The Ebro, Laura, Rosenberg Show - 174.) Mayor Zohran Mamdani On His First “Holy S***” Moment, 9/11, + Fixing NYC

Episode Date: September 1, 2026

It’s Been A Long Time Coming. Ebro, Laura Stylez & Rosenberg Sit down with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani for a wide ranging conversation at City Hall. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Glaze away. You're talking to Glaze Monster number one right here. Now listen. The Ebro-Lora Rosenberg Show. Ladies and gentlemen, the sit down has happened. Ebro-Lora Rosenberg are here at City Hall. Oh yeah. We're Mayor M. Dhani.

That is Soron-Promay, Mom Dani, aka. Are you giving them full name? Yeah, that's the mayor of New York City. Show respect. Listen, we can't just let them weaponize his name. We've got to celebrate his name. You know what I'm saying? We got to do that.

Sir. Do you guys have middle names? I'm Ibrahim Jemeal Darden. Salamalam ala. Yeah. That's Jewish half Christian. A whole Muslim day. Peter Elliot Rosenberg.

Yeah, I'm not going to give you my whole government. But my middle name is Yolanda. Laura Yolanda style. Yeah. Shout out. Yo, real talk, though. I know we didn't plan a star here, Laura. But do you want to share why you don't want to give your full name?

I just don't want people in my business. That's it. That's a real thing. That's what it is. I want to get, I want to protect my family. It's a real thing. It is understandable. Yeah.

And the reason I bring. bring that up is because people are all in your business. Oh, yes. You got, Ugandan rap videos have become a thing. Everything. Everything. Everything. I feel like I've seen your chest too many times because of that video. Imagine how I feel.

You did. You feel? Now, how did you feel when it started to go viral and you saw young you? Like, how does that feel? It's a funny thing. Yeah. Because you feel like you're in a different part of your life. Right.

But the way that the internet works, all the parts of the your life collapse. Right. And then you also look back on yourself of how I used to enjoy when other people's, you know, you'd be watching like Timothy Shalameh's high school performance. This is great. And I'm like, I shouldn't have even watched that. Right.

I was like, I'm doing. Right. Oh my God. Do you have moments when you're, you guys are in bed with your wife and you're like, babe, look what popped up. And you're like, oh my God. It's just like, you know, I mean, it's some things you expect, some things you do not expect. Do you feel they found it all, though, by now?

That's the question. Yes. So we wanted to, you know, first salute you for having an amazing beginning to your, you know, mayoral run. It's pretty unanimous for people who live in New York City. We'll get into the negatives and the narratives and the narratives and all of those things. I mean, just stay right here with the glazing. Right, just keep glazing. Just live in the glaze.

Living the glaze. Dunkin' Donuts. But yeah. But I do, I do want to, I do just want to salute you, man, because I don't think anybody can remember a time that a mayor started and was attempting to be so transparent and making it easy for everyone to follow along and understand. Also not being afraid to like, look, you know, the billionaires and the people who run media want to shape things the way they want to shape things. And thank God for social media and the way you carry yourself. you're able to make sure that your story doesn't get lost and the way you want to tell your story doesn't get lost.

Is there anything that you feel like in the first six months, you could have done even better, though? I think you have to look at every day as being one you can be better at. And I don't mean that, like, flippantly. I just mean that sometimes there's such a desire to categorize things in wins and losses that you forget the fact that you have to push yourself every single day. I mean, that's one of the things that I love most about New York City

is that the hunger for being as good as you can be is part of what makes people New Yorkers. And for a long time, it's felt like that's only been true in certain sectors, but not in politics. Right. It's felt like we have a culture of exceptionalism in the arts, in sports, in finance, in whatever it may be. But in politics, it's just like mediocrity is accepted simply as what it is.

And so for us, it's that even when you think you've done a good job, you know this thing is going to happen again. Right. Like, you don't just get one of these crises or one of these events. I mean, one of the first things that I learned is that this job is in many ways, it's like you are facing bigger waves than you've ever faced in your life and that that wave will end and another one will soon come. Right. And so just as important as what you're doing in the moment is what we call an after action, where you meet after the issue has left everyone's consciousness and people have moved on to the next issue, how do we make sure that our response to this isn't just repetition?

