Breaking News from Pod Save America - MAGA Has Racist MELTDOWN Over Zohran Mamdani In New York

Episode Date: June 25, 2025

Jon Favreau and Jon Lovett discuss MAGA's complete meltdown over Zohran Mamdani's victory in NYC’s Democratic mayoral primary. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Accept it. Schedule pickup, and we'll come to you with a check in hand. Your car, your timeline, your terms. Visit Carvana.com to sell your car today. Carvana. Delivery fees and terms may apply. I think they genuinely believe that they are tribunes for the unspoken truth, which is that everyone is as bigoted and hateful and small as they are.

But it's just fucking wrong. Hey, everybody. I'm here with John. Hi there. We are going to cover the New York mayor's race. What happened in New York? Why Mamdani was able to defeat former governor Andrew Cuomo, what people are saying in the aftermath and the unhinged right-wing reaction.

Let's start with this. We have just begun our walk through the entirety Manhattan. We're at Inwood Hill Park at the tip top. We're outside because New Yorkers deserve a mayor that they can see. They can hear. They can even yell at. Oh my gosh. I live on a chair for you. To everyone who pulls me aside to whisper with the best intentions

you have already won. I am sorry. But the days of moral victories are over. Because this... Because this is a campaign that is going to win on June 24th. And he did. And he did it. And he did it.

And you know why? Why? It's because he walked a lot. He did. It's the walking and the videos and that's it. I will say, you know, we joke a lot about wanting candidates who can draw a clock. And I agree that that's important. They shouldn't be able to draw a clock.

We set our bar too low. I would like candidates that can traverse the places they're looking to lead. That is very important. or at least our, and just to just to get ahead of any claims, I was saying, just to, to want to, right? By whatever means of conveyance, to talk to the people they're representing, right? Because you don't need to be able to walk. I didn't know this was a reporting abelism. You know, you got to dodge and abelism charge.

Yep. Get out of that. But, uh, but let that what you, there was this feeling in the like the, the days leading up to it. Like, if you watch the debate, uh, between, uh, Cuomo, Moundani and all the rest. Like, there was such a disdain. in Cuomo's voice. Like this job was beneath him that he was like doing everybody a favor

by jumping in the race. Also, what an attitude to have at a time when people are not very happy with the Democratic Party and especially the Democratic establishment. The current mayor of New York Democrat has about a 20% approval rating and you were sort of driven out of politics

because you're a creep. And so you don't think you have to fight for the job I mean, I just never, like, what a fucking wild thing Andrew Cuomo decided to do. And I think because he felt assured by the polls and didn't, but the polls were, we don't know how wrong they were versus how much they didn't capture some late momentum, but regardless,

he was cocky. And he was counting on a bunch of money and endorsements to carry him over the finish line. It just didn't matter. It didn't work. And, you know, we should talk about why Zoran won, which no one knows for sure. And just like every other campaign and race in America for as long as we know, there's multiple factors.

Andrew Cuomo is certainly one of them. I would say that Zoron's focus on cost, cost of living, affordability, I think the slogan was like for New York you can afford. And not just his focus on it, his like relentless focus on it. We talk a lot about, I mean, we have been banging the drum about like, you know, Democrats should focus on the economy. economy and cost of living. We talked about this with Biden. We talked about this with Kamala. We've been talking about this forever. And we've also talked about how a big challenge of doing that is the campaign, the opposing candidate, the media environment, everything else pulls you in all these other directions. So you have to respond to this issue and this issue and this issue and this issue.

And I think it is a credit to him to Zoran and his campaign that they made the entire race about costs. And it wasn't just like a slogan kind of thing. There were obviously policies behind it, right? He talked about rent control everywhere. And rent control, I'm not sure I necessarily on board with that as

the solution to housing. I think you need to build more housing. I think rent control doesn't allow you to build as much housing or it disincentivizes building more housing. Maybe it's a solution in some areas. But super popular. You know, polls it like 70, 80%. But this is, I think, the other part of it too. So I think sometimes

