GOP Caught Praising Mamdani Behind Trump's Back? He's Losing His Grip And Spiraling

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0:36All right, Zoran Mamdani and the Democratic Socialists are gaining steam all across the country. And what the Democratic establishment is finding out is the base doesn't trust you that much anymore. And here to discuss this with me is somebody who really understands trust and betrayal in the Democratic Party. Of course, it is our good friend David Hogg, the former DNC vice chair. And now he is doing the Lord's work as president of Leaders We Deserve. David, how are you? Any day that I start my day off talking to you, Jen, is a good day. Oh, I love that. OK, here are some strange bedfellows for Mom Donnie.

1:13He's getting his flowers all over conservative media. Play the clip. He was here, as you know, twice. And he's a very nice guy. He's a charming guy, good looking guy. When Mamdani got elected, I know tongues of Republicans who are actually operatives within the party who were saying they couldn't wait to make him the face of the Democrat Party. And they thought that would be very good for Republicans. Depends on where you are, because in New York, he's a hero. I mean, he's becoming extremely strong and formidable as a kingmaker. There's a kingmaker tonight, and that's the mayor. Mayor Mamdani is not only a kingmaker, but a queenmaker as well, because he backed two women who were going to go to Congress.

1:54Mandami's forces, by going door to door, took down some big players, including AIPAC. People in this city love Zoran Mamdani. Look at the way. OK, so even Bannon, David, when you see Republican strategists acknowledge the power and the movement, and you're not seeing that from the Democratic establishment. Give me your take on that. I mean, look, they can see as plainly as we can that we are winning. And the fact of the matter is that we're winning because we're actually leading with policies that people are excited to go out and vote for and organize for. We're giving them something actually to believe in and not just saying, you know, Republicans suck so much, go and vote for these milquetoast Democrats that don't really want to change anything, right?

2:40I've never seen a major political movement be led with a message of vote for us and we basically will keep everything the same. Right? Like that, that is the expectation that we're hearing from the establishment over and over again, which is just vote for us because Republicans are so horrible and we're not actually going to change anything. We're not going to talk about the corruption that has completely infested both sides of the political aisle. We're not going to talk about all the corporate PAC money, the APAC money and everything else that we're taking to constantly vote against the best interests of the majority of what the American people want.

3:12And the gig is up for them. And these Republicans know, and the crazy thing is too, for all of the freaking out that remember, Jen, how just a year ago, the establishment was like every single piece of Republican mail this fall in 2026 is going to have photos of Zoran and they're going to be terrifying, terrifying voters. Fox News has told their anchors to stop talking about Zoran because he is too popular. They can't find a photo of him not smiling. That is the effect that he's having. And what's really amazing about him is he is not just conserving his political capital as many traditional political advisors would have advised him to, to just, you know, you won your race, just do a good job.

3:55Don't take big risks. He went all in, he bet the farm and he won big because he knows that his endorsement, when we saw this in our data at Leaders We Deserve, when we backed Claire Valdez in her race in New York, we saw that Zoran's endorsement moved the race 30%. That is a huge effect that can overpower many of the special interests in politics. And that's why a lot of the establishment is freaking out because they know the gig is up. Like I saw somebody posting earlier that, oh, we need to start counter organizing as centerists against ESA and excite people. And it's like, what the hell is your message going to be?

4:32Hey guys, let's go and change absolutely nothing. Good luck getting anybody to show up to that when people are craving actual change in a vision for the future. All right. I think this might be what you're talking about. Axios reported this, popped this up. House Dems centrist plot Mamdani caucus counterattack. Moderate House Democrats are warning they're prepared for war. If incoming progressives and Democratic socialists try to hijack the House floor to secure ideological concessions. This strategy would mean even more work for the House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to tamp down divisions and keep his caucus unified come 2027.

5:17This is just the stuff that I call titty baby city. I mean, get some of that Mom Donnie shine. The reason he's popular, the reason he got triple Trumpers to vote for him is because people are voting against the status quo. The votes for Trump, yeah, some people are crazy cultists, Bible thumpers, 100%. We have those in the country. But the movable voters voted for him because he was an anti-status quo candidate in both races that he ran in. He was an anti-status quo candidate. What do you think about this centrist meltdown? And then what do you think about centrist? I've kind of had it. I find it very ironic that the people that are constantly saying that people on the far left of the party are causing infighting, Now that those people have won their primaries, the establishment and many of these centers are saying we're going to make a massive fight out of this once we all are brought into Congress together.