But it's pushing yourself, pushing yourself. Because to me, in that example is how you find if you can actually keep up the pace with New Yorkers. What was the first like, holy shit, I'm mayor, like moment? I mean, in the first week there were two five alarm fires. then we had the first snowstorm that we'd seen at that scale in a long time. And then we had the first blizzard in more than a decade. And it was just, you know, I remember this one moment where someone was like, yeah, so typically the way that City Hall accounting works is we allocate the amount of money

we've spent on snow removal in the last few years as the amount that we'll have now. And we didn't really have any snow to a significant level last year. I was like, so. Right. So what? And you just realized that you have to. to come up with a plan in the moment as quickly as you can and then be willing to just pressure test every single part of it because a lot of what I mean you guys know this working in any job

there's the rationale in the job and then the rationale in the world outside the job but there are things that make sense to people who are working there and then when you step out of it you explain it to a friend of yours and they're like I don't know what you're talking about that or care right and and one of those things is this is how it's been done yeah a New Yorker does not air if that's how it's been done, if it's not working. And so one of the key things is pushing past a rationale of we do it this way to say, why do we do it with it? Do you remember the after that?

Because for people who are not watching this, not in New York, we had snowstorms back to back that were unlike anything in my entire time living here, probably you two. Yeah, they were calling them 10-year storms. Yeah, it might be 20 years. They were literally. Yeah, that was literally the name. That kind of language is hyperbolic. Yeah, it's like 10 years.

I'm like, oh, it is age. 10 year storm. No, your whole life, you never seen anything like that, right? It was in a long time. It was like since I was watching New York One waiting from my school to pop up on the list of... But did you see the people online that, remember, like people were making videos and like, oh, nice work, Mom, Donnie, look at this. You know, you got Michael Rappaport walking down the street.

Look at this. And I'm like, what do you people expect if there's three and a half feet of snow on 87th Street between Broadway and West End? And then a truck comes through and plows that and your car was there, you may have problems with your car. But like, do you ever get caught up in these sort of unrealistic expectations, or are you able to go, these people know this isn't reasonable? I think you have to separate the noise from maybe, you know, the person you cited, to many others like it.

To good faith, right? And I think that's the thing is you can never confuse the two where you tell yourself all critique is bad faith, all critique is noise. If you do that, you make your world smaller and smaller, and you start to just tell yourself that everything you do is right, and you can never end up there. And so distinguishing between the two, a lot of that has to also do with the team you put around yourself, people who are willing to go beyond just saying yes to you,

willing to push you as well. And I think what we also realize is with the climate crisis, these kinds of storms are only going to get more intense. They're only going to get worse. And so what may have worked in the past is going to have to be changed now because the scale of snowfall is at a specific level. I mean, we talk about the rain. We have a sewage system built for rainfall of 100 years ago.

That has intensified. Up to like one inch per hour that's prepared. And we're getting three inches per hour or something like that. You know, and this is also what the other side of the climate crisis looks like in a quality of life day-to-day aspect of it all. Yeah, I think one of the most refreshing things about your administration and the people. And shout out to your team, by the way. Great team. Is the transparency on social media.

You do a, you guys do an exceptional job because we see for the first time things getting done, period. And it's super refreshing. I mean, one of my favorite things to see is when people are, you know, have been, have been shouting you out like, hey, mayor, there's a pothole right here. And boom, it's fixed the next day or, you know, that week. We've never seen anything like that before. Tell me about your strategy. Did you specifically say this is something I want to do? You know, I think first I just want to start by saying what you said, which you said, which

is shoutouts to the team. Yeah. Because so often in politics, it's the, what we call the principle that gets the credit. It's the politician at the heart of it. We're talking about a city workforce of more than 300,000 people who are out there and they are grinding and they are delivering for the people of the city. When it comes to potholes, we have paved over 191,000 potholes in these first eight months. And a lot of this comes from the feeling that we have as an administration, which is that

