The Donald Trump v Zohran Mamdani Show

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

0:30Schwab offers. Because Schwab knows that when it comes to your finances, choice matters. No matter your goals, investing style, life stage or experience, Schwab has everything you need, all in one place, so you can invest your way. Visit schwab.com to learn more. One of the most surprising scenes we've seen in the Oval Office in the last few weeks and months was when the new mayor of New York, Zora Mamdani, came to meet Donald Trump. These are two men who have been trading insults for weeks during the election campaign for the New York mayor. And now suddenly they're all smiles, handshakes, warm body language, looking like the best of friends.

1:13What is going on here? Have they discovered that they actually like each other? Is there political benefit for Donald Trump in being nice to Mamdani or Mamdani getting on with Donald Trump? What does it tell us about how Zora Mandani might actually govern New York? Welcome to AmeriCast. AmeriCast. AmeriCast from BBC News. When Donald Trump calls, they say, yes, sir. Right away, sir. Happy to lick your boot, sir. We are the sickest country in the world. Oh, dear. Are you worried that billionaires are going to go hungry? Of course the president supports peaceful protests. What a stupid question.

1:49Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?

1:58Hello, it's Sarah here in the BBC's Washington Bureau. And it's Anthony, right next to Sarah here in Washington. And Anthony, we've got a guest with us today, which is really good news. I'm really intrigued to speak to him because it's a political reporter called Nick Reisman. He's their Albany Bureau Chief, which means he's an expert in New York State politics, not just what happens in New York City. and we're going to be talking to him shortly to talk about what's at stake for Zoran Mandani, the new mayor of New York, well, will be the mayor on the 1st of January and what the coming year is going to be like for him.

2:31But let's remind everybody, I mean, I'm sure our AmeriCasters do remember the rather dramatic win Mandani had on the 4th of November when he became the mayor of New York. But what was almost as surprising as that was the meeting he had with Donald Trump in the Oval Office. and we're just going to talk a little bit more about that and the consequences of it because we know our listeners are interested. We mentioned it the other day, but we didn't get into in-depth why it was that the pair of them who had basically spent an election campaign really heavily criticising each other sounded like they were best friends.

3:06Let's have a listen to what happened inside the Oval Office when they met. Are you affirming that you think President Trump is a fascist? I've spoken about... That's OK, you can just say yes. OK. It's easier. It's easier than explaining it. Would you feel comfortable living in New York City under a Mom Donahue administration? Yeah, I would. I really would. Especially after the meeting. Absolutely. What makes you comfortable? We agree on a lot more than I would have thought. I think he's, I want him to do a great job. Why did you fly here? Aren't trains, Raina? I'll use every form of transit and I want to make sure that they're all affordable in New York City and that's why making buses fast and free is a centerpiece of our country.

3:47There is a bus that goes. I know, but it'd be fluid. That's a lot quicker, too. You know, I mean, he's working very hard. I tell you, the press has eaten this thing up. You know, I've had a lot of meetings with the heads of major countries. Nobody cared. This meeting that you people have gone crazy. You know, outside, you have hundreds of people waiting. This is just a small little group. For some reason, the press has found this to be a very interesting meeting. the biggest people in the world that come over from countries, nobody cares. But they did care about this meeting. And it was a great meeting.

4:20Go ahead. The press really did care about that meeting. Maybe that's why Donald Trump cared about that meeting, because it was getting a lot of press attention. But were you surprised that they got on as well as they did? I was surprised at first because there had been so much attention, so much hype leading into this. Fox News was running a chyron that was Trump against socialism. And it was being billed by Republicans in Congress, again, as Donald Trump taking on this almost comic book villain who was going to make New York City, in their view, totally unlivable. People were going to be streaming out of the city.

4:57Millionaires were not going to want to live there. And then to have this kind of flip around like that did catch me a little bit off guard. Although does kind of make sense. I mean, they both are outer borough New Yorkers. They both have a lot in common, even though they come from different backgrounds. Growing up in New York City, it probably knows some of the same sites, know some of the same places, know some of the same people, maybe even. And for Donald Trump, politics, first and foremost, is personal. And Zohran came in there and did treat Donald Trump with respect. He searched for common, common shared kind of footing to operate off of.

