Trish Regan argues the NYC mayoral race backfired on Democrats as Zohran Mamdani, an avowed socialist, gains traction with proposals for city-owned groceries, a 2% tax on millionaires, and $60 billion in debt for housing. She claims these policies will drive corporations out, crash REITs, and mimic economic collapses seen in Venezuela or the USSR, while criticizing his inconsistent accents and lack of support among working-class minorities. Ultimately, this "communist disaster" threatens the party's financial viability compared to Republicans' $72 million war chest, potentially crippling their ability to oppose Donald Trump. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, Qwen/Qwen3-ForcedAligner-0.6B, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Mamdami Pulls Ahead in Race00:07:27
New York mayoral race, my goodness.
Okay.
Like I told you this was going to happen.
I was watching Poly Market, which is a great indicator because again, you're talking real money on the line, right?
So it does better than the polls.
And we were seeing that this Mamdami guy, who maybe you had never heard of up until today, was pulling ahead.
This is the guy that wants to basically put New York grocery stores out of business because he's going to have the state run them all.
Which I'm going to just tell you in the here and now is just going to be funny.
We can talk about it, but it's messed up.
Here's this guy.
Grocery prices are out of control.
The cost of eggs and milk has skyrocketed.
Some stores are even using dynamic pricing, jacking up the cost over the course of a day depending on what they can get away with.
It doesn't need to be this way.
I'm Zahran Mamdani, and as mayor, I will create a network of city owned grocery stores.
It's like a public option for produce.
We will redirect city funds from corporate supermarkets to city owned grocery stores whose mission is lower prices, not price gouging.
These stores will operate without a profit motive or having to pay property taxes or rent and will pass on those savings to you.
Okay.
Yeah, savings.
Again, my colleague at 76 Research and I were just talking about this this morning, and he actually used to cover grocery stores for quite a while.
You know, they're an interesting sector to invest in.
And what has been tremendous that you've seen in the grocery industry is just all these massive technological changes and shifts and advances.
And it's actually pretty sophisticated technology that I'm sorry.
The government is not going to be able to do, okay?
I'm sorry.
Memtani, you're just not going to be able to pull that one off.
We are looking forward, though, to seeing you try.
He also wants to put a 2% income tax hike on anybody making more than a million dollars, which, believe it or not, is a lot of people, right?
Because the cost of living is so darn high because you can't send your kids to public school.
I mean, it's a mess to live in New York City.
I am so thankful I am out of New York City.
I literally, like every day, the honeymoon has not worn off.
I lived there for a lot of years.
And I saw it through a lot of changes.
I'll tell you, Giuliani was the best thing that ever happened to that city.
And I'm going to be nonpartisan here and tell you that Mike Bloomberg continued that tradition, okay?
And then you got socialist de Blasio in the door, who was a disaster, followed by Eric Adams, who's trying to do things, but he's kind of limited.
And then now you get out of this guy?
Are you kidding me?
You're going to have a socialist that is going to drive every corporation out of New York City.
That's why those real estate investment trusts are plunging.
You know what I'd be doing?
I'd be investing in Florida real estate.
In real estate around New York City, because there is going to be a mass exodus.
It's already beginning.
He wants corporate taxes going from 7.25 to what they see in New Jersey, an 11.5% tax.
Companies will just leave.
How are you going to pay for all those things?
I'd like to know.
This came up this morning on Fox and Friends, and Eric Adams, the mayor of New York, is growing on me.
I got to tell you.
He's like, this guy is a snake oil salesman.
That was his comment.
I want you to see it.
Police, this candidate, Democratic Socialist.
He wants to freeze the rent.
He wants city run grocery stores, social workers to replace the police because that's going to help.
He wants $60 billion of debt fund for affordable housing.
He wants free buses, no cost of childcare, baby baskets for newborns, and a $30 minimum wage.
How can someone vote for this?
He's a snake oil salesman.
He would stay and do anything to get elected.
Think about this one moment.
