Ask Haviv Anything - Episode 63: New York in the age of Tucker and Mamdani, with Noam Dworman

Episode Date: November 25, 2025

Noam Dworman is the owner of the legendary Comedy Cellar comedy club in New York. He a lifelong New Yorker, a podcaster and an astute observer of his city and his country.What does he make of the incoming mayor and his anti-Israel views? What about the rabid new antisemitism on the Carlson-Owens right? And how does he understand the weak responses to both by American Jews?And finally: Will America weather these challenges, or has American Jewish life become less safe going forward?Today’s episode is sponsored by Ruth Adler and Eric Weinthal and is dedicated to each and every hostage brutally dragged into Gaza on October 7, and their families. In their words: “We rejoice with each hostage family reunited with their loved ones and our hearts break for those whose loved ones were murdered or died in captivity. We would also like to thank the protest groups we marched with that have organized to help amplify our voices for over 700 days, including Run For Their Lives, Bonot Alternativa and many others. We will not stop marching until the last body is returned home."If you like what we do here, please join our Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything. There you can ask the questions that guide the topics we cover on the podcast, join in our great discussions where listeners share news and valuable resources, and take part in our monthly livestreams where Haviv answers your questions live.If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at [e-mail]⁠.Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.

Hi, everybody. Welcome to Ask Havid Anything. Thank you for joining me. I'm very excited to have Noam Dwarman here. Noam is in my mind, New York. I'm just going to go ahead and say it and embarrass him. He is New York. He represents its culture. First of all, he grew up there, and he's the proprietor of the comedy seller, the legendary comedy seller in the village. And I want to ask him about Mamdani. I want to ask him about the New York Jewish community and where American culture is at, also on Israel, where Noam has some fascinating. and I think really important positions. And so we'll get into it. New York, American Jews, what's going on? What is this war done? What is it like to be an American Jew right now? Before we get into it, I just want to tell you for one second that we have a sponsor that we're very grateful for. It's a beautiful dedication. Today's episode is sponsored by Ruth Adler and Eric Weintel and is dedicated to each and every hostage, brutally dragged into Gaza on October 7 and their families.

They asked me to read these words. We rejoice with each hostage family reunited with their loved ones, and our hearts break for those whose loved ones were murdered or died in captivity. We would also like to thank the protest groups we march with that have organized to help amplify our voices for over 700 days, including run for their lives, Bonot Alternative, and many others. We will not stop marching until the last body is returned home. Thank you very, very much, Ruth and Eric.

I also invite you to join our Patreon, where you get to ask the questions that we tackle here today and in the episodes. You also meet thousands of members and friends of the podcast who discuss, who comment, who share really valuable resources that I learned from, and you get to take part in a monthly live stream where I answer your questions live. So if that sounds interesting, join us. It's a great time. It's a great place.

I'm part of those discussions and it'd be great to see you there. Noam Dorman. How are you? Okay, Haviv. Thanks for having me. How are you? Good. I want to introduce you really briefly and get into it.

You're a veteran podcaster. I'm a new podcaster. So at the end, I want you to tell me how well I did. Norm, can I call you my friend? I mean, you're on the spot. Absolutely. I'm honored. You don't have that much choice at this point once I raise it.

like this. What do I mean by friend? Noam saw this sad little mutt trooping through a rain soaked New York over the past two years a wandering Jew as I as I'm trying to make it to all these different places in America and took pity on me

and took me in and I have hung out at the comedy cellar multiple times I have seen extraordinary comedians had amazing discussions with your friends who are just brilliant, awesome, clever, serious people. Do you have a habit of taking in strays?

Yes, I do. No, I don't have a habit of... You're not a stray, obviously. I think you were unaware of the impact you had already had on the reasonable-minded pro-Israel community after October 7th, who all of a sudden you were making the arguments that we... that hadn't really been made fully that we all wanted to hear.

So you were not astray. You felt like astray, but we actually, we were welcome you with open arms. But I do gravitate towards, you know, a certain group of thinkers that I really, really enjoy. And many of them have become very, very prominent after I first met them. So that's kind of flattering for me. Okay. So now that's something to strive for. Now I have to meet that expectation.

So let's get into it. Who is Norm Dorman? How did you come to be the proprietor of one of the most prestigious comedy clubs in America? I saw shows by Amy Schumer and Louis C.K. And Dave Chappelle and, you know, me and I don't know, we were 50 people in the room. I don't know how many people can sit there. But phones have to be... 120, 120.

120. Well, it feels very intimate. It's how did you become that? person at that, really at that, one of these beating hearts of American, American culture. What is that? Who are you? And where do you come from? Well, okay, the end of that story is just, I inherited it. So there you go. This is, that's the full length of the meritocracy there. But prior to that, I went to University of Pennsylvania law school. I decided I didn't want to practice law. I opened up a music club,

which it's called the Café Wah, which, you know, there's a, there's a, People think the cafe Oaz exists since the 60s. It hasn't. It had been closed for 20 years, and I opened a club and just took that name because that was the same location of the Wad existed. That became a big success. I opened up a bar, became a big success. I had a bunch of things going,

and then my father, who had the comedy seller, died in 2003. And so I woke, it was the last week of 2003. So I woke up in 2004, it was just more than I could handle. And I had to consolidate, and I had to consolidate, and I ended up, I decided to consolidate into the comedy seller because that was the piece of real estate that we owned and everything else was a lease. And with a lease, you can't count on a future.