5:38And I think Donald Trump reacted positively to that. So, you know, I was shocked at first, but then it started to kind of make sense in a weird sort of way. And we heard Donald Trump there saying they shared some of the same policies. And you were saying they probably share some experiences growing up, maybe know some of the same people. They also share some of the same voters, don't they? I mean, it might sound completely bizarre, but there are quite a number of people who voted for Donald Trump in 2024. and one year later voted for Zora Mandani to be their mayor, even though, you know, one's a MAGA right-wing politician, the other calls himself a democratic socialist.

6:15Yeah, Mandani actually stressed that, saying that some of the people he talked to on the street who were his supporters were also Trump supporters. I think Donald Trump liked that as well. Donald Trump wants to be popular in New York. I mean, you know, as much as it's this bastion of liberalism, and that's where he's from. I mean, he lives in Florida now, But he's from New York. He is a New Yorker. He wants to make it there. His whole professional career up until when he went into national politics was becoming becoming a dominant force politically, culturally and so forth in New York City. So this was an opportunity to connect with someone who did that, who was popular in New York, who won a mayoral election with more than 50 percent of the vote.

6:58And I think Donald Trump respects that. When he said they could work together on some things, I mean, the reason that they've got some voters who support them both, I assume is largely around affordability. It's about, I mean, New York's one of the least affordable cities in the US. So whilst this is the biggest issue in politics across the country, even more so in New York, where the price of accommodation is so high. But people are still struggling with the price of utilities and groceries and all the other things that people are worried about. Can they find common ground on how to fix the affordability crisis?

7:32Or have we got just that situation where they both identified the same problem, but they have very different answers? Yeah, I think that may be where friction comes back, because Mamdani has already called for higher taxes on the wealthy in New York City to pay for a lot of these programs, to pay for the free buses that he wants to provide, to pay for the grocery stores that he would build in communities that don't have access to reasonably priced goods, to pay for subsidized housing and things like that. And Donald Trump obviously personally believes in lowering taxes on the wealthy, but also it's kind of a core tenant of the entire Republican Party.

8:12So it'd be difficult for him to break with that. So I think, you know, we may run into a wall at some point there. And when we talk to our guests, we can ask about the practicality of even doing that for Mom Donnie, because it's New York State, not New York City that will set tax rates. But it's something that we've touched on in previous episodes when we talked about Mom Donnie and Trump. And that is that they both stylistically are very similar. They both have the same sort of outsider message. They both have this kind of we're going to rail against the elites who are trying to keep us down message.

8:49So again, going back to your original question about whether I was surprised, I mean, we did, we had hints of that. It just seemed like there was so much hype and so much drama leading up to this that there would be no way that Trump would be as accommodating, as welcoming, as friendly. I mean, so gracious when Mamdani was in there. I mean, those pictures of Trump sitting at the Resolute desk with Mamdani over his shoulder, kind of like almost like an aide, and just beaming a Cheshire cat grin from ear to ear as Mamdani was talking, it made for just a visual of that alone, even without knowing what they were saying, was astounding.

9:29Yeah, Trump patting Mamdani on the arm and all of that kind of thing. The one thing for all, so we've identified the reasons why they might be able to get on. What surprised me a bit was they've been very useful political foils for each other. Mondani spent a lot of his campaign attacking Donald Trump. And famously on the night that he won, he said during his speech, Donald Trump, I know you're watching. I have four words for you. Turn the volume up.

10:01a combative message. Donald Trump's been very, very critical of him, calls him a communist all the time. They're useful to each other as each other's opposite. So, you know, to characterize them as particularly dangerous or evil is politically and electorally useful. So that's what surprised me a bit. And then, of course, it wasn't long after Mamdani left the Oval Office. He gave another interview on Sunday to meet the press on NBC. where he did agree that he does actually still think that Donald Trump is a fascist. You were about to answer. Then President Trump sort of jumped in and he said, quote, that's OK, you can just say yes.