He wants to raise 1%.
He wants to raise tax on 1% of New York's high income earners.
As a mayor, you don't have the authority to do that.
You know who has the authority to do that?
An assemblyman, which he is.
He wants to do free buses.
He could have done it at assemblyman.
He doesn't understand the power of government and how you must make sure you improve your economy, raise the standard of living.
And this is what we've done in the city.
And I'm looking forward to being on the campaign trail and showing New Yorkers we can't go backwards.
And New Yorkers never surrender or quit.
I'm never going to quit for the city that I love.
That is so interesting.
You're in the position.
Unbelievable.
Just unbelievable.
Okay, so this is backfiring big time on the Democrats because people are like, oh, okay, now you're just taking it a little bit too far.
You know what's interesting?
This guy, very, very woke educated, he went to Bank Street School, which is a super expensive school, probably $65K a year to go to Bank Street School on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
Very liberal place.
He is clearly a liberal guy, young, 33 years old.
I believe he just Became a US citizen seven years ago.
He's kind of sort of questioned for who he is, like fundamentally who he is, because he doesn't even seem to speak with the same accent depending on where he is, in all seriousness.
Like he's got different accents at different times.
This came up in actually a local news report on NBC because the reporter's like, wait a second, but like, who are you?
Which accent is actually really yours?
Because when he was promoting some music video that he made with his mom and Disney, He spoke with a totally different accent than when he's speaking on the campaign trail.
So, what's this about?
I want you to hear this one because I'm like, this guy, this guy's kind of frightening, really.
I mean, like the accents alone will throw you because you're like, who is he?
And then on top of that, he's a total communist who wants to have free housing for everyone, tax everyone.
This is how he's going to pay for it, right?
Reform the grocery stores.
I mean, he's really out there.
They've tried this, by the way.
Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, it didn't work out so well.
It's been tried in Cuba, it didn't work out so well.
How about communist Cambodia or Vietnam or, you know, you go around the world, you take your pick, go back to the USSR.
It does not work, okay?
Here he is.
Because I think that New Yorkers, more than they hate a politician they disagree with, they hate a politician they can't trust.
On the subject of trust, you've adopted different speaking accents in different scenarios.
But they go to their local bodega.
Is there one that's real and one that's affected?
I would say, as any immigrant knows, having been born in Kampala, Uganda, and then raised in South Africa, and moving here when I'm seven years old, is there different parts of my life?
Worldwide tour is a worldwide tour, is a worldwide tour.
Mamdani was talking about a worldwide press tour back when he was a rapper.
Nepotism and hard work go a long way.
Here in New York City, this is how I speak.
Oh, okay.
So Democrats have themselves a little bit of a problem.
Like, it's one thing to be liberal, it's another thing to be a complete socialist who wants to drive all the revenue out of New York City.
What are you going to do?
Okay, you're going to defund the police.
Well, that's good because you're not going to have any money because all the corporations are going to leave and any individual that can is going to get out.
So, what are you going to be left with?
I don't know, like a mini Venezuela?
Like, that's not good, okay?
That is not what you want.
Vote for Mandami or Cuomo00:02:02
But he had all kinds of crazy support.
It was very interesting.
It was actually a lot of white educated people as well as Asian people, youth, educated youth, the woke people, right?
The hipsters in Brooklyn that actually went for this guy.
It was not sort of middle class working New Yorkers.
You didn't have a large contingency of the African American population or the Hispanic population voting for him.
You had sort of this younger, I don't know, Sex in the City watching crowds.
Cynthia Nixon was one of his biggest supporters.
She is an actress, best known for her days on Sex in the City, quite liberal.
You know, I hope she's willing to turn over all her money to Memdami for those grocery stores because, you know, she's going to have to pay up.
Here we go.
It is election day.
I'm on my way to vote.
I don't know that I have ever been more excited to vote for anyone than I am to vote for Zorhan Mamdani.
I've got my button, I've got my tote break.
