The Press Box - Trump’s “Piggy” Attack, MLB’s TV Deal, and Joel’s Nuzzi Take. Plus: Mamdani Advisor Zara Rahim

Episode Date: November 21, 2025

Hello, media consumers! Bryan and Joel discuss President Trump's recent interactions with the media, including his “piggy” comment, his meeting in the Oval Office with Mohammed bin Salman, and his comments on the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Next, the guys parse through MLB’s new media rights deal with NBC, ESPN, and Netflix (18:32). Later, Brian and Joel examine Netflix’s newly released broadcast lineup for their Christmas Day NFL games (24:16), before Joel gives his take on the whole Olivia Nuzzi situation (27:24). The show ends with the next installment of 25 for 25 as Zara Rahim joins to talk about the strategy behind Zohran Mamdani’s successful mayoral campaign, her relationship with Mamdani, and changes in democratic messaging over time (37:11). Hosts: Bryan Curtis and Joel Anderson Guest: Zara Rahim Producer: Bruce Baldwin Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, media consumers. Welcome to Pressbox Thursday. It's Brian Curtis. It's Joel Anderson. It's producer Bruce Baldwin. Coming up on the podcast, Donald Trump is still attacking reporters both dead and alive.

We've got the latest on the brand new MLB TV deal and who's calling Christmas Day football on Netflix. And then Joel is going to unleash Skip Bayless style on the whole Olivia Nutsi saga. And in the latest

installment of our 25 for 25 series, we'll talk to Zeran Mamdani, senior advisor Zara Rahim, about the election, about her career, and about how Democrats communicate. But first up, Joel, Donald Trump is... No, Brian, don't do that. Happy birthday.

Oh, man. Don't do that. Happy birthday. Press box listeners. It's today's Brian's birthday, and I'm causing him a lot of heartache today. He's supposed to be getting out of here. having lunch with this beautiful wife christine they're supposed to be going out and i'm holding

them up and i just i want to apologize ryan because you should be what what what uh what what birthday is this what this is uh well you and i are the same age pal are we okay okay yeah that's right that's right so are you 48 now you got it you got it you got it right all right all right oh man you were one of those kids that uh you know had your birthday early in your school year so that's great It helped me in my football career, definitely, to be bigger than the other defensive line. That's like I said, bigger, stronger, more mature. That's right. Pascal, I'm sure they really benefited from it.

I love that we have the same birthday because, you know, one of the my favorite parts about hosting a pie with you is we just have almost the exact same Texas cultural overlay. Oh, yeah. The few notable hip-hop exceptions. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah, well, I was going to ask you who is your favorite Fort Worth rapper, but we don't have to get into that today. Yeah, why don't you ask me that on birthday number 49 and I'll have... Okay, yeah, you get some time to catch up.

Take A. All right. Maybe not, maybe not take A. I don't think TK is somebody you want to... That might have been a particularly fertile category, but we'll do our best. All right, Joel, thank you for that. First up, Donald Trump is still treating reporters like crap. Yeah. He never stopped and won't stop, of course.

He will not. I got three separate incidents for you. Number one is the... quiet piggy incident. Because that's what Donald Trump said aboard Air Force One to Bloomberg's Catherine Lucy after she asked about a message from Jeffrey Epstein that said Trump knew about the girls. Yeah.

Have you heard the excuse kind of going around that he was referring to a reporter actually named Peggy? Come on. Yeah, that there's a reporter named Peggy. Peggy, I think it was Bloomberg's D.C. Bureau Chief Peggy Collins. And so he was actually saying, quiet Peggy. That is what they're trying to say that he was saying. By the way, saying quiet Peggy to a reporter, if you're the president of the United States or anybody, it's also totally unacceptable.

Yeah, I mean, we're not in a classroom, you know, that's not. You know, I know a lot of people like to refer to Trump as their daddy, but he actually is not. He's not people's daddy. You don't talk to people like that. No, you don't. And look, you know, to me, you'd have to just convince me. You'd have to work so hard on me to convince me he did not mean to say that word. Absolutely.

That word has occurred previously in the Donald Trump cinematic universe about a woman. Yep. And it's his attitude toward reporters. It's absolute as attitude toward women. You know, I've always sort of thought about this because it's, you know, Bobby Knight also was really kind of a bully with reporters and, you know, would insult them and talk to them. I always just kind of wondered why people don't ever lash back out. Because I don't know, you know, any problem I've ever had in my life is because I didn't like the way somebody was talking to me, okay? Like fundamentally.

And I just, I've always wondered, would I have the calm, would I have the cool to just shrug that off? And I think we, I mean, we don't give the journalist, and I don't know if it's credit or what for keeping their cool under those circumstances. Because I just don't think if you insulted me in that way and you talked about me like that in front of my peers, I don't. know how I would not lash back out or be like, you know, who are you talking about, you know, being a pig, you know, I mean, just coming back at you like that, you know? I completely agree. And it is really the riddle of journalists when you're dealing with somebody like Donald Trump or somebody like Bobby Knight. Yeah. You're supposed to be the monk who has absolutely no passions at all who forsakes everything else, no matter what is said to you. And look, we credit journalists.

a lot, including some we're going to talk about today, for keeping their cool, for keeping their quote unquote professionalism. Right. But Jamel Hill also brought this up on Twitter. It's like, wait a second, if some member of the press corps is treated like that, it's not just up to that member of the press corps to say, excuse me? Would you just call me? Anybody who's in that gaggle there can also say the same thing.

Absolutely. I was going to say, like, the obligation to maintain your composure and professionalism. always sort of is dependent upon the reporter under that circumstance. And I just, I mean, it goes one way with Donald Trump. It goes one way. It goes one way with a lot of people because, I mean, it's not, and we've talked about this before, it is very common for people at a lectern or a podium to take cheap shots to be insulting, dismissive, condescending, whatever.

And it's not. Aaron Glenn, the coach of the New York judge. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I fortunately in my career, I don't think I can't really remember a time something like that has happened to me, but I know that I am particularly poorly equipped to handle that sort of a thing. And so I really, I don't know if it's admiration I have for these people or just sort of wonderment. Like, how are you able to hold, how are you able to not just fire back at somebody that does that? Let's be honest. Do we really want reporters to, as the kids say, clap back in a setting like that? You do? Yeah, I wouldn't mind it. I don't think, you know, it's just tough because the thing is, is that reporters and people in media were very unpopular. People are not inclined to agree with us.

And also, you're not probably even going to get a lot of support within your newsroom, right? Because the expectation has always been that you maintain your composure and professionalism. But I don't mind when people fire back, man. Like, I don't know, maybe that's, I don't know if that's, you know, my upbringing or whatever. but I like people that stand up for themselves and defend themselves under those circumstances. Not that they should be required to, but yeah. I just those press conferences with Trump are just such a mess in the best circumstances.

And I'm like, now we're going to have the reporter arguing back. Again, I don't, I think they're perfectly within their rights. If you're treated like that to say, excuse me, sir, and continue or maybe not even, sir, and just continue from there. But I'm just like, do we want that? If the whole idea is that we are actually at some level trying to get news out of the president, trying to understand what his thinking is about something or what he's going to do about something, even if that is covered under a mountain of lies and half-truths and everything else,

do you want that to turn into the Royal Rumble in the Oval Office? Well, that's the thing. And this is what those reporters, and unfortunately this female reporter is having to deal with. do I want this to affect my relationship going forward? Like, do I want to put myself totally on the outs where I'm not even allowed back in here or, you know, my editor thinks that I need to take me off this beat because now that it's forgotten personal.

So I totally get it. But I'm just... It's really easy to get into the gym Acosta zone where all of a sudden, you know, oh, you're part of the resistance, huh? Because you stood up to the president. Oh, well, you know, sorry, we don't do that here at ABC News. We're at CNN. We're afraid of getting sued. We don't want that kind of back talk around here.

