Bulwark Takes - Savoring Curtis Sliwa’s Epic Takedown of Andrew Cuomo and Bill Ackman

Episode Date: October 21, 2025

JVL and Andrew Egger take on Curtis Sliwa's incredibly theatrical, straight-to-camera interview performance with Nate Friedman where he thoroughly takes down failed tennis pro billionaire Bill Ackman as he explains his NYC mayoral ambitions.

Hey there, it's JVL here with my bulwark colleague, Andrew Egger, and we had something wild happen over the weekend in the New York mayoral case. I regret to inform you, Andrew, that we had a fatality. 187, call the police, because Curtis Slewa absolutely annihilated Andrew Cuomo. Guys, we got to go to the videotape on this. We are going to look at Nate Friedman, as he says, sits down with Curtis Slewa, and he tries to tell Slewa, oh my gosh, what if you wind up getting Mom Donnie elected?

Shouldn't you drop out so that Andrew Cuomo can win? Bill Ackman says you should. And what happened next is absolute gold. You've made it very clear, of course, that Mom Donnie would not be good for New York City. And, you know, as a New Yorker and someone who's just, you know, I'm online all the time and I see what people are saying, I'm sure you come across this. Bill Ackman, for example, yesterday said that, you know, a vote for Curtis Sliwa is a vote for Mamdani.

I'm not going to ask you, are you going to drop out? Because I know the answer is no, and I know you're probably tired of hearing that. However, I think it is clear to New Yorkers who are against Mom Dani that you and Cuomo are splitting the anti-Mam Dani vote. So my question is simple. Are you okay if Mom Dani wins that you, so to speak, contributed to that? Well, number one, Ackman is a jerk. Has he been right yet?

Here's a guy who goes up to Newport, Rhode Island, and thinks he's a professional penitist player. Come on, Ackman. Stay in your lane. Does he know anything about politics? No. Does he live in New York City? No.

He lives in Chappaca, the whitest suburb of America, where even the lawn jockeys are white. He may know Wall Street. He may know hedge funds. He has been wrong every step of the way with the billionaires. So let's say people come to the conclusion, if somehow I lose. Somehow. And we know Andrew Cuomo's lost. He's already tossed in the town.

Oh, it's because of you, Curtis. Because it's really? It's because of the Democrats. What I'm saying? Who created Zohan Mandami? Who embraced him? Who nursed him? Who supported him?

And how dare you, people who know nothing about politics, suggest that everybody who's going to vote for me is suddenly going to be really? We're reborn. We love Andrew Cuomo. He killed all these elderly, he's a sexual harassment. He told conservatives and Republicans in 2014, if you're conservative and you believe in right to life, and the Second Amendment, you have no place in New York.

You need to leave. This is the result of the Democrat self-destruction. So I'm supposed to help them? How come they don't help themselves? Andrew Cuomo failed to everybody in that primary. He even admitted it. Now he's basically saying, I can't win without Slewa votes.

Where are your votes? Why don't you spend your money and think he's got millions from the billionaires? Millions. Go out, get your own votes. Convert Slewer voters. But for me to drop out. Andrew, I'm going to level with you. I've never been a Curtis Slewa fan before.

Now I get it. That was, I think, the single best performance I've seen by any politician this cycle. I understand. It's an off years. There aren't a ton of races. But what do you think? I don't know. Look, you guys have been covering all this New York mayoral stuff quite a bit. I have not, you know, I have not, you know, I live in Virginia, you know. I'm not like you up there in New York City. But I don't know. Watching that clip, I discovered something about myself. And it is that as far as the New York mayoral race goes,

I really am a single issue voter. I would be if I lived there. And that issue is who is going to just nuke Bill Ackman best from orbit. Man, that was just really good. That was really good from top to bottom. I don't know. What do you want to do? Where should we start with old Curtis Sle?

You know, what I love so much about this is that Slewa goes after Ackman. And he goes after Ackman on all of the things, on like the corruption with the billionaire stuff. on how stupid he is about politics, on tennis? Come on, Ackman. Stay in your lane. The Bill Ackman, so that's a deep cut. You have to really hate Bill Ackman to have followed his aborted professional tennis career.

That was one for the real Ackman heads out there, yeah. Which is something I have done. He got a little stage fright. He got a little stage fright. His nerves, he had butterflies in his tummy, Ben. Tummy flies. And then for him to go. go after Cuomo pointing out the inconvenient, like, when this guy was governor, he killed a lot

old people. We love Andrew Cuomo. He killed all these elderly. I mean, he doesn't, he doesn't attack Cuomo for any, he just attacked Cuomo for like the most straightforward thing, which is like, dude, you were governor during the pandemic and you made nursing homes and do abattoirs. I mean, that's, holy shit. I have only ever kind of like tangentially followed him. And, And my kind of impression of him was that he was just one of these sort of strange figures that sort of hang around perennial candidate type guys who are always kind of running. And I always feel like these guys, they tend to have a few things in common. And one of the things that they have in common is like just a sort of strangeness to them that like they don't translate necessarily super well to sort of like digital stuff. And when he like leaned across the table to like look straight into the camera and be like, first of all, Bill Ackman is a jerk.

