51]  But I was like, wow, kind of like, it was like old ladies.
[00:09:56]  There was like kind of old, and I'm going to be honest, Jewy-sounding ladies who were like, I'm voting for Mam Dani, blah, blah, blah.
[00:10:02]  Who like were kind of, you know, batting me out of their way, like crabby women who I would sort of expect to go for Cuomo.
[00:10:09]  And that's when I was like, oh, I think he's going to win.
[00:10:12]  So I had been like, Mamdani's going to, he's going to lose the entire time.
[00:10:17]  I was like, he's going to lose.
[00:10:18]  I wasn't really saying this publicly, but anyway, I talked to him.
[00:10:20]  I was like, there's no way he's going to win.
[00:10:22]  There's no way he's going to win.
[00:10:23]  And then like the previous week, so I guess it would be by the time this episode comes out, two weeks ago, I was like, oh, he might win.
[00:10:30]  And, you know, I queried a lot of voters.
[00:10:35]  You live to query.
[00:10:36]  I love to query.
[00:10:36]  You know, I'm always taking surveys.
[00:10:38]  Querying, querying.
[00:10:39]  I am.
[00:10:39]  And I asked a lot of people, you know, in the past few months, you know, who are you going to vote for?
[00:10:44]  And I was sort of surprised at the large range of people who told me they would vote for Mamdani.
[00:10:53]  And so then I went to a party.
[00:10:57]  We had to go to, like, Sarah was speaking at the Bushwick, or like, I don't really know what they were doing, but like the, it was the Bushwick watch party thing.
[00:11:07]  And you don't, my funky ass is not trying to go to Bushwick at a time right now.
[00:11:12]  We're not really in Bushwick, Liz.
[00:11:14]  Okay.
[00:11:14]  We're kind of not.
[00:11:15]  According to like a real realtor, we're not.
[00:11:17]  According to a realtor, we're not.
[00:11:19]  On a map.
[00:11:20]  And when we bought these low-income housing units to evict the residents and put our podcast studio in, it said East Williamsburg where we signed.
[00:11:31]  But we're not there.
[00:11:32]  But we are, people know we're near Punch.
[00:11:34]  I don't give a shit.
[00:11:34]  Yeah.
[00:11:35]  What are you going to do?
[00:11:35]  Kill me here?
[00:11:36]  I'll see you first.
[00:11:38]  He's got his hand in his pants.
[00:11:40]  Yes.
[00:11:40]  Plus, I do have private security just because of the election and stuff like that, because of the Jew stuff.
[00:11:45]  But I feel like it was like, I was a little tense.
[00:11:50]  And then he just fucking won in like an hour and a half.
[00:11:54]  And so I saw once the early voting results got in, I was like, wow, that's a pretty like, okay, like we all kind of thought he would dominate in early, early voting because that was sort of like the, everyone was kind of like saying that, even the Cuomo people who were trying to be like, oh, you know, like the early voting is going to show him with a lead, but we're going to come in on election day results.
[00:12:14]  But it was a lot of early voting.
[00:12:16]  And then once the election results started to come in, that lead stayed kind of consistent.
[00:12:21]  And in fact, only slightly narrowed even as it like filled out with all the results.
[00:12:26]  And so I think a lot of people, myself included, who were even being like, oh, you know, I think Zoran can eat this thing out, thought he would win on the final ballot because it's ranked choice voting here.
[00:12:36]  But he won on the first ballot, which I think surprised a lot of people.
[00:12:43]  And he had people going crazy.
[00:12:45]  Yeah.
[00:12:45]  And so now the name on everybody's lips, Zorhan Mamdani.
[00:12:50]  The new Hitler.
[00:12:52]  In case, again, you're still confused what we're talking about.
[00:12:55]  Surge ahead, shock election that is now a week old by the time this is coming out.
[00:13:00]  Just totally, totally housed Andrew Cuomo.
[00:13:06]  The vampire devil.
[00:13:08]  It was crazy.
[00:13:10]  I said this to you before, but I want to say it again.
[00:13:12]  He looks like an anti-Italian caricature of Frankenstein.
[00:13:16]  I mean, my God.
[00:13:17]  He's crazy.
[00:13:18]  He would have been the oldest mayor ever.
[00:13:22]  That's crazy.
[00:13:23]  How old is Andrew Cuomo?
[00:13:24]  I feel like mayors are old and he's that.
[00:13:26]  He's old.
[00:13:27]  Did he used to be kind of larger?
[00:13:30]  Do I mix him up?
[00:13:31]  He did a little bit of Cuomo.
[00:13:32]  He did.
[00:13:33]  Some of these people are taking the Wegovi, but they don't like, it makes them look worse.
[00:13:39]  Well, because especially when you're old, if you're not really like trying to put on the muscle, you get the droopy dog face.
[00:13:47]  He's a little droopy dog.
[00:13:48]  He's droopy.
[00:13:49]  And I think it's with how slowly he speaks.
[00:13:53]  It makes it seem sort of like you're like, he's like a lich, which is like an ancient skeleton wizard.
[00:13:59]  So this was like a total reversal from basically what everyone thought.
[00:14:04]  All the polls basically up until the day before election day showed Cuomo up by 12.
[00:14:10]  And then when people try to do like ranked choice, whatever, like, you know, play it out, which, by the way, that's basically like kind of impossible to do, like you can't really.
[00:14:20]  It's like ranked choices can be so complicated, especially with a field this big.
[00:14:24]  They like it's really hard.
[00:14:25]  When you see like ranked choice estimates, you can kind of make like a general estimate, but like you're not getting any kind of numbers, you should not take them that seriously.
[00:14:34]  But he was shown consistently and again, also mostly by his own polling, but even by like.
[00:14:39]  So the way that polling works is that, like most of the time, candidates do their own polls in local elections and you either release the results if they're good for you and you try to massage the questions so that you get uh, better responses.
[00:14:52]  You release the results if they're good for you, or you take them and you hide them and you say, because you also pull on your ideas and your ideas will probably be popular because they'll be like, should we make things cheaper?
[00:15:04]  Like what if we did good things instead of bad people?
[00:15:06]  Like i'll vote for that?
[00:15:07]  And so this whole time Cuomo has been like we have these polls showing our head, and then Momdani's campaign has been like our ideas are popular, meaning that they probably pulled both the candidate and the ideas.
[00:15:18]  The ideas were more popular than the candidate because you didn't have a lot of name recognition and I was like that's not a good sign.
[00:15:25]  And so um, it was.
[00:15:28]  Yeah, I mean it was total reversal.
[00:15:30]  I don't know exactly what it stands at now, but like I mean, I think on election night he had an eight percent lead.
[00:15:35]  So he was Zoron, was Momdani, was eight percent above Andrew Cuomo.
[00:15:40]  Uh, where it was supposed to be, Cuomo was 12 above Momdani.
[00:15:43]  So that's like a 20 difference.
[00:15:45]  Yeah, and it wasn't just name recognition that he was against, it was a whole onslaught of a lot of money, a lot of corporations and kind of the entire political establishment.
[00:15:58]  Spencer Ackerman had a really good roundup.
[00:16:00]  He said, against all odds, against Door Dash, against Michael Bloomberg, against Bill Ackman, against Palantir's Alex Carp, against Andrew Cuomo, against the Murdoch media behemoth, against Bill Clinton, against Jim Cliburn, against the entire Democratic Party, Zorhan Mamdani will win the Democratic nomination for mayor.