10:39It's easier than explaining it. So, Mr. Mayor-elect, just to be very clear, do you think that President Trump is a fascist? And after President Trump said that, I said yes. So you do. And that's something that I've said in the past. I say it today. And I think what I appreciated about the conversation that I had with the president was that we were not shy about the places of disagreement about the politics that has brought us to this moment. And we also wanted to focus on what it could look like to deliver on a shared analysis of an affordable crisis. And I think that cuts to one of the critical issues here, which is, oh yeah, we can agree on making housing more affordable and maybe improving transit.

11:15We disagree on the fact that you're a fascist. I mean, that seems like a pretty big disagreement. And if he sticks with this, then it's going to be, I think, a source of real conflict between the two men and I think what may drive them back into their kind of opposite corners to start lobbing bombs at each other. Yeah, it's a bit difficult to be meeting and saying, here's my friend, the fascist, and I'm my friend, the communist, who's standing beside me right here, which is something they've tossed around a lot. Where does it leave Republicans who really, really welcomed Mondani's election because because they thought here we've got a figurehead of somebody who we can paint as being unacceptably far left, democratic socialist by admission, communist, they'll call him and say this shows how far to the left the Democratic Party have gone and use that in the midterm elections coming up next year to say the Democrats have swung to the left.

12:15These chummy meetings make it much, much harder, don't it, for them to say this guy is just unacceptable in American politics. Yeah, I think that's a very real challenge for the Republicans. They were building an entire midterm election strategy around making Mamdani the face of the Democratic Party, that he was going to be the communist villain and all of his horrible socialist policies would wreck New York City. And they'd be able to point to it and say, see, the city is going to hell in a handbasket. And this is what Democrats want to do for the entire country. And this just gives a visual that undercuts that pretty, pretty significantly.

12:53at least Stefanik, the House Republican from New York, is running for governor against Kathy Hochul, the incumbent Democrat. She had been building up her campaign to try to link Hochul to Momdani. Hochul had endorsed Momdani shortly before the election, one of the few real prominent New York Democrats to do so. And she was going to make her pay a political price for that. And there were some indications even that, you know, that might have been a useful traction. There were, as we've discussed in the aftermath of those November elections, that there were New York suburbs, Long Island, some of those elections actually went better for Republicans, and it may have been because of the perceived threat of Mamdani.

13:37But now if Mamdani and Trump are best friends, where do you go from there? There's a lot of challenges ahead for Mamdani, who made big promises. Not all of them. It's within his power to fulfill either. He's going to have to work with the governor over how they're going to raise funds to pay for some of the things like the fast and free buses that he promised. How much does he need the president? He had threatened to withhold federal funds from New York if Mamdani was elected, and he could always go back to threatening that. Are they necessary? Is that a huge part of New York finances? Does it matter?

14:09Well, I think the relations with Albany, the New York state capital and Hochul is going to be more important for what he wants. But yeah, Donald Trump could really hurt New York City if he wanted to put the squeeze on it. We already saw some signs of that in the run up to November's election where Trump had cut off funding temporarily to this transit tunnel between New Jersey and New York City that is really needed. There's other government funds that are coming in for other projects in New York City that Trump could make very difficult to obtain. And that would cause very real problems for for Mom Donnie.

14:44So it's not you don't necessarily need Trump as an ally, but you would hate to have him as an enemy who is really working against everything you're trying to do. And there's a threat also of him sending the National Guard into New York, as he has in Washington, Los Angeles, Chicago and other cities now. They've been received differently in different places, especially when they've been backing up immigration raids. I do wonder, given some of what you saw happening in Chicago, whether it wouldn't actually be helpful for Mamdani. I'm sure he doesn't want the National Guard in there, but in New York, of all places, that's unlikely to endear people to the Republicans, is it?

