Americanswers! Could Zohran Mamdani serve in a Democrat White House?

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1:49americast americast from bbc news you hear that sound oh i think when i hear that sound it reminds me of money we didn't start this war but under president trump we are finishing it this is a big cover-up and this administration is engaged in it this guy has trump arrangement syndrome i have four words for you turn the volume up

2:16Hello, it's Justin in the worldwide headquarters of AmeriCast in London, England. And it's Anthony in the American headquarters of AmeriCast in Washington, DC. And it is Mariana also in the worldwide headquarters of AmeriCast next to Justin in London. OK, first question is about Zoran Mamdani. Here we go. Hi, guys. My name is Will and I'm from Hartlepool. My question is, could Zoran Mamdani serve in a democratic cabinet? And does this come with a precedent for non-natural citizens to serve in the cabinet? Thanks, guys. Keep up the great work. Very good question. Well, Zoran Mamdani was born in Uganda, so he was not born in the United States.

2:52So he can't, he is not eligible to be a president of the United States. But the Constitution says nothing about cabinet secretaries. They can be born anywhere and serve in the cabinet. Alexander Hamilton, of course, was the first Treasury Secretary, and he was born in St. Kitts. Most famous, of course, is Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon's secretary of state and national security advisor. Madeleine Albright, who was Bill Clinton's secretary of state. Also, Elaine Chao, who was Mitch McConnell's wife. We have a senator. We've talked about her in the past, but she was cabinet secretaries twice with George W.

3:28Bush and with Donald Trump. And Jennifer Granholm, she was born in Canada. She was energy secretary under Joe Biden. So it happens, not uncommon, really. So really, it's just the presidency that's barred to you. Nothing else is. Exactly. You can be a senator and be a non-native born U.S. citizen. And you don't even have to be born in the United States if you're a citizen at birth. So say Ted Cruz, he was born in Canada, the Texas senator, but he was a citizen at birth because his parents were U.S. citizens. John McCain was born in the Panama Canal zone in Panama. His father was in the military and he ran for president without and got the Republican nomination without any any big issue because he was born as a U.S.

4:24citizen. So it's just that one little provision in the Constitution. And, you know, Zofran Mamdani is very popular right now in New York City. I was just there last week. And there are still a lot of people who really think he's doing a good job. There are a lot of people who are maybe a little more suspicious of his democratic socialism and his policies. But he seems to be pretty popular right now. Arnold Schwarzenegger, born in Austria, when he was governor of California, people were talking about maybe he could run for president if they changed the constitution, but you would have to change the constitution to get it through.

5:00Yeah, I remember that stuff about Schwarzenegger. When he was at the height of his powers and he was rising to become governor of California, I was there then. In fact, I went to his sort of inauguration, I suppose it was, when he won. And there was this real groundswell of opinion there, Mariana, that somehow, you know, if we want to do it, Americans. We can change the Constitution. We can make it happen. I suppose it's not entirely impossible if the Democrats have an absolutely clean sweep in the midterms and they are enormously popular. Republicans fall apart. They have the presidency as well.

5:32I mean, you've got to it's quite an effort to change the Constitution, to put it mildly. But you do wonder if there is a groundswell then that comes for Mamdani and possibly for some others who weren't born in the states but but or to at least have the right to to run i think that his approach his very visible approach to problem solving in new york so this idea that like someone will post being like mayor help out it's really annoying that i can't like access this platform of of the subway or like i've got this problem with my building and then he often will swoop in and um sort of film himself or his team will film him sort of like sorting out or resolving it that whole like mandarin can resolve the problem mentality.

6:14I think it's proving pretty effective at just creating an impression of someone who listens to what people say, reacts to what they want, responds, even though critics would say, well, this is a bit stunty actually and you can't just do this on a case-by-case social media post basis. All of that is to say that he's someone who I wondered whether the aura around him might collapse or reduce. And I would actually say, certainly just by analysing what's going on in the social media world, it hasn't yet. But if it doesn't, is a cabinet post really a promotion, Anthony? That's my question. Because, I mean, he's in charge of one of the great cities in the world at the moment.