=== Polycules and Political Contradictions (14:51) ===

[00:16:20]  For three weeks, every time I turned on the local news, every time I turned on a base basketball game, every time I loaded a youtube video, every time I went to my mailbox I saw those forces call him a dangerous Anti-semitic Jihadi and that is not an exaggeration, I think, for people who are not in the in it, that are not living in New York or in the immediate like vicinity.
[00:16:43]  I had people like reach out to me and be like is this really like as insane as it seemed like from the outside?
[00:16:49]  And I was like yes, the NEW YORK POST, the like NEW YORK Meeting Machine and all the money behind all Yes, was going after him like crazy, and it's only going to get worse, which we'll talk about.
[00:17:06]  But now, like, you know, New Yorkers from downtown to uptown are basically all freaking out.
[00:17:14]  I was, I saw some clips.
[00:17:15]  CNBC had some hedge fund managers on who were like, okay, all of our clients and all of the people that we work with are going to bounce to Miami.
[00:17:25]  Larry Summers went and freaked out.
[00:17:28]  He was like, he tweeted something.
[00:17:31]  I am profoundly alarmed about the future of the DNC and the country by yesterday's anointment, anointment, not election, but anointment of a candidate who failed to disavow a globalized Intifada slogan and advocated Trotskyite economic policies.
[00:17:51]  A lot of, that's some good, some good words from him.
[00:17:54]  Also kind of true because I do think that the sort of factions within DSA that Mamdani is close to, I would describe as crypto Trotskyites.
[00:18:02]  Interesting.
[00:18:03]  Catherine Wilde, who I might talk about again, she's the president of this nonprofit, we'll call, we'll call it called the President of the Partnership for New York City.
[00:18:18]  It's literally like a grouping of CEOs.
[00:18:20]  It's the CEO NGO, basically.
[00:18:24]  And it was founded by Rockefeller in 1979.
[00:18:26]  And she came out and she was like, terror is the feeling.
[00:18:31]  Just like absolutely everyone, every kind of person that you think is like a caricature of like the worst type of person is coming out of the woodwork to be like, the fucking Khmer Rouge is at the gates.
[00:18:47]  Mao is coming in.
[00:18:49]  That fucking countryside does surround the city and it's queens and it's coming.
[00:18:54]  It does for us.
[00:18:55]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:18:56]  For us good bankers and we're scared and we're leaving unless somebody fixes this because somebody has to fix this.
[00:19:05]  It's just like absolutely, absolute insanity.
[00:19:08]  Yeah, there's been a, which I'm sure sort of our more online listeners have seen a little bit of.
[00:19:15]  But, you know, Momdani's win was a, was a pretty big and it is a pretty big national story.
[00:19:20]  You know, he's on like CNN and all that kind of shit.
[00:19:23]  It was funny.
[00:19:24]  There was famously, obviously, the New York Times editorial board was like, fuck this guy, don't vote for him.
[00:19:29]  And then did a all-but endorsement endorsement of Cuomo.
[00:19:32]  It was, I would say, clearly a Cuomo endorsement.
[00:19:35]  It's so funny because they were like, guys, we don't do endorsements anymore.
[00:19:41]  They made such a big show of like, we actually, that politics thing, we're not about that anymore.
[00:19:47]  That was then.
[00:19:48]  This is now.
[00:19:49]  We're doing Wordle now.
[00:19:50]  Just do Wordle and we and talk about like, you know, like crazy stuff that parents are doing with their kids.
[00:19:58]  And then Masthead calls certain prominent journalists in to make sure that they're not having sex with other people at work.
[00:20:03]  And not just other people, but other guys.
[00:20:06]  And well, and polystyle.
[00:20:10]  Well, okay.
[00:20:11]  Could you imagine being like the New York Times HR person having to sit down, a star reporter who won't be named and be like, You have to tell me using the polycule because I have to make sure this is.
[00:20:22]  I feel like there's a lot of polycules at the New York Times.
[00:20:25]  Almost certainly.
[00:20:27]  I would say that New York Times, like I don't know, actually.
[00:20:29]  No, I would say almost.
[00:20:31]  Yeah.
[00:20:31]  I would, yes.
[00:20:33]  I think definitely.
[00:20:33]  So polycules are so, what is it about it?
[00:20:37]  But like polycules are so common among like, I don't even know what kind of people.
[00:20:40]  45 plus Brooklyn Heights.
[00:20:43]  I know, but it's like, I think people, including me, have this like vision of a polycule being like, you know, a bisceptum pierced sort of like, you know, person kind of lumbering around.
[00:20:55]  Oh, I just always see Arizona chip bag of that one lady, that one lady with the insurance adjusters in Phoenix.
[00:21:06]  But I think it's weird.
[00:21:08]  Because to me, I'm like, Bushwick polycule, Ridgewood Polycule.
[00:21:12]  That's polycule.
[00:21:13]  But I think we're actually looking in the wrong place.
[00:21:15]  I think the polycules are happening.
[00:21:17]  You got it in Brooklyn Heights.
[00:21:18]  But see, I think what they need to stop calling those polycules and just call it swinging.
[00:21:23]  I'm like, if you're rich, you're a swinger.
[00:21:25]  You're not in a polynomial.
[00:21:25]  We've talked about this.
[00:21:26]  Yeah, but swinging is right-wing-coated.
[00:21:29]  Well, maybe that's something that liberals need to take back.
[00:21:32]  Once all these guys move to Florida, they need to take it back.
[00:21:37]  Liberals need to take this back.
[00:21:40]  We need to reclaim swinging.
[00:21:42]  No.
[00:21:43]  Could you imagine me swinging?
[00:21:45]  Maybe it's not right-wing-coated.
[00:21:46]  Maybe it's really a like rich thing.
[00:21:49]  I think it is.
[00:21:50]  It's rich, but also like culturally, I feel like, because I doubt that certain like New York Times writers would necessarily refer to their situation as a polycule.
[00:22:01]  I think they would.
[00:22:02]  You think so?
[00:22:02]  Yes.
[00:22:03]  Oh, as a polycule versus I'm Polly?
[00:22:06]  Because to me, a person who's like self-referencing a polycule is like those Instagram pages I follow, like decolonizing polyamory and shit like that.
[00:22:14]  You know what I mean?
[00:22:14]  Like Polyamory seems a little too evergreen college.
[00:22:17]  They would call it like our arrangement.
[00:22:20]  The lifestyle.
[00:22:21]  Yeah, or the lifestyle.
[00:22:22]  Yeah.
[00:22:23]  The kind of like abundance lifestyle.
[00:22:26]  I think that Polly Amory has escaped velocity from that type of Instagram and is now like so normy that it would shock you.
[00:22:38]  Is it so?
[00:22:40]  Obviously, Zoran's got like three or four wives because of his religion.
[00:22:43]  Is that Polly?
[00:22:45]  I'll leave that one up to you.
[00:22:48]  Anyways, so the Washington Post put out a, I think, little scene editorial after Mom Dane's win.
[00:22:56]  And I don't know if like really anyone read it, but there's a section I thought was very funny.
[00:23:03]  Now, a man who believes that capitalism is theft is in line to lead the country's biggest city in the world's financial capital.
[00:23:10]  His signature ideas are: quote, city-owned grocery stores, no bus fares, freezing rent on 1 million regulated apartments, and increasing the minimum wage to $30 an hour.
[00:23:19]  No doubt these might strike some voters as tempting ideas, but as with so many proposals from America's far left, the trade-offs would hurt the people they're supposed to help.
[00:23:28]  I got to be honest.
[00:23:30]  I've seen this repeated a lot of places.
[00:23:32]  We've heard this song and dance before.
[00:23:35]  And I'm like, is it really going to hurt the people that are supposed to help to do like a rent freeze on rent-stabilized apartments?
[00:23:40]  First of all, this has already happened.
[00:23:42]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:23:43]  It already happened.
[00:23:43]  DeBlasio already did it.
[00:23:44]  People are being disingenuous about what it means for political reasons.
[00:23:50]  Also, I'm just going to say, anyone who is making a big stink about the whole grocery store idea, chill the fuck out.
[00:23:57]  It's so low stakes.
[00:23:59]  Why do you care?
[00:24:00]  It's a pilot program.
[00:24:01]  It's a pilot program.
[00:24:02]  It's first of all, this is one of those things where people in the media freak out, and I'm going to say, like, Liz Roll, don't worry about it.
[00:24:08]  Don't worry about it.
[00:24:12]  This is not a, don't worry about it.
[00:24:14]  They should just copy like the Mr. You know, like Mr. Pineapple, Mr. Mango, all the good.
[00:24:19]  Those are good.
[00:24:20]  Yes.
[00:24:20]  And then, oh, and they could use the, remember those t-shirts that were like Mr. There were all the characters from the 70s.
[00:24:27]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:24:28]  It was like Mr. Monday, Mr. Tuesday.
[00:24:29]  Do you remember those?
[00:24:30]  Maybe.
[00:24:31]  And Mrs., what were they fucking called?
[00:24:33]  But that could be the theme for the, then everyone would like them.
[00:24:37]  But they should just nationalize the Mr. Fruit Stores, basically.
[00:24:41]  Mr. Lemon, Mr. Plum.
[00:24:44]  You know, the city should just take them over.
[00:24:45]  But they won't do that.
[00:24:46]  And nobody listens to me.
[00:24:48]  But it's just like, it's funny because, you know, it reminds one of, you know, there's a big freak out of de Blasio.
[00:24:55]  Yes.
[00:24:56]  I mean, it was a little bit, you know, it was very different.
[00:24:59]  I think this time is very different considering like basically nobody thought this would happen.
[00:25:03]  But also, if you go back in the archives, like it actually isn't that dissimilar to a bunch of the shit that they said about de Blasio before he was elected, which is so funny considering, you know, how like not insane his administration was.
[00:25:20]  There was like a moment during his debate where de Blasio was accused of being sympathetic to Marxism.
[00:25:27]  There was like a vibe from rich New Yorkers at the time that you can get from, you know, that's in the press.
[00:25:32]  It's like, oh, there's murmurs that the city's richest are spooked by de Blasio's liberal rhetoric, that they're going to turn to the, you know, to the right for protection because they just want to, you know, keep up like Bloomberg's good times.
[00:25:44]  Like that was the kind of idea.
[00:25:46]  So, this idea that like a bunch of rich New Yorkers are now suddenly going to leave the city have heard it a billion times before.
[00:25:55]  Yeah.
[00:25:56]  Yeah.
[00:25:56]  They're like, oh, the tax base will completely leave.
[00:25:59]  You're not going to have anything less.
[00:26:00]  I'm like, first of all, he kind of can't really raise.
[00:26:03]  I mean, there's sort of the usual contradictions of like a self-described socialist running a city in like an advanced capitalist nation.
[00:26:12]  You know what I mean?
[00:26:13]  Where it's like you kind of can't make the city socialist.
[00:26:16]  It's like you can, if you're lucky, kind of enact a moderate social democratic program.
[00:26:22]  But people sort of treat it, you know, obviously, but I'm dying out de Blasio, but like people treat it like it's like, you know, Fidel entering Havana or something.
[00:26:31]  Yeah, I mean, because they don't want their taxes raised.
[00:26:34]  And I think his proposal on raising taxes is like very, is like not insane at all and is totally like in line with increasing like progressive taxation.
[00:26:48]  I do think like what you said, if he is elected, you tend to kind of moderate as you govern because of the political contradictions, like what you're talking about.
[00:26:57]  But even setting that, all that stuff aside, like I do think that, you know, it's funny because half of the time the people in the media are saying, okay, he's going to raise our taxes.
[00:27:09]  It's going to be, I mean, even fucking Trump said something about it on True Social or someone behind Trump's True Social account because I actually don't think Trump authored that tweet or truth.
[00:27:20]  But, you know, calling this like Marxist takeover, Secretary Besant came out today and said something about it, like, oh, they're going to turn New York City into Caracas.
[00:27:36]  They're going to turn it into Caracas?
[00:27:37]  That's what he said.
[00:27:39]  Really?
[00:27:40]  Yes.
[00:27:40]  And that's the fucking, that's the Treasury secret.
[00:27:43]  I'm sorry.
[00:27:43]  The Treasury Secretary, who I dislike, just saying, commented on the 33-year-old Democratic candidate for New York City mayor.
[00:27:53]  It's just like, it's all, and you know what?
[00:27:56]  This is just starting.
[00:27:57]  This election is not until November.
[00:27:59]  He is now the front runner, and everyone is like fucking freaking out.
[00:28:05]  Yeah.
[00:28:08]  I have like for the past few days sort of been soliciting, I guess, people's friends and family's reaction to Zoran's win.
[00:28:19]  In particular, the Jewish people's reaction to it, because I think it was a Jewish person's reaction.
[00:28:26]  It's fair to say that there has been a lot of ink spilled during this primary, but especially sort of reaching a fever pitch in the last couple of months about supposed anti-Semitism from Zorhan Mamdani, his campaign, and a possible reign of terror if he reaches the highest office.
[00:28:49]  He will unleash, you know, his, I don't know what.
[00:28:52]  It's October 7th every day.
[00:28:54]  Yeah, October 7th every day.
[00:28:56]  He will do the equivalent of 10,911s every single day.
[00:29:01]  He's flying straight into Wall Street.
[00:29:04]  I mean, it's just some of the shit that people have sent me, and like dozens of people have sent me stuff from like their friends, like text message, like conversations from their friends and family members.
[00:29:14]  I'm only going to kind of repeat a few here because it's, it's, I think if you've experienced this at all yourself, you'll kind of know what they're all like.
[00:29:22]  But first, I want to read actually an Instagram post from Jewish Resistance.
[00:29:29]  And it's one of those ones with like, you know, some text on a sort of beige background.
[00:29:33]  Oh, New York, you failed us.
[00:29:36]  You failed the Jews.
[00:29:38]  You didn't just elect a person who elevated a message that Jews don't matter, that our safety is negotiable, that anti-Semitism is acceptable as long as it's dressed in activism.
[00:29:49]  We are watching history repeat itself in our very own backyard.
[00:29:52]  In a city, we had a pivotal role in making what it is today.
[00:29:57]  We will not go down quietly.
[00:29:59]  Okay, that was written from Tel Aviv.
[00:30:00]  This is not fucking, I just read that out loud.
[00:30:03]  I was like, wait, you didn't just elect a person who elevated our message, but then it's like, it doesn't accuse them of doing anything else.
[00:30:10]  That's just, this is poorly written.
[00:30:14]  But someone sent me a text from a relative that said, pretty sure Zoron is going to bring in UNRWA to run the Department of Education.
[00:30:23]  Somebody else got a text that said saying in the 1990s, white thugs beat up black kids while screaming, it's Giuliani time, which is also the name of a documentary, which I watched last week.
[00:30:35]  My assumption is that I'm going to start hearing, it's Mom Daddy time next, which is so funny.
[00:30:42]  Mom Daddy time is so good.
[00:30:44]  I'm like, can DSA guy just be like, it's Mom Daddy time?
[00:30:53]  And most amazingly at all, a prominent Orthodox family reserved, like rich family, reserved a helicopter in case they had to flee the city in the like the day after he won the primary.