Well, number one, Ackman is a jerk. I was like, whoa, okay, I didn't know you had this speed, Curtis. And then my, you know, my admiration continued to grow throughout the course of the clip. I will say one other thing about him. And I think it's, there's this weird thing now where, like, the fact that he is sort of like an older school Republican guy, he's like been around New York City for like a long time, right? He's like, kind of been a fixture. And obviously, you know, Republicans aren't winning races in New York City. So he has never had the opportunity to like, you know, do the Rudy Giuliani thing, which is kind of the kind of guy he wants to be is like a law and order mayor.

in New York City. But, like, the fact that he has been around, like, he so predates the Trump era, like, he has not gotten the memo that you're supposed to just sort of, like, fall in line with whatever kind of, like, the, the GOP consultant class take is on anything. And, like, one of the weird things about the current moment is, like, the GOP consultant class take and the MAGA take tend to be the same thing. Like, you have, like, a lot of MAGA influencers out there who are just, like, doing MAGA versions of the GOP consultant class take. Like here. Yeah. And so, like and so here he's it kind of like it really highlights that right because like it's crazy that there's sort of like maga people out there who are like you know who we should really vote for

you know who's like our last best hope for new york city is andrew quomo it's just an amazing thing all around so i appreciated the clip uh yeah he yeah so you got to understand curtis lewa is like a tom wolf character come to life i mean for all i know he is a tom wolf character and he pops up somewhere in Bonfire of the Vanities, the way like Chris Hitchens does. And he's, you know, he's a quintessentially New York kind of figure. He's a quintessentially Trump kind of figure in that, you know, he's not even so much law and order as much as vigilantism. Like, he wants Bernie gets New York.

You know, again, never thought much of the guy, but at least he says what's on his mind. And I thought that was, ooh, we're not. When Bill Ackman's getting roasted by Curtis Slewa. You know, we have a phrase for this in journalism, Andrew. Strange new respect. Yes, yes, I can feel that. I feel the strange new respect. You can totally see where he's coming from, too.

I mean, like, where does Andrew Cuomo get off? He's running as an independent in the race, you know? Yeah. Slewa won a primary. Mom, Doni won a primary against Andrew Cuomo. People might remember. And so it's like, I mean, the idea that like everybody just needs to like, oh, well, you know, Curtis Slewa, he fought a good race, but

But now it's time to face the music. I can ask you one thing. Why do you think Cuomo's doing this? After he lost to Mumdani, he dropped out, right? And at first he teased with the, you know, I don't know what I'm going to do, right? Because he had said the whole campaign that he would be running in November no matter what. And then he lost and then he dropped out and then he came back in. Like, if you're Andrew Cuomo, what is the point of being back in?

Like, I don't fully understand it because your career in electoral politics is over, I think. I just don't see how there's another act for him. And so the only thing I can think of is, like, he comes back in to reposition himself on the side of MAGA. But he's tried not to do that, too. Like, he's done a weird, instead of just embracing the Trump stuff, he's done a lot of, like, well, you got to elect me. otherwise, Trump is going to really just drop the hammer on New York City into, if I'm, if I'm the mayor, you know, like, he won't, he won't come in like a kaiju. Yeah, but even that is like weirdly like mega, it's like a bank shot, like, mag sympathetic thing

because he's like, Donald Trump is not going to like single me out for destruction, like he will single out Zoran if he's elected, which Trump has promised to do, right? I mean, Trump has basically said he's going to put Zoron straight at the top of his list of Democrats to punish, you know, if and when he's elected mayor and go after, you know, more federal contracts to New York City and things like that. It's a totally normal thing for the President of the United States to do to threaten citizens by saying he will come after their municipality if they do not elect the people he likes. Yeah, yeah. And also possibly be wrong with that. And a totally normal thing for just like sort of soulless machine,

uh, politician guys like Andrew Cuomo to just sort of like take that under consideration. Like These are, this is just the facts on the ground now. You've got to do real politic about the fact of who's in the Oval Office. And, you know, maybe, maybe you might be tempted to see that enemy of my enemy thing and feel some solidarity towards Zoron. But wouldn't it actually be nicer if Donald Trump had no cause to go after New York, which also, like, I mean, just again, we're just like so far through the looking glass and all this stuff. Cuomo was a main Trump, like, foil and villain during COVID, you know, like back, back the one time

the sort of national Democratic Party had its weird brief flirtation. with Andrew Cuomo, national political figure, I don't know, like maybe he's still just chasing the high of that. He's like, ah, you know, we had it right then during COVID. And it all kind of fell apart after that with the nursing homes and the sexual harassment scandals and things like that. But I, it's just, we're just one turn of the screw away from from getting back in there, from being back on top. And I feel like a lot of politicians, that's as, that's as deeply as they think about this sort of thing. Does Andrew Cuomo wind up in the Trump cabinet in 2027? Maybe the Trump cabinet of 2013 could happen let's leave it there we'll have more more awesomeness good luck america