6:50And I'm more inclined to like him. Yeah, but he's also actually doing things. I mean, you have some executive power if you're mayor of New York. Maybe not as much as you have as a big state or governor of California or whatever. But you do have executive power. You make decisions that do things to the place. If you're in the cabinet, we've discussed before. It's not like a British cabinet, primus inter pares and all that stuff. You're just working for the president, aren't you? Yeah, it's a big bureaucracy. No matter what cabinet you're in, you have to answer to the president. So you don't have the same kind of authority, autonomy that you would have as mayor of New York City.

7:26I mean, mayor of New York City is a challenging job. Obviously, it's a big, sprawling metropolis, the biggest city in the United States. And it has all these constituencies and a lot of people who like to complain. but it is also a powerful position to have and maybe he would seek higher office maybe governor of new york uh someday he might be able to pull that off but yeah cabinet secretary seems you know some people go there because they they see it as a stepping stone to national office and becoming a senator or becoming maybe even president as we saw hillary clinton go from secretary of state to running running for president but it's uh it's not great if that top job the top federal offices closed off to you because of where you were born.

8:08Yeah. And Pete Buttigieg, of course, was once mayor of South Bend, but South Bend, with great respect to South Bend, is no New York. And, you know, he was transportation secretary, wasn't he? And he's still in a position where he probably will run for the presidency again. So it's not, it's possible to be in the cabinet and then go on, as you were saying, with Hillary Clinton, although I suppose it's a slightly odd case for Hillary Clinton. And you can come out from under the shadow of the president, but I'm not sure. Having said that, I'm not sure what Zoramudani does do. I mean, you're not term limited, are you, in New York?

8:46I suppose you could just go on and on. Yeah. I mean, Ed Koch stayed mayor of New York City for quite some time, as I recall. And, you know, if you're popular and you're getting things done, you have your own little mansion there, Gracie Mansion. You know, You get to go to good parties and, you know, there are worse jobs in the world if you can make it work. Last point on Mandami, but isn't actually what matters here for the Democrats, not whether he's necessarily in cabinet or in one of these posts, but that he continues to be prominent to basically project good vibes and ultimately possibly to be the kind of blueprint for social media strategy that could help them to win the next election in a way that they really did not manage with Kamala Harris last election.

9:31Like actually the gift he gives them is perhaps beyond any kind of position within the government itself. As long as people feel like he's allied with whoever they pick to be their next candidate. Yeah, but you want to run things there, don't you? Well, no, if you were him, you probably would. But if you're the Democrats and you're looking at it, it might be better not to kind of like change a load of complicated constitution things. and actually to just say, great, let's hold this up as a shining example of how we can reach the electorate, how we've actually progressed in terms of our social media strategy, how we come across and how we own who we are and personality-led politics and all that kind of stuff.

10:08I don't know. I think that that's their benefit from him, whether he would like that as just the, like, I'm the mayor forever might be another question. OK, talking about able politicians, we've had this voice note about Lyndon Johnson. It comes from Patrick. I'm currently reading the Robert A. Caro four-volume biography of Lyndon B. Johnson, all about his ascent from an upbringing in hardscrabble Texas to the presidency. And I wonder if you could tell me what similarities you see between LBJ's journey and the current president. Thanks so much. That's an interesting one. I mean, I grew up in LBJ country, Central Texas, the hill country is where he lived.

10:52Johnson City is where his ranch was that he would go back to when he was president. I used to tour it and drive through it all the time. He was a congressman representing Austin. And he actually, before he went into politics, he was involved with a radio station in Austin, the station that is now KLBJ, his initials. I find it difficult to draw a whole lot of parallels between Donald Trump and LBJ in that LBJ came up through Congress. He was a congressman. He was a senator and master of the Senate is the name of one of the Caro books about his time as Senate majority leader. Very involved in kind of how to work the political system.