=== Jewish Community Hysteria (15:15) ===

[00:31:12]  What do they think is going to happen?
[00:31:14]  So this is obviously like something I've wondered because, again, if you're Jewish and you're listening to this grocery store.
[00:31:22]  Your family is, you know, like many people's families are a little, you know, racist, frankly.
[00:31:30]  And ignorant.
[00:31:31]  And yeah, but there's a huge sort of upsurge of pretty open racism Jewish community.
[00:31:40]  I would also just say ignorant of their own standing.
[00:31:42]  Oh, absolutely.
[00:31:43]  Yes.
[00:31:44]  Yes, yes, yes.
[00:31:46]  It's unclear because like, obviously, if someone's like, if Zorhan Mamdani wins the election, that means there's going to be pogroms.
[00:31:55]  Obviously, like, one has to wonder exactly how those are carried out.
[00:31:59]  And so, like, you'd wonder, like, you know, so what do you expect like is going to happen to you?
[00:32:04]  And a lot of these people are sort of scared of like within our lifetime or SJP, you know, students from Columbia or whatever.
[00:32:14]  Again, like, keep in mind that among certain very, I guess, hysterical communities here in New York, there is a genuine belief that the Columbia chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine was in contact with the group Hamas who let them know they were about to do October 7th before they did it.
[00:32:36]  I mean, this isn't a lawsuit.
[00:32:37]  This is like, obviously, it's not true.
[00:32:39]  And like, a moron could just think for two seconds and be like, well, it's, that seems a little unlikely.
[00:32:47]  But there is this genuine belief among a lot of people.
[00:32:50]  And the reality is, is, is a lot of the Jewish community, both in New York and then obviously just in the rest of, not speaking even about Israel, but like, you know, in the U.S. and I think in much of the rest of the rest of the world, there's a hysteria, sort of mass hysteria that has overtaken people since October 7th.
[00:33:16]  We've seen and are going to definitely continue to see, I think, in increasingly sort of crazy ways that manifest itself as pretty open racism.
[00:33:27]  I mean, we've been seeing that just over and over and over and over and over since October 7th.
[00:33:33]  But I think it's going to get really crazy until the election November.
[00:33:38]  And of course, afterwards, too.
[00:33:40]  So, I mean, obviously you see like a lot of memes saying like Zoran did 9-11, that we're getting Sharia law, that he's going to make, you know, New York Tehran.
[00:33:48]  Of course, we've always said that New York City is the Tehran of New York.
[00:33:53]  Sure.
[00:33:53]  You know.
[00:33:54]  The Islamabad, even.
[00:33:56]  It's the Islamabad, but it's also the the Shanghai.
[00:33:59]  It's also the fucking Athens, Athens The Dublin one was my favorite because he was wearing the sweater, the Irish sweater when he said it.
[00:34:08]  Amazing.
[00:34:08]  I hate that.
[00:34:09]  We'll talk about Eric Adams one.
[00:34:10]  Him and Lori Lightfoot put them together.
[00:34:14]  I wish she was his boss in the police department.
[00:34:16]  That is something I'd like to see.
[00:34:17]  I wish Lori Lightfoot was a bad person.
[00:34:18]  That would be a great TV show.
[00:34:20]  Could you imagine Lori Lightfoot being like, Eric, you've gone too far this time?
[00:34:24]  Or there could be little buddy cop.
[00:34:25]  Yeah, that'd be good too.
[00:34:27]  Right along with those two.
[00:34:28]  Her explaining, like her, like, him, him, like, saying something reflexively homophobic and her showing him that love is love.
[00:34:34]  Yeah.
[00:34:34]  Like, you know, same love style.
[00:34:36]  I do think they have a lot to teach each other.
[00:34:38]  I want to see them do like an Abbott and Costello routine, do a little Who's on First or something?
[00:34:43]  Or they could do Master Blaster from Beyond Thunderdome.
[00:34:47]  You know what I'm talking about?
[00:34:48]  The little guys on top of the big guy.
[00:34:50]  Madam testified him.
[00:34:51]  I was just thinking, or when they go undercover, he could put her on his shoulders and they'd get a big trench coat.
[00:34:57]  Yes.
[00:34:57]  And he could hide under there undetected.
[00:35:00]  So one thing I've been seeing a lot in the past couple weeks is this belief that Zorhan Mamdani as mayor and that he actually tried to do this in the assembly is going to shut down all synagogues in New York State.
[00:35:13]  He's going to shut down synagogues.
[00:35:17]  One, one, of course, if one was, I guess, thinking clearly, be like, well, that certainly doesn't sound true and might look into this is like Bolsonaro, WhatsApp level propaganda.
[00:35:31]  This is fucking absurd.
[00:35:34]  I would say like a huge amount of like the, especially the older Jewish community in the U.S. has like QAnon level beliefs about what is happening sort of in the world.
[00:35:45]  I mean, it's just like completely detached from reality, sort of following these like shadow narratives that kind of play out on Instagram stories and everyone's sort of like putting each other via oftentimes front-facing video into this like state of like total fear.
[00:36:00]  And obviously like post-Holocaust Judaism has sort of had to sort of, I don't know what.
[00:36:06]  I mean, it's kind of this Holocaust Judaism, right?
[00:36:08]  Where like there is that is like the central focus of so much of the culture and kind of the religion.
[00:36:16]  And this has kind of kicked it into like the next gear, right?
[00:36:20]  Where there is this like constant state of like paranoia and oftentimes like completely disconnected from reality.
[00:36:27]  I mean, I had people messaging me like their parents were moving from one small town in America to like a gated community where, you know, like people couldn't get in because of fears of anti-Semitism.
[00:36:38]  Now, had people experienced that themselves?
[00:36:42]  Not so much.
[00:36:42]  But I think to get into the like mindset of a lot of people, you know, I think there is just this, I don't know what it is.
[00:36:52]  It's just like this group hysteria where like you see all of this, you know, maybe you're taught your whole life that Israel is like this like unso central tenant to your belief system and to your life.
[00:37:06]  And it's sort of like, it is your Israel, I guess.
[00:37:09]  I don't know.
[00:37:10]  You know, it's like the, it's like the one place that can keep you safe, even though you don't really live there or really go there very often.
[00:37:16]  And it was sort of a fact, a given that everyone supported it to the hilt.
[00:37:21]  And to see, especially a lot of young people, not do that.
[00:37:24]  And in fact, be like, this is an apartheid.
[00:37:26]  They committed genocide.
[00:37:27]  It's a yada, I think that is like basically made a lot of people flip a nut.
[00:37:33]  But it's also like an extreme, I think for a lot of, especially, you know, especially some of the hysteria you see around this election and coming out of New York City, like so much of it is a defense mechanism from having to come to terms with your speaking to these people, their responsibility for standing up for what's happening in Gaza.
[00:37:59]  Yeah.
[00:37:59]  Like, sorry, you have a unique responsibility as a Jewish person to stand up and say no.
[00:38:04]  Yeah.
[00:38:05]  And they are escaping that and pushing back on it.
[00:38:09]  It's a defense mechanism from coming to terms with exactly what you're talking about, which is this like, you know, I was taught this one thing and I've believed this one thing for so long.
[00:38:18]  And yet this thing is happening and I can't deal with it by centering them, you know, themselves and fucking going hysterical.
[00:38:29]  I mean, a classic, classic hysteria.
[00:38:31]  In like total defiance of all available evidence and reality, you know, that somebody, like fucking child could see.
[00:38:41]  And I think that, you know, that removal of oneself from like the reality of the world, the reality of the situation puts you into this like mindset where like you're almost like living in this, there's this like persecuted, I mean, there's this, I guess you're living in this fantasy, right?
[00:39:02]  And this fantasy world where all these things can be true, where all these fantastic, over-the-top, almost like, and oftentimes extremely racist caricatures of people are all completely true.
[00:39:13]  Yes.
[00:39:14]  Hamas fucking texted a sophomore at Columbia and said, dude, we're going to do October 7th tomorrow.
[00:39:22]  If you believe that, I'm sorry, like you're, you're, it's a, I want to say you're stupid because you are stupid, but it's actually not your stupidity that makes you believe that.
[00:39:31]  It is like it's a hysteria that makes you believe that.
[00:39:36]  You know, the thing about the synagogues, I was like, what are these people talking about?
[00:39:40]  And I realized that it's because he co-sponsored, maybe sponsored something called the Not on Our Dime Act, which is like New York City, you know, like charities operating in New York City cannot contravene international law by like supplying settlements in the West Bank that are in defiant, that exist in defiance of international law or help with displacement from people of Gaza in defiance of international law.
[00:40:06]  So it is basically saying something like, your charity cannot contravene international law.
[00:40:13]  Or they lose their tactics every day.
[00:40:14]  Exactly.
[00:40:15]  They're not going to shut down your charity.
[00:40:16]  I don't think they can do that.
[00:40:18]  But you lose your tax exemption.
[00:40:20]  And so people are like, well, they're going to shut down all of these different synagogues.
[00:40:24]  I'm like, wow, that seems like a pretty big fucking indictment on all your synagogues.
[00:40:29]  You know what I'm saying?
[00:40:31]  It's just crazy.
[00:40:32]  I'm like, oh, so your place of worship is for some reason inextricably linked to the ethnic cleansing of a place that's under Israeli military control.
[00:40:44]  Like, that seems like a pretty big problem for your synagogue.
[00:40:47]  I'm not really sure what that has to do with the worship of God.
[00:40:49]  But it's just, people are just.
[00:40:52]  It's sort of, I think maybe some people who were outside of New York City got a taste of how insane, or like the fever pitch that this reached with the interview on Stephen Colbert.
[00:41:03]  Oh, God.
[00:41:03]  Yeah.
[00:41:04]  Where like, it just, I, I actually think that I'm sure that that was like, I think that the answer was great that he gave.
[00:41:11]  And I think that that was, you know, probably, I think it was worked out well.
[00:41:15]  And there was like a very nice little answer there.
[00:41:17]  And I think it probably won him some, you know, skeptical conservative votes or whatever.
[00:41:23]  All well and good.
[00:41:24]  But what's it's crazier to me, just when I saw that, it's so insane that this is being asked on national television of a mayoral candidate for a city.
[00:41:38]  What has, you know, do you believe that Israel has a right to exist?
[00:41:42]  That that is like a question that a mayoral candidate has to ask on national television.
[00:41:48]  Like it just, that this was the conversation about the mayor's race is fucking crazy to me.
[00:41:56]  It's just for an outsider, especially someone who doesn't live in the United States or is like not American and coming into this, it looks absolutely like absurd and shocking.
[00:42:06]  Yeah.
[00:42:07]  I mean, it was it was crazy to ask.
[00:42:10]  I mean, the first debate Fayery famously ended in the moderators asking all the mayoral candidates for New York City, basically, will you visit Israel?
[00:42:19]  Right.
[00:42:19]  I mean, it was phrased as like, what's the first place you're going to visit?
[00:42:22]  And all these people were like, the holy land, Israel, Israel.
[00:42:26]  Why is the mayor visiting places?
[00:42:28]  Then they can say about him later, like, oh, he refuses to visit Israel.
[00:42:31]  I see.
[00:42:31]  Just because everybody else said that he was visiting.
[00:42:32]  Well, every question about Israel is like a, why are you, what, when did you stop beating your wife question?
[00:42:37]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:42:37]  But it was funny because it was like, they all asked him that.
[00:42:40]  And so everyone said Israel.
[00:42:41]  And he's like, I'm going to stay in, Zoran's like, I'm going to stay in New York.
[00:42:44]  And then the follow-up question was, would you visit Israel?
[00:42:47]  And so it was like, oh, so you expected it to be Israel, the first question.
[00:42:51]  Why would the mayor of New York?
[00:42:52]  I mean, and it's funny because every mayor of New York City has visited Israel.
[00:42:56]  Obviously, we have a very large population of, I guess, Israel supporting.
[00:43:02]  Yes.
[00:43:02]  Well, it goes into, he ferries them over.
[00:43:06]  But it is just like, why is the first place the mayor of New York City?
[00:43:10]  Well, we do have.
[00:43:11]  Do you visit Philadelphia?
[00:43:12]  New York City, of course, has a what like friendship program the NYPD does with the IDF.
[00:43:19]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:43:21]  So it actually has an office, NYPD.
[00:43:23]  It has a large program, actually.
[00:43:25]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:43:27]  I got to tell you, though, that's probably the best.
[00:43:29]  No one is checking up on those guys.
[00:43:31]  Those guys are doing nothing out there.
[00:43:35]  You know, it's on the Colbert show or whatever.
[00:43:39]  I do not like that guy.
[00:43:41]  I didn't like the Colbert report.
[00:43:42]  I'm like, I don't like any of these fucking characters.
[00:43:44]  But, you know, Zoran, even in that, was like, you know, he's pretty pro at answering question, but he's like, we're going to increase funding for hate crime prevention by 800%, which I'm like, okay, what does that mean?
[00:43:58]  I mean, it seems like I read his, I later read his like platform on it, and it's like basically like preventative things in schools and mental health stuff or whatever.
[00:44:08]  Mental health for people who hate.
[00:44:10]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:44:10]  Health for hate.
[00:44:12]  That's a great one.
[00:44:14]  Eric Adams, health for hate.
[00:44:15]  He's going to withhold people's insulin unless they sound like a woke pledge or whatever.
[00:44:20]  But, you know, I kind of was like digging into this a little bit.
[00:44:25]  And I was reading some polling.
[00:44:28]  Fuck, I don't think I wrote down who actually did it, but I can find it.
[00:44:32]  No one cares.
[00:44:33]  But it's like one study I read, basically.
[00:44:35]  It was like one of the bigger studies that's come out recently.
[00:44:38]  Said that due to their polling, they believed 290,000 Jewish people had been physically assaulted in a directly anti-Semitic attack after October 7th in the United States.
[00:44:54]  Do you think that's true?
[00:44:57]  I think it was like four or five guys just like every day over and over getting assaulted.
[00:45:01]  So there was some people who it's like, how many times have people been anti-Semitic to you?
[00:45:05]  And like a lot of people were like, no, not, it hasn't happened.
[00:45:09]  And then some people were like, five plus.
[00:45:11]  And I'm like, what are you doing?
[00:45:13]  Where are you?
[00:45:14]  These are like the tort law guys who go after like, you know, when businesses aren't in compliance of the ADA or whatever.
[00:45:23]  It's like those, there's like five guys that go after it.
[00:45:25]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:45:26]  There was 61% of Jews, again, Jews that responded to this survey reported feeling less safe since October 7th.
[00:45:32]  I was like, wow, that's a big leap.
[00:45:34]  But then I actually found out that, okay, so that was polled like, I think in last, maybe earlier this year or last year.
[00:45:42]  But then it also says that like, I looked it up and it's like in the period between in 2020, people were polled whether they felt safer or less safe being a Jewish since 2015.
[00:45:53]  And 53% of Jews said it was less safe to be Jewish then.
[00:45:57]  So I'm like, oh, well, that's not, that seems about in line with national averages.
[00:46:03]  60% of respondents said that all our most criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic, which kind of, so this is kind of where we get to sort of the crux of the matter here.
[00:46:14]  Because I have been looking into some of the hate crime stuff, and there's actually a great article by Mary Cohen and Jewish Currents that just came out called How Support for Palestine Became a Hate Crime.