So, and at that time, the comedy seller was the smallest of the businesses. It was very successful, but it was the small one. The Cafe Wa was much more important at that time. But I made a decision to sell the Cafe Wall. So that's, I'm already talking too long. So that's how it happened. I took it over in 2004 and had been growing it ever since. I literally sat in a show where Dave Chappelle was about to go on Saturday Night Live.

He was about to be the host of Saturday Night Live. And he tried out the material in the comedy cellar, just to test it in front of an audience. That's a central institution of culture. How did that happen? This is a family trait. But, you know, my father and I were extremely like-minded about not all fathers and sons are. And it was, you know, we'd always comment to each other how we would come to the same conclusion without even having discussed things with each other. And we both just loved conversation, debate, arguments.

It was always my father's dream to have debates at the comedy seller, which he was. was never able to do. And there was a show, I don't know if you know, a tough crowd with Colin Quinn, which was on in the 90s on Comedy Central. This was a show where the comedians kind of like would argue and debate about politics, and also like ranking on each other.

But this was Colin Quinn had based it on the scene at the comedy cellar that my father and I were both part of. Really, my father was one who presided over that. And of course, as I said, I went to law school. And as everything that I've ever done, and this also went back to my music career, things like that, it's just always me trying to enjoy my life.

Like, okay, I have this ability to shape my own universe. What would I like my universe to be like? Well, I'd really like to spend my time talking about issues of the day and having access to the smartest minds and being able to play the guitar and drink and, you know, meet girls, whatever it was is my priority at the time. So as I got older, yeah, a debate and being in the thick of interesting conversations. Mental stimulation, I'd all sounds a little corny as I'm saying it out loud, but it's the truth.

This is what I wanted to do with my life, and somehow I was able to do it. So I think there's a lot of luck to it, but I would say about myself at some point, I was, good enough to hang with the big boys such that they didn't, they weren't just indulging me, you know, like that would be the worst thing of all. And I know that because people email me and people call me, you know, I understand, but in some way I know it's my ball so I get to play, right?

So that's always a, I have to tread lightly. But I think it's real. I think it's real. I have this nice relationship with people. And from that, it became because I guess, I'll stop now, but I guess because this also happened at a time when everybody was so scared,

of touching third rails. When is that? You know, during the previous, you know, six or seven years, or actually started in 2015, 2014. This is live from the table you're talking about as an intellectual debate, such kind of arena? No. I've met serious, like, world-renowned economists

at the comedy seller. What do I mean I met? I was in a table, and the guy next to me happened to be one of them. Tyler Cowan. Tyler Cohen, but when did that begin? And he's one of 20 such people that I've met there. When did it become that? It's kind of a New York version of a Parisian salon.

Yeah, it's reflected in the podcast, but it started before the podcast, actually. People would start hanging out. And we started doing debates. I think our first debate was about the Iran deal, so that was during the Obama administration. But even when my father was alive from time to time, people like, New York figures like Roy Innis and to Cavett and Ed Koch. There was always a little bit of that. It just accelerated.

It just accelerated. And I tell you, it's such a wonderful way. It's such a wonderful profession for me, you know. You really are fascinated by politics and issues of the day. much broader than politics. You talk about all the, really all the third rails and free speech and whokeness and everything.

And those are two separate things. Are those two separate things, or is comedy, in fact, politics? And the reason I ask is so many comedians, Louis C.K. Is not canceled at the comedy club. Is able to show up,

no matter what, you know, is happening out there in the big, wide world, you've taken in, I call it strays about me. I don't mean to say, about anybody else because, but strays, right? And it's a place where you come to talk.

I have encountered people on Twitter who randomly harassed me with garbage, but they're very persistent and they're building a name for themselves on Twitter, and you invited them onto your podcast. You have no class consciousness. And it feels like it's connected somehow to the comedy culture of the club. I don't know a question mark here. No, there obviously there is a correlation between the type of people

who like to argue about politics and a good subset of the comedians. They're not all like that. Some comedians just tell lighthearted jokes or, you know, things like that. But for instance, people like Andrew Schultz and Shane Gillis and Dave Chappelle and Louis C.K. and Chris Rock,

they're hyper-focused on ideas and the world. So, yes, that's a natural, that's a natural overlap. And so it's very natural for the comedians to go downstairs and tell their humor and then come upstairs and argue about Trump or whatever it is. And to them, it's often scratching the same itch. And then often I'll notice that some argument that we have upstairs will then be put through their process and it'll come out as a joke downstairs a couple weeks later,

you know, some thought or some premise or things like that. So, yeah, this is, I think, a similar mind. And by the way, conversely, a lot of very powerful thinkers have had wonderful senses of humor, right? Christopher Hitchens, Kissinger, Hedigray sense of humor, Abraham Lincoln.