Have you ever seen that? I can only think of one reporter, and I can't remember his, well, I can remember his name, but because I'm not having a success looking up this incident. But there was a sports reporter many years ago who got into an argument with somebody in a locker room for insulting him. And he yelled back at him. And it was news for a moment. I think he was at the Washington Post at the time. That reporter's no longer there. I want to say that he's at ESPN now. And it was a big deal when he, like, fired back at this guy. And he moved on. He's still had us a career, has done fairly well. And I just, you know, I guess nobody really wants that in their past. Nobody wants that on that Wikipedia page.

But, yeah, you know, I, like, I've never had a chance to tell that guy. I was like, hey, I respect what happened there. But I did. I really did. So that was incident number one. here's incident number two. This was Tuesday in the Oval Office. Donald Trump was meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, itself a big story. And ABC Chief White House correspondent, Mary Bruce asked the following questions. Mr. President, is it appropriate, Mr. President,

for your family to be doing business in Saudi Arabia while your president, is that a conflict of interest? And your royal highness, the U.S. intelligence concluded that you orchestrated the brutal murder of a journalist. 9-11 families are furious that you are here in the Oval Office. Why should Americans trust you? Pretty good. Yeah, man. I mean, that's the, I mean, that's the question that everybody should have been asking, right? I mean, it got to be top of the mind when the Saudi Crown Prince's lands over here and is in front of you, right?

Yeah, she hit number one and number two in the AP poll of questions you should ask. That's an occasion. That's right. That was Ohio State and Indiana of questions in there. 100%. And you heard Trump say, who are you with? He gave her the old fake news business after that. Somehow, dude, Mary Bruce came back and asked another question about the Epstein files,

which is in the Texas A&M number three slot in the AP poll. Number three, that's right. And when she went there, Trump said this. It's not the question that I mind. It's your attitude. I think you are a terrible reporter. It's the way you ask these questions. You start off with a man who's highly respected asking him a horrible, insubordinate, and just a terrible question. And you could even ask that same exact question nicely. You're all psyched. Somebody psyched you over at ABC. You're going to psyched. You're a terrible person. You're a terrible person. a terrible reporter. Yeah, man. Once again, I mean, I just, that is shocking.

You know, it reminds me, do you remember Yamiche Alcindor when she used to work at USA Today, and I believe she's over at MSNBC now? And it was kind of the same thing where he would, you know, cut them down, say she's a bad reporter. I don't like your attitude.

And again, it proposes that he's daddy, you're not allowed to talk about important things with him. It's not even that I don't like your question. I don't like your attitude. Well, who can't? Like, that's not, you're not supposed to be in the attitude monitoring business. Your job is to answer tough questions. And obviously, he doesn't feel like he should have to do that.

By the way, he also does mind the question. He absolutely minds the question. The fair point, yeah. The piggy thing came because he was being asked about the Epstein files as well. So, of course he minds the questions. Like, come on with that stuff. He should only be facing questions like that when he's in public. to be honest.

Because, like, I mean, those are the things. I mean, of course, whatever event he's having, of course, like you ask questions related to that, but you only have so much time around the president and to ask him questions. And if he's going to dodge them and not answer them, he should face them until he answers them. But obviously, he's chosen this as his strategy

for handling those queries. He's also chosen to say, and this is in the clip, after cut off there, that the, quote, license should be taken away from ABC. Yeah, man. And that his commissioner, Brendan Carr, whom we've heard so much about and read so many tweets from, should take a look at that. That's incident number two.

Incident number three, Joel, in that same setting, Donald Trump had more to say about murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi and his White House guest, Mohamed bin Salman. And that it ever could have been no matter who was president, there would be nobody bringing in $21 trillion, that I can tell you right now. As far as this gentleman is concerned, he's done a phenomenal, You're mentioning somebody that was extremely controversial. A lot of people didn't like that gentleman that you're talking about, whether you like him or didn't like him. Things happened, but he knew nothing about it.

And we can leave it at that. You don't have to embarrass our guests by asking a question like that. Things happen. And sometimes they happen with a bone saw. I mean, so what is for people that think that we're living out here and that, you know, we're being unfair to Trump? What is the argument on behalf of this being an appropriate way to respond? Right?

Like, I would, I mean, I kind of, I don't know that I really want to hear it, to be honest, because, I mean, I think it's really disgusting, right? But, you know, just in the interest of fairness, the people that think that we're living out here and that we're not being fair to Trump or MAGA, what is the appropriate response to something to that? Do they really think that the issue here is that this is a breach of decorum and that they should be kind to any guess that he deems to bring up there. I mean, he brings a lot of people into the White House for one, right?

Like, I mean, we got to do Dana White like that, too. Or that it's somehow important to note that the journalist who was murdered was controversial and people didn't like him. Yeah. I mean, so, you know, as far as I know, people being controversial and not liking them, the punishment for that is not the death penalty, right?

And so I just, I mean, that's, again, I would like to know, on its merits, what is the argument in favor of that sort of behavior in the Oval Office? Here's what I want to know from you. Okay. How are we supposed to keep covering this stuff? Man. I mean, I think the thing is, is by continuing to point it out that it's a huge breach of protocol, right?

Like, this is just not the way that any American president has acted like this in recent memory. And that any journalists deserve to be treated? And that any, you know, the thing is, because, like, I, So I would say that people are less sympathetic to the insult of journalists, right? And I'm not saying that, like, it's not important, but I don't think we win people by talking to them about how we're being insulted or whatever, right? Because I don't think people care. But I do think that, like, it's important to say that, like, for the good and the health

of the First Amendment, for the freedom of the press, it is important that he continues to face questions like this, and that for him to respond like this is trouble. right? That's not something that should be happening in a healthy democracy, right, that treat it like this. Now, I guess you could say that nothing has happened, like he just insulted them and things move away, but it sort of coarsens the environment, right? And this has been a whole thing since he was running the campaigns and they had the reporters in the pits at his rallies or whatever, and his supporters would yell at them and talk, you know, be mean to them and even sometimes, you know, attack them or whatever. So, I just think you have to talk about it. It's like this is not really acceptable behavior and that it is a, it is a, I don't know. Like, what do you think, I guess? Well, I agree with you that, hey, a reporter's feelings have been hurt or a reporter's been insulted as just a complete non-starter with 75% of America, 95% of America.

Like, nobody cares. They don't care. But I also think a breach of decorum is kind of a non-starter too. like I mean first of all a lot of people Trump won people voted the people looked at the ballot and said I vote for breach of decorum right he he is my choice to be president of the United States and honestly I think we just priced a lot of that into the world now you know it's and it's interesting it's like is the problem here the breach of decorum or is he just not answering questions that are put directly to him I mean he's trying to protect Salomon from questions and by the way he was willing to answer the question, or at least give a response, maybe that's a better way to put it, about Khashoggi. How dare you ask him? He was like, actually, I will answer the reporter's question. I'm prepared to do it. Yeah, I mean, I guess the thing is, it's like, you're right. It's important that he continues to face questions like this, and at some point you get some sort of a

response. But I think it's just a deeper issue in America. Like, it goes beyond journalism. It goes beyond, like what, you know, the precedent for the White House or the Oval Office, this is just a matter of, like, how we treat people, right? Like, in the world, right? And so, like, it's not acceptable to call people piggy. Like, if you do that on the street, like, you wouldn't want your children to do that, right? Like, that is not the behavior that we want to model for anybody in the world. And yet we're seeing it from the top down.

And, like, it's, I mean, contributing to the coarsening of our culture and our society. right now. So I did like it's like it's it's so much larger than journalism or the feelings of journalists or like even the first amendment. It just gets down to the core of like how we treat people in this country. And it's not you know you can it's just it bodes poorly that that is how things are trending right now. Let's talk quickly about this new MLB TV deal. Pivot. Pivot. Yeah, all right. Away from the coarsening of the culture and toward baseball. Right. Be honest, how much the World Series did you watch? Well, man, I mean, happens during football season.

I love what I get to ask the questions here. Do you watch Game 7? I did watch some of Game 7. I watched the end of it. Maybe I caught the extra endings portion of Game 7, okay? And that was great, by the way. I mean, that whole World Series was fantastic. It's great theater. And people won't believe me after I said what I said, but I love postseason baseball. I got an opportunity to cover it before. Remember when Albert Poo-Holes hit that dinger in Houston during Game 6 of the NLCS in 2004? I was there for that, man.