11:33But I will I'll play along with this and say both of them were outsiders. Both of them were outsiders to Washington society, whether it was Donald Trump being the outer borough person, the one who was never accepted into New York high society, kind of bought his way in. LBJ being the brash Texan who had to rub elbows with a bunch of Washington socialites and never was accepted by them. both of them outsized personalities, both of them dealmakers in their own right, whether it's financial or political, domineering kind of personalities. So, yeah, you know, maybe their backgrounds and their experiences are different.

12:18But OK, I will say there are some similarities in the personalities and the way they interact with people. And their ability to bend everything to their will, which is also something that really comes out in that Robert Caro book, which is a wonderful set of books, which it is, Johnson's ability to make people do things and his absolute lack of scruples when it came to using any tool that he could find to bend them to his will. And in a sense, I mean, could you also say, Anthony, that he had a lack of respect for the system, which would be Trump-like, in as much as he wanted to get round it. He used all sorts of ruses, didn't he, in the Senate to make things happen and eventually, of course, make the big stuff happen, which was civil rights, which, again, is not something you'd associate particularly with Donald Trump.

13:11But the ability to make stuff happen behind the scenes and not be too fussed about conventions, about the way things have always been done or about, you know, people falling foul of you and having a pretty terrible time on the way. because there were plenty of people during Lyndon Johnson's rise to power who came a cropper as a result of that rise to power. And I suppose in that respect as well, he's quite Trump-like. Right. He knew how to, the weak points and how to influence people and how to... Which is what people say about Trump, isn't it? He spots weakness. A lot of it is, you know, not necessarily, you know, playing by the rules, but playing by the way to influence people.

13:53And you don't see that with Trump much with the legislative world where LBJ was really influential. But I guess you do see it in the business world and in his negotiating strategies and how he tries to strike deals that are the most to his own advantage. Well, in the business world as well, there's this line, isn't there, that LBJ used to have. And I can't remember the exact line, but it was something to the effect of if you're going to sell something, you've actually got to believe in it. And it came from someone, an influence of those of that era, a PR guy and advertising guys, I suppose it would have been who he'd been very impressed by.

14:36And this is from memory from the I think one of I think maybe the second book, the book about the Senate. So he's he's enormously influenced by this and genuinely takes it on. You've got to believe something yourself in order properly to sell it. And that actually, again, is quite Trump-like, isn't it? Because you wonder sometimes about some of the things Trump has done and said at various stages of his career and thought, how can he do that? How could you be so cynical? And actually, maybe it's not cynicism. Maybe he convinces himself at various stages that the things he's saying are true. And that, again, that would be quite LBJ-like.

15:13Yeah, I mean, it's kind of a fundamental sales strategy, right? I mean, you have to believe in your product. And if you're able to do that, then you can sell it to people. So it's the power of positive thinking. All of that kind of goes back. And Donald Trump definitely draws on a lot of that sales mentality that, you know, you believe it, you think positively, you think it's the greatest and therefore it makes you a better salesman. OK, we've had this question from Mary on WhatsApp, who says, AmeriCast has repeatedly come up that Justin's first interaction with Donald Trump was a brief radio interview about windmills in Scotland.

15:49Could you please dig up that audio and share it with us? I'm dying to hear it. OK, dig it up we have. And the question I asked him was, are you thinking of running next time round? Well, they all want me to, and a lot of polls want me to. The thing is, I love what I'm doing. I love taking Turnberry, and we're going to make that something that Scotland and everybody can be so proud of. You know, I love doing that, but polls indicate that I should. And another thing is that, you know, our country is not doing well, and a lot of mistakes are made by people that are very incompetent. So there's a real possibility that you will seek the Republican nomination next time round?