I mean, these are just people that come to my mind, but it's quite regular to see the, even Charles Krauthammer, to see the really the gems of intellectual also be very, very funny. So I think there's a relationship there. Like math and music, they're related. For some of the mathematics and music,

I think it's the same thing with comedy and thought. Jews were very big into comedy when Jews felt very marginalized. And then there were periods in culture. I read this somewhere. This is not some clever insight of mine where there was a huge over-representation of gay and LGBT community

in the comedy world. And it had to do with that sense of being on the edge, but also wanting to not be on the edge. And one of the ways in that, you know, when you feel yourself as someone who's very much on the edge of society is comedy, there's something there that is, that's, you can kind of get a pulse of a culture at a comedy scene. It feels like the future. In other words, if I'm listening to a show at the comedy cellar, I know what American politics will be dealing with three weeks from now and maybe three years from now. a way that I can't get if I'm watching CNN. There's something there that is cutting edge, that is on the edge,

that is looking into the culture from the outside. Jerry Seinfeld, I mean, it doesn't matter who you are. If you're in comedy, you're looking in from the outside in some way. And those are amazing conversations. There's something fascinating about, okay, so let's get away from philosophy.

October 7 happened. And I guess my question is simple. what was that like? What was that like to the Jews of Manhattan, the Jews of Westchester, the Jews of the communities that you are in? Your name is Noam. You serve Israeli food in your restaurant.

What did October 7 feel like to you? It was, you know, one of the things I don't like about being interviewed is because you're supposed to in some way dig up yourself. And it's not, it's not, I got to mind doing it one-on-one, but it's not that comfortable for me to the world. But I just tell you honestly that I feel like I had a very clear understanding immediately that we were on day one embarked on a war against, a psychological war against the Jewish people.

I remember worrying about an acid rain, a psychological acid rain that was going to start to pour down upon us. And there was some early optimism that the world was taking Israel's side. And my comment at the time was, and this is like in the first week, no. I said, we're about to see daily George Floyd videos and a worldwide defund the police reaction. I saw this very clearly and it scared the shit out of me. So much so that I remember saying, look, if Israel decides to do nothing, Or, you know, I won't question them because I felt that, not that I think that's what they should have done, but I felt there was so much at stake. And yeah, and that's what it turned out to be.

Many, many Jews, you know, left-wing Jews were shocked about the fact that there was such anti-Semitism or, if you don't want to put it as anti-Semitism, but such quickness to blame Israel. for what had happened and such a quick lack of empathy or sympathy. I still don't know how big that group of people is, especially when we see that Mamdani did pretty well among Jewish people. Maldani, I think, represents at minimum that lack of sympathy and empathy for Israel and the Jewish people. To what extent it goes beyond that we could talk about. And then it just got worse and worse as the casualty numbers piled up.

And then this ugly accusation of genocide that I've done, I've tried to do a lot of work to push back against. It's, it's, it's, I fear for the Jewish community in America. Because if it's, what's that cliche? If you're not for yourself, who will be? And we are not for ourselves as we should be. That's already not an answer to your question. There's so much to unpack there.

It absolutely is an answer. You saw what was coming. Why? Why did you see it when so many other Jews were hopeful or not or shocked? You weren't shocked at the discovery that anti-imperialist terrorism is now heroized in as it frames itself is now heroized on college campuses

on Ivy League campuses or so many Jews said to me I had no idea that everybody I marched with and every other march and every other issue you you understood what was coming.

Why? This is very much of a good instinct. I even went back to some of my group chats you know from that first week and I was admonishing people stay away from the atrocity porn

nobody's going to care make the arguments nobody you know they they they they they and they cut off a, they put a baby in the oven, whatever, even things that turned out not to be true. We thought they were true at the time. I said, this is not the way to approach this.

This is going to, very quickly, people get tired of hearing this stuff. I don't know how I knew that, but I had, as I sent you a video, I had already, for a couple years prior, been very worried that since we ourselves, the Jewish, like the liberal Jewish community, were completely

uninformed about why it is that the argument for Israel why it is that the West Bank is occupied why it is that Gaza is suffering under this siege all these things

that it just became clear to me that nine out of ten Jews wouldn't know what to say and then it would collapse because the non-Jews would say well if he can't make an argument I'm not going to open an encyclopedia and try to figure this out.

If the Jews themselves don't have a powerful argument about this, I guess there isn't one. And that's why you were so important, because you finally made the arguments that I could actually send to people. Say, no, listen to this about the second. It's a father about the Jewish psychology, all of it. And I just felt like we were going to collapse like a house of cards because we were so uninformed. And I think that's exactly what helped me. So let's just, you know. I'm going away my list of...

So with the optics of a people being occupied, the optics of the settlers, the optics of people, you know, of a siege, this is very, very viscerally powerful stuff. You have to have very strong arguments to get people to accept. Yeah, I get it. I see why you're doing that.

Very strong arguments. You and I have talked about this stuff before. You aren't just worried about the optics. The actual thing on the ground is actually bad. And, and, um, and, um, And we've talked about it a hundred times. But there's nevertheless complexity here, and there's layers here, and they're not small complexities.