=== How Support for Palestine Became a Hate Crime (07:22) ===

[00:46:28]  And I think one of the things that makes it really hard to parse with some of this stuff is A, the nature of hate crime charges and enhancements.
[00:46:38]  And B, the really the nature of like a lot of, frankly, like a lot, a lot of Jewish people.
[00:46:47]  I don't know if it's, I mean, again, this study is probably kind of bunko, but like, or I'm assuming it's bunko because they literally say in this in the study they think 290,000 Jews have been physically assaulted for being Jewish since October 7th, which is just extra.
[00:47:02]  I mean, it's just obviously not true.
[00:47:05]  But it's a little difficult to parse whether people are talking about anti-Semitic attacks or they're talking about anti-Zionist things because a lot of this also hate crime charges can be about graffiti as well.
[00:47:19]  And so people will report being victims of being a hate crime if they see like pro-Palestine graffiti.
[00:47:25]  And so it's just a little like the way that this stuff is recorded is a little tough to parse.
[00:47:31]  Again, hate crime laws are already kind of like iffy and a little weird because oftentimes they're enhancements for things that are already a crime, right?
[00:47:40]  So like writing graffiti is a crime.
[00:47:42]  But if I write like kill the blacks or whatever, well, probably, frankly, in that situation, I wouldn't.
[00:47:49]  But if you're going to write that, I guess you're probably using, you know, a different word there.
[00:47:54]  But if you write that, like, that's already a crime.
[00:47:57]  You're already getting busted.
[00:47:59]  Unless you're a cop that writes it.
[00:48:02]  Black's rule.
[00:48:03]  Black's rule.
[00:48:05]  But that was amazing.
[00:48:08]  But, you know, so it sort of is a way to just like make things.
[00:48:15]  It was this hate crime laws were specifically basically designed to like make misdemeanors into possibly felonies, right?
[00:48:22]  Which I'm, you know, not a huge fan of.
[00:48:25]  The article that Mary Cohen wrote is, I think you should read it.
[00:48:29]  It's pretty long.
[00:48:29]  It's fucking nuts.
[00:48:30]  Yeah, it's crazy a piece.
[00:48:32]  It describes how pro-Israel groups manufactured an incident on the NYU campus.
[00:48:37]  Like this is sort of like the, I guess, lead story in the piece.
[00:48:41]  Getting a student charged with a felony hate crime and had it seemingly unprecedented access to the DA's office and were feeding them legal analysis to get the result they wanted.
[00:48:50]  And so this is just like a kind of like sample of one of these kind of hate crimes that have occurred in New York.
[00:48:57]  And by the way, like the end goal isn't just to like put one kid behind bars or send a chill down groups and students' spines, even though that is definitely one of many goals.
[00:49:10]  It's also to like create a media event that can then be like echoed across like all different channels and help like further this claim of everyone feeling unsafe in the city.
[00:49:25]  Yeah.
[00:49:25]  And like, you know, it's, it's, I mean, it's not like there's not people who like go beat up Jewish people or whatever.
[00:49:33]  Like it happens, you know, there are oftentimes violent incidents in Hasidic communities.
[00:49:40]  They, I mean, frankly, I've had some friends get the shit beat out of them by the Shamrim for writing graffiti and shamrim, the Jewish police that there are in New York, which of course, that's what Zoron's talking about when he said, I'd abolish the fund the police.
[00:49:54]  But like, you know, there, there are, there's like, it's often, like, to be real, it's usually like black people and Jewish people who share these neighborhoods.
[00:50:04]  Oftentimes, I mean, a lot of these fucking Hasidic Jews are really poor, but like, oftentimes it's like fucking people's landlords and shit, like fight each other.
[00:50:12]  I don't know how to describe it.
[00:50:13]  Is that when people hear these like media, like produce like media reproduce like statistics or whatever, that that is what they're thinking of at all?
[00:50:22]  Yeah.
[00:50:22]  They're thinking of kids at Jewish kids at Columbia, like, or just like walking down the street on the Upper West Side, just getting like fucking sucker punched for like wearing a yamka or whatever.
[00:50:34]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:50:35]  I mean, it's, it's, it's, and it's just kind of crazy.
[00:50:38]  And like, I'm not trying to like downplay whatever happens in like Crown Heights or whatever, but like, it's like not really a new phenomenon here, you know?
[00:50:46]  Like there is straight up racial tension in Crown Heights often.
[00:50:51]  I don't know what to tell you.
[00:50:52]  It's just the fact.
[00:50:54]  And like, you know, there'll be, there'll be, there was something that happened the other day.
[00:50:58]  Like some dude, you know, I don't know what, like got in a fight with some people or whatever.
[00:51:03]  And it's like painted as like an anti-Semitic attack.
[00:51:05]  I'm like, was it?
[00:51:06]  I'm like, I don't know what maybe these people just fought, you know?
[00:51:09]  You have no fucking idea.
[00:51:11]  But, and I was trying to like look into like, cause they're like saying, oh, anti-Jewish hate crimes have gone up by like this huge percentage in New York.
[00:51:19]  And it's honestly, I'm sure that it can be done.
[00:51:22]  But I was really trying to parse through the data to be like, wow, like what is happening here?
[00:51:26]  And there definitely are a few identifiable events.
[00:51:29]  But then there's also all these other events where it's like, is that a hate crime?
[00:51:32]  Or like, did you just like get beat up and you're Jewish?
[00:51:37]  You know what I mean?
[00:51:38]  Like, I don't really know.
[00:51:39]  And like, there is this sort of like sense of hysteria that a lot of people have that I think is feeding off.
[00:51:44]  You know, it's just, it's a little tricky, but the Merrick Cohen article shows really consistently how crimes that would have had hate crime enhancements added, like a crime that, you know, under the sort of hate crimes mindset probably would have been a hate crime, were not charged as hate crimes, but often allowed to expire, as in the case of a realtor slash rabbi slash relative of Meyer Khan.
[00:52:12]  And not to, I mean, I'm sorry, that sounds really anti-Semitic when I said that, but he is a rabbi, realtor, slash relative of the famous Jewish Nazi Meyer Khan, purposely running into Palestinian protesters with this car.
[00:52:27]  And, you know, there was another one that Mary Cohen shows in the article of a felony that got downgraded to a misdemeanor with no hate crime enhancement in the case of a banker hitting a woman wearing a kefia.
[00:52:39]  Again, like these are not, those are her examples.
[00:52:42]  You know, I'm just saying those are, those are in there.
[00:52:45]  I don't know.
[00:52:46]  It's just, it's, it's, but it feels like obviously Zoran sort of has to kind of take this stuff, and I'm sure he believes it in some extent, like, as like a major focus.
[00:52:58]  But I think there really is like, unfortunately, I don't know any way around that, but there is this hysteria that that kind of plays into that like Jewish New Yorkers are under attack, that we're being assaulted.
[00:53:09]  And I just want to fucking reality check on people.
[00:53:11]  It's like people that are actually being assaulted are probably the people that like, you know, your tax exempt charity organizations are helping give money to that are burning people out of their homes in the West Bank or bombing their homes and their children into rubble in Gaza.
[00:53:29]  Like it's to, it is absurd.
[00:53:31]  It is frankly absurd to think that like your life is in danger as a Jewish New Yorker walking down the street when actually this is probably the best place, best time to be Jewish in a, in human history in New York City in 2025.

=== Reality Check On Hysteria (02:44) ===

[00:53:50]  In all of the history of Judaism, we've never had it better.
[00:53:54]  It's fucking crazy to read this stuff.
[00:53:58]  Again, my views represent only myself.
[00:54:02]  But let's talk about the mayoral election.
[00:54:05]  Here's the thing, guys.
[00:54:07]  Liz is a felon and can't vote.
[00:54:09]  We do a little bit of election coverage here at Tranon.
[00:54:14]  And we're proud to announce that we will be covering the November mayoral election in New York City.
[00:54:23]  This is our first episode covering that, which means that we're going to need a new little jingle.
[00:54:30]  A new little election jingle, which perhaps we could play right now.
[00:54:34]  My name is Mamdani.
[00:54:37]  New City is the Athens of Americans.
[00:54:39]  I am black.
[00:54:41]  I am gay, gay, gay, the south grass of America.
[00:54:48]  I am black.
[00:54:50]  I am gay.
[00:54:51]  I am safe.
[00:54:54]  I feel like this will be, and people are like, oh, believe me, we're going to make it palatable to audiences all over the world because we truly do have an international audience.
[00:55:05]  I literally don't listen to anything that anyone says, so don't care.
[00:55:08]  Yeah, no, but I'm just saying, if you know, if you're one of our Kuwaiti listeners or our one Kuwaiti listener, shout out to you.
[00:55:15]  Shout out to Kuwait.
[00:55:17]  Shout out to you.
[00:55:19]  I hope you guys are.
[00:55:19]  You're listening to Smoothie.
[00:55:20]  I do have this.
[00:55:21]  It's definitely hot over here.
[00:55:22]  Actually, shout out to the dude in Kuwait who does listen to the show because, frankly, and this is maybe weird, but once I was helping out, like we were sending some merch, and I was like, damn, we're sending this to Kuwait.
[00:55:34]  Respect.
[00:55:36]  Why are you listening to podcasts there, man?
[00:55:38]  Shouldn't you be trying to, isn't it really?
[00:55:40]  I think they're very, it's a very large country because of fast food.
[00:55:45]  Interesting.
[00:55:45]  Yeah.
[00:55:46]  We did that.
[00:55:47]  No, we did do that.
[00:55:48]  I know.
[00:55:48]  We did do that.
[00:55:49]  We did.
[00:55:50]  We added to fast food in Kuwait, according to like a 10-minute vice documentary.
[00:55:53]  All right, let's talk about the New York mayoral election.
[00:55:56]  So we're going to lay out the candidates here as they are now.
[00:55:59]  This is Friday, 3.54 on Friday, June 27th.
[00:56:03]  This could change over the weekend.
[00:56:05]  We'll talk about that.
[00:56:06]  We'll talk about that.
[00:56:07]  But this is the candidates as they stand now.
[00:56:10]  First, and possibly the one we'll be closest to in this election, Curtis Sliwa.
[00:56:19]  Curtis Sleewa is from Canarse.
[00:56:22]  He started the Guardian Angels in 1979.
[00:56:26]  And we will be doing, I believe, a Guardian Angels episode.
[00:56:29]  Which, boy.
[00:56:30]  So the Guardian Angels are...
[00:56:31]  Liz is excited for that one.
[00:56:32]  I know.
[00:56:33]  I know, but they're so incredible.