6:12It's pretty ironic because we constantly hear over and over again how it's a waste of time to engage in these primaries because we just need to be focused on defeating Republicans. Jen, we have to think about the fact that we lost not just once, but twice with the same centrist playbook against Donald Trump. We have to do both, build a better Democratic Party to offer people something better and defeat Republicans at the same time. And that's why I left the DNC, because I knew it wasn't going to be possible inside of that establishment to actually change the status quo in the way that we need to.

6:47Because I saw firsthand how all the establishment wants to do is simply change our message instead of changing what we're actually voting on, instead of making sure that we're not constantly voting in the interests of corporations and the ultra wealthy. and then using money from those very same groups to try to gaslight our voters into believing their lives are getting better because Republicans suck so much and you should vote for us, even as their quality of life continues to decline over and over and over and over again. And what's really inspiring to me about these wins in New York is I show up all over the country doing many, many rallies with candidates.

7:23I have never seen candidates with organizers that on average are so young. it is very rare to see young people in that with an actual sense of hope in their eyes an actual sense of hope that maybe we're not totally screwed and here's the thing our party said at what did they say jenna after uh 2024 we got to win back young people i remember being at a meeting harrison was leading of the dnc executive committee where our pollster at the dnc said the reason we lost the first and foremost reason was 18 to 29 year old voters so the whole thing was, how do we win back young voters? Then we see a movement that is actually winning back young voters.

8:01We see somebody like Zoran, who's getting twice the 18 to 24 year old turnout. And we're like, no, no, no, no, no, not like that. Not like that. And the question is, do we actually want to win? Because we're going to actually have to offer people something new instead of just gaslighting them with new ads with the same people and the same old priorities that got us into this place in the first place. Yeah. And I would just say when the Democratic Party was at its peak, was during FDR's reign. That's why the Republicans have been plotting and machinating all of these decades later, because he was popular, delivering a government that served the people was popular.

8:39And the Republicans have been reeling ever since. And that's why the Supreme Court's justices have been groomed. And it's not that Trump believes in anything. They just know they can manipulate him, just like the Iranians have just done. But here's where I think the Democratic establishment lives in this weird bubble world where the rest of us are like, believe in something and fight. Like, I would take a centrist and build a coalition with them if they were fighters, if they fought. But here's a centrist Democrat from New York. And this is her idea of fighting fascism, I guess. So pop this up.

9:17The New York Knicks are champions and Ted Cruz made good on his bet. So, Kristen Gillibrand and Ted Cruz had a bet about, well, if the San Antonio Spurs win, Kristen will wear the jersey. And then Kristen's like, if the New York Knicks win, then Ted Cruz will wear a jersey. I want to say this, Kristen. Nobody wants this. Nobody likes Ted Cruz. Even the Republicans hate Ted Cruz. This is the most, all of the APAC shit you do, Kristen Gillibrand, is disqualifying enough. palling around with Ted Cruz who can't even defend his fucking wife is so maddening. And this type of palling around with Ted Cruz, it makes me fucking crazy.

9:58And I just want to remind you, and then I want to get your take on all of this. Here is Ted Cruz going against Graham Plattner. Play the clip. The Democrats just selected three communist lunatics. in maine they've nominated a communist nazi oyster farm okay this shit right here kristen jillibrand playing patty cake with this pathological liar who can't even defend his wife who sucks up to donald trump and you're doing a jersey swap is exactly she shows up to a fight with these people with a little spoon and they've got fucking machine guns it makes me crazy and then when she actually does turn up to a fight it's not to fight people that are on the right it's to turn the fire on people on the left and say oh you guys are the problem instead of actually trying to form a coalition with people that are winning by massive margins in her own state right that's the crazy thing to me it's almost as if these democrats are more willing to fight the left side of their party than they are the actual Republicans that we are all supposed to be against.