They are fundamental complexities. You want to feel good for yourself? Go ahead and feel good for yourself by screaming whatever you want into the ether. You want to solve the problem? We have a problem called Hamas. We have certain ideologies on the other side that every time the Israelis withdraw, it's a bloodbath. And so it's hard to get them to withdraw at this point. Not the Israeli right.

The Israeli left. The Israeli left. You've got to convince the Israeli progressive left is to want a Palestinian state. That it's doable. If you don't have to respect them, you don't have to do it, whatever. But there is a much larger context here. People have lived, this is what people have lived for 30 years. And if you don't get that they've lived it for 30 years, you're only talking to yourself

about your own feelings. You're not actually solving anything on the ground. This has been my argument. One of the things I have discovered is when I get to a college campus, the sheer, I'm just going to say it. All my questions are now gone. The gratitude. It's heartbreaking. It's almost pathetic. How did the Jews get there? The gratitude and just a carefully articulated distinction between Zionism and someone screams Zionism as colonialism. Maybe it's not true. Someone screams Zionism is X or Y or maybe there's an counter argument. It's not even that I say I know the truth of history. All I say is it's complicated and it doesn't reflect the experience of actual Israeli Jews. And also, if your argument,

I had this debate on apartheid somewhere. It's not that Israelis are incapable of aparthe. There was actually one Israeli who tried to legislate apartheid. His name was Mayor Kahana. He had a very brief time period when he was a single member party in the Knesset. And he tried to pass a law to make sex between Jews and Arabs illegal, a felony, something the state has to pursue to discover, like a bank robbery. Not just a misdemeanor that if a cop sees it, then it's a problem, but you don't have to hunt it down.

something you have to hunt down as a prosecutor. He tried to present that bill in the Knesset. That actually is South African apartheid, where interracial sex was actually illegal. It's not that we're incapable of being bad people. It's that the argument that we're apartheid is not descriptive of what's happening now. It's not attempting to be. It's prescriptive of what should happen in the future.

And what should happen in the future is the dismantling of a Jewish state, the dismantling of Jewish self-determination. going to the civic democracy vision of America or the civic democracy that South Africa claims to be but actually isn't. It's kind of a weird coalition of like six tribes. It's that attempt to say to the Jews, you don't get self-determination. Well, if apartheid is an argument about what should happen in the future, and in that future, Jews don't get a state, your campaign isn't going to work. The Jews are not going to have to, the last surviving Jews of the Eastern Hemisphere after the 20th century are not going to give up self-decentry.

determination because you decided to feel moral feelings about it or because you threw an epithet at them as a global campaign. They know the world hates them. That's what built Zionism. To prove to them the world hates them is something they're already inoculated toward. So if you want to make life better for Palestinians, you need a new argument. The Jews have to be able to defend themselves in the future or nothing works. The Palestinians, by the way, need their independence.

They desperately need their independence. Any solution that isn't into it, but this is maybe an argument for some early versions of some Trump plans. If they don't get their independence, you haven't solved anything. You want to make it federated through Jordan? Fine, but I don't know how to do it. But long story short, there was a really bad debate. The Israeli-Palestinian question in American-Jewish debate was shallow.

It was ignorant. People are like learning stuff now that they had never known. American Jews forgot everything. They know almost nothing. And the gratitude when they learn a little bit of their own story. I've had anti-Zionist Jews come up. me and say, I'm still anti-Zionist, because this is Israeli government is just terrible. But obviously, Israel should exist.

So I guess you're not anti-Zionist. Yeah. In other words, anti-Zionist is a flag you fly for social reasons. I don't know, I don't know what it is. If you criticize this Israeli government, you're like 60% of Israelis are with you. That's not. So how did it get that bad? What happened to American Jews?

Did it just not matter because everything really was safe? Everybody actually thought everything was okay. Yes, I think that, you know, like, the analogy that pops to my mind is that I was always bad at Spanish in high school. But then when I went to Israel and I wanted to meet girls and I wanted to say it, I learned Hebrew very quickly because I had a use for it. And Jews, life was so good in America is just like, who wants to put the work? we had no use for it. It was a muscle that atrophied and it was complacency

and now, you know, hopefully it's not too late. We need to get it back. After October 7th, there was all this talk about how do the Palestinians feel? And I don't mean to belittle it, we should be concerned

about how people feel. The psychology, the psychology, Norman Finkelstein compared it to the Naturn of Slave Rebellion. And I remember saying to Finkelstein, okay, but the Israelis have a psychology too. Nobody ever inquires into the Israeli psychology. It's always about the Palestinian psychology.

And you were explaining to people the Israeli psychology how the second intifada is a psychological event. And there's a PTSD from it to this day, which drives things, rationally drives things, because the other side has never indicated that they wouldn't do the same thing again, given the chance. So these are just, you know, the things that pop to mind hearing what you're saying. But at root, yes.

And I think Herzl must have written about this, you know, 100, 150 years ago that Jews become victims of their own complacency. What I didn't see coming was this thing on the right now with the Tucker Carlson's and the Candace Owens's and that. And that sounds like what... Explain that. Why? This is a total surprise. You didn't know that there was this anti-Semitism. I mean, it's just this literal, I mean, pro-Nazi sentiment.