=== Guardian Angels Episode (03:38) ===

[00:56:35]  It's all, they are like sort of a, I don't know what you'd say.
[00:56:38]  It's like, do you remember when there was all those people who were sort of, there was like a, like a kind of Reddit style immediate phenomenon of like guys dressing as superheroes in like Seattle or Portland or something like that?
[00:56:47]  No.
[00:56:48]  It's like 15 years ago.
[00:56:49]  I just remember being like, wouldn't someone just shoot you?
[00:56:52]  Like, you don't actually have a super.
[00:56:53]  I feel like everyone needs to stop putting on costumes.
[00:56:56]  Interesting.
[00:56:57]  You think that people just wear a mask and they don't show who they really are?
[00:57:00]  No, I'm just tired of everyone looking silly.
[00:57:04]  And yet what I say, okay, well, the shorts are different, though.
[00:57:08]  Shorts are different.
[00:57:09]  Shorts are just normal clothes.
[00:57:11]  I'm talking about dressing up as something.
[00:57:13]  Shorts pants.
[00:57:14]  So they wear red berets.
[00:57:16]  They are often wear too tight of t-shirts over prodigious beles.
[00:57:24]  They apparently used to ride like the subway and prevent like the warriors and the other gangsters and the warriors, like the guys on the roller skates from like robbing old ladies.
[00:57:33]  A lot of their more famous incidents have, let's say, some issues with credibly being, quote, real.
[00:57:42]  They also were deployed in San Francisco for a second.
[00:57:45]  I don't know if you ever saw them on Mission Street.
[00:57:47]  Yes, there was like actually, there was like a huge gang.
[00:57:50]  Do you remember there was like a big gang fight?
[00:57:52]  Someone got killed.
[00:57:54]  And the Guardian Angels were there.
[00:57:56]  And there was like, it was like, I actually really remember this.
[00:58:02]  It was, I was actually pretty crazy.
[00:58:04]  And then someone got shot at the funeral or something.
[00:58:06]  It was like a whole, there was like a whole fucking gang war.
[00:58:09]  Do you remember when the fucking dude got killed at Thieves on 24th Street?
[00:58:12]  They're like the biker dude.
[00:58:14]  And then they blew up his house in Daily City with an RPG.
[00:58:17]  Yeah.
[00:58:17]  Like, yeah, I was, that was a wild time.
[00:58:21]  Anyway.
[00:58:22]  Anyways, Guardian Angels, we'll be covering all that.
[00:58:24]  He became a local talk show radio host, possibly shot by a guy.
[00:58:28]  I mean, he was definitely shot by a Gaudi, John Gotti Associate in 1992.
[00:58:33]  The most recent job that he had was a radio show he co-hosted with a guy who just lost his election on Tuesday, Anthony Weiner.
[00:58:43]  No Adam Friedland bump.
[00:58:44]  I know.
[00:58:45]  No Friedland bump.
[00:58:46]  Well, maybe the bump he got was from Friedland.
[00:58:48]  That's true.
[00:58:48]  Interesting.
[00:58:49]  And he lives with 19 cats in a studio apartment with his wife.
[00:58:54]  I think that should be illegal.
[00:58:56]  I asked him about that because I ran into him last year, 4th of July, and I was like, Kurt, bro.
[00:59:03]  And he was on the boardwalk at Coney.
[00:59:05]  I thought you were going to say on drugs.
[00:59:07]  No, he was definitely not on drugs.
[00:59:09]  And I got to tell you, this guy was like, it was like seeing Jagger in fucking 71.
[00:59:17]  The amount of old ladies that were just like all over him.
[00:59:24]  I mean, it was very hot, but let me tell you, some of the moisture that was sort of emanating off of people, like, you know, like a breath in a freezer, was not just from the heat.
[00:59:36]  It was sort of a pussy.
[00:59:38]  Oh, explosion.
[00:59:40]  Exposure.
[00:59:43]  Not on this show, Bryce.
[00:59:44]  No, I would like to see it, but he was just like, he was surrounded by women and also flanked by like four relative, not relatively, just old guys also in Guardian Angels uniforms.
[00:59:55]  And I asked him, I was like, what's up with the cats, man?
[00:59:58]  He's like, I'm like, you have 19?
[00:59:59]  He's like, yeah, because Mark Twain had 20, but I'm no Mark Twain.
[01:00:04]  You know, it seemed like he couldn't get 20 because.
[01:00:07]  You could just have one and say that, though.
[01:00:09]  But I was like, well, no, I was just like, but did Mark Twain live in a studio apartment?

=== Fight and Deliver Party (09:27) ===

[01:00:13]  Like, surely he had a.
[01:00:16]  Surely he didn't.
[01:00:17]  Surely Twain had a bigger place than yours.
[01:00:20]  Yeah, he had a whole fairy boat.
[01:00:22]  But I'm also just like, how have you not gotten a, is it $4 a month?
[01:00:26]  Probably, yes.
[01:00:27]  It really is.
[01:00:27]  Yeah.
[01:00:28]  Yeah.
[01:00:28]  So he is running as a Republican.
[01:00:31]  He has.
[01:00:31]  He ran uncontested for the Republican, which also was on the stage.
[01:00:34]  It's so fucking funny.
[01:00:36]  So, wait, you guys, you don't understand.
[01:00:38]  In New York, as in many blue cities, Costa Elite cities, like the got the Democratic primary is much more contested in kind of the crazy race than the general election because it's always or usually always the Democrat that wins.
[01:00:59]  And so no one really even bothered to run as a Republican because no one gives a shit because it was like seen as a joke.
[01:01:07]  We have literally joke candidate who is now on the ballot as the Republican.
[01:01:11]  And funny enough, this is one of the things that everyone is freaking out about because they want to figure out how to replace him so they can get a real candidate on that ballot line to run against Mamdani.
[01:01:24]  I mean, keep in mind too that like New York had a string, well, not a string, a pair of Republican mayors, you know, Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg, like for a while.
[01:01:35]  It was like a decade, like a decade and a half that these guys were in office.
[01:01:40]  I think Bloomberg was finally had left the Republican Party by the end of the moment.
[01:01:45]  But, you know, it was like a real thing.
[01:01:48]  And this guy is like sort of a, I mean, I'm not going to say he's a joke because I want him to come on the show because I think he's, you know, I think he's, I think he's got a really strong platform and a strong chance to win.
[01:01:58]  This is what the New York Post said.
[01:02:01]  New prominent donors, and I am sure, I think this is Bill Ackman, are gunning to get Republican mayoral nominee Curtis Sliwa a job in the Trump administration in hopes of pushing him out of New York City's mayoral race, sources told me.
[01:02:18]  The aim is to open up the GOP nomination and the nearly 30% of the vote.
[01:02:24]  Yeah.
[01:02:25]  It's so funny.
[01:02:26]  So like it, they are basically trying to push him out any way they can.
[01:02:31]  And he has already come out and I think gave another quote being like, over my dead body.
[01:02:35]  He literally was like, you'll put me in a casket and I'll be out of it.
[01:02:38]  Yeah.
[01:02:38]  And I was like, don't say that because they will.
[01:02:41]  They will kill you, dude.
[01:02:42]  They tried to do it before, Curtis.
[01:02:46]  All right.
[01:02:46]  The next guy we have is Jim Walden, who is running as a technocrat, former prosecutor, and I would say a fucking nobody.
[01:02:58]  Yeah, I don't even.
[01:03:00]  That name is like.
[01:03:01]  Should we, we should follow him around for the election.
[01:03:04]  He was like a mob prosecutor, I guess.
[01:03:07]  Okay.
[01:03:09]  I don't give a fuck.
[01:03:10]  But he's like, hasn't this, he's just a crank candidate.
[01:03:14]  He's not even a crank.
[01:03:15]  No, I know, but you know how on any ballot, there's always just like the random parties.
[01:03:19]  And then it's like someone named Jim Walden.
[01:03:21]  And you're like, well, that's the random weirdo.
[01:03:25]  So again, it is 4.01 p.m. on Friday, June 27th.
[01:03:31]  Today is the last day, although actually the deadline might have already passed, for Andrew Cuomo, the loser of Tuesday's Democratic primary, to get off the ballot.
[01:03:40]  And I believe he is.
[01:03:41]  I think he is staying.
[01:03:42]  I think he is staying.
[01:03:43]  I think he's officially staying.
[01:03:45]  Fucking loser.
[01:03:46]  But Andrew Cuomo is also going to be running in the November election.
[01:03:51]  Even though he just lost.
[01:03:52]  And it lost by like a large amount.
[01:03:55]  So I think they were like kind of anticipating he might lose.
[01:03:58]  They were definitely anticipating he might lose.
[01:03:59]  But they thought he would like lose because of ranked choice vote kind of shit.
[01:04:02]  But he just straight up lost.
[01:04:04]  Yeah.
[01:04:04]  He lost.
[01:04:05]  He's a loser.
[01:04:06]  Nevertheless, he is still registered to run in the general election in November on the fight and deliver ballot line.
[01:04:15]  So the way the New York voting system works is that you can have different ballot lines or parties and you can run on multiple ones, right?
[01:04:24]  Like if he had won in the Democratic primary, he would not only be on the Democratic Party ballot line, but he would also be on the fight and deliver ballot line.
[01:04:33]  So he could get those crucial fight and deliver votes.
[01:04:35]  But those would be added together.
[01:04:37]  Right.
[01:04:37]  So like, it's like you would be voting.
[01:04:39]  It would count as a vote to be able to do that.
[01:04:40]  Can you imagine being like, I'm voting for him on that line?
[01:04:43]  You know, like, I like his policies, but I'm more of a fight and deliver like loyalist than I am a Democrat.
[01:04:48]  So it's actually not the first time he's done that.
[01:04:50]  He founded the Women's Equality Party in 2014.
[01:04:57]  He founded the Women's Equality Party in 2014, which there's also a party here called the Working Families Party, which sounds a lot cooler than it is.
[01:05:06]  And it has very similar initials, which is, I think, why they chose that.
[01:05:10]  He was not actually the face of the Women's Equality Party, even though he funded it.
[01:05:13]  He should have been.
[01:05:14]  No, you know who was?
[01:05:15]  Kathy Hochul, the current governor.
[01:05:18]  And how'd that work out for Cuomo?
[01:05:20]  A little stab in the back there.
[01:05:21]  Stabbed in the back.
[01:05:22]  Women's Equality Party.
[01:05:24]  She is horrible.
[01:05:26]  This sounds so.
[01:05:27]  I have a really hard time saying her last name.
[01:05:29]  I don't like hearing her speak.
[01:05:31]  I don't think I really listened to her.
[01:05:33]  It's troubling.
[01:05:34]  And she has kind of, I would say, a lib version of Mar-a-Lago face.
[01:05:38]  Interesting.
[01:05:39]  I have to look at that.
[01:05:40]  Is it Hochel or Hokul?
[01:05:42]  Hochul.
[01:05:43]  Hochul.
[01:05:43]  Kathy Hochul?
[01:05:44]  Yeah.
[01:05:45]  Kathy Hochl.
[01:05:46]  Oh, yeah.
[01:05:46]  The brunette.
[01:05:48]  Yeah.
[01:05:49]  I see what you're saying.
[01:05:52]  You know, it's like there's a wideness to it.
[01:05:54]  Well, that's the cheek filler.
[01:05:55]  That's what I'm saying.
[01:05:56]  She's had some stuff done that like it was done by an unsteady hand.
[01:06:01]  Yeah.
[01:06:02]  A little stretch happening.
[01:06:04]  I actually just got an urgent, urgent from the WhatsApp group.
[01:06:07]  I'm the anti-Zoran, one of the many anti-Zorhan Mamdani WhatsApp groups I'm in.
[01:06:13]  Actually, a letter to Governor Hokul that it pre-written.
[01:06:16]  It says, we urge you not to endorse Assemblymember Zoran, blah, blah, blah.
[01:06:20]  His record and public statements reveal a deeply concerning agenda that is unfit for the challenges our city faces.
[01:06:24]  He's anti-American, no executive experience.
[01:06:28]  And he's released music praising Hamas-linked terrorists.
[01:06:32]  The music?
[01:06:33]  Yeah, he has released music praising Hamas.
[01:06:35]  Wait, real quick, back to Cuomo.
[01:06:36]  So if I understand this correctly, he founded the Women's Equality Party in 2014, which he then, and then he ran against Zephyr Ticho.
[01:06:47]  Yeah, so he founded the Women's Equality Party to be like, I'm running against a woman.
[01:06:52]  But I love these females.
[01:06:55]  You know what I'm saying?
[01:06:57]  Yes, he did.
[01:06:57]  He did do that.
[01:06:59]  He also, you know, he funded it.
[01:07:02]  They also supported in his run against Cynthia Nixon.
[01:07:06]  And they say, I think this is from a New York Times thing.
[01:07:08]  I didn't put down where I took this from.
[01:07:10]  Yes, Cynthia is a woman.
[01:07:12]  And yes, she represents a lot of our values.
[01:07:14]  But we have a governor who literally created the party.
[01:07:16]  Susan Zimmett, the chairwoman of the WEP, says.
[01:07:20]  Well, hard to weigh those against each other.
[01:07:21]  It is.
[01:07:22]  It's tough to figure out.
[01:07:23]  You guys will be disappointed to find out that the WPEP unfortunately found itself, first of all, basically only endorsing Andrew Cuomo ever, because it was just a front group for him, but also dissolving in the wake of his numerous sexual impropriety and assault accusations.
[01:07:42]  Sorry, I got so excited that I got for glimpsed there.
[01:07:48]  But it obviously dissolved in the wake of the numerous sexual assault allegations against its founding member.
[01:07:54]  So yeah, he's on the fight and deliver ballot line, echoing sort of a common refrain among Democrats.
[01:07:59]  This is sort of from his press release that he put out announcing the party, the fight and deliver party.
[01:08:04]  Over the last few months, as I've been out talking to New Yorkers, one thing has become clear.
[01:08:09]  There is a disillusionment with the Democratic Party by some, a feeling that the party has been hijacked, that it doesn't produce real results, and that it doesn't fight for working people anymore.
[01:08:18]  The proof was in the election in 2024 when right here in New York City, 500,000 Democrats stayed home rather than vote for Kamala Harris.
[01:08:26]  And in 2022, when we had the closest gubernatorial election in nearly 30 years, poll after poll show that the Democratic Party's approval rating is the lowest it's ever been.
[01:08:35]  This is emblematic of a larger problem, one that we as a party will not be able to solve until we are willing to admit Trump didn't win, Democrats lost.
[01:08:43]  So, I mean, that was, that's kind of been his refrain during a lot of the primary.
[01:08:47]  Right.
[01:08:48]  Like, I'm not a Democrat.
[01:08:49]  Yeah.
[01:08:49]  Like, it's funny.
[01:08:51]  I think he stacked himself into such a corner because he's like, I'm not a Democrat.
[01:08:56]  The Democrats lost.
[01:08:57]  Kind of the implication that they went too woke with Kamala or whatever.
[01:09:00]  But I also am going to stand up for Trump to Trump.
[01:09:04]  Like, I'm the only one with like the power to stand up to Trump.
[01:09:07]  Fuck Trump.
[01:09:07]  It's like very anti-Trump, but also I'm not a Democrat.
[01:09:11]  And that puts him in a tough lane right now.
[01:09:13]  Yeah, I think that also people are under probably undercounting the everyone hates Andrew vote, which is like everyone hates Andrew Cuomo and everyone fucking hates Andrew Cuomo.
[01:09:26]  And that also is what makes the next candidate, I think, more formidable than some people think.
[01:09:37]  In New York.