Democrats that look to appeal to a bunch of different people across a bunch of different issues and are worried about alienating different parts of the coalition end up with more sanded-down versions of proposals, whether they are actually sanded down or just their rhetoric is soft and watered down. Either way, you end up with a bunch of things that pull pretty well, right? Mamdani is going out there with big, clear, bold policies that have a lot of potential political blowback, right? A lot of critics of it. A lot of people that don't like it. But I think there was two things that were important. One, he believed that the top line salience of these ideas would help people know him and understand him and that it would really break through. And then two,

also made them salient. Yes, and he made them salient. But the other part of this too, which I think is very much lost when this is a local race that's sort of nationalized and a lot of people are consuming it in this context free way is people. online or critics from the right or people not paying close attention will ask rhetorical questions like, well, how are you going to pay for this? Or how on earth would this work? Or what happens if this happens? And he's answering those questions, right? If you're actually paying attention, if you're in the city, he's methodically trying to answer those concerns by doing basically any interview he has asked to do. And like that was my experience of talking to him.

Like I asked him about this question. I asked him this question about the effect of freezing the rents on the market. And he has an answer, which is this is one part of a larger plan. Right. Like he has thought through how to assuage people's concerns. And more than that, what I've been in talking to him is he's genuinely not, he's not just aware of the criticisms. He's intellectually curious and thoughtful. He's grappling with them.

Yes. He's genuinely grappling with them. And not in a bullshit way. No, no, not at all. And so like that to me was really impressive. And not just a not in a bullshitty way. Also in a way where he is, and I noticed this about, I noticed this in his interview with Tim Miller, the bulwark,

minus the end about the globalized the intifada answer. But his whole stance in that interview was trying to convince Tim, trying to persuade Tim. And he was doing that, he does that with everyone, right? He was trying to, like, you don't agree with me. Even that clip we just saw. Even if you want a mayor to yell at, even if you want to yell at me, right? Like he comes across as reasonable.

which I think is the other, I mean, there is this sort of dumb online debate that we don't have to get into that is like, is it, you know, some people like, it's just as, it's his policies. It was the policies that did it. It's, it's, it's him. It's the candidate. It's clearly both. There are plenty of other, either DSA candidates or progressives who have similar policies who have not been successful. There are also other Democrats, center-left Democrats, moderate Democrats, who talk about costs, who have not been successful. Yeah. And then there are candidates across the ideological spectrum who are quite charismatic who have not been successful. He is a real talent, clearly, and he's a talent because he re-end this campaign that he was joyful, reasonable, comfortable in his own skin. He talked to everyone. He went everywhere. He never stopped. There's an energy that you sense, not just from the videos, but from him, where he's just relentless and he's working for it,

which is, again, the perfect foil to that is Andrew Cuomo, right? So it matched the moment really well. But so I don't think you can necessarily, in terms of how he won, divorce or like separate. Just say that it was the policy or the candidate. It was clearly both. Yeah, I mean, one thing that I remember, like, I talked to Tim. We both had interviewed Momdani, and then we ended up recording a day or two later. and even Tim, who was obviously to the right of Mamdani, was so kind of disgusted by the Cuomo aspect of this.

And I think had been genuinely kind of impressed by Mamdani that like we were we was jokingly talking about that if he were in New York, he would have ended up ranking him. Yeah. Right. And like I think that that was the feeling just in just in talking to him that that and we said that we said this before the election that like how does somebody who's 33 end up succeeding in this way? well, first of all, he managed to build an incredible campaign, right, which is a testament the kind of manager and leader he is, but also he's just a really smart, talented guy. Yeah. Then the results started coming in, and it became pretty quickly evident that Cuomo was not going

to do what he had to do, and that Mamdani was having an extraordinary night. And that led to this moment when Brad Lander, who deserves a lot of credit for endorsing, cross-endorsing with Mom Donnie. and said this about the former governor of New York. Andrew Cuomo. Andrew Cuomo is in the past. He is not the present or future of New York City. Good fucking riddance.

So good. So good. What? Everyone's saying fucking yesterday. All kinds of politicians. Yeah. Everybody's saying it in the morning. Schiff's saying it.