I mean, we always knew there were some, you know, overgrown Nazis living in their parents' basement who would march in Charlottesville or whatever it is. But the conservative establishment of the Republican Party, the most important right-wing publications, had wanted no part of this whatsoever, you know. And nor, even though Trump, people would try to say that Trump did, Trump, you know, got in trouble for his words at Charlottesville personally.

And I think it is true to reality. Trump was never part of that either. Although in some way, maybe his mistake was that he knew he needed their votes. So he spoke cautiously about them. But I can't put this on Trump. Somehow. you know, these crazy people. And I take solace from the fact that they're crazy.

And I don't use the word lightly. My hope is that it'll collapse on its own weight only because, like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, they talk about demonic possession and chemtrails and satanic beings that live underwater that the government knows about and Jews killing Christian babies at Passover and Stalin being Jewish.

I mean, and Charlie Kirk being killed by somebody who comes out of a trap door. Like, there's no end to the actually, apparently mentally ill things that these people are saying. And what would it be if it's not mentally ill? I think they possibly believe it? You literally laid out the like five highlights that I've noticed or that somehow came across my attention. What is that? What is Tucker Carlson doing? This is a guy who began, his father was a chairman of the board of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

His father was a friend of Jews. His father, I'm going to get a warrant after my arrest in the wrong places, but his father was a neocon. Don't tell anybody. Yeah. As was Tucker at one time. How does a man go to this place from that place? In other words, he came from a place that we understand. We could agree or disagree.

The Iraq war can be smarter stupid, but he came from that place. so he knows where he's at now. It's not like a man who just grew up in this and doesn't have the perspective. What's happening? I think there is mental illness there. I know some people say it's a grifter. I don't think it's Katari money.

I, I, like there was a documentary where Joaquin Phoenix played that, you know, weird guy. I didn't see it, but I, and he stayed in deep character for so long that people began to think maybe he, he really was, and then he turned out it was just an act. I don't think Tucker Carlson is an Academy Award-level-winning actor who can stay in a totally false character 24-7.

I think he actually believes this stuff. He's functionally, mental illness is weird, he's functional, he's smart, but at some point, I don't know, I'm using the word mental illness in a layman's term, but at some point when there's deep irrationality. Like I joke about to cross in many times. If you show up at the hospital bleeding and they say, what happened? You say, I was mauled by demons.

They do not let you go home. And I'm not being hyperbolic. They will not let you go home until you give them some explanation that indicates you're not a threat to yourself or others. Because obviously you were not mauled by demons. Only crazy people believe that.

That Tucker might be emotionally unstable or mentally ill in some way or fantasizing or, you know, hallucinating schizophrenia of some kind. Millions and millions of people. Millions of people. Joe Rogan has exactly zero mental illness of any kind than I have ever been able to identify. And he'll platform Ian Carroll and give Ian Carroll, you know,

millions of young American men watching his, him lay out his entire vision of the world. And not challenge it seriously. And then Tucker will platform Nick Fuentes. And then Candice will start in on insane the number of times that she has called basically me. I mean, the Jews I know, Zionists, I don't know. What she? Frankists.

I know who the Frankists were. They were a specific Jewish cult, like hundreds of years ago. What? Like, why is this interesting to you? You're such a weirdo. And, you know, this is the kind of, I mean, and millions of people are watching her for it. They're watching her because of the spiral. They're not opposed to the spiral.

So those millions, they're not watching it despite it. You know what I mean? She's not Albert Einstein has given humanity all the things he's given. And in his old age, started fantasizing about fairies. That's not what's happening here. Because she is doing that, she has millions of viewers. Now what do we make of it? I don't know.

You mentioned Rogan. Rogan has always loved conspiracy theories. I don't think he believes we landed on the moon and, you know, these kind of things. And comedians have this kind of smart aleck. overgrown adolescent attitude that's constantly rolling their eyes at the adults and it's not that serious

you know old man you know and and usually they're right and usually they're right to poke holes and things and the sky doesn't actually fall down this seems to be different and to Rogan's credit

ever since that Douglas Murray debate with Dave Smith and and the blue and everybody got a good glimpse at Ian Carroll. Rogan has not doubled down to my knowledge on one of these guests. He seems to be avoiding this topic, which I'm happy for. He doesn't seem to be looking around to add fuel to this fire. Yeah, what it is.

I have watched your podcast a great deal. I have talked to you a great deal. You're one of the sharpest observers that I know in America of America. And I don't watch a lot of the people who are famous. famously sharp observers because I learned nothing from them. You have told me things would happen that happened. On the Trump administration and the relationship with the Middle East, you talk to the right people, you yourself see it, whatever it is.

And you have no idea what's happening here. And I have no idea what's happening here. Is America going to beat all this back? Or is this going to overwhelm American Jews? What do you see the future, given this strange, that we don't even understand because we're still inside of it? Yeah, I'm always taken within many issues, the concept of critical mass. and at what, you know, like at what point does it become a self-sustaining reaction?