15:24Yeah, it may come with a price. I don't think it would. Well, it might help Mamdani in that it gives him more of a political cudgel to beat Trump with. I don't think it'll help help Mom Donnie in that it reduces crime because actually crime in New York City is fairly low by historic standards right now. It's certainly different than Chicago, where there was some some very real crime and gun violence problems in some of the less affluent areas of the city or Memphis, where they have, as you mentioned, welcomed having National Guard troops, Tennessee National Guard troops come in and try to clean up the city.

15:57It seems like there's two different ways of handling that National Guard situation. if you're a Democrat. One is you dig in and fight like we've seen in Portland and Chicago. Another one is where you try to convince, politely convince Trump otherwise. And the mayor of San Francisco, actually, it looked like Trump was gonna send in the National Guard and this San Francisco mayor got on the phone with Trump, kind of sweet-talked him, told him about all the good things that San Francisco was doing. And Trump actually backed down from that without a whole lot of drama. So that might be the path that Mom Donnie is feeling out and is going to try to pursue that, you know, you don't start crying fascism and warning of how awful it'll be if the dictator in Washington, D.C.

16:42sends the troops into your city, but rather does it behind the scenes quietly and then talks Trump back from such a dramatic move and maybe highlights, you know, the political risks for Trump as well if he did it. This is a perfect moment to bring in our guest because we're joined now by Nick Reisman. He is Politico's Albany bureau chief, and he's the co-author of Politico's New York playbook. Nick Reisman, thank you for joining us. Hello. Thanks for having me. What is it about New Yorkers, outsider New Yorkers, who seem to be able to catch fire and make these kind of changes? Is there a certain pugilistic, certain kind of combative nature to them that gives them the ability to win as outsiders?

17:21I don't know. I mean, Frank Sinatra has a whole song about it, about how you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. But I think there's something to that. Look, New York City, a lot of New Yorkers, I'm originally from just outside of the city, they have a real kind of almost egocentric view of the world. There's that old New Yorker magazine cover of New Yorker's view of the world, and it stops just at the Hudson River going into New Jersey. People think and have kind of an outsized expectation for New York really mattering on the national stage and on the global stage. And in some respects, it really does.

18:03New York City is the financial capital of the United States. It's the financial capital of the globe in some respects. And it's also the media capital of the U.S. as well. Like all the newspapers and major television stations are based in New York City. So automatically, when you're mayor of New York or if you're a very prominent, let's say, real estate developer in New York, you're going to get an outsized amount of attention just by virtue of the fact that you're in the Big Apple. We were mentioning earlier, Anthony was mentioning that taxing the rich and the most wealthy New Yorkers is probably not something that Donald Trump's going to get on side with.

18:41Probably won't include him now he's resident in Florida, possible other members of the family. There may be property taxes that he would have to pay. Once Mamdani starts actually trying to implement his agenda, is there any possibility that this bromance can carry on or do you think they're going to fall out? Well, it's also important to keep in mind here that the words mercurial, temperamental, they apply to Donald Trump. And in some respects, you know, I was talking to a few New York Republicans in the aftermath of this meeting, and they were telling me, look, Donald Trump may very well wake up tomorrow morning and decide to put on true social how Zoran Mamdani is a loser and a communist because he saw Mamdani say something mean about him on TV and he reacted and all of this is over.

19:28So this may very well be something of a snapshot in time. All of that said, though, Trump and Mamdani do have a shared outlook on economic populism. Trump even kind of floated the idea of raising taxes on very wealthy individuals nationally. This was something, obviously, that was going to be anathema to Republicans and it was quickly dropped. But I think Trump and Mamdani kind of share a similar instinct when it comes to this economic populism. The rubber is going to meet the road at some point in all of this. Obviously, Republicans do not want to see tax increases. Mamdani knows that it is actually quite popular in New York City, in New York State for that matter, to raise taxes on rich people and very large corporations.

20:15But that's going to be a tension point for Mamdani going forward. I think the bigger issue is probably going to be on something like crime and public safety going forward, not so much taxes, any kind of issue surrounding economic populism. There is kind of a shared understanding that blue-collar New Yorkers in particular are struggling to live in a very expensive city, one that, quite frankly, Donald Trump helped build in the 1980s. And in many respects, what we're seeing now, this deep unrest over how expensive it is to live in New York City, produced Zoran Mamdani's victory just less than three weeks ago.