Nothing has ever felt like that did in a postseason environment for me. So I love postseason baseball, but to be honest, I did not get to watch a lot of it. No, Brian. I'm sorry. So MLB's hot. You know, they're feeling good. A great number for Game 7, as you'd expect, especially when the Dodgers are involved. Oh, yeah.

So they're resetting things because what happened, Joel, was that ESPN walked away, actually MLB and ESPN sort of consciously uncoupled from their own deal, which as Andrew Marchand notes in the athletic, ESPN would have paid MLB 1.65 billion over the next three years for that deal. ESPN's looking at that and being like, hey, that's not the number we want anymore. So MLB goes out and makes three different deals with NBC, with net. Netflix and with ESPN, which gets back in the baseball business. Now, these are interesting all and I'll give you kind of the top line here. NBC is going to get Sunday night baseball. So Sunday night sports franchises, football in the fall, basketball in the winter in the spring, and then in the summer they will have Sunday night baseball.

Yeah. That's great. I mean, we haven't talked about it that much, but we have NBC's been doing really good with the NBA. Like, I just like them being involved back in this again. Like, maybe the time away has inspired them, right? I completely agree. You're also going to get the wild card round that was on ESPN as part of this deal. Yeah.

Netflix, and of course you want to be in business with Netflix if your sports league. Right. It's going to get the home run derby and opening night. It's part of their deal. Okay. And then ESPN is going to get national games. They're going to retain some national games, but they're also going to get it, and I'm quoting from Austin Carp's story in Sports Business Journal here,

they are going to get the addition of the MLB.tv out of market package, right? So I'm Brian. I live in Los Angeles. I want to watch the Texas Rangers. ESPN is now going to be handling those rights. There's still some uncertainty about whether, where you're going to be able to get those going forward in the immediate future. You're going to be able to do it both inside the ESPN app and outside the ESPN app. But ESPN now is saying like, look, hey, we need stuff, right? We still need stuff. Even if our relationship with baseball is different, we need stuff.

And baseball, by the way, is like, hey, it's still a good time to be selling sports rights, you know, because what a, what a market, what a wonderful, you know, market you're walking into, right? You got Netflix, you got the streamers, NBC need stuff for themselves and for peacock for their streamer. Absolutely. I got to fill a lot of air time, man. Yeah.

So you're like, you know, again, I think there's a floor if you are a commissioner that is selling stuff. If you're a filmmaker, if you're a showrunner, the world is uncertain and growing more uncertain by the day. But if you're a commissioner, mate, you can find deals out there to be made. Man, it's just crazy, man. I just, you know, I'll be curious to see, you know, if, because I mean, the whole theory is that there's a whole generation of kids out here. who don't care about watching whole games anymore. And you're right? Like, I mean, you know, I don't know.

Your kids. Like, do they say, your son does kind of... Absolutely not. But not a whole game. Not three hours of even football. Yeah. I'm just kind of wondering it. Like, there's been this prediction that the younger,

that this younger generation of sports fans is coming up and they're not the kind of people that watch games, they watch highlights on their phone, on their internet or whatever, and then they come up. And so I just, I'm, I'm curious. curious to know, like, how these deals are going to hold up over the next 10 years or whatever. Is those that, that group of people becomes, they get purchasing powers.

They get to become consumers, right? Exactly. And these outlets, both TV networks and streamers, are going to have to convince people to watch whole games. Yeah. Or parts of games, right? Yeah. That's, and again, not, not awesome, you know, game seven. Oh, my God, here we go, baseball.

But Tuesday night. When's the night. Pirates cardinals. Wednesday night. Are you in or you out? You know? Pirates might be a left. It really might be.

And baseball is great if you want to go to the game. Like, I mean, I'm not, look, I love baseball. And we're of the era when baseball meant something different. I love going to be. But like, it's just watching regular season baseball on TV, especially with all the other offerings we have going on now. It's just, it seems like a really tough prospect. But I do hope it succeeds because I always hope that eventually will come back to the things,

like come back to newspapers, come back to hard, hard copy books, all that kind of stuff. So, yeah, maybe, maybe, maybe this will, uh, you know, a rebirth in the interest of the game here in the country. Karp and Mike Mazeo note that these are short-term deals and also Fox, TBS, and Apple will remain as MLB partners. Okay. On that same note, Netflix released their Starship Enterprise Bridge of people that are going to be covering Christmas Day NFL football. This looks like, didn't like Notting Hill, what was one of those movies? It was the movie that's like the big holiday film that every...

everybody watches this time of year, like all the actors. Love Actually? You love Actually. That's what it is. Yeah. Just so many faces are here, you know, headshots. I was like, oh, wow, this is just a star-studded lineup. Man Tai-Tai-Ego.

Noah Eagle. Yeah, man. Okay, so let's go to the two names that just pop out to me. Mantaito. Yeah, man. It's been quite a comeback. Man, that, you know, do you think that was something? We need to get here.

Because I feel like that Netflix documentary on him introduced him to a whole bunch of folks, and they were really sympathetic to him, and he came off really well, if not a little, you know, just kind of a sympathetic figure. So I don't know, like maybe that boosted his career or something, because I would not have expected him to be here after all that. And speaking of the healing power of Netflix, how about Michael Irvin? Man, who's going to be a desk analyst? Playmaker, man. Playmaker. Dude, it was not that long ago that Michael Irvin got sent home from the Super Bowl by the NFL network. Not that long ago, February 2023 or got dropped by the NFL network in August 2024.

That man has been hustling, man. I don't know. Like he has a very active YouTube channel. He appears on the Cam, the Cameron and May show fairly regularly as a correspondent. So he's been doing, I mean, he's been getting his reps in and he's never really walked away from the business.

So I guess this is sort of like, you know, credit to him for sticking around. And that case, that case they got him off TV kind of went away. you know, here he is. And he's good. He's a compelling figure when he's on camera.

It's like tough to look away. 100%. And it has always been. And let me say, here's my theory of it. You know, when he was on the Cowboys dock on Netflix, he was very, very contrite. Oh, my God. Yeah. He's, Michael Irvin is very appealing when he's contrite about his sins.

So you see him in that context and he's telling you what happened at the White House. And he's telling you in this way that seems, you know, very honest and very human. But the thing is, those are actually different sins than what got him, allegedly, sent home from the Super Bowl. Right. These are actually many, many different things. But you see him in there. You're reminded of those great Cowboys teams from the 90s. And all of a sudden, everybody's like, actually, we want Michael Irvin on the air.

Absolutely. I mean, look, his agent, I mean, my understanding, and you tell me if I'm right about this, Brian, is that the people that participated in that Cowboys documentary, they got paid, right? Like, a lot of them. That was my understanding. His agent was in conversations with Netflix during that time, right? And I wonder, you know, like, hey, if you know, you like what happened here, maybe we can figure some other things out, right? And he did so well.

He was the star, right? This was about Jerry Jones, but everybody was talking about Michael Irvin at the end of it. So good for him for being an opportunist, man, and seizing on that opportunity with the Netflix folks. Finally, Joel Schumacher and I spent most of the show on Monday talking about the Olivia Nutsi, Ryan Lizza, and... American Kondo story. We're still waiting for Lizzie to deliver part two of the story on his site,

Tellos, but I got to hear what you think about this. I've been waiting. I mean, I'm excited that you give me a little clearing out some space for me. American Konto sounds like a movie I would have seen at the Magnolia Theater in Dallas in like 20, 20, 202. You know what I'm saying? You remember the Magnolia Theater over there? Yeah, that's nice. Yeah.