So you have the war in Gaza, which is obviously a, you know, accelerant, you know, to a flame. And that's going to be gone. And the question is, especially on the right, which doesn't really concern itself with colonialism and occupation, is that self-sustaining and this fire of anti-Semitism continues to burn and spread or will it just fade back down especially since these leaders are so outlandish in their bouquet of crazy beliefs that they have beyond Israel, chem trails and all stuff, and B because, and this is really a big one, we really still don't know how to interpret Twitter as part of real life.

We just don't know that when I was having a terrible time because Louis C.K. came back to the comedy seller and every single newspaper in the country was writing about it. And I was getting attacked on Twitter and they were protesters and I thought, my God, I'm going to lose everything. What am I got myself into? Why am I defending this?

We did not see business fall $1. Not one dollar. And that was very informative to me that the Wizard of Oz, pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. You can see the wizard right in front of you, and it can often not be as it appears. So this is what I'm wondering about

because I don't feel like people on the right hate the Jews. I haven't gotten that sense. You know, when the immigration issue was very hot, still as hot, but I'm talking about 10 years ago, I would say, you know what? They should just build the wall and shut the immigration down because in two weeks it will be the right-wing Republicans are saying, we need immigrants. We have nobody to man our stores.

We have nobody to do our lawns. We have nobody to build our buildings, meaning like let them have what they wish for and they realize right away, you know, how much the country screeches to a halt without immigrants. Similarly here with the Tucker Carlson people, they're, I don't know if you saw the interview with Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson.

I saw pieces of it. I couldn't bring myself to watch at all. Yeah, you know, they talk about how the Jews are unassimilar bowl and can't be trusted and blah, blah, blah, blah, and they're venting about the Jews. But in the end, there is no policy that they are recommending. this is America. We are not going to start rounding up Jews. We're not going to have Jim Crow for Jews.

We're not going to throw the Jews out. None of this is happening in America. And at the point where these people, some genius says to Nick Flind is, okay, well, what, or Tucker, what are you suggesting? What legislation would you like vis-a-vis the Jews, you know? They're not going to have anything. They're just enjoying the hate of it all.

And that's why that plus the fact that they're so crazy, I'm hoping that it will burn itself out in accompanied by calm in the Middle East. That's what I'm hoping for. I don't see another. But there is, of course, there is a certain reversion to the mean of attitudes about Jews

and the kind of comfort in expressing them, which I think is here to stay. And more like my first, father's America, but he adored America despite it. But even, you know, maybe it won't go as bad as that. That was bad? America of the 1970s and 80s was that bad? Now I'm talking about the 50s, 40s and 50s. My father would talk about Jews getting nose job, changing their names. He hated reformed Judaism because introduced an organ into the services to try to be more, these kind of things to try to be less offensive to the non-Jews.

And even Alan Dershowitz talks about he was first in his class at Yale, and he got turned down by every law firm in the early 70s. So I got to say, I, Zionism argued that no matter where you go and how much you try to integrate, they won't let you. You will be someone else to them. You think you're a Russian, you're not a Russian. The Russians will explain to you that you're a Jew.

You think you're German, ditto. You think you're English, ditto. and the place where Zionism was totally wrong was America. What if now you're other? What if that's what they're doing? You're not assimitable? I love America so much and I am assimilated. And this is why I've been fighting for fighting like hell for people to take on these people,

to argue with them effectively, drive a stake through the heart. I'm astounded at the poor level of argumentation. that the people on our side are capable of. But once the arguments are finally made and these people are exposed for the rank biggest that they are, my faith is with America that we're only going to go so far. The left-wing version of anti-Semitism or whatever one, they wouldn't consider themselves anti-Semites, most of them.

Most of them would have no problem if you brought home a Jewish girl to marry or anything like that. Whatever it is, you would. want to describe what it is that they are and be fair to them. That's not going away because their worldview cannot tolerate an occupied Palestinian people, and that's not going away either. So that that irritant is there. I'm just hoping that on the right.

But applying it to the Jews in New York is the bigotry. Oh, then you want to get to New York? So, actually, I don't know. Yeah, figuring out we're in, the topic we were going to start with. I am, you know, what you want to say first, what you think, what your worry is about New York, I'm curious. There's one poll. We don't know how accurate it is. I really have no idea how accurate. By the way, the polls on Jewish support for Mondani are all over the place. 75, 25, 65, 6633, and that's all with Mondani and the minority. And one poll I saw where he's in

the majority. Okay. Either Jews are lying or the polls are just totally. unreliable. Did one-third of Jews vote for Mamdani? What does it mean? What does Mamdani represent? And are you comfortable as a lifelong New Yorker who I was a little bit kidding, but you really are deeply, deeply New York. It's your comfort zone. It's everything you understand and know about the world. What is it? Is Mamdani a new New York? What does it feel like? I had a pretty testy exchange with a proud Jewish Mamdani voter, not an anti-Zionist, works for an Israeli restaurant, you know, and the stuff he was telling me, it was so nonsensical. Essentially, what his arguments boiled down to is that he can't do any of the things he says

he wants to do. I'm like, okay, but why would you want to vote for the guy who says he wants to do the things he says he wants to do? So what if he can't do them? And it just seemed to come down to... You mean affordability? You mean buying an apartment in New York? Yeah, affordability, you know, this freezing rain.