11:11And for the amount of shit that people on the left side of the party get for not talking enough about wanting to take down Republicans, we get so much more shit from moderates and the establishment of the Democratic Party than the establishment and the moderates give Republicans to actually fight back against them. If they fought a 10th as hard against Republicans and ICE and people like Ted Cruz as they did against Zoran, as they did against AOC, as they did against people like Clara Valdez and others, we would not even be having this conversation right now because Donald Trump would not have won in the second term in the first place.

11:47And what we need to do right now is not just look at Congress. We need to look at every level of government and realize, Jen, we have the opportunity of a lifetime because the establishment has become so largely geriatric that they're not going to be around forever. They've become a geriatric incumbent protection racket that time is against. The question is, what are we going to do to replace them? And what we need to do in order to do that is not just work at the congressional level. We need to start laying the groundwork for a generational revolution within the Democratic Party at the state legislative level, fielding candidates around the country so that they can prove themselves at the state legislature level like Zoran did so that they have experience in governing.

12:32Then they can run for higher office with higher name ID. So it's easier for them to overcome attacks inevitably from APAC or from other special interests and prove that we are competent in governing, that we don't just have the right values. We actually get shit done in the first place. And that's what we're doing at Leaders We Deserve. And like the other last time I was on your show, Jen, I, you know, I talked a lot about the work that we're doing, especially at the state legislative level and congressional level. And in that time since, we now are at 21 of our 26 election nights that we've had so far this election, we have won.

13:04And some of those are obviously going into competitive general elections to break Republican supermajorities and break Republican majorities because unlike the moderates and the establishment of our party, I don't believe that offering people the same thing again and asking them to behave differently is going to work for a third time here. I believe we have to get better Democrats in order to defeat Republicans at the same time and give a generation like those young people that I saw door knocking with Clara Valdez or Bira Kawas or in Maryland with somebody like Matt Post or Spencer Dixon, two of our most recently elected candidates to the state legislature there.

13:40We need to give young people a reason to actually believe in the Democratic Party and show our country that actually, no, not both sides of the political aisle are owned by the same corrupt special interests like attack and the corporations that in the democratic party while of course right now there there is serious corruption that happens there is a segment of democrats that you actually can believe in because we the real swing voters in this country are the voters that not just theoretically vote you know the the five percent of republicans that might change their vote it's the 20 percent of americans that never vote in the first place because they believe that politics is so corrupt, there's no point in participating in this at all.

14:21We have to present them something new in order to expand the electorate and defeat Republicans. I completely agree. And I think that when you talk about the geriatrics holding everybody hostage, I think about Susan Collins and Graham Plattner. And I think about the biggest resistance to Graham Plattner is not what we just saw with Ted Cruz, I hear it the most from people within the Democratic Party. And Susan Collins is diabolical. Women are dead all over the country because Susan Collins was the deciding vote for Brett Kavanaugh. And in my home state of Oklahoma, women are dying. Women are dying in Georgia.

15:03If you look at the ProPublica reporting, women are dying in Texas. And Susan Collins has blood on her hand. She has a track record that makes Graham Plattner's Reddit post and tattoo look like a Boy Scout. Susan Collins is a part of the MAGA death cult, where every single policy they vote for leads to death while lying to everybody and telling you they're pro-life. And so the patronizing nature from the Democratic Party to treat the voters of Maine as though they cannot deduce from their decades of experience of being a Mainer, that Susan Collins is a pathological, diabolical liar, and that Graham Plattner is willing to say, look, I was fucked up.

15:44I had an online record. I got this fucked up tattoo. But here's where I am now. We have to believe these people. And it just infuriates me when the establishment treats voters in a patronizing way, because they can't have it both ways. You can't say, oh, MAGA is a cult. They do whatever Fox news and trump tells them to do and then the main voters are using critical thinking and then they're like no we fall in line and so there's just this hypocrisy at the center of the party says speak to that and let's speak to truth tellers in the party and how with this new digital age candidates are going to come of age that are younger than me more your age that are going to have digital footprints that are kind of up i mean it's just my god the internet we've all been assholes on the internet Can you speak to that and the way the Democratic establishment treats the base?