=== Everyone Hates Andrew (03:00) ===

[01:09:41]  Concrete jungle wet dreams are made.
[01:09:45]  Concrete jungle, wet dream, tomato.
[01:09:49]  Eric Adams.
[01:09:50]  Eric motherfucking Adams.
[01:09:53]  He gets up with the boys, goes to bed with the men.
[01:09:57]  He's beloved by many Central Asian grocery store outlet owners, might be the worst mayor of all time in terms of I.
[01:10:10]  So how do I say this without offending our more, let's say, DSA style?
[01:10:17]  I'm going to speak from the heart right now, and some of our listeners might not like it.
[01:10:21]  And I'm not saying this to be a funny.
[01:10:22]  I'm not saying this to be a mean.
[01:10:24]  I'm not saying, I straight up think that Eric Adams is like mentally retarded.
[01:10:30]  Like I'm not like, and I think it's like one of those things where like, have you seen being there?
[01:10:34]  Yes.
[01:10:35]  I think it's kind of like a being.
[01:10:37]  It is.
[01:10:38]  So like being there, he was a cop and then he woke up and now he's the mayor.
[01:10:41]  Yeah.
[01:10:41]  It's just like he can't like, he's like, everyone kind of thinks like, oh, yeah, he's got these Turkish handlers.
[01:10:46]  I think he's just like, like, I don't, like, sometimes it doesn't seem like he knows where he is.
[01:10:51]  Bit of a Dougie Jones.
[01:10:52]  Yeah, yeah, or like that.
[01:10:53]  Or just like, yeah, exactly.
[01:10:55]  Like, just like kind of a guy who's like kind of going around it.
[01:10:58]  But like, I don't think like when Eric Adams sits down, like, do you think he's like, there's a vacancy there in the eyes.
[01:11:04]  He might be tough.
[01:11:05]  Yeah, he might not know where he is, but he always knows where he's at.
[01:11:10]  You know what I'm saying?
[01:11:11]  And that's facts.
[01:11:12]  And that's facts.
[01:11:13]  Like, sometimes he like is just there's like, there's just an emptiness sometimes in the eyes and sort of a slackness of the jaw.
[01:11:21]  That could be the veganism.
[01:11:23]  He's not vegan, dude.
[01:11:25]  That's the other thing.
[01:11:26]  When I found that out, I was like, I don't know if he knows he's not vegan.
[01:11:29]  He's plant-based.
[01:11:30]  Like, I think he's plant-based.
[01:11:32]  He is plant-based.
[01:11:32]  He's plant-based.
[01:11:33]  And shout out.
[01:11:35]  And shout out.
[01:11:36]  Plant-based really fell off.
[01:11:39]  And shout out to his vegan czar.
[01:11:41]  Yeah.
[01:11:42]  Recently written about in the New York Times marrying our goat of the show, Jean McElway, who brutally rebuffed us.
[01:11:51]  Who did a 180 turn?
[01:11:53]  It's a heel turn on me.
[01:11:56]  Before we even saw the wedding profile, we didn't even get to congratulate him.
[01:12:00]  We didn't get an invite.
[01:12:01]  You didn't get an invite.
[01:12:02]  You didn't let us bring you a present.
[01:12:04]  Oh, yeah.
[01:12:05]  For the Blessed Day.
[01:12:06]  Goat skin con.
[01:12:07]  No, wait, no goat skin.
[01:12:09]  What if you're vegan but allergic to latex?
[01:12:11]  I'm sure they've got a, you know, it's really, but anyways.
[01:12:17]  Anyway, let's talk about Eric Adams some more.
[01:12:19]  By the way, we did a very good episode, I will say, on Eric Adams, which we will link in the show notes if you want to learn about him more.
[01:12:26]  But I think that he is a tough opponent because I think that his campaign is basically: I'm funny, crime is down, I love Israel, there's less rats.