and making coming down on business and raising taxes and all this stuff, arresting Netanyahu. He supports New York arresting Netanyahu? Yeah, he said he would arrest Netanyahu if he came. I don't think he can do that. I think there's diplomatic immunity, but I'm not an expert on that. So as best I could take from what I was hearing, was a kind of psychological moment.

of peer pressure in the same way people became hysterical after George Floyd and hysterical after me too it's just in the air about Israel and the genocide and it just like I said acid rain

I wish I could give a very technically sophisticated answer but there was no alignment between the arguments he was making and a logical choice to vote from Mamdani and he is not alone. And I don't know where that leads. I don't think Mamdani can do the things that he wants to do.

What Mamdani worries me, again, is this concept of critical mass. So aside from the Jewish question, which is, you know, scary enough, I am very worried about, again, critical mass of New Yorkers at some point. leaving. So if we, when we live through the 70s and 80s and the 90s of high crime and fiscal disasters and burnt out buildings, in those days, you had no choice. In most industries, which were based in New York, you had to eat it and live with it because where are you going to go? There is no place that. You're in New York and you're attached to New York. That is no longer the case. The entire financial industry could be probably

run out of a warehouse in Oklahoma somewhere, and nobody would be the wiser. The world is tiny, and yes, New York still is the highest concentration of culture and talent and intellect, and it won't leave overnight. But I already know, you probably already know, New Yorkers who have left for tax reasons. They have an app, which tells them when they've been out of the New York for 100,000, 883 days and they moved to places like Florida and then people follow them and then Mamdani might find a way to squeeze the rich more and then all of a sudden again a critical mass forms somewhere else and it happens gradually and then all of a sudden and that is that is

a fear of mind that it was the same way in actually in the comedy community so it looks like Joe Rogan left and moved to Austin for whatever his reasons were with California. And Shane Gillis left New York for the tax reasons and moved. And I'm very worried that at some point, Austin will achieve critical mass. And then all the comedians will start going to Austin because it becomes another center, another poll. And this is my bigger fear with Mondani's that he's so utterly naive that he can send New York back into a tailspin. But this time, New Yorkers won't have to stay. This time, they can leave. And once they start leaving, then we're in trouble. Is he evidence that this anti-Jewish thing now is self-sustaining?

Of course, there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of weird peculiarities of this particular election cycle. There was this debate between Cuomo and six other people in Mandani. Cuomo thought he was a short thing, so he barely tried. he was terrible in the debates. Mamdani is talented and handsome and sunny. And Cuomo split the vote with a bunch of old, another, a bunch of like five other Alta Cockers, you know, old people.

And it's not, and Cuomo had the sexual harassment and COVID and the old age people. So it's not clear that Mamdani was destined to win. And whoever was going to be the, if Cuomo had been the nominee and Mamdani had run as a third party candidate, Cuomo would have won in the landslide.

So, you know, It's very, very difficult to know what we're seeing. But what we are seeing, and this is in New New York, is that a guy saying the kind of things about Israel and River to the Sea and all this stuff, this is no longer disqualifying among New Yorkers. And I have to say, much of this is just that they're younger. They know nothing. They are no longer in the gravitation.

force of the Holocaust, like my father's generation was and my generation was because we lived with my father's generation. And many of them just did not understand what all the fuss was about. He sounds like he wants

nice things. He's not... And also, people are just not that informed. We who are informed, imagine that everyone who's making his decisions, knows what we know, have thought about what we've thought about, and they're coming to an informed a reasoned decision. And they're not. They're not. They're just voting where their friends are

or whatever it is. You are not sure that any of this is as dramatic as it feels and looks, even to you, to you it looks and feels very dramatic. You're not 100% sure, not on the right, not with the Tucker Carlson's, not with, not on the left, with the Mamdani's. This might be more rhetorical moment than a real shift in American society. It's somewhat of a shift for sure question is how much and will it edge back? I feel like, it's funny that I'm the one saying this to you, I feel like we should be reacting to it

very, very seriously. You plan for the worst and hope the best takes care of itself. So yeah, this is a five alarm fire, is unprecedented, we need to fight on all fronts and fight to win. Just the fact that my children are living through this stuff, seeing

this kind of stuff said, the acid rain, I keep coming to it. It degrades them. It sickens me. that they can't, that they understand that being Jewish is something. This is new to American life. It's something. My daughter was a Jewish star. It's not just like, whatever.

Nobody cares. We have a Jewish star in the olive tree. Yeah, this is brand new. The Jewish star in the window is a wonderful story. That's been there from day one. It's been there forever. And it was always like an Italian flag in a pizzeria. Nobody cared.

Everybody assumed if you have an ethnic restaurant, you have an ethnic symbol. And sometime around 10 years ago, people would be like, good for you. You know, you know. And by lately, they've been like, are you sure you want to keep that there? Someone's going to throw a rock to it.