16:37Well, I think what's remarkable is the similarity between how the Democratic establishment, you know, says that the left is constantly acting and creating problems in the party and how similarly they are projecting just like Republicans constantly are. Every accusation that Trump makes is a confession. And nearly every accusation that the establishment of our party makes is a confession where they're constantly saying, vote blue no matter who, vote blue no matter who. And then when it's a candidate that actually is broadly supported by a large base of people that is getting thousands of people out to defeat somebody who has been horrific for women in this country, which is Susan Collins because of her vote for Brett Kavanaugh, and vote for somebody like Graham Plattner, who just got the endorsement of who really matters here, which is groups like Planned Parenthood and the voters in Maine that elected him in a landslide.

17:29It's not because Janet Mills wasn't on the ballot necessarily. It's because they wanted Graham Plattner and that's who they picked. The irony of all of this is they're constantly saying the left of our party is constantly dividing us. They're not actually fighting against Republicans. And now we have an instance where we've gone through a competitive primary process that Graham Plattner won in a landslide and the center of our party refuses to consolidate around him and actually support him to get him across the finish line here. And it's just, honestly, it's remarkable how much it is showing how much bullshit was behind what the establishment was saying for all of these years.

18:08We always knew that, right? But to see it so plainly painted and laid out there as it has been in Maine is absolutely insane because Graham is supported by the people in Maine. He won in a landslide. And it's time for our party. When people have online posts in the past year, point, Jen, look, we work with young candidates here at Leaders We Deserve. I can tell you, this pattern of younger people that are running for office having online histories is not something that's going to go away. Our party and frankly, both sides of the political aisle, as a generation comes up, are gonna have to learn how to deal with that.

18:44And what should matter to us is how are people actually responding to it? Now, if they go out there and deny that it was them when it actually was, and they lie repeatedly and they say that wasn't me, or they say that they still believe those things, obviously that is a problem. But we need to have the capacity to understand that people can grow in our party and give them the opportunity to prove that they have changed. Because if we want normal people to run for office, normal people have messy backgrounds. And we have to have the opportunity for them to show that they have grown as individuals and give them that.

19:15It doesn't mean that we perpetually give them chances, but clearly Graham has gone out there and showed voters in Maine time and time and time again. These posts that came out came out months before the primary, and he went out and directly responded to them at every single town hall and owned it and then focused on what really matters in this race, which is how are we going to defeat one of the worst people in the United States Senate for women's rights, which is Susan Collins. He just pulled out his anti-corruption platform. He called it the Collins rule. And she was so bothered by it that she actually tweeted that a man that I've never met before called me corrupt or accused me of criminal behavior.

19:56And it's like, oh, I'm not a crook. It's like, Susan, you became 21 times more wealthy as a United States senator. You make six figures, but that would not equate to you making 21 times more money than you had before you got into office. And just maybe it has to do with the fact that your husband is a lobbyist for the fucking defense industry that is making trillions of dollars off of the very goddamn forever wars that you are voting on and have been in power for so long. She has literally been there to see multiple forever wars start and end. Think about that. Susan Collins is an abject failure.

20:35She has failed forward via pathological lying the way the Republican Party has for decades. and the people of maine have stood up and there's a person who goes out in front of main voters all the time and his name is graham plattner and then there's a person that hides and only goes to her little safe spaces for interviews and that's susan collins and i just want to remind you this susan collins voted not to impeach donald trump because she said quote he had learned his lesson If you are governing with a bar so low that the president of the United States needs on-the-job training in how to have a moral compass, that is more disqualifying and dangerous and reckless.

21:19And I just think Susan Collins and the disservice she has done to women, and she uses her gender to gender wash and weaponize these attacks on women. I hope the people of Maine, I hope she gets shellacked. I hope it isn't even close. And I hope it sends a message to all of the establishment on both sides that the party is not going to tolerate this. And just final thoughts. I think it's interesting. And we talked about this a little at the beginning, but I just want to end with this too. you. When you see Steve Bannon in that video I played at the beginning, kind of in awe, because Steve Bannon at his core is a political strategist.

22:05He's a nihilist. He doesn't really believe in anything. He wants to win and get power, you know, and break laws and do his grifting, right? But he was in awe of the coalition that Zoran built. When you see Zoran getting praise like this from strange bedfellows. And then you see Kristen Gillibrand playing patty cake with the most unlikable person. Even Republicans hate Ted Cruz. My audience, all of us, have gone through somewhat of an evolution of being good Democrats and watching MSNBC and reading the New York Times and feeling like we were doing the right thing. and the Democratic Party has failed and taken a lot of our votes for granted by not delivering and feeding us propaganda.