16:27Well, there's always a possibility, and there's a real possibility, absolutely. If I don't see the right person running, because a change has to be made, and if I don't see the right person that's running, and if the country continues to do poorly, there is certainly a possibility. There you go, Mary. He would not have run if he'd not had that interview with me. I was just about to say that you're going to claim this as one of your predictions, that you somehow got right. Twelve years ago, both you and Trump seem a lot livelier, a lot more energy. I was going to say, Justin Kaila sounds the same.

17:01I tell you, OK, so here's full disclosure. I was on a train pulling out of Doncaster Station. Oh, I remember you telling us this. In the middle of England, for those who are not English, and a place that we had just been to the UKIP National Conference. UKIP was a party that campaigned to leave the European Union. Nigel Farage was a big member of it. It's since been folded into other parties, no longer really properly exists. But anyway, we were at UKIP and I was coming back and the business reporter who was meant to be doing that interview hadn't turned up. So they rang me and said, can you just do it on the phone from the train?

17:41So I explained to Trump when I was put through to him, I said, look, I'm really sorry, but they're getting me to do it because I know something about America and I know who you are, at least, and no one else does. And he was very, very, he was really genuinely amused. and we had a nice conversation. And then most of the conversation, actually, which we haven't bored people with, was about golf. And he had a particular, he was having a feud at the time with the then leader of the Scottish National Party, Alex Salmond, and he wanted to come on in order to pursue that feud. But when I asked him that...

18:12That's so random. It is very random. If you think about that now, it's so random. So I asked him then because I thought, I'll just get it in, just in case. And I assumed that he would say... No. And of course, when you listen back to it, so many of those phrases that he used then, of course, he used again and again, the country's not doing so well, etc. And people want me to run. People keep telling me. When we ran it, Anthony, we ran it on the Today programme and we actually had complaints from people saying, why are you allowing space for this American businessman we've never heard of telling us he's going to run for the presidency?

18:50and we actually got into some trouble for even running it. But of course he had run before, hadn't he? And that's the thing. I think the reason I asked him then is that he'd run sort of unseriously, hadn't he, for other parties or just for himself? For the Reform Party, yeah, in 2000. Yeah, and then he dropped out. And didn't he have been threatening that? He'd been showing up at the CPAC, the Conservative Conference, and making motions and then not running. and everyone started to think, well, this was just a stunt. He would talk this game and then, you know, to kind of drive up his publicity for whatever he was doing and then back away.

19:27And then, of course, in 2015, he didn't. Yeah. Okay, well, it's not exactly Frost Nixon, is it? But it's my greatest claim to fame. Can't be your greatest. It is. I'm sticking with it. And what does Mary mean about windmills? Oh, yeah. Well, the windmills are part of the Gulf. So the issue was with Turnberry and the reason he was having this fight with Alex Salmond, you can't believe any of this, can you? I just enjoyed how you referred to it as a feud. I feel like Donald Trump is the most feud-prone president of all time. Yeah, so he was having feuds. Well, he was having feuds, wasn't he, with all sorts of people long, long before he became president, long before politics was a talk part.

20:08Rage bait training. Yeah, I mean, he was absolutely from the beginning. There's a wonderful book called Never Enough, which was a biography of his time long before he became really properly famous, even before he became famous on the TV. And he feuded with absolutely everyone. So he's having this feud with effectively the Scottish government. And the reason why it's golf and windmills is that the thing he really hated was offshore windmills coming up next to his golf course, so spoiling the view. So he had all this stuff about how the Scottish government was damaging the natural environment of Turnberry and his golf course.

20:48That was the reason why he was mentioning windmills. And that was the reason why he came on. Although, as you have heard, I cleverly trapped him into saying that he was going to run for the presidency and the rest is history. And his crusade against windmills has continued to this day. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. They're not sadly his relationship with me when it comes to interviews, but whatever. Okay. Back to the present day. and to Pete in Bath, a city you know well, Anthony, and I do too. And Pete has emailed to say, I read that the Republicans' campaign war chest is much bigger than the Democrats, but I seem to recall Kamala Harris outspent Trump significantly, and we all know how that ended.