21:00Yeah, I guess if Donald Trump can turn on Marjorie Taylor Greene, as we've discussed over the past week, he can turn on anyone. No permanent friends, no permanent allies. Right. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. Now, you know, we talked about the dynamic between Mamdani and Trump, but it seems like the real dynamic that may determine whether Mamdani can pursue these policies and get them implemented and have the money to get them implemented is his relationship with Kathy Hochul, the governor there in Albany, where you are. Does it seem like they have a warm relations? And is Hochul going to cooperate with Mamdani in order to get the taxes necessary to give these free bus rides to everyone to make housing more affordable?

21:44All of these programs that he is promising low or the child care for all New Yorkers from the age of one to three or something like that? The tax question is going to be a major one for her. She has previously said that she doesn't want to see any taxes go up, especially on rich people, especially on these corporations. But in the last couple of weeks since Mamdani's election, she has started to hedge a little bit. And she said, well, you know, there's a lot of uncertainty coming from the federal government. We just don't know what Congress is going to do next year that could wind up financially harming New York State and New York City.

22:22So she has kind of played her cards a little close to the vest there. It makes me think that at the very least, when she submits her budget proposal in the next four weeks or so, that we'll probably see some tax increase proposals in there. Again, it's politically popular to do, and Mamdani obviously has a lot of the wind at his back, too. So that's a very long way of saying I think Hochul is going to try and work with Mamdani where she can. She needs Mom Donnie voters when she is running next year, and she is going to have to kind of thread this very delicate political needle. Now, Kathy Hogle may be facing a challenge in that election next year for the governorship from Elise Stefanik, the Republican congresswoman close to Donald Trump, who was going to be his ambassador to the United Nations.

23:12So she was going to be moving to New York. And then there were there were anxieties over the by-election that that would create in her seat in the very slim majority that the Republicans had in the House of Representatives. So instead, she set her sights on governor of New York. She was unhappy about the chummy loving between Mamdani and Donald Trump because she had been wanting to paint Mamdani as a dangerous communist and tie Cathy Hochul to him because she had quite backed him early on in the race, much earlier than a lot of other Democratic leaders had. What are her chances, do you reckon?

23:46And have they been torpedoed in any way by Donald Trump's embrace of Mamdani? It definitely did not make it easier for Elise Stefanik to run in what is a very, very Democratic-dominated state. A Republican hasn't won in New York statewide for about 24 years now, so this is going to be a real, real uphill climb. I think it's fair to say, at least at this point, that it's going to be a long shot for Elise Stefanik to unseat Kathy Hochul from the governor's office. you have to remember that Stefanik has really kind of tied her career to Donald Trump. Originally, she started off as this moderate Republican representing a very large rural House seat in upstate New York.

24:29And subsequent to Trump winning, she was a little uneasy with this idea of Donald Trump. And as her base in upstate New York became much more Trumpified, much more magified, she very quickly shifted into a pro-Trump posture. And she ardently defended him during his first impeachment trial. And she has subsequently emerged as this major ally of Donald Trump's in Congress. The problem with that is if you were running statewide in New York and trying to win votes in the suburbs and in New York City, the vast majority of New Yorkers do not approve of Donald Trump. And it is a vehement disapproval of Donald Trump.

25:17He has lost New York State three times in all three elections. He is broadly unpopular here. So she has to try and find a way of separating herself from Trump. Now, the way to have done it is probably to not disagree with him on Zorad Ramdani, in the sense that Trump was asked, point blank, you know, Elise Stefanik is calling the mayor-elect a jihadist. Do you agree with that? And Trump said he disagreed. Do you think you're standing next to a jihadist right now in the Oval Office? No, I know, but she's out there campaigning and, you know, you say things sometimes in a campaign. She's a very capable person, but you really have to ask her about that.