You know, we actually did put a piece of plexia over it. You know, this is kind of like, you know, Henry short story where you can see the world changes through the condition of this Jewish star. But so I don't take any of it lightly. But in the end, my prediction is not the most diet. of consequences, my prediction is a slight calibration for the worst.

And that is a huge thing to me. You know, I just don't want to, I just don't want to pretend that it's more than that. I don't think they're rounding me up. I don't think, you know, like I said, Nick Flentes is not going to reinstitute or institute some sort of Jim Crow where Jews can't use the water fountains and they're not going to deport the Jews and they're not going to be, this is not going to become the 1930s Germany. but there is a difference.

There is a difference. Jews are no longer carefree. And as I said in that other video, like we have a little bit of a hedge when we say what we are in the way I remember years ago when a South African, we have to say, I'm from South Africa.

Or even to this day, when I meet a German, I can tell the bubble over their head is, you know, they don't want to show it. but there's a little catch and there becomes a little catch on saying we're Jewish, a bigger catch to say that we support Israel and this is a heavy price that we had to pay

and I hope it reverts back but it'll be with us for a while and Mamdani is definitely a symptom of that and maybe we'll become a little bit of a cause. I'll tell you one other thing like you know we have a lot of city inspections health department, the fire department, blah,

and I have this dark thought, like now that I have a Jewish star in the window, a lot of these inspectors come from minority communities, which polls show are not fond of Israel and the Jews. And I, like, can this filter down to me in a way like that? You know, well, I get a lower mark on the hell. Who wants to live that way? I never had to live that way as a Jew before.

Never even entered my mind. So this is a lot. you stood your ground against all of the left-wing cancel culture insanity that wanted to erase people. And then you stood your ground against the entire whirlwind coming in from the right. You'll criticize them and you'll criticize them and you'll criticize them. And you don't give a shit. And that is the position almost not of a Jew. That's almost the position of that's the healthy American.

That's in my mind. I'm telling you about my cartoons in my head. But that's what it is to be American, is that you can have everybody out there talking safely and nobody thinking that they're canceled and marginalized and segregated off in a corner. And so American Jews can stand up, take that position. They can say, hey, lefties, you've gone over the deep end. This is insanity. This is bigotry.

And dear right-wingers, you've gone over the deep end. This is insanity. This is bigotry. But there is in America, and it's worth saving. And it is the best thing that ever happened to Jews. And it's worth saving. And the Jewish experience of America, I've said this 100 times on this podcast, is the biggest compliment ever paid to any nation in the history of history,

in the history of humanity. It's such a good thing and such an important thing to say. I meet so many anxious Jews who are asleep. So I don't take there being asleep as a sign that everything's okay. They need to wake up and they need to go to fight for this America. How do you do that? Well, we have, like every movement, we have to make the arguments. I think we should stay away from calling people antsy-sumites

and demonstrate the incoherence or the bigotry in the positions by making the arguments. We are in a certain way maybe lucky that Nick Fuentes is now one degree of separation from the vice president because it's so over the top. They will have to deal with it. they can't win and embrace Nick Fuentes

I don't believe but we what Jews are listen I am lucky because I am my own boss and I in some way talented

intellectually and in argumentation and nobody can fire me nobody can do shit to me. So I have had that latitude to do what it is that you describe. Many, many, many, many people work for organizations. The way they conduct their lives matters to their careers, their trajectory professionally.

As I've gotten to know journalists, I've realized that they're no different. They're cowards. They're hypocrites. They're bought off. by personal relationships. I mean, the disgrace that Megan Kelly has become in the way she accepts

like lame brain arguments about personal loyalty. If personal loyalty is an argument, then anything she's ever complained about the left can be just slotted away. I was being loyal to my friend the Nazi. What do you want from me, Megan? You know, like it's so stupid.

And she used to belittle people making these arguments. But as Jonah Goldberg said, personal relationships are the most corrupting thing, even more corrupting than money. So what do we do? We have to find the courage to make the arguments. Thank God, I believe we have the better of the arguments. Be much worse to be on the wrong side of these arguments, but I've had enough arguments

and won enough debates to feel very confident in saying that when Kaviv Retagor makes the arguments, nobody can beat you. and you don't need to call anybody an anti-Semite. And that's what the Jewish community needs to learn its arguments and then make them. And that sounds very easy to say. I don't know if that's possible. I don't know if that can be done, but that's what needs to be done. But America, you know, I still have faith that America is a good place and that it's going to be a right.

I think it's going to be a right. It would be some difference, but whatever people have in their hysterical minds of, like, some sort of dystopian worst-case scenario for Jews, I would rule that out. I don't think that's where we're going. I think these guys are going to lose badly at the ballot box in the 2028 cycle. What did Ronald Reagan say there's nothing bad about America

that can't be fixed by what's good about America? Yeah. No, and Dorman, thank you so much for coming on. It was really fun to have a good friend here. My pleasure, Habeev. If I knew about the compliments, I would have given you, you know, longer and more time. Thank you. No, I'm tremendously flattered.

Thank you. Thank you.