there's no problem too small, no task too big for us to tackle. And as much as I talk to New Yorkers about the importance of the kind of sweeping, ambitious vision of universal child care, for example, we also have to deliver on the smallest problems in their life. Because if you leave a pothole on someone's street, they will look at that pothole and say, how can I trust city government to do anything bigger than this if it can't even do this? And it's the same thing where anytime government is failing someone, that's where they are losing their faith in even believing in government. That's where they're telling themselves, let me just get as far away as I can from government. There are people who feel like my job is to make as much money as possible, so I never have to

rely on government because look at what it looks like right now. My job is to win that trust back and not do it by browbeating someone, but by delivering. So it sounds like, you know, because part of my convo on the air and with our team is always like, yeah, start has been great. But that clothes has to be equally, like you got- Riano. What? And that is often, you know, and I'm sure from you studying politics, and I'm sure you think

about that, like, to the degree of like, can we sustain the momentum, the trust, the, you know, the energy, because I'm sure, I mean, look, when you walked in, I was like, yo, bro, you are right? Like, like. You're doing a lot? Like, you good, my dude? like how are you keeping this up right and then i was reminded you're 34 i'm 51 so you'll be all right you keep pushing them guys um but on that note yeah the clothes man like are you even able

to look out that far uh two years from now three years from now and what are some of the things that you want us to be paying attention to the pressure test like you're saying to be a part of the community that's like nah bro this can be better you said xyz how do you how can we help with that pressure test. Well, I think there's two things. You know, I'm a big soccer fan. Okay. And in soccer, when a team takes a lead,

there's a lot of different approaches that they can take. One of them, and we saw this in the World Cup, is when people try to just sit back and protect the lead. They kind of give up everything that got them to that point, and they just want to hold it. And you start to feel the pressure just build. I use this as an example of, you know,

I leave some New Yorkers to judge how we're doing. If New Yorkers believe that we've had a start here, then our job is not to then say, let's not screw it up. You have to keep going. You have to keep pushing. Because if you get into that kind of mindset where you wake up in the morning and you're trying to not make a mistake, then that's going to paralyze you from any of what you actually have to do. I want us to be so much more than simply managers of the way life is. I want us to make life better for people. And that means going beyond trying to not make a mistake.

And it also means that when you make a mistake, you have to move beyond the ego of the fact that it's been made and ask yourself, why did this happen? How does it never happen again? And I think to you, the thing that would be most helpful is how do we keep pushing ourselves to be as ambitious as we can be? You know, I believe New York is an exceptional place. I also believe we sometimes suffer from something in New York politics called, well, New York exceptionalism where we say, oh, if that worked there, it can't work here. This is New York.

We're different. And in many ways, what you're actually doing is just justifying mediocrity by trying to say that it's a fact of life here in New York City. But I want people to be looking around the world, looking around the country and saying, look at what's working over there. Look how we could start to think differently. I mean, you know, one of the key things that is a focus for us when we're thinking about quality of life is trash, garbage disposal. We are now going to be rolling out more than 6,500 empire bins so that we're going to stop seeing black bags of trash out on the street in the way that we grew up associating with New York. And it's like, what are the other things that we've come to accept as if they're a fact

of life when in fact they're not a natural state of being? They're a result of political choices. That's the thing to me where I'm always wondering, and sometimes it's not even looking that far. It's looking at our own history. Because I'll tell you, When you look at mayors like LaGuardia, you look at what their ambition was, and you look at how far we've strayed over the last many decades in how we've constrained our thinking. And they called him a socialist. They called him all type of names when he was trying to do things for the same. Called him everything, man.

Yeah. One good nickname was Little Flower. It's a great nickname. It's also a great coffee shop and Astoria if you want to check it out. You need to develop a nickname, your Little Flower nickname. Yeah, 511 Flower. So obviously there's a ton of noise around everything you do. And we're pretty transparent about this.

Most of it to me, a strong percentage, is just rampant in the open Islamophobia. In my opinion. 9-11 is around the corner and it's 25 years. This is obviously a big deal for New Yorkers. Ignoring the noise about your involvement, we know that obviously you'll be doing all the things as mayor that you should be doing. and that you wouldn't miss it. What does the 25th anniversary of 9-11 mean? And what is your personal 9-11 story?