I saw the Junction Boys there. Oh, there go. Well, anyway, a few things, and I'll try to be brief. So I think there's a problem with the Capitol Hill Press Corps in that, from my perspective, there's way too many young and inexperienced journalists among those ranks. And it doesn't mean that I'm talking about people who are covering Congress as their first job, but like people who have not really had a chance to build up a lot of experience doing a lot of other things. and, you know, just kind of getting a chance to come up with a theory of the reporting they're doing, a lot of experience for handling different sorts of people. And I know that the numbers don't reflect this in the aggregate because it's still a mostly white,

mostly middle age, mostly male core. But there's still a lot of young campaign and congressional reporters on those front lines. And I think that that's a really critical time because you're supposed to be learning a lot in those years, right? Like, your editor is like, is schooling you on this is the right question you should have asked, or this is how I think that story should have gone. This is how you build a sources or whatever. You're soaking up a lot from your peers and the people you're covering those years. And so if you kind of get thrust right into what I consider, like, a high-profile position,

these are very generally sophisticated people, you know, with media apparatus around them. It's really easy to be influenced and to fall under their influence. And so, like, when I think of Olivia New, who's basically been doing this since she was in college. Like, she didn't have time to report at the Amarillo Globe News or whatever or the Tulsa World. I think that would have been valuable experience for her. So, Brian, have you ever flirted with the source?

Have you ever flirted with somebody that you were trying to talk to? I do not believe so. Really? I don't think so. I'm trying to remember. No. I mean, mostly writing about male sportscasters that are 10 years older than me. So that's a fair.

Yeah, well, you know, there was a lot of romance in the air. I mean, that could. You know, you never know what opportunities you missed. But, but, but I think that like an awkward thing to talk about is that there's an element to romance and intimacy and building sources, right? That's true. You got to flatter these people. You got to find reasons to stay in touch with them.

Hey, it's your birthday. Oh, man, I saw you posted a bunch of kids. You're finding reasons to stay in touch with them, check on them, ask them about their families about their lives, you're trading information, and then you've got to meet up with them, right? And so this, I was bad at this, but for the record. Like, that's why I don't have, like, a huge, you know, book of, like, sources or whatever, because usually I'm, I'm cold calling, we build up a relationship. We have our one night standing, and it's over, right? I don't, I kind of move on. I don't have, like, but for, like, if you're going to work in that world on Capitol

Hill, a lot of what you're doing and a lot of what your editors are asking you to do is to to build these relationships with people. And if you're really young, if you're really inexperienced, if you're sort of ungoverned, because a lot of times people just kind of have a hands-off approach to how people develop their sources over there, it's going to get kind of messy. And given that a lot of these people

are parts of the same social circle, human behavior simply is going to take over. And I just think, again, the answer to this is that, like, more mentorship, more education, more experienced reporters doing this sort of stuff. right? And I think of Olivia Nutsi, and I'm just like, man, who was watching her? Like, who was over her asking questions about how you got this story? Where were you? Like, what was the time you spent reporting? What were you doing?

So given that, it's not a surprise that you see this stuff a lot. Like, you remember a few years ago, and I'm not going to use their names, because it was embarrassing. But four years ago, there was a fairly high-profile dust up between a White House spokesman. It was Biden White House and a couple of female journalists. One, he was in a relationship with, right? And it suggested that there was, like, a lot of messiness going on in the background. Like, we just sort of accept as part of the landscape, right? There's just like, well, sometimes the person covering the Biden White House is going to date the Biden spokesperson.

Right? And we just kind of, like, look at that. And we're like, all right, you know, that's, I mean, they spend a lot of time together. They're on planes together. They're waiting in the same rooms at the White House. together. And that stuff just kind of happens. And I'm just kind of like, eh, you know, I mean, I've gotten sort of hardened to that thing. But it's just, I feel like if you step back from it from a second, you're like, maybe there's a better way we could be doing this. Like, maybe there's

a better way to create those relationships. Like, I mean, like, like the Keith Oberman of this whole thing, right? I'm not even trying to be a moralist about it or whatever. But it was like, yo, like, y'all out there sleeping with each other like that, for real? Like, I mean, it just seems like instead of part in practice. They're at the same parties together. Yeah, well, look, if you're going to say media people can't date media people, that's going to be the boldest proclamation you're going to make on this

podcast. Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Because, I mean, look, I mean, without getting too much into my dating history, I've, co-workers are not off limits, okay? But it's just like, you can imagine being in those sort of circumstances that, like, it's just, the blinds get

kind of weird. And so I kind of understand. all this. Like, I understand how this happens. I don't, I know that there's ways that we can prevent it, but it just seems like political journalism is not willing to change that. So, given all of that, how can Vanity Fair trust Olivia Nutsi? I have some sympathy for her because this has to be incredibly embarrassing if she has any self-awareness at all, right? Like, if she's a self-aware person, this has to be humiliating. And it cuts to the core of her credibility, because it's like, you wrote all these big stories about these people, and we've learned that you've slept with

allegedly slept with at least a couple of them. Or in a relation, some kind of relationship, let's say. Yeah, so in a relationship with them. So what, has she expressed contrition for any of this, how this has affected her or her ability to do her job? Has anybody said what she's going to do differently? Is Vanity Fair talked about that? Which safeguards are in place to prevent this from happening again?

I haven't seen anything about that. And I think that's like what's the really disturbing part. It's like we're supposed to trust Vanity Fair and Olivia Nudsi that like, all right, she went through that, it's over. But if we're to believe her ex-fiance, they jeopardized a book deal over something like this. And it's like it happened again. So what are, like where has been the intervention? Like where is anybody to say, hey, are you going to be doing this again?

Like how are you going to make sure this doesn't happen again? Like what kind of, what kind of protections are we going to be going to be? be putting in place. The contrition will be so interesting when you and I pick up this book after Thanksgiving and read it. Yeah. And kind of the reflection, because again, we're all looking at one excerpt in Vanity Fair. It's not the whole book. I'm not even convinced that was like one passage of the book. I think in likelihood that was cobbled together from a few different things. We're reading something a little bit out of context. But when you and I sit down and read this after Thanksgiving, we are going to read the entire book after Thanksgiving. That will be something to look for. It really will.

really will. And again, just how she processes it. Not because we're all into right now, we're into the what happened, you know, but the whole how I reflect on this. And to, and I think you ask really the most important question going forward, which is, you know, how is she going to be a journalist going forward? Should she be a correspondent for Vanity Fair going forward? Certainly, the Vanity Fair part of that has not been answered. Not, not, not, don't you think Vanity Fair should, I mean, she's already working for Vanity Fair. Don't you think Vanity Fair should have already been addressed this? Like, like they've, yes. They're using this.

They're using the publicity from this book and her notoriety, but they haven't told this, like, why we should trust her as intermediary here, right, and how she got that information. And that's, I mean, not very many people can do that, bro, in this business. Like, not many real people can come back from that. And I just think about over the years, I've just seen all these guys, like, they're working that industry over there. They've been cop and pleas for Olivia Nutsi, man.

And they've been, oh, one of the. the best writers and one of the best, you know, profilers and all this shit. And I'm like, okay, cool, all right, you know. Like, I don't, I just kind of felt like maybe those people would benefit from a little bit of reflection about how all this happened because they play a role in this happening too. I'm not saying that they're responsible, but I'm just saying that, like, that environment that they've allowed to thrive where those of us that are, you know, those people are playing at the same parties and hanging out together and getting sources and not having to name them,

You all are part of that ecosystem, man. And if people don't trust us and if people don't trust your reporting and people say that this shit is fake news, that's on y'all, bro. Like, this is the environment that you all have created. And you need to think about how Olivia Nutsi represents what you all are doing over there and what you all might do to prevent this sort of thing from happening in the future. All right, Joel, now's time for the next installment of 25 for 25. All right, Joel, let's bring on a guest we've been so eager to have on this podcast. Zara Rahim was a senior advisor to Zaraan Mondani's mayoral campaign where she helped engineer what the New York Times called one of the great political upsets

in this generation of New York politics. She's now part of the Merrillex transition team as he gets ready to be sworn in on January 1st. Zara, welcome to the press box. I'm an honor to be here. Thank you for having me. We want to ask you about so many things, but let's start with some news from yesterday afternoon. Donald Trump announced he'd be meeting with Mom Donnie at the White House on Friday. Mom Donnie told Chris Hayes last night that his team had actually reached out to Donald Trump to set it up.