=== Overwhelming Support for Adams (15:32) ===

[01:12:41]  That is a really strong slate for New York City.
[01:12:46]  You know, it's funny.
[01:12:48]  One would think like six months ago, seven months ago, like there's no way Eric Adams is going to get a second term.
[01:12:54]  I think one can't discount such an event from occurring.
[01:12:58]  I think that it's a tough, it's an uphill battle given the state of the ballot.
[01:13:05]  And maybe we can get into that as time progresses.
[01:13:08]  I don't, I think it's, it's, it's, I think there's some, you know, it's probably capped.
[01:13:12]  However, it does seem like everyone is kind of piling in on supporting Adams now that Cuomo proved himself to be such a fucking loser.
[01:13:25]  Um, I do want to remind people, in case they haven't listened to our episode, Eric Adams was indicted on federal bribery and fraud charges.
[01:13:33]  Yes.
[01:13:34]  Um, people were like calling for the governor to remove him from office.
[01:13:38]  Correct.
[01:13:39]  Yes.
[01:13:39]  I mean, it was, it was a pretty big deal.
[01:13:42]  He claimed this was lawfare by the Biden administration because he is an independent thinker who tried to defy them on their open borders policies.
[01:13:54]  Yeah, that was a good move.
[01:13:56]  It was a good move because he got the charges dropped by Trump exchange for immigration, like concessions from the Trump, basically to DHS and whatever else.
[01:14:06]  I mean, it wasn't an official deal that was like written because obviously there's, it's like pretty illegal to do that, to like do a quid pro quo dropping charges about something.
[01:14:18]  So a bunch of people, I mean, Trump's defense attorney, acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove, filed the motion to drop the charges.
[01:14:26]  And then a bunch of U.S. attorneys resigned rather than kind of go along with this.
[01:14:33]  So in a letter accompanying her resignation, U.S. Attorney for Southern District of New York, Danielle Sassoon, said, Danielle Sassoon.
[01:14:40]  Danielle Sassoon.
[01:14:42]  Miss Sassoon.
[01:14:44]  That's wild.
[01:14:45]  She says, first, Mr. Bove proposes dismissing the charges against Adams in return for his assistance in enforcing the federal immigration laws, analogizing to the prisoner exchange in which the U.S. freed notorious Russian arms dealer Victor Bout in return for an American prisoner in Russia.
[01:15:06]  It continues.
[01:15:07]  Such an exchange with Adams violates common sense beliefs.
[01:15:10]  Yes.
[01:15:11]  She implies also that Adams himself might have proposed the deal.
[01:15:15]  I fucking bet he did.
[01:15:16]  I fucking bet he did.
[01:15:18]  And there is like real questions now whether Trump was actually going to endorse Eric Adams, which I think that he will.
[01:15:25]  I think Eric Adams also went to the.
[01:15:27]  Did he go to the inauguration or did he just meet with Trump?
[01:15:29]  He went to the, he went to the White House, but then Trump said something funny about it afterwards where he's like oh yeah, he came in, he said hello, like I don't think they met yeah um, and he made it seem like he just came in for a photo op.
[01:15:41]  And then Trump made some fucking comment that was like I bet he did want a photo op.
[01:15:46]  Tough times for him now or something like that.
[01:15:51]  Um, but it's funny because now Adams finds himself with overwhelming support.
[01:15:56]  You have to understand that, going into this, the fact that Eric Adams was even running again on the oh, he's on the, she's so okay.
[01:16:05]  So yes, Eric Adams is not running.
[01:16:07]  Eric Adams, obviously he did not participate in the Democratic primary because he knew he wasn't gonna win.
[01:16:13]  Yes, and so he is running on two different ballot lines.
[01:16:16]  He is running on the end anti-semitism ballot line one word and the safe and affordable also technically one word ballot line.
[01:16:30]  Can you imagine he's trying to come out at both sides.
[01:16:33]  We might have a mayor from the end anti-semitism.
[01:16:36]  We might have a mayor finally.
[01:16:38]  We might have a finally I people are like, oh, it's representation.
[01:16:45]  We might have a guy with mosaic down syndrome who is the mayor, the first time someone from the END Anti-semitism Party has ever reached the highest office.
[01:16:56]  I think it'd be better though, if it were, end anti-semitism now.
[01:16:59]  Yeah, because it's like when end anti-semitism I mean that's a very vague sense it's like whenever you're Jewish.
[01:17:04]  In that sense no, yeah.
[01:17:06]  So he was not expecting what's very funny, because I don't think that he was expecting to have basically any support was he was lip-syncing for his life, if you know what i'm saying yeah, and now he suddenly finds himself with overwhelming support.
[01:17:24]  So this is from some of our.
[01:17:26]  Some of governor Andrew Cuomo's biggest backers hinted in fluid panic conversations that they'll put their money behind Adams, who was elected in 2021 as a tough but fair ex-cop and now, after a federal corruption indictment and the removal of his inner circle, is running on his policy successes and frankly, fun personality.
[01:17:46]  I want to talk about that.
[01:17:48]  He does not not have good, he's at 20% approval ratings.
[01:17:53]  It's not great.
[01:17:54]  It's not great.
[01:17:55]  Emerson actually has his unfavorables at 69%.
[01:17:59]  Wow.
[01:18:00]  Which is wild.
[01:18:03]  However, because of the situation where we've got the Reds at the gate, now Adams fundraiser, you know, after speaking to a bunch of Cuomo donors, made it clear they said there's going to be overwhelming support in the business community.
[01:18:19]  That's a dog whistle to rally around Adams.
[01:18:22]  I don't think that was a dog whistle.
[01:18:24]  I think literally it means the business community.
[01:18:27]  Yeah, but it's like all different, it's real estate, it's bankers, it's CEOs.
[01:18:34]  Is that what you meant?
[01:18:35]  Outcasts.
[01:18:37]  It's the Jewish community.
[01:18:39]  Oh, I didn't mean that.
[01:18:40]  Oh, I'm sorry.
[01:18:41]  But there is going to be.
[01:18:43]  He's anti-Semitic now.
[01:18:46]  Also, you.
[01:18:47]  No, you just said that.
[01:18:48]  And I didn't.
[01:18:50]  What are you fucking talking about?
[01:18:52]  You said that.
[01:18:53]  No, you just said that it was a Jewish business community.
[01:18:57]  I didn't say that.
[01:18:58]  A Jewish business?
[01:18:59]  What does that mean?
[01:19:00]  What the f?
[01:19:02]  I said he was facing overwhelming support from the business community, and then you said the Jewish community.
[01:19:07]  You're so annoying.
[01:19:10]  Okay.
[01:19:11]  You know what?
[01:19:12]  I'll let you have this one.
[01:19:14]  We're both wrong.
[01:19:16]  But yeah, I mean, it's just a good idea.
[01:19:18]  I just want people to know this is what I deal with every day.
[01:19:22]  And your beliefs?
[01:19:24]  When I am, when you hear that awkward silence from Liz, just know that it's me recentering myself, like my therapist told me, giving me all these tools to deal with the kind of gaslighting and the kind of onslaught of, we'll say, warfare, her language, not mine, that I deal with daily.
[01:19:45]  Liz encourages me to cut it out.
[01:19:48]  Cut it out.
[01:19:49]  Got to make stage weight.
[01:19:51]  She says I have to cut.
[01:19:52]  It out.
[01:19:53]  Also, she sometimes, Liz told me that people would like the podcast if I weighed less.
[01:20:02]  So I think there's this great scramble where like Bill Ackman, for example, was like, what's going on here?
[01:20:09]  I don't, he wasn't saying it hushed.
[01:20:11]  He said it with his fucking chest.
[01:20:12]  He was like, we got to figure out what's going to happen here.
[01:20:14]  I have an idea.
[01:20:15]  He said it in many tweets, many very long tweets.
[01:20:18]  And that's classic Ackman.
[01:20:20]  And that's classic Ackman.
[01:20:21]  He is like, I think that there's, I can sort of see what they're thinking here is that like, all right, fuck.
[01:20:28]  Because we need somebody that everyone can coalesce around.
[01:20:31]  But if there's a Republican who like, obviously, some amount of Republicans are just going to vote for because he's an R on the ballot.
[01:20:37]  Yes.
[01:20:37]  You've got Eric Adams.
[01:20:39]  Oh, so he's not a Republican.
[01:20:41]  He's a fucking crank.
[01:20:42]  He's like a crank.
[01:20:43]  Exactly.
[01:20:43]  I mean, we've got a crank taking up space on the ballot line, which they, so they can't use the like X that, like, 30% or whatever.
[01:20:52]  He's, he's supposed to, he gets just from people going like, I vote Republican.
[01:20:56]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:20:57]  And not looking.
[01:20:58]  Then you've got Cuomo, who's a fucking loser.
[01:21:03]  Loser.
[01:21:04]  Deadweight.
[01:21:04]  Nobody wants him.
[01:21:08]  Eric Adams is really the only guy left unless they can get someone else on this ballot, which they can't.
[01:21:14]  So, I mean, that's the thing.
[01:21:15]  Eric Adams is sort of their perfect candidate because, but unfortunately, there's these other guys on because he can unite like the moderate Democrats straight out of the people who like Trump, you know, because he sort of has this like friendly relationship with them.
[01:21:29]  And I think a lot of New York Republicans are more prominent New York Republicans are a little more amenable to Adams, a lot more amenable to Adams than they would be to like a whatever other Democratic public official.
[01:21:43]  And you kind of have just whoever he can kind of sweep in with his like giant patronage network of basically corrupt ethnic enclave leaders.
[01:21:53]  And unks.
[01:21:54]  And unks.
[01:21:54]  He does, he does, dude, that fucking, oh, yeah, he's got more, it's more Gramp than Unk at this point.
[01:22:02]  He launched his campaign yesterday under a nuke slogan where it just says Eric, by the way.
[01:22:10]  Yeah, he's just running as Eric, which is.
[01:22:13]  It's Eric.
[01:22:14]  Yeah, that's great.
[01:22:14]  First name, Eric.
[01:22:16]  And everyone calls him Eric Adams.
[01:22:17]  It's not like people call him just Adams or like, he's a first name, last name guy.
[01:22:23]  Eric delivers, never quits.
[01:22:26]  And that's his new slogan.
[01:22:28]  And my God, we need to play a clip from this campaign launch.
[01:22:35]  We utilize the letter F for faith.
[01:22:39]  Our opponents use the letter F for profanity.
[01:22:43]  So we need to stay focused.
[01:22:46]  No distractions and grind.
[01:22:49]  Focus, no distractions and grind.
[01:22:53]  Focus, no distractions and grind.
[01:22:57]  Focus, no distractions, and grind.
[01:23:00]  We're straight ahead.
[01:23:02]  So there were multiple female cronies who had been raided by the federales there to usher various unks to and fro.
[01:23:08]  And I got to tell you, dude, I was looking at one picture, just like a still shot from it.
[01:23:13]  I watched the whole thing.
[01:23:14]  We both watched the whole thing.
[01:23:15]  But there's a, there's like four Chinese guys in the background all on their cell phones at the same time.
[01:23:20]  Not like looking at their cell phones, talking on their cell phones, like a few feet behind Eric Adams when he's speaking.
[01:23:28]  It's an incredible video.
[01:23:29]  It's really amazing.
[01:23:30]  The thing is, is that I feel very torn about this because Eric Adams is legitimately very funny.
[01:23:37]  You can't say he's not.
[01:23:39]  You can't.
[01:23:39]  Except here's the thing.
[01:23:41]  That is a very powerful weapon in an election.
[01:23:44]  People will legitimately vote for the funny guy.
[01:23:48]  That's how Hitler came in.
[01:23:49]  And Trump.
[01:23:50]  And Mussolini.
[01:23:52]  No, but literally, like, how many fucking people voted?
[01:23:54]  They're just like, well, he's funny.
[01:23:56]  He's funny.
[01:23:56]  And I don't want to vote for the communist.
[01:23:59]  Which election was this?
[01:24:00]  I don't know.
[01:24:00]  Kabula.
[01:24:02]  Any of them.
[01:24:02]  But like, also, you could see that the thing about meme Eric Adams, of which, look, we do a little, we dabble a little bit in it ourselves.
[01:24:11]  It's really hard not to because.
[01:24:13]  It's really hard not to.
[01:24:14]  It's right there, and he's genuinely very funny.
[01:24:16]  Genuinely very, like, when he, when the fucking, when Trump did the fucking attacks in Iran, he was at a Persian hookah bar in like somewhere in Queens, just smoking hookah with like another 65-year-old dude.
[01:24:29]  I know, he's really amazing.
[01:24:31]  How do you, nobody, he's, no, I don't think he has to do that.
[01:24:34]  Here's the thing part of me believes that this city, as garbage as it is, deserves him.
[01:24:39]  I think part of me believes the city deserves him because of how garbage it is can be.
[01:24:45]  However, the stakes are different now.
[01:24:48]  The stakes are different.
[01:24:49]  And I think it would behoove everyone to think twice about, you know.
[01:24:58]  Well, my take on that is my take on that.
[01:25:01]  By the way, we should start going as Mr. Ball and Mrs. Strike for our Balls and Strikes coverage of this election.
[01:25:08]  Just call them Balls and Strike.
[01:25:10]  Mr. Ball and Mrs. Strike.
[01:25:12]  Wait, how come I can't be Mrs. Ball?
[01:25:17]  That doesn't feel right, right?
[01:25:18]  Ms. Ball, by the way.
[01:25:20]  Ms. Ball.
[01:25:20]  Ms. Ball.
[01:25:22]  There's no Mr. Ball.
[01:25:24]  It sounds better.
[01:25:25]  Ms. Ball.
[01:25:26]  Ms. Ball actually is pretty good.
[01:25:28]  Ms. Ball and Mr. Strike, Senor Strike?
[01:25:30]  No, not Senor.
[01:25:31]  Come on.
[01:25:32]  Why not?
[01:25:33]  Because I'm Latin.
[01:25:34]  No, you're not.
[01:25:35]  You won't even listen to Smooth by Satan.
[01:25:37]  You do not know.
[01:25:37]  I don't know my race, Liz.
[01:25:39]  Let's be real here.
[01:25:40]  You don't know.
[01:25:41]  There could be a little in me.
[01:25:43]  I'm white Latino.
[01:25:44]  Okay.
[01:25:46]  But some have said.
[01:25:47]  I'm not saying that.
[01:25:48]  Some have said.
[01:25:49]  But yeah, I mean, the thing is with that is I think in this election, if you're going to vote for Eric Adams because he's funny, you are either so tuned.
[01:26:01]  It's hard to think of the person who's tuned enough.
[01:26:03]  I know, I know, but it would be hard to think of the person who's tuned in enough to know that he's funny all the time, but also tuned out enough to not like any of the other characters.
[01:26:11]  But that's not how those things work.
[01:26:13]  It starts.
[01:26:14]  Its genesis is always in small little group, and then it expands and grows.
[01:26:19]  You're thinking of Dark Brandon or whatever.
[01:26:21]  I'm not really thinking of Dark Brandon, but just like kind of every other sort of instance.
[01:26:27]  That was manufactured, but it did kind of work.
[01:26:30]  Anyway, my point is I'm just saying it's something to watch out for.
[01:26:36]  So there's, of course, a final option.
[01:26:39]  Solution.
[01:26:41]  For the Momdani problem.
[01:26:42]  You can say it, not me.
[01:26:45]  There is chatter.
[01:26:48]  Obviously, it's not.
[01:26:49]  Well, no, I shouldn't say that, actually.
[01:26:51]  I don't think it will go anywhere.
[01:26:53]  Is this real chatter or just fake chatter?
[01:26:55]  It's just like Republicans writing Pam Bandi letters.
[01:26:58]  Okay.
[01:26:58]  But like Republican congressmen doing it.
[01:27:00]  Okay.
[01:27:01]  Interesting.
[01:27:02]  Fake-ish.
[01:27:03]  In order to get Zoran Mamdami deported to Uganda, where he was born and lived until he was seven when his family, I guess, moved to New York.
[01:27:13]  And, you know, I...
[01:27:15]  What?
[01:27:15]  They're saying he's not a citizen?
[01:27:17]  Well, they're saying that if you join a communist party, you can be denaturalized.
[01:27:25]  That is true.
[01:27:27]  Yeah, but that is true.
[01:27:29]  Yeah.
[01:27:29]  But I'm like, what?
[01:27:31]  Is the DSA a comment?
[01:27:32]  Like, I don't think he was in a comedy.
[01:27:33]  No, I mean, that would be an insane escalation on so many levels and would be a fucking scandal.
[01:27:39]  But hugely crazy.
[01:27:40]  That is a law in the U.S.
[01:27:42]  Yeah, no, it is.
[01:27:43]  That is like one of the ways they can denaturalize someone.
[01:27:46]  And I don't think that that would be.
[01:27:48]  And they did a bunch of this in like the first Red Scare in like the 10s and 20s, the teens and 20s, I guess I should say.
[01:27:54]  And then later also in the 50s, the 50s as well, or 40s and 50s.
[01:28:00]  But, you know, I thought this was just maybe, I was like, this is just like a crank Republican.
[01:28:03]  It's like some Randy Fine bullshit.
[01:28:05]  But in one of those WhatsApp groups I joined, one of the main, because I'm in, I'm in Mondani.
[01:28:13]  Actually, I shouldn't say.