Like you were a kid in Morningside Heights at that time, right? I think for me, the 25th anniversary, it's a moment for our city to come together to grieve what was one of the most horrific attacks our city has ever seen. And we know that the focus of that day should be on that day and on the families and the lives that were forever changed by that day, lives that were shattered. And we also know that for many that day never ended.

And what I mean by that is that, you know, we are now in a place in our city where more firefighters have lost their lives since 9-11 from 9-11 related health complications than on 9-11. And I've had the privilege of visiting a number of firehouses across New York City. where they sent firefighters on that day. Some of whom were scheduled to be on, some of whom would just finish their shift. They were supposed to be going home,

and they said, I'm going. And they still have etched in the wall the names of those who were reporting for duty that day. And that to me is what the day has to be about, honoring that sacrifice, honoring that service, honoring those families. and knowing that this moment is a moment that has to be a solemn one in really recognizing that and being there as much as we can for the entire city.

And my memories of the day, you know, I was nine years old. And at that age, you don't fully grasp the horror of what it is that we're talking about. but you do have a sense that something horribly wrong has happened. And my memory had more to do with the sense of panic amongst those in whom I would never see it. Adults, teachers, and people who had no way of grappling with what they had just learned. Early dismissal, everyone going home, a student knowing their parent was in lower Manhattan that day, trying to find out if they're okay. That's also the panic is the sense of where are my loved ones.

And this is a city where so many people's loved ones were killed that day. What are your memories? I was actually on the air, but I wasn't in New York City yet. I was in Portland, Oregon, actually. And I was actually doing the news. And I was like, yeah, some idiot you know because it wasn't known that it was a passenger plane like it was just kind of like yo somebody I remember plane ran into the world like it's like a small private yeah I thought it was like

Cessna some individual person whatever and that's a 6 a.m. and then you just start to get information I was on the air that day until like you know two o'clock in the afternoon just reporting the news trying to get updates understanding what's taking place have you have you guys been to the museum yeah I have I actually have I haven't done the museum. You should go. It's... You will cry.

Yeah. You will cry. But thinking about it, I haven't thought about this in a long time. I remember I was going to be MCC. I lived in Inwood. I was about to catch that one train. And then I just remember the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, everyone on the platform freaking out and I just didn't understand what was happening.

And my phone didn't work. So I remember everyone was like, go home. I went home and turned on the television and I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I was like, I just couldn't process it. I couldn't process it. But I haven't felt that feeling. I haven't been, I just remember crying because I was so scared. But I recommend you do go to the museum because it is powerful.

It's very powerful. And you will shed a lot of tears. Well, and, you know, seeing the attempted, because it's bizarre, the attempted negative narrative of trying to attack you for, being a part of the 25th as the mayor of the city or individuals in New York City or wherever you are on social media acting as if people from all backgrounds weren't affected on that day or lost people on that day or whatever is so but I guess bananas is the only that's how like well not to mention then the secondary trauma that then happened for Muslim New Yorkers and Middle Eastern New Yorkers of all background who looked a certain way in the months and years that followed. You know, it led to a really horrible time of Islamophobia.

So in addition to like the immense tragedy that all Americans felt, you then had a group of people who not only were dealing with their own tragedies because their people were lost and they lost people, but now we're being villainized because this is what we tend to do. And that is sadly not something that has changed.

It is something that we sort of lived in a bubble and pretended like things were better for a little while and we'd all come together. And sadly in 2026, it does not like anyone is together at this moment. Are you able to just ignore the ridiculousness of people suggesting anything about your place as someone who is the ultimate servant to the city?

I think I always bring myself back to what the point is, what my job is, and it's to serve the city, and it's to ensure that the day is one where it's not about me. It's about the city. This was an attack on the city. And when you go to that museum and you see all of the different New Yorkers coming from all backgrounds, all parts of our city, and you realize that what this day should be about is a commemoration of them, of their families. And, you know, I look forward on the 25th anniversary. I will be there at the event as I was last year to commemorate those who were stolen from us.