Trump is still calling Mom Donnie a, quote, communist. He is still putting his middle name in air quotes for a reason I can't quite discern. What is the best outcome of a meeting like this? So I would start by saying that Zoran has sort of repeated from the beginning, of this campaign and sort of, you know, repeatedly, whenever asked, that of course he'd be willing to sit down with not just the president, but quite literally anyone, right? And I think that he's demonstrated that and, you know, taking on meetings with business leaders who have threatened to leave the city or folks who might have sort of concerns about his general kind of, you know,

policies or been privy to $30 million in attack ads. And I think that part of the responsibility that he has as mayor of New York is to protect New Yorkers and also to clarify for people that this is not somebody who is going out of his way to kind of poke a fight nationally with the president for the sake of doing that, right? I think that there is this kind of, I think in democratic politics specifically, this performative kind of sparring back and forth with the president. And I think that Zoron's opportunity here in going to the White House is to be able to stand on business and reiterate his position to the president face to face, not have to do this over tweets in a way that some might expect a 34-year-old to do, right? And I think that the sort of

kind of, you know, just here's what we believe in. And again, a reiteration of, if you are willing to work with me on fulfilling a promise that he repeated, you know, time and time again during the 2024 cycle, which was to make groceries cheaper, for example. Let's do it. What does that look like? And I think that, you know, I won't say much more, but let's see, you know, how much, you know, how tomorrow goes. And yeah, I'm looking forward to kind of seeing how that all plays out. Without poisoning the water too much, is that sort of a belief that, like, I'm assuming you guys prepared for it if it gets a little ugly, right? Like, I mean, you've got to kind of prepare for that with him, correct?

Of course, of course. I think that this is sort of one of the gifts of Zoran is like he doesn't go in with this sort of like preconceived notion of how something may or may not go. And I think that another thing about him, you know, I'll just sort of speak as his friend, you know, is the thing that's amazing about Zoran is there's so many people who have these ideas of how they want to feel about him or, or, you know, just there's this caricature of him that they, they understand. Ninety-nine percent of the time, people will walk out of a meeting being like, huh, you know, like, I like the guy, he's reasonable. Like, you know what I mean? We actually

had a spirited policy discussion. He, you know, stood in his principles. He knew what he was talking about. And I think that he is going in with an agenda, not sort of trying to kind of speculate on how things might go, but also really, again, reiterating the fact that his job is defending New Yorkers, and particularly the most vulnerable among us. And so there's, you know, certainly not going to be any capitulation of those principles. But again, I think, I think it'll be also a good model for how do we interact with this sort of administration, right? Like, we've tried so many things over the course of the last decade, which is so crazy to say out loud. But it is sort of like, what does this look like for us to actually just have an honest, open, transparent, like, yeah, I am going to meet with the president.

And here's what I will say to him. And let's, you know, make sure we share exactly how it went right after it ended. There needs to be sort of this transparency that I think a lot of folks are no longer used to in politics, which is just all these backdoors. deals hearing about things through the press and what does it look like for us to just go direct to people and say, look, this is what my intention is. This is what I plan on saying to the President United States. And this is what I will not capitulate on. And I think that there is something, you know, even that President Trump might respect about that. And so let's let's see how it goes. And, you know, I think the best case scenario is that, you know, we walk out of this with feeling like

he is able to deliver on his agenda without any sort of, you know, major issues. So we'll see. Let's go back and talk about that guy. You talk, you know, that when people get a chance to meet him, they're like, oh, he's very reasonable, very smart guy. So how was it that you met Mom Danyan started working with him? Because even at this time last year, he's essentially a backbencher in the state house, right? And it would have taken a very active imagination to believe that he, a Muslim member, immigrant in his early 30s, self-identified socialist could become mayor of New York City.

So, like, when you're meeting with him, like, how did that happen? And what did you realistically think could happen with his campaign? So I'd always known of Zoron, sort of the way that all brown people know of each other. You know what I mean in small circles. And of course, I was certainly aware of his, his assembly run. And then, you know, that he was this up-income politician and in, in, in, in, in, you know, Queens. And he did have, you know, this reputation of kind of delivering on this agenda with the taxi drivers. But we became close, particularly around the time people in our community were organizing around Gaza specifically. And so he was, you know, he was incredibly vocal when it mattered

the most. And during this moment of mass grief, particularly in our community, and also just mobilization. I saw him showing up time and time again with this clarity and conscience that so many people were not acknowledging existed, right? Like this sort of movement that was kind of the underbelly of what we were seeing in 2024. And so he came to, you know, he'd come to an eat, the dinner that I hosted last spring and, you know, with his parents. And, you know, again, his, there was, there was something about him that just made sense to me. And we sat down. And we sat down. in July of 2024. I had sent him a text, actually, originally,

saying, let me know when you're ready. And he liked it. And then the next week we're at Collar House, which is, you know, his favorite place to take people. And it's funny because whenever he, like, he's like, I met them at Colla House. I'm like, you took him there. But it was his, you know, meeting spot of choice.

And he said, I'm going to do it. you know, and in front of me was this reflection of, you know, just everything that made sense for us to be running in kind of democratic politics. I had seen it all, you know, I had cut my teeth in politics. I'd kind of gone through the same process of being disillusioned in the same way so many of us had been. And, you know, I saw a young man, you know, who had every single thing New Yorkers were waiting for, you know, charismatic, he was principled, he was able to to move through every type of room. And somebody who had organized the literal spine of New York,

which is taxi drivers, right? And he, to me, I think, I just saw him. And I was like, this makes sense. You know, sign me up. Like I, you know, let me know sort of how things go. And I told him, like, you know, I'm assuming you can't afford me through the fall, but call me in 2025.

And so, you know, we had been, I had been advising him sort of informally and then, you know, came on officially in earlier this year. The Times reported on a conversation you and he had last summer. It might have been in the same meeting where you said in the paper's words, forget the New York conjured by political strategists, make a campaign about the actual New York City. Yeah. What's the difference between actual New York and political consultant New York? I think what I was saying there, you know, and I don't know if I was even being kind of as wise as I thought it was at the moment. But what I think I was trying to express there was that we had a real opportunity to

like make a campaign that was a love letter to New York. And I think that, you know, we had seen so many versions of the city that were the versions that were alive when everybody was watching, right? Like what does it look like for us to talk about the people who keep the city alive at night, taxi drivers, working class people, the airport workers, you know, the people who are changing shifts over overnight. And, you know, he had living in Astoria had very close proximity to. And so we had the opportunity to build a campaign that was totally different, right? Like there was a unique opportunity for us to create this campaign where we were showing people

that this city was capable of loving again, right? And, And I think we had heard over and over again, particularly post-pandemic, that they missed the old New York. You know, I miss the old New York. I miss the old New York. The city is a sort of shell of what it used to be. And so through that, you know, we were able to integrate real things that people just, I think, reignited people's imagination and love for the city, right? Like there was the walk that we did through, you know, from the north of Manhattan to the bottom.

We did the scavenger hunt where we had people, you know, going from borough to borough and figuring out clues about like Fiora LaGuardia. We had Zoran go to the airport, you know, after midnight and, you know, greet all the taxi drivers. I think what I really meant was our campaign asked the question of what does it mean to build a city around the people who make it run and not the people who merely benefit from it. And again, I think as brown, immigrant, you know, people who had just sort of moved through so many different parts of this city, I think it was just so clear that we had this chance to really lift that part up. And so I think, you know, it was just an exciting kind of vision. But a lot of this, I want to be clear, was Zoran's, you know, insistence on bringing these people to the forefront. of this in his fight for making the city more affordable. Was there a model for this sort of campaign?

Like, what was the inspiration for this? Like, who are you looking at around the country or anywhere? You know, I mean, you could, you know, we could go globally, right, if necessary, to run this sort of a campaign because you're right. Like, I mean, just from like, it just seemed like the social media efforts, the things, the videos, the campaign ads. It was all like he just, I don't, maybe he's just a special candidate. And it popped in a different way.