=== Denaturalizing Communists? (04:13) ===

[01:28:14]  Yeah, don't tweet those.
[01:28:16]  But one of the people, and I'm not going to say her name either because I want to out myself, but one of the people who's in charge of these is a brand consultant who wrote a book about being Jewish in 2024.
[01:28:25]  It also seems to pay for a lot of advertorials in like Bloomberg and Forbes and all those fucking bullshit.
[01:28:32]  But I was looking at her Twitter.
[01:28:34]  She retweeted Batar of Ross Glick fame, saying that they were working on getting Zoron deported because of this very thing.
[01:28:43]  And so I'm like, interesting.
[01:28:46]  We're in contact with people at DHS or whatever.
[01:28:48]  If Batar is like trying to make that happen, then I think that ups my kind of my eyebrow raising an inch.
[01:28:57]  Yeah, I mean, and this is from a fucking guy.
[01:29:00]  This is a clip of Benny Johnson of, so I don't know if you guys know who Benny Johnson is.
[01:29:06]  He was.
[01:29:06]  I thought he was a cartoon.
[01:29:08]  He was a car.
[01:29:08]  He was BuzzFeed Benny, but not that BuzzFeed Benny that, because isn't the other guy BuzzFeed?
[01:29:13]  Ben Ben.
[01:29:15]  That's a semaphore guy, right?
[01:29:17]  Whatever.
[01:29:17]  I don't know.
[01:29:18]  I thought this guy was a little cartoon-like pencil.
[01:29:21]  But we're going to play a clip of him talking to Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, the Bitcoin mayor, who really fell off after his initial.
[01:29:28]  I think he ran out of money for PR.
[01:29:31]  He's got a big face.
[01:29:32]  About if Zoron can be deported.
[01:29:34]  We pulled up the American naturalization documents, and you have to effectively prove that you're not a member of the Communist Party to this day.
[01:29:42]  You have to prove that you're not an active member of the Communist Party and never have been a member of the Communist Party in order to become a naturalized American citizen.
[01:29:50]  And you have to effectively disavow it.
[01:29:52]  Yet we have communists running for mayor of some of our largest cities and becoming mayors of our largest cities and winning, which seems like a wild dichotomy to me.
[01:30:04]  Here's the naturalization form right here.
[01:30:06]  It says you can't be a member of the Communist Party, and it says you're not allowed to have active Communist Party affiliation if you're going to become a naturalized American citizen.
[01:30:15]  How do we square this?
[01:30:17]  Should communists be allowed to run for office?
[01:30:20]  Well, they shouldn't be allowed to be citizens, right?
[01:30:22]  They should be naturalized.
[01:30:23]  And so they certainly shouldn't be able to run for office because that should be a precondition of being able to run for office.
[01:30:27]  You should be a naturalized citizen of the country.
[01:30:31]  And so to me, that's, by the way, my favorite part of the naturalization process, right?
[01:30:35]  This concept that you cannot be an avowed communist to be an American, right?
[01:30:38]  So, I mean, I think that's a beautiful thing.
[01:30:41]  But I think, you know, communist, what people don't understand is communism is a virus.
[01:30:44]  It's insidious.
[01:30:46]  The way that communism, the Cubans in particular, were trained by the Russians, by the KGB, right?
[01:30:52]  And they were trained as spies and they were trained to manipulate and to be insidious in the way that they penetrate our country and try to infuse this perverted ideology on our cities and on our citizens.
[01:31:06]  So in effect, Zoro Mamdani would be deported to Uganda.
[01:31:10]  My question is, though, are they talking about the Communist Party or a Communist Party?
[01:31:15]  So it's actually, it's a member of a Communist Party or then any totalitarian party.
[01:31:20]  Oh, interesting.
[01:31:20]  Because I think it was about the Demon Rats.
[01:31:23]  I know, exactly.
[01:31:24]  Or the Republicans even, you know?
[01:31:27]  But yeah, or any terrorist organization.
[01:31:29]  But it would be funny if they got out of it, like, because it's like not CPUs.
[01:31:34]  But I mean, I could say, I'm like, because he did, so he did have one of his rap songs that did shout out the Holy Land 5, which we talked about in the show.
[01:31:42]  And I'm like, I wonder if they would try to incorporate that in the denaturalization because they've been talking about denaturalizing.
[01:31:50]  I mean, that's sort of been on the table, denaturalizing like pro-Palestinian type people.
[01:31:56]  And I mean, he, it could happen.
[01:31:59]  I think one of the big questions, sort of the looming question, is will the Democrats rally behind him or not?
[01:32:09]  Because it is very unclear where everyone's at.
[01:32:16]  Obviously, New York, for people who, I think people know this, but it has a very robust and very powerful Democratic Party machine.
[01:32:26]  Yes.

=== Democrats Rally Behind Him? (03:09) ===

[01:32:28]  I think there was just like there obviously AOC came out and she, you know, endorsed him early or like before the election.
[01:32:37]  But I don't believe Schumer, I mean, Schumer is like, I look forward to meeting with him, but hasn't said anything else.
[01:32:43]  Kathy Hochel, I don't think said basically anything.
[01:32:48]  Nope.
[01:32:49]  Other than something similar to Schumer, like, oh, he has ideas.
[01:32:54]  Best of luck or some shit.
[01:32:55]  Like, like, it's totally whatever.
[01:32:57]  There were, I mean, so it's a real question of if they're going to distance themselves or get behind him because he's running as a Democrat.
[01:33:05]  And, you know, maybe not even if they'll distance themselves, if they'll actually join in to scramble, to kind of like knock him down.
[01:33:15]  You know what I mean?
[01:33:16]  Yeah.
[01:33:17]  And I think that that is like definitely something to watch for sure.
[01:33:22]  Kirsten Chilibrand said he's a violent jihadi.
[01:33:26]  Well, if she said it.
[01:33:26]  I mean, it must be true.
[01:33:30]  Well, we'll be covering the race.
[01:33:31]  Mr. Mr. Mr. Strike and Miss.
[01:33:36]  Well, yeah, Mr. Strike, Ms. Ball.
[01:33:39]  Mr. Strike and Miss Ball.
[01:33:41]  Ms. Ball.
[01:33:42]  Ms. Ball.
[01:33:45]  Say it with a Z that's why it sounds better.
[01:33:49]  Ms. Ball.
[01:33:50]  Yeah.
[01:33:50]  Ms. Ball.
[01:33:51]  Senor Strine.
[01:33:52]  Ms. Ball.
[01:33:53]  Senor Strong.
[01:33:54]  Hola.
[01:33:56]  Como Seamo.
[01:33:57]  You know what?
[01:33:57]  I think it's a good question.
[01:33:59]  He's going to fucking kill it on Theo Vaughan.
[01:34:03]  Senor Strong?
[01:34:04]  Senor Strike.
[01:34:05]  Mamdani.
[01:34:07]  Tio Vaughn.
[01:34:08]  Yeah.
[01:34:09]  Oh, yeah.
[01:34:09]  I think, I mean, that's the thing is, I mean, we already talked about it in this episode.
[01:34:12]  The guy, I mean, that's a, that's a, that's a pretty good politician.
[01:34:16]  Yeah.
[01:34:16]  You know, you can do the little cutsy.
[01:34:18]  Here's what I say.
[01:34:19]  You know what?
[01:34:19]  It's nice.
[01:34:20]  It's nice to see a mayor in a suit.
[01:34:22]  Yeah.
[01:34:24]  It is.
[01:34:25]  No, literally.
[01:34:26]  He wears a suit everywhere.
[01:34:28]  I know.
[01:34:28]  It's great.
[01:34:29]  Even in the summer.
[01:34:30]  Yeah.
[01:34:30]  Put a fucking suit on.
[01:34:31]  Put a suit on it.
[01:34:33]  Put a suit on.
[01:34:34]  But especially if you're running for mayor.
[01:34:36]  We'll be calling the balls and strikes.
[01:34:37]  Liz, of course, will be interviewing one-on-one in the apartment with the cats, Curtis Sleewa.
[01:34:42]  I will be absent during that because I am a warjuk.
[01:34:46]  You're a what?
[01:34:47]  I'm a warjuk to them.
[01:34:49]  Are you?
[01:34:49]  Like a little baby.
[01:34:50]  Oh, the cats.
[01:34:51]  No, I'm not.
[01:34:52]  I'm not allergic to cats.
[01:34:55]  You're such a liar.
[01:34:55]  You're always lying.
[01:34:56]  I do lie all the time, but it's true, but I'm not allergic to cats.
[01:35:00]  But I would, but don't quote me on that because if you have cats at your house and I don't want to come over, I might say that I am.
[01:35:08]  But we will be covering this very closely.
[01:35:10]  Yeah, and I can't wait to hear our new jingle.
[01:35:11]  Haven't heard it yet.
[01:35:12]  It's going to be good.
[01:35:13]  With that being said, my name is Bryce.
[01:35:15]  I'm Liz.
[01:35:16]  I'm producer Young Chomsky.
[01:35:17]  And this has been Drone on.
[01:35:19]  We'll see you next time.
[01:35:20]  Bye bye.
[01:35:22]  Jefferson, Jeffrey Lexter Jefferson, Jeffrey Lexter Johnson, Jeffrey Lexter Jefferson, Jeff,