And in all of the events around that, because what we, you know, when we're talking about the fear that you felt, that was something that so many New Yorkers felt. And at the same time, there were New Yorkers who felt that fear and ran towards the towers to try and save people. Save lives. And, you know, when I went into these firehouses and they, were explaining to me to the names that you're seeing on the wall, some of those people were supposed to be at home. It's hard to, it's hard to comprehend that. Talking about somebody who had just finished a 12-hour shift is a change of shift and they choose to get back on the truck.

That's what sacrifice looks like. That's what... Well, and your ability to articulate that and continually, no matter the onslaught, lot, redirect and focus people on what matters, I think contributes to the success that you're seeing in the job, right? And that was one of the reasons we want to, you know, been kind of on you and your team so hard to get our opportunity to sit with you was because we're very excited, man. We're very excited that we're living in a time where people get to see someone really give there all to try to make things work because so much of the culture of New York City is accepting the way things are accepting corruption accepting broken things ah man this New York City ain't never going to

happen ain't never got to do you glamorize yeah it is that is that exceptional glamor dysfunction and some of it is just a way to survive right but because I really think about why is their trash out on my street like with what people pay for their apartments they walk outside they're just garbage out on the street like you're just saying that there'll be 6,500 containers you know I'm gonna try not to throw shade we were we were waiting for some changes over the last few years there was a rat czar there was all kinds of things I was gonna ask you the rat the rat headlines like I don't even see rat headlines you don't have a rat czar do you know we just we're just going after him just gonna go put you if you put the trash into the container so you mean you

don't have less rat that's that's the that's the that's the czar and you didn't have to pay someone another salary and add someone to the payroll you're just that you know it's you know it's it's It's, for us, the question is just how do we get to the outcome? Right. And a lot of times it's a conversation around the outcome. It's not actually getting you there. We just want to put the trash. Yeah, but he isn't in the cigar lounge is like my man.

So boom. So real quick, on that, broken things and accustomed things being broken. Van Wick Expressway. Come through. Where are we at? And what is the truth? And then walk us into your plan with the BQE, which looks like it's about to be Van Waker Jace. Is that what they're saying?

Well, no, because even in your video, you were like, all right, guys, this is going to be hard. It's going to be long. There's going to be some rerouting, like, you know. I wanted to be straight with people. I'm glad you brought up the Van WIC because to me, you know, like when my friends talk to me about the Van WIC, it's almost like a marker of time. That's right. I was eight when they started. You could have like a t-shirt, right?

I know that the state is hard at work on the Van Wic. Okay, so that's a state thing. That is a state thing. But by my last update I've received is we're looking at completion this fall. Oh. Okay. That's not bad. That's the last thing I was told.

And I know there are a lot of people who are not going to believe that until the day that that is completed. and I do not begrudge you that. That's right. When it comes to the BQE, we're talking about the one section that is city control. And that's what's so important for me is we have autonomy over this one section.

So it's up to us. It's a responsibility on us. I can't say, you've got to go ask this person or that person. And this is one of the areas where it's safe right now, but that's really being tested because we're talking about a BQE that was designed for 50,000 cars that now has more than 100,000 every single day, not to mention the,

much heavier trucks that are on the BQE. So we're talking about a timetable of over a decade where we will be able to sustain that level of car traffic by creating a temporary bypass so that those cars, while we're doing these, while we're overhauling the BQE, this central part, do not have to go onto local streets. Got it.

That they can actually be on an adjacent temporary highway that can then bring them back onto a BQE that is functioning while we make these kinds of shoes. And for those of us in the city, the difference is Van Wick was a state thing. This is a city thing. While you're on the job, we could constantly badger you about what it's going to be done.

But you think the timetable is a 10-year time table. I think that's the maximum. As a parent, it was such a breath of fresh air to hear about your 2K program. Where are we at now? And I know it's only in certain areas, but can we expect it to be citywide? Yes, you can't expect that. We are rolling out 2,000 seats of free child care this fall.

So when school opens, that's with 2,000 seats of free child care. And that is so exciting because we're talking about free child care, which means that a family doesn't have to pay $20,000 a year for that same seat. Next year we're going from 2,000 seats to 12,000 seats. So we're going to be expanding the neighborhoods that we're present in with this. And then by the end of year four, we will be for every single child in New York City that is two years old. will have free child care. Okay, on children and parents. I was very happy to see the headlines about your Dula program.