And other people could have done that stuff. wouldn't have popped in quite the same way. But was there anybody or any campaign that you'd looked at and said, hmm, we want to take some of that and put that with Zorn? Well, I certainly, you know, we'll say that there were parts of this campaign that weren't completely, you know, totally new models or field program was, was obviously, I think, built out by an amazing, our amazing field director, Tasha Van Aachen, who has worked on many progressive campaigns,

including AOCs and I come from Obama world, right? So a lot of the kind of, I think, learnings and things that we sort of found special about different various campaigns of Frankenstein altogether. And I think that there was something, though, that we did uniquely, which was we just turned the mirror. You know what I mean?

Like we were just sort of like, actually like, we don't have to do this the same way that it's been done over and over and over again. this world has changed so much over the last five years alone, right? Like it's like we have a totally different understanding of the way media works. We have a totally different understanding of what Democrats are. We have a totally different understanding of how people are getting their information and what they feel about politicians and what their responsibility is.

And so I think for us, we really had to kind of throw shit out a wall and see what stuck. And luckily, what we found early was that, it was just pure authenticity. And I think that there was no sort of gimmicks. There was no kind of like, there was no part of it that we wanted to feel like performance. And I think we succeeded. But I don't think that there was kind of, you know, one we're like, let's do that again. But hopefully people can repeat what we've done here across progressive campaigns in the country.

on June 24th, he wins the primary in a route. Andrew Cuomo winds up staying in the race as an independent. Eric Adams gets out later on. We know now how this story ends, but what worried you most about the general election? I want to say a few things. One, which is I don't, I want to really talk about the magnitude of the victory first,

particularly on June 24th. You know, Zoran didn't just beat a former, three-time, you know, or three-term governor, he beat Andrew Cuomo twice now. And he did it not narrowly. He did it decisively. We had no clue that we were going to have the race called that early that evening, right? Like there was a certain, there was a certain point around like, I think 945 or so where somebody said that in order for Andrew Cuomo to like remotely catch up, he's going to have to win more than 50% of Broadlanders number two's, which we knew. was just not going to happen, just given the kind of, you know, amazing support that we had had

from the Comptroller. And on top of that, Andrew Cuomo had name recognition. He had institutional backing. He had billionaire support. There was a machine of politics behind him. And every attempt at coordinated smear campaigns felt flat, both in the primary and in the general. And on top of this was the largest grassroots volunteer operation we've seen in the history of this city. We had, I think it was like three million doors knocked. We had 100,000 volunteers. We were, we were, you know, speaking in more than 15 languages, you know, to constituents. And you can't fabricate that, you know. And I think that there was something really amazing just about sitting with the kind of magnitude of the victory. I think the thing that, you know, that,

scared me the most is in all of that, the coordinated smear campaigns, $30 million was spent in the primary alone on Islamophobic, xenophobic ads that were being sent as mailers. They were being run on television. They were being run online. They were being created through AI videos, as I'm sure you've seen. And I think the gravity of that was, a real challenge, not that we couldn't defeat it, but what the lasting implications were going to be of said Islamophobia. You know, and I think that it wasn't just revealed that that it was this political weapon, but also that there was this editorial bias that existed when covering Islamophobia that was a real challenge for us to kind of get through, right? Like, I think that, you know,

people really don't understand the magnitude of Islamophobia. Like, I think Equality Labs just released an 89-page report where they tracked all of Zoran's mentions from June until, I think, just after Election Day, they released it, I think, on the 6th of November. And, you know, they tracked Islamophobia. They tracked red-baiting. They tracked just general xenophobic comments.

And it was 17 million posts, 17 million posts. 17 million posts. And again, I think that is a gross understatement probably of the number that they were probably able to track. And this didn't happen in a vacuum. I think that the ecosystem, whether it was like cable news networks or local press, there was constantly absorbing and amplifying these attacks, it was happening without any interrogation. It was happening casually. and it was just fighting a lot from every direction. And I had worked on 2016 where I saw a candidate who was throwing absolutely everything at the wall to distract us, right, from doing any kind of proactive messaging. Every single day was rapid response for us, right?

Because it was like he's attacking indigenous people one day. He's attacking queer people another day. He's attacking women. And it's like, what do we do? How do we keep focused on the message? We failed, you know, expressly failed in 2016 doing that. So the balance, I think, of Zoran being this brown-skinned, Muslim immigrant who was on the precipice of becoming the mayor of New York,

the responsibility we had to sort of name the thing that was happening and not letting it get out of hand because we knew that Zoran had protection at the end of the day, right? He talks about how lucky he is to have this, incredible protection around him, we were thinking about the New Yorkers who did not have that. What was happening when people weren't looking? What were people willing to say when people weren't looking? And I think a lot of that sat with us as a really major fear. And I think that that's sort of more on a kind of abstract level. I think from another perspective of things that scared me was the energy from the primary into the general,

able to sort of carry that and maintain it and make sure that people, particularly young people, weren't becoming complacent and just accepting that, oh, he had this massive victory in June, and he's, you know, it's going to be walking the park to November. And I think that there was a massive kind of focus on making sure that we did not ever, ever, ever lose any focus on making sure that we were, we were always playing like we were 15 points behind. And so, Those were my two kind of big things. Just to kind of drill down on this for a second, because you're talking about the Islamophobia here. So, like, I imagine that the security apparatus, just like the fear for your physical safety was a big part of this, right?

Like, I mean, what did that look like on a day-to-day basis? Because then you would see, and I would even say, I was like, oh, Zarnas is just walking down the street. He's at the next guy. And it's just like without being too bleak about it. But, you know, it's dangerous out there, man. have said a lot of things about him to suggest that he's a real threat to the city and the people there. And so, like, what did that look like, that security apparatus and trying to navigate that? I want to start by just saying that I want to make sure everybody understands Zoran is incredibly safe.

He has an incredible detail around him. They take every single precaution, ones that are both seen and unseen, in order to keep him. him safe and also in order to allow him to move through the city in the way that he likes to, right, which is to take the subway or take the bus or walk. Just, again, a thing that was incredibly important to him when I think the sort of reality of having to have the security apparatus around him at all times hit him was, how do I maintain, you know, he says this thing about like not wanting to like look out, you know, like a window in an SV and just only see the reflection of himself back.

that sort of being his biggest fear. And he's incredibly safe. We're so lucky. And there was a level of vitriol that was, you know, Muslims joke about this often, you know, that like sort of post-9-11, like, you really can't get under our skin. We've heard it all. Like, we now make the joke before you do. Like, there's just, like, no getting to us.

but the insistence on, you know, people from across the country calling in to his assembly office, right, and threatening to put an IDF bullet through his head and telling, you know, that him, he better watch out, you know, his car has a bomb strapped to it. These are real things, right? And I think that for us, I think that there is always going to be a concern that I have for the rest of his. life around his security and that is a real thing and we need to name it out loud, but he also won't let it stop him from doing the thing that he, there is, there is a, of course, a responsibility and concern he has, you know, for his family and the people around him, but he is incredibly fearless and he understands that there are things that are said and threatened

upon him in order to stop him from doing the very thing that he's doing. And so I think the insistence to continue doing it is sort of what's really special, you know, about him and the type of mayor that he's going to be. But yeah, it's all pretty heavy. Joel and I talks a lot about the social media videos Mom Donah used so effectively during the campaign. How do you think we'll see him use some of those tools that he used during the campaign to talk to constituents when he's the mayor? Right. Well, I think the amazing thing about our digital team was so much of that was the brilliance of Zoron. and also my colleague Andrew Epstein, who was there from day one, you know, on Roosevelt Avenue,

sticking mics in people's faces and getting sort of, you know, walked past. But I think that there was also this like, okay, we can't get people to cover us, right? Like there's nobody coming to the press conferences. There was nobody reading the press releases. There was nobody responding to inquiries or pitches that we were sending. How do we sort of create this apparatus of speaking directly? to voters, without it sort of feeling like truth socially, you know, in this way that, that again, like, is sort of easy to kind of fall into. And I think that what was revealed was