22:59In your closing remarks, tell me about this movement that Zoran is doing and with your polling and your research that you see in your organization, Leaders We Deserve, the pundits are saying this is a New York City thing. Are you seeing that exclusive exclusively are you seeing this a sweep across the country it certainly is not isolated to new york city you know i think it's easy for people to forget but nita alum in north carolina who was one of the first incumbent challengers this election cycle that leaders who deserve was proud to back you know in politics people don't really remember how if you lose how much you lost by nita came within one percent of defeating a democratic incumbent back in march and that was only because Hakeem Jeffries called in an AI super PAC to spend over two and a half million dollars against NIDA alum in the final six days of the election.

23:53Wait, stop. I'm sorry. This is what I'm talking about. Hakeem Jeffries called an AI super PAC to interfere in an election. These people want to lecture us about Republican interference. Exactly. And say that we're wasting money because we're involved in primaries. And then they call up their friends from Anthropic where, let me walk you through, Jen, just like what happened in this race. And I'll tell you why this is not isolated just to New York City. Nitta alum's opponent, Valerie Fouchy, was appointed conveniently right after Nitta's announcement of her campaign. Valerie Fouchy was appointed to a AI oversight committee.

24:32And obviously that was to signal to the AI industry like, hey, this person's very friendly to your interests. You should support them. And right before the election, when Nita really started to take off and was leading, Anthropic came in, I believe at the direction of Hakeem Jeffries, whose own PAC was also involved in this, and spent$2.6 million in the final six days of the election to get Fushi across the finish line, who, by the way, also was massively supported by APAC in her first race, and had to be shamed into rejecting the influence of APAC and then had to also be shamed into signing on to block the bombs.

25:09And then in that race, NIDA lost by less than 1 % there. I know that that$2 million made the difference. And it is the reason why NIDA is not about to be a member of Congress. But after that race, many people, I think, were like, well, this whole upset about the Democratic establishment isn't really real because they didn't win. And they forgot that Hakeem Jeffries cannot go and spend$2 million defending every single one of the people that is challenged in these races. And that is what started to happen in New York with all of the incumbents that were defeated. And we saw Mai Vang, one of our candidates that we're working on with Justice Democrats out in California, defeat a 47-year incumbent between her and her late husband, Doris Matsui, has been there for 47 years and was defeated by 1 % by an incumbent challenger, despite the fact that Doris loaned herself a million dollars.

25:58Now, in California, they got to advance to a top two system because they have to run against each other again in November. But if you also look at somebody like Randy Villegas in California's 22nd congressional district, where we've run a moderate three times at this point and lost every time against one of the most vulnerable Republicans, we were able to defeat the Democratic establishment that spent about$2.5 million more than Randy was able to on a candidate that was the only Democrat to vote against Prop 50 in the California state legislature and had taken a million dollars from the pharma and insurance industries in a district that relies more on Medicare and Medicaid than almost any district in the country.

26:34And our candidate, Randy Villegas, ran on a proud platform of calling out AIPAC, of calling out the genocide in Gaza, rejecting corporate money. And he won because young voters showed up for him who had never really voted before because they actually believed in him because they saw somebody who finally is not owned by the same corporations and special interests. And that's why we do what we do at Leaders We Deserve. What is happening in New York is not isolated. And it's not to say, Jen, I'm not going to sit here and say every single one of these incumbent challengers across the country is going to win.

27:01But the effect is real, and many of them are going to win. Because even if we take out a few members of Congress this election cycle and get these incumbent challengers elected, even if it's five or six of them, it sends shockwaves through the political system where they start to freak out. And I can tell you from my years of advocacy in the gun violence prevention space and now working in politics, politics is full. What dictates politics is cowardice. these politicians on Capitol Hill are fucking cowards. They're afraid of their own shadow. And they continue to write off this progressive generational revolution that's happening in the Democratic Party against corporate money, special interests and say, no, no, no, that's an isolated thing.