And I know the Dula program started under Adams, so I read about that, but tell me what's different. Well, I think one of the key things is we also want to look at what was working in higher administrations and then build on that. Sometimes there's a temptation where if you have criticisms of a past administration, you say everything they were doing is something we want to throw out and we want to restart it again. We want to ask ourselves what's actually working here. The Dula program is an example of something that is important. And also, these are the kinds of approaches we need to take if we're serious about combating maternal health and mortality that we're especially seeing for black women across New York City. We have to be approaching it in this kind of a multifaceted way. And the last thing, and I'm glad you brought up maternal health and black women because there has been this narrative that's been attempted to shape not only about the DSA, but about Donnie with regard to the black community and their focus on the black community.

When I first met you, you, me, and Ross Baraka and a bunch of black men. met in Harlem to talk about, you know, your commitment to the black community, I think. So first part of the question is, how much of that is someone trying to shape a narrative about you and the DSA with regard to the black community? And then is there work that needs to be done by the DSA, yourself as a mayor in New York City, to embrace priorities for the black community? There's always more work to be done. For me, for everyone.

And the reason for that is we're talking about the very New Yorkers. who have been pushed out the most from this city. Whenever I talk about raising taxes on the wealthiest, people will respond with what is generally a myth of capital flight. But the flight that's actually happened, 200,000 black New Yorkers have left the city in the last few decades. There are so many people who will still tell you they're New Yorkers, but now they live in South Carolina.

They live in other parts of the country because they couldn't afford to live in this city. And you can feel that in neighborhoods across the city. feel like in classrooms across the city. And so for me, it's always ask yourself, how has this city left people behind and how can we actually start to show up? So we're talking about maternal health, we're talking about the mortality rates that they're disproportionately affecting black women. We also have to ask ourselves, how do we start to build housing that isn't just increasing supply, but also is increasing affordability within that supply at the same time while delivering

the strongest tenant protections this country has ever seen? And then also, asking yourself, how do we do similar initiatives for stability for homeowners? Because a lot of black homeowners, especially older black homeowners, have had to deal with the scourge of deed theft. So we went out and created the first ever office to prevent deep theft. This is an office that will actually proactively go out there to talk to our aunties and uncles who are being taken advantage of by people who know that they want to pass their home onto their next generation and are instead going to be signing their home over to someone they've never met before. Does that office have power to prevent sales or just give them legal help.

It's more about proactively providing them with legal advice. When it comes into the actual accountability for someone who's engaging in deed theft, that's through partnership for the district attorneys. And they're also taking it seriously. Thank you. You guys, this is Mayor Mamm, Donnie. We got our sit down. We got our talk.

Thanks to his team and the staff for carving out time. We really appreciate it. Zoron. Thank you, man. Thank you for you. Before we go, I promised my dad, my 79-year-old father in Maryland, reformed, you know, Zionist to pro-Palestian freedom person that he's become over the years. But more importantly, someone who just admires great politicians.

The guy who was holding Bobby Kennedy's legs on the back of a convertible in the 60s who walks around Chevy Chase, Maryland wearing three different, he has three different Zoran shirts that he walked away. He wanted me to tell you, he worries about you, he prays for you, and he just, I'll be honest, as my wife contests me, he's just obsessed. There are lifelong, like, you know, hippie-dippy people who like they just... Shoutouts to your dad, man. The name is MJ. Shout out to MJ.

MJ, you have truly made people like him happy. You know, as they get older to see that there are people who are actually, maybe there's a chance. This old American experiment could turn out okay. Shoutouts to MJ. Shoutouts to the bootleggers who sold them those three T-shirts. Because that's one of the things I also love. I've never even seen some of the T-shirts people are wearing. I'm like, wow.

And where are they sold and who made them? You know, I love it. Just go out there. Shout out to MJ. That's really lovely. Thank you. Thank you. Mayor of New York City.

Thank you. Thank you, guys. Don't call in a podcast.