that like, oh, when the media attention did start coming. And then we were up against the challenge of sort of like the material reality of how people were experiencing Zoron in the street being so different from the way that media was portraying him. I always talk about the fact that, like, if you googled zoron's name in like in like you know august of of this year and and and you had explained this to an alien who had never heard of him before you would not believe what the actual material sort of reality of the movement was on the ground it was totally at odds and it's why they got so many predictions wrong and so i think that for us to be able to have that opportunity right to be able to like go direct to camera have him look down the

straight down the barrel of each camera that he was given the opportunity for, it was incredibly important. Now, there is an opportunity as mayor of New York to let people know that government is supposed to work for you, right? Like, there are all of these resources that should be at your disposal, are at your disposal that are being currently underused, are, you know, you don't know about, right? Like, we've already seen some of this working really well. You know, the Department of sanitation has an incredible social media presence. The MTA does incredible videos, but like, how do we sort of continue that tradition, amplify it, make it a little better, give it some production value? And also just like, what does it look like for us to reimagine public access,

right? And people feeling like they can hear from the mayor directly every single week. That is such an important and special thing, right? Like, we cannot underestimate how powerful it was to have a presidential address every week or having, you know, somebody sit on the radio and address you every week and answer these questions. There is a difference between having to face room nine every day, right, on the campaign trail or in city hall and actually talking to New Yorkers.

New Yorkers don't give a shit about room nine. The Yorkers are not reading the New York Times to find out about, you know, how their tax dollars are being. It's just not happening. And I think that there is, if we can admit that, out loud, right, as not just like a, as a party. We can probably solve a lot more issues, right? I think that the kind of like thing that we've focused on is, is press and journalism, which is important and incredibly important for holding the mayor accountable. But what does it

look like for us to like go directly to our constituents and tell them, here is the commitment that I made to you? Here is how I'm delivering on it. And also here is a, a video record of all of the things that I've told you that I'm going to deliver on, right? And that keeps us honest as well. And so I think, again, there's a, I'm excited to sort of see what, what it, you know, what kind of happens through, you know, the digital and on our digital team. There's a lot of exciting things, you know, that are coming up as we speak. But I think it'll be, it's a massive opportunity for us to redesign the way people interact

with their government. You talk about focusing on press, and so that's good, because I wanted to get into this. Part of the strategy just seemed to be courting like a number of media outlets and personalities, and that's like Pablo Torre, Andrew Shultz, Hassan Piker, Fox News. Yeah. Is that do every interview strategy transferable to Democrats around the country? Because people were like, oh, man, Kamala Harris didn't go on Joe Rogan, right? Or is it that Mamdani is just so good.

good at this, that you kind of just need to be mom done and get out there and be on camera? There was an intentional effort for us to show up everywhere. And I think that people talk a lot about our bold media strategy. And honestly, I have to say it was simple. We just were not snobs. Every person deserves to hear this message. We are not above anyone. So, yeah, we went to Manosphere.

We went on Fox News. We also aggressively were doing Bangla Media. Zoran was doing interviews in Urdu. He was talking to Telemundo in Univision regularly. There was, you know, if Al-Arabia wanted to be at, was at every single one of our press conferences. Al Jazeera was at every single one of our press conferences. They were invited just like the rest of the press corps was, right?

Because we knew that we were kind of, we needed to reach our people exactly where they were consuming their news, right? which was Time TV, NTV, all of these Urdu channels that so many of our parents were watching. And these sort of, you know, that part of our press strategy didn't get as much attention, but it mattered significantly. And I think that a thing that we thought about was if young men were getting, you know, we're online getting radicalized, we meet them there, right? Like that's information for us. That's sort of like pure information for us.

If aunties were watching Bangla TV, like, we are meeting you there. And so I think an example that I think about a lot is like, yes, we did Playgrant. We did kind of, you know, we wanted to do Joe Rogan. We were unfortunately unable to because the date that they had proposed was the day before the debate. and flying to Austin and back was going to be difficult, but we were, you know, we were aggressively sort of pursuing the opportunity. But one of the last things that we did was Stephen A. Smith, you know,

me, the hardest working man in America, I have to say, I don't get starstruck. I met, I've met presidents, I've met celebrities, I've met them all, but me and Zoran, we met Stephen A. Smith when we went, And we went to go do the view. He came into our dressing room. And it was like an enigma walked into the room. What the fuck just happened?

You know what I mean? It was so hilarious. But, you know, it was this, there was a, we knew that Stephen was going on and on and on about Zoron and his opinions about Zoran. And he has obviously very strong opinions about him. And he was talking about him quite incessantly. And I think that there was this,

We were unable to sort of find the time to kind of sit down with him, you know, for the full hour, but we had heard that Andrew Cuomo was going on. And so I listened in during that hour because I wanted to see sort of what Andrew Cuomo was saying. And I listened to him spewed 20 minutes of absolute bullshit, right? And he was saying all of this stuff that was just not rooted in any sort of fact. But the first thing I thought was not like fuck Stephen A. Smith for platforming this guy, right? It's, I need these listeners to understand the actual truth. So I had Zoran call in that hour, right? Zoran, he called during his live audience into his live audience line. And, you know, there was no booking. There was no planning. He just said, Stephen, I'm here to talk. And I want to just clarify the record here for your listeners. And I think, again, our willingness to sort of just go into space. that might be, you know, considered hostile or difficult and being able to be like, look, like, we might disagree on something, but like also like, we can laugh and have fun about this.

And I can also sort of get you to understand that like I'm not some fucking demon. You know what I mean? That, again, $30 million worth of ads might have convinced you that I am. And so that was really the strategy. It was to show up where people already are. And yeah. You told us about primary night. What will be your memories of November 4th and how that night unfolded?

Oh, man. You know, the difference between June and November. I mean, I want to go back to June first. So June, we, you know, have this like insane day. Zoran was like, I want to do a press conference at five in the morning when the sun is rising. And we're all like, oh, great, sick. You know what I mean? We're like, perfect.

So, you know, we're at, you know, Astoria Park, five in the morning. He is back to back all day, just hitting interviews. He's doing a press conference. He's walking through the city. He's courting and meeting voters where they are. He's doing, you know, influencer interviews. And then election night, you know, we arrive at the sort of venue, and it's a very modest 400-person venue.

And again, we were under the impression that there was no way that the race was going to be called that night. We were going to maybe feel good and kind of, you know, message around how we were, you know, anticipating the next few days was going to go, but we had no plan of delivering a victory speech. So the second that we realized things were changing, Julian Gerson, my colleague, whose speechwriter, got up and they ran to a hotel room that was not previously booked, and they rewrote a speech within three hours, right? It was just like pure chaos. Like they wrote that speech that night. And I think that, you know, and so we waited until like midnight to to give the speech. I think it was like very late, totally, you know, just magical and wonderful. This election night,

I think we were a little bit more calm. We were like, okay, like let's be in our calm bodies. Like we, you know, I had, you know, Zoran spent some time with his family alone and really just had this kind of like last moments with them. And then I think we had some, he hit some interviews throughout the day, like, you know, with influencers and people who had really, I think digital media, people who had really, I think, rode for him from the beginning as a final sort of thank you for bringing me here. And then he relaxed for the rest of the day and worked on his speech, you know, and just sort of made final tweaks. It was interesting because it was myself,