Lander's saying it. First of all, I really, so I really liked talking to Brian Lander. And he made, it was clear. Like he was, I think genuinely likes Mom Dani, but the antipathy and disdain he had, not just for Cuomo, but for people who were getting behind Cuomo, you could really feel because when I talked to him, he gave such a good answer for why Cuomo would just be a bad mayor, not based on criticisms of who he was in the past, what he did in the past, or all this terrible scandals or sexual harassment, which are all fucking terrible, but specifically why him as a person would fail because of his flaws. And I thought it was an excellent answer. My fear going into the, in. to the election was that because of all these controversies and the money being dropped on the race and the fact that Cuomo has all these Trump-like, you know, unlimited number of reasons to despise him, that the clear message wouldn't break through. But I think it's clear that it did. And then there's just like the one, when I was talking to Tim about this, I was like, how fun will it

be to say, fuck you to all the people that got behind Cuomo? And it's like, that's a good reason. Yeah, until they try to try to get him into the general. or try to pull something like that. I'd also think to the extent that you can draw any lessons for Democrats nationally, which I think everyone should, of course, be very wary about because a New York City primary electorate is quite different from most other electorates in the country. But Rebecca Katz, who's been on our pods many times, she did media for Zoran.

And she wrote a piece in The New York Times today. and basically mentioned that like this this generational split, this idea of like people are tired of the old guard, they're tired of the establishment, you heard Landers say pass versus future, and that they want Democratic candidates who are going to go out there and relentlessly talk about the cost of living and make it an issue and be more creative and be interesting. And she, you know, she said, look, Pat Ryan, who we've also had on before, Congressman, more moderate than Zoron, but had a similar vibe and how he talked about cost of living. He talked about patriotic populism.

She talked about Ruben Gallego, who she worked with in Arizona, who outran Kamala by seven points, even though the national party at first was like, oh, Ruben Gallego too progressive, or is he right or whatever else? And, like, you know, he ran his own race, again, which is much different than Zoran's race, but did it well. And so I do think that it is, there's lessons to be learned for other Democrats across the country

where you can still fit with your electorate, but be bold, exciting, creative, and, again, focus on what people actually fucking care about. Yeah, like, I do think that because there have been so few examples of challenges to the establishment on the left that haven't been from the left, you end up with that as the kind of dichotomy, and that's what we had in, and that's partly because of Bernie's success. But you look at the three most successful, to me, politicians in,

democratic politics over the last several decades, it's Barack Obama, it's Bernie Sanders, and it's Hillary Clinton in terms of kind of galvanizing a movement or being someone that challenges the establishment. And Bernie, it's from the left, Obama, it's outside, inside, and Clinton, it's from the right, right? And it just, that spoke to the political conditions of the time. That spoke to their own worldview. But it just, it does point out that, like, some of this is obviously deeply ideological, and that's very important to this race. But there are many ways you can kind of prove your bona fides as someone challenging the, establishment. I also just, I didn't

I mean, I knew, but I didn't realize how many people who had endorsed Cuomo had also called on Cuomo to resign. It's ridiculous. And the fact that like Bloomberg drops $8 million, that there's $36 million of Super Reckland. What a fucking

like, what a waste. What an absolute waste. All these people from out of state or even in state just dropping money in at the last minute that led to fucking nothing. I hope those people feel very pleased with themselves. All right. So now we have Mamdani winning. And as you might expect, this immediately led to a pretty unhinged reaction from the right. Let's see what we've got. I think it's Charlie Kirk. If you live in New York City,

do you want to vote for Muhammad Mao? That's basically what it is. You have Muhammad Mao as a blended political dynamic. He is the candidate for freaks who hate normal people and resentful immigrants who hate the West. And we imported his base in New York City. And if we are serious about taking back America and taking about Western civilization, if we are serious about the Reclamation Project in front of us, if we are serious about it, then Zohran Mamdani must be defeated.

Forget a mosque. You're going to get a mayor. You're not just going to get like a singular place of religious gathering. There will be a potential Muslim mayor of New York City, the largest city in America and one of the most important cities on the planet. Yeah, wow, just some pretty fucking, I hadn't seen just the full extent of just how just blatantly bigoted and racist, that is. I haven't seen it at all.

That was my first impression. We're going to make the whole city out of the Ground Zero Mosque. I will say my first, my first reaction, having watched that just now, is how out of touch Charlie Kirk sounds with the vast majority of Americans. And we have talked before about how, you know, people's views on immigration or one. one way and you know that people got a little more conservative on undocumented immigration like but that and what and what stephen miller was tweeting today i mean one charlie kirk obviously very influential pundit on the right maga pundit but stephen miller the most powerful person in the federal government aside from trump um sort of talking about well this is what happens when