Cuomo t shirt that I have been hidden because I'm going to the polling site.
Zoran 1, Brad 2, Adrian 3, Stringer 4, Michael Blake 5.
And whatever you do, don't rank Cuomo.
Vote for Jumani, vote for Justin Brannan.
We have a chance to make sure that our corrupt Trump donor supported, disgraced former governor is not elected mayor of New York.
And we have a chance, oh, we're within the polling site now.
We have a chance to elect Zoran to have fast free buses, to have rent stabilized apartments with the rent frozen.
We have subsidized grocery stores, and we have free childcare from ages six months to five years.
We have a guy who will stand up to Trump, and we will have a guy who creates a city for all of us.
Make sure you vote today and don't, Frank Cuomo.
Shocking Results Shake Up Election00:03:30
Okay, so she was celebrating at the party last night.
Wow.
The way this election works, you see, you have to get more than 50% of the vote.
And what happens is you pick like your first choice, second choice, third choice, et cetera.
So when she was saying don't vote Cuomo, her point was don't put him anywhere in your choices whatsoever.
So because Brad Lander had that big moment, remember when he got cuffed the other day?
He's the city controller.
He was running for mayor.
This actually kind of gave him the boost.
He was recommending basically, you know, if you're, don't vote for Cuomo as well.
So vote for Mandami if, If I'm not, you know, if I don't get it.
So, a lot of times he was the second pick on the list.
And so, Mandami was able to pick up all of his votes.
This is the guy, remember?
He made the big stink.
And you almost wonder if it was somewhat deliberate.
I'm not trusting him.
I'm sitting here in the hallway.
I asked to see the digital warrant.
I asked him to provide digital warrants.
I mean, it was quite a stunt to have pulled, let's be honest, just days before the election because nobody had ever heard of him.
And so you wonder if some people that maybe were thinking Cuomo went for him and, you know, if this kind of contributed to a shakeup in the race.
But what had happened was once they were going to be done with their first choice pick, they would.
Have moved on to Mamdami, and so this guy, if he was your first choice, chances are Mamdami was the second.
And so Cuomo came out and announced that he was bowing out of the race last night.
This is like really and truly pretty shocking, guys.
It's bad news for the Democrat Party, it's bad news for the Democrat establishment.
But you know what?
I'm sitting back and saying, heck, you know what?
They deserve it, they really do deserve it because you know they got here for a reason.
Someone's commenting, I see, on his accent and saying, no, you know, like you can have a different accent if you speak a lot of languages, you can have a different accent.
I'm going to tell you, I speak a lot of languages.
I speak Italian, I speak Spanish.
I was actually decent at German at one point in my life, earlier in my career.
Again, I have a background as a singer, so you need to know all these languages.
I can sound pretty fluent in French, though I'm not.
And here's the reality.
No, do you hear me speaking with an accent?
No.
Okay, like, you know, yo hablo español.
I can speak Spanish with a Spanish accent.
Okay, from Barcelona, España, because I speak all these languages, but I have my.
Own accent in each of these languages that is very particular to me because I know who the heck I am.
Thank you very much.
And clearly, this guy does not.
He really, really, really does not.
And now the Democrats are sitting there saying, What are we going to do?
Right?
We've got an AOC disaster.
We've got a Jasmine Crockett disaster.
We've got a communist disaster in New York City.
And this is bad, bad news for our party.
And a lot of people know it's bad news.
Diller knows it's bad news.
Barry Diller's pulling his money.
Billionaire Mike Bloomberg, he's pretty darn mad.
They're all distancing themselves.
They got to remake this thing.
The Democrat Party is like, they're struggling.
They go, look at this $15 million is all they got in the bank.
You know, it's not a lot for a party that needs to try and run some kind of opposition against Donald Trump.
And then you look at the Republican Party with $72 million and more on the way.
And so this is going to be bad.
But again, you know, we saw Brad Lander getting cuffed.
There, which is going to bring me to another store.