Zoran, our now chief of staff, El Descart Church, Morris Katz, who's a fellow senior advisor, and we were, it was interesting because it was like sort of anti-climatic because we were like, okay, CNN has called it, you know what I mean? Like, we were

like, what are we waiting for? What's the sort of like, woo-hoo moment? And we realized that, you know, I think it was, we waited for AP, to call it. And I think that in that moment, of course, his wife was there as well. And it was just, it was just this moment where, I mean, I just started crying, you know, because I was like, he's Merrillect, this sort of massive shift from like me sitting across my friend and call a house and Astoria and like, how did we get here? Like, what, what is life? This man is about to stand on

stage as, you know, the first Muslim, brown mayor elect with his beautiful family and signal to the world that, like, this is possible. And the sort of, I think, magnitude of that was really hitting us, but it didn't really quite hit us until we were driving into the venue. And there was just scores of people outside of the venue who had not, you know, gotten ticketed to go inside, but like, we're waiting outside, you know, because they just wanted to catch a glimpse of him on this historic night. You could hear New Yorkers cheering as the, you know, the race was called. It was just this magical moment where everybody, you know, people were driving by in taxis and beeping their horn, truck drivers. It just was like, oh, my gosh, we can feel good again about

something. And I think, you know, it was incredibly special, but it's just a blur, you know. What you're describing sounds like catharsis, right? Like just like, whoo! Like, what a moment. But I want to go back to something because you've worked for, like, an incredible range of Democratic politicians like Obama and Hillary Clinton. And I kind of want to talk about the Hillary Clinton thing because you talked about failing there. And it feels like, and you tell me if I'm wrong, that that loss, like, is inflicted

a tremendous amount of psychic damage on Democrats and Democratic messaging, right? And I'm just sort of wondering, what did you learn from that campaign that you've carried with you going forward? Let's take a step back to sort of contextualize all the kind of things that got me to that moment. And I think the kind of moment where I was like, things have to change. So I spent, you know, in my 20s, particularly in these wildly powerful rooms that, you know, I did Obama's reelected at the White House. I worked at Vogue. I worked on Hillary's campaign. I was successful early and honestly there was this value that I had of power and I,

you know, and I was able to kind of just find the sexiest thing in front of me and do it. And then I had an ego death and everything changed. And I was like, who am I? What am I doing? Who's water am I carrying? What have I done? And I think that 2016, I had joined right after Bernie had dropped out of the race and right after the week after the convention. And I was sort of charged with working on our national coalitions team.

Coalitions, of course, being, you know, AFAM voters, women, brown folks, Latinos, everything but cis white men, you know, and they all lumped us together in a team. And I think the thing that I saw there that I was, I wish I kind of, I don't wish. I, I wish people advocated for more because I was certainly like not senior enough to kind of be pushing for these sorts of changes was I saw a bunch of people around me making decisions who had no, had no grounding in the communities that we were talking about and that Trump was talking about. We had a bunch of folks who were making abstract decisions about communications that were not rooted in the sort of material realities of people's lives.

You know, we're talking about, you know, I think the focus on not doing Latino radio, right? Like there was a massive, massive misstep in 2016 of us not putting her on Latino radio. We were doing a ton of media that was like more national and not local. There was no effort to sort of do things like Banga media or things like, you know, any other sort of kind of foreign language press. It just was not there. And on top of that, what we were seeing also was a message that was about being in opposition to something and not an affirmative vision for. something. And I think that the real sort of lesson that I got there was like the thing that I've said before is like, who are we? What am I? What are we saying? Like what is this party for? We lose this

race. I, I am, you know, totally devastated. I famously was like the first person on the comms team who like started sobbing, you know, that night. And everybody's like, calm down. And I was like, I don't, you know, I'm from Florida. So I was watching all the exit polls from Florida. And I was like, oh, something's wrong. And I think that, you know, between the pandemic, between Trump, between the genocide and Gaza, I went through, you know, when all the shine fell away. I think that there was something that happened to me and a lot of people around me, right, which ended up being sort of a huge part of the base for Zoron that forced us to confront the question of like,

what are we for, you know, like, what are we for, what are we against, and what is the affirmative vision that we want to see for the communities around us? And I think that I realized that everything I'd learned, you know, strategic comms, cultural literacy, crisis instincts, organizing narrative work, was actually preparing me for something, I think, with more purpose. And I think that the campaign that ended up being one of the best things for me. And I think, again, for everybody who was involved, whether you were knocking on doors or whether you were, you know,

just somebody who was following him on social media, it did something for people to see that. And I think that there was a massive lesson there of like, we can give people something to believe in. And there is something incredibly exhausting about fighting all the time. And what does it look like for us to give people, you know, the choice?

Zara, a few quick ones before you go. You mentioned all the campaigns you've worked on this experience. We could do a whole podcast about your time at Vogue, and hopefully we will sometime in the future. What are you going to do next? That's a massive question. I right now am focused on, you know, getting us through inauguration.

And really, I am focused on sort of the symbolic moment that that will be for, I think, the annals of history. And so I'm really kind of caught up in getting that, you know, perfect and over the next six weeks or so. And then, you know, I am, I am now at a point in my career where, like, I don't worry about what's next. And I've sort of like, I'm like in my Zen, like, okay, whatever happens happens. You know what I mean? Like I've just done something incredibly, you know, I think important to me and magical. And I have never benefited from trying to guess. And we will see.

We will see. TBD. So I don't mean to get you caught up in our bullshit, but I got to ask Brian a question. Brian, what's your favorite Mariah Carey song? Oh, man.

Hold on. I know there's so many of them, right? Yeah, it is. Let's all answer the question as I think. Yeah, sure, that's good. All right. The Christmas,

the Christmas stuff. The honey remix with the Lonez. Anyway, what did you do for Mariah Carey? I had the, profound privilege of working on Mariah Carey's memoir. And so Mariah Carey put out her memoir. There was an understanding that I think traditional kind of celebrity PR and media

was not necessarily equipped to talk about abuse, to talk about racial, you know, the complex relationship that Mariah had with her white mother. calling the police on her, or generally, you know, just the relationship that she had with her abusive partner. There were so many dynamics that could not just sort of be, I think, simply handled by, you know, just throwing a reporter in front of her and being like, great, let's talk about the book. A lot of it was so personal, a lot of it was so heavy. she had actually gone a solid amount of her career, never talking about her personal identity a ton. But to me, what was exciting was seeing this artist who had shaped so many parts of my life and was the soundtrack of so many of our lives.

And also this woman who was incredibly important to the bridge between R&B and hip-hop and had this wealth of stories around, you know, I mean, like, Cameron and just, you know, like the things that she was talking about, her Moroccan room, the things that she would casually talk about, Whitney, Prince, you know, these people who really saw her as part of their peer class, you know, younger, but still like they cared for her in this profound way. She was the last of this sort of grouping of talent. And it was an incredibly just insane experience. And yeah, I just, it also was like considering like there had never been, it had been somebody

interviewing Mariah who had like really grown up listening to her. She had not been interviewed by a black woman before. She had not been, you know, there was so many layers that I was like, whoa, this is like all obvious strategic choices. And so, yeah, it was, it was working on the memoir with her, her, her, co-author, Michaela Angela Davis, who's incredible and a friend. And yeah, it was, it was quite the time. What's your favorite Mariah Carey song?

Ooh, I have to say the roof. The roof, okay. All right. That was going to be my answer too, by the way. Whatever she said. I'm an OG emotions guy. That's a good one. That's a good one.

All right, Zara Rahim, we've covered everything from the campaign to Stephen A. Smith to Mariah Kerry. I think that's about the world. Don't be mad at me. Thanks so much for coming on the press box. Thank you guys so much. That's the press box. He's Joel Anderson.

I'm Brian Curtis. Putting some magic by Bruce Baldwin. A couple things to put on your plate before we exit stage right here. We want you to follow us over on Instagram at Press Box Ringer, where you could have seen, had you already been following us over there, the rundown for this podcast, the hand-down for this podcast. the handwritten Joel Rundown in beautiful blue ink. Are you a blue ink person or a black ink person?

I don't use my hands to write anymore. So unfortunately, it's like that part is my life is over. I don't write anymore. I just type. And then Shoemaker will be back here on Monday. We'll hit the news of the day. We're also going to be joined by the great New Yorker writer Susan Orlean. Susan Orlean is going to be here.

I asked her about three different. of my favorite New Yorker stories, which I will tweet out over the weekend in case you want to check out those stories before the interview. Then Joel, you and I will rally up after Thanksgiving with more lukewarm takes about the media.

See you then. Can't wait to do it, man.