uh you know a third of all new york city residents are foreign born and two thirds of new york city's children live in the household with a foreign-born parent. And Matt Walsh and all the rest of the right wings were like, the problem that we, and Charlie Kirk tweeted this too, the problem is not just illegal immigration anymore. It's mass immigration. It's immigration altogether. And which I appreciate the honesty. It is not in line with the views of most Americans in poll after poll after poll. But they are very open about the fact that, oh, no, no, no, no, we're starting with illegal

immigration, but we want to get rid of all the immigrants. Well, they just, yeah, well, not even all the immigrants, the immigrants that are from what they describe as the third world. They're talking about the brown immigrants. Right. They've been saying third world migraine. They now say third world because they, you know, Mamdani, someone who moved to this country as an immigrant, as a child, an American. By the way, all the voters in this election were Americans. We used to be proud of, uh, first-generation Americans, their parents, immigrants, their kids building a better life in America. And look, it's almost like, I know it's resistance cringe. I know. But so New York has always been,

like I am, I am from New York. New York has always been the, this capital of immigration in America. It has been the place so many immigrants have come through. It has always been the most diverse. city in the country. I don't know how you count that, but one of the most diverse places in the country, if not the world. And, you know, I even think of like the New York accent, right, which is an accent that is just the result of immigration. It is the combination of all the people that came in to New York. And I remembered that Stephen Miller's family, just like my family, at about the same time, came to New York, escaping the pogroms in Eastern Europe. to build a better life in this country.

That's why he's here. And there were a lot of people at the time that didn't like all these Italians and Jews and Polacks and Irish coming to our country. There were natives at the time that tried to stop that. But fortunately, they failed. They did succeed later. He is right, right?

It is true that the nativists, that the anti-immigrant natives did manage to restrict immigration in this country had terrible consequences, not just here but for the world. It is one of the reasons many Jews were turned away while the Holocaust was unfolding. But the population of immigrants when our families came to this country in New York City was higher than it is today.

It made New York. And I know that doesn't matter to him, but it reminded me of just how disgraceful this is because they benefited from the system of immigration that built this country. this is like it it's so un-American and they're just they're they're disdain for the city and the people right like they they have no love of any of these places they hate California they hate New York they hate us and they just sort of judge from afar calling us what freaks and all the rest and um I don't like it Houston they like Houston's the most door city oh really how does that how do they call a new yorker oh new yorkers center of the universe well that would be Well, we will, well, the whole country.

The whole country is the most diverse country in the world. Well, I guess you mean diverse isn't as the greatest proportion of people that are, are non-white. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I guess, but New York is a huge black population. Right, right. But I just, you know, there's many ways, as I said, as I did say, I did say there's many ways to quantify. I'm just saying as a place where people from all over the world come, New York City is an

extraordinary place. It's a beacon. It's a beacon. I can't handle fucking New Yorker sometimes. All right. like the only place on earth. Honestly. Sitting next to Charlie Kirk, this fucking guy.

Unbelievable. Unbelievable. We're sitting here in Los Angeles, which is like a... You know what? Honestly, this is Boston. This is fucking Boston shit coming through the surface. I'll wave the flag for L.A. too. I love L.A.

I love L.A. The two most diverse cities. Yeah, no. They are... They are bad people. They do not like people who are different than them. And also, I know this isn't. the most important point.

But the whole fucking great replacement theory is not just racist and xenophobic. It is dumb. It is wrong. Donald Trump won immigrant citizens who voted in the last election.

He won them. It's ironically a testament to our argument because our hope that immigrants don't just build this country, but they come and become part of this country, and that's like part of our greatness. And sometimes they vote Republican.

In the last election, more of them did than not. And you know what? I'm okay with more immigration. More immigration. Do I think, oh, no, well, if we get more immigration and they vote Republican, then that's bad. No, that's, I don't care. I want more immigrants. It's a great diverse country.

That's what America is. And then, and then try to persuade them, especially New York, and especially New York, and Los Angeles and New York, and then try to persuade them, perhaps, as citizens. As citizens, there's a kind of like, yeah, I mean, look, it's just, it's so. transparent now they feel so comfortable it actually speaks to the bubble they're in to be honest right as you were saying because they feel so that's why it's out of touch it's completely out of touch

they think they can just take their mass off because they genuinely believe I think they genuinely believe that they are tribunes for the unspoken truth which is that everyone is as bigoted and hateful and small as they are but it's just fucking wrong it's just wrong yeah and we'll leave it there Mamdani wins Cuomo loses and we move on to the general

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