21:24Is cash still king in choosing the next president? And, Anthony, the first thing I was surprised, we were mentioning this, I think you were the other day, I was really surprised at how cash-strapped the Democrats are, given how successful they've been electorally recently and how they're expecting to be again. And I thought that attracted money. It surprises me that the Republicans are so well off at the moment, also because so many wealthy people support the Democrats and so many poorer people now support the Republicans. It just seems odd. Yeah, I think the first thing you need to understand is, yes, the Republican National Committee, the Republican Party has one hundred something million dollars more than the Democrats.

22:02Democrats barely have any money. The Democratic Party barely has any money. And so the Republican Party is vastly outspending the Democratic Party in supporting candidates in these midterm elections. That doesn't mean necessarily that the Republicans have all this much more money than Democrats do, because Democratic donors, people who support Democrats, Democratic candidates are giving directly to the candidates. They don't like the Democratic Party that much. We've seen it in the polls. So they're giving to the candidates they like, whether it's Al-Sayed in Michigan or it's James Tallarico in Texas or it's Roy Cooper in North Carolina.

22:46They're actually doing all right. And a lot of those candidates have more money than their Republican opponents. I think one of the big questions here is that Donald Trump himself is sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars in cash that he has fundraised over the past few years. And is he going to start spending that money on Republican congressional candidates? Everyone in the Republican Party is hoping he will. He says he will. But that could help tilt the balance towards the Republican candidates. And then another big question is Mariana's favorite, Elon Musk. He has said he's going to weigh in with his untold fortunes, perhaps even in a place like Texas, where Tallarico does have an advantage over Ken Paxton, the Republicans.

23:33So so, yeah, it's a little bit more complicated. But to get to to Pete's larger question, is money still king? King. I mean, Donald Trump was vastly outspent in the 2016 Republican primary. He won. He was outspent by Kamala Harris, as Pete noted, in 2024. Money is important, but it's not the only factor right now in American politics. Yeah, I was just going to say that when it comes to particularly effective social media strategy, I mean, we know now that gaming the algorithmic systems is the most effective way of popping up on people's feeds that involves triggering a reaction rage bait or feel good content or whatever that is and that's not actually hugely expensive in fact content that often looks more authentic that looks kind of normal um does does quite well and so if you spend a lot of money and i think we saw this with some of kamala harris's social media content i mean obviously not all the money is spent on social media strategy etc but some of as you know a significant portion of it is.

24:35And with Kamala Harris, we saw how actually almost making stuff look a bit too polished and like it wasn't authentic was much less effective than what Donald Trump's team did, which was reaching out to streamers and podcasters and other people in the alternative media sector who could engage with and possibly promote Donald Trump. And I think that the Democrats have become much more wise to that. You know, we think of streamers like Hassan Paikha. We think of some of the places that even Mamdani, who we were talking about, is posting and turning to in the style of his content. None of that is very expensive, really.

25:08Yeah. Mamdani was vastly outspent by Andrew Cuomo in that New York mayoral race. And he won. I mean, he came out of nowhere. He was a state assemblyman running against a former governor without any kind of the resources. And he pulled it off. So, yes, another good example. And also the people who are good. So if you're thinking of spending money on hiring someone to advise you on your social media strategy, the people who are often good are not very expensive because they're often younger. They're often sort of unknown. And actually the fact that they sit outside of the world of politics is their greatest strength or attribute.

25:42So actually, I think from that point of view, at least, money is less important than it was at a time when you needed huge ad campaigns. And that's not to say that ad campaigns are not important and people can also pay for social media. ads in some respects, although there's rules around political advertising. But yeah, you can run a very effective social media strategy without cash. I suppose there are some media markets, aren't there, Anthony, where it is going to be expensive. And the classic one is Texas just because it's so huge. But maybe Michigan as well because it's so varied and you've got to get to the various places.