wake that ass up in the morning the breakfast club morning everybody it's DJ Envy just hilarious charlemagne the guy we are the Breakfast Club we got a special guest in the building he's running for mayor of New York City we have Zoronwame mamani nailed it nailed it there we go that's that you gave him a great tutorial right before we started i'll take and I'll take it if you don't know ask that's right that's what I do i was going to say it was off the top of the dome but I did see your video before we get into politics I did see your video you were a rapper you got a bop you got a bop i was I was an aspiring rapper aspiring rapper nobody will vote for you based off what I heard a rapper okay and that's why I'm not a rapper anymore based on the quality of that rap nobody you see you to be to be the mayor you have to know what you know and know what you don't know got you and I learned quickly what I didn't know you really wanted to like pursue a rap career at one point there was a point there was a point i mean it was it was at the level well so I was born in Kala Uganda in East Africa and there was a point where there was a guy I grew up with he's like my brother the two of us were rapping together and I was trying to sell mixtapz on a public bus which doesn't leave until it fills every single one of the 14 seats that's how much we were trying wow and here I am cuz it didn't really work out all that well it was kind of like Yin-Yang Twins when they were whispering i was I like Was there an inspiration for you the Yinyang Twins whisper song i have to say that was an inspiration for the the song I made called Nani yeah yeah um but I think you know for me it was it was also a way of just telling the different stories of what I grew up with gotcha and and especially in Kala you know I'm I'm Ugandan of Indian origin the guy that I grew up with his name is Abdul he is Ugandan by way of South Sudan it's all these different cultures coming together we were trying to mix it all in and then when I was here in New York City just trying to kind of this the song that I made was a testament to my grandmother and how she's a real badass and how so often when we talk about our elders we put them in a box of a nice gentle person who you know is very much constrained in how we imagine them and I wanted to just be a little more absurd in the celebration of a woman who gave me a sense of the world and was a social worker and should be a little more celebrated and disciplined you love that and disciplined you you know a few a few slaps in Jackson Heights hurt nobody oh you got slap in the video school discipline yeah that's what's up in that video not by my grandmother so so question in real life when you do make the pivot to you know do what it is you're doing now do you say to yourself "All right scrub all that off the internet we got to get rid of that." No because I I think that it's it's about being a real person you know like I I enjoyed that time in my life and ultimately I actually see a throughine between that work and this work in that you're trying to tell a story gotcha and you know when you're trying to sell a mixtape or you're trying to get somebody's signature to get on the ballot at 6:30 in the morning you know at the Broadway stop of the NW and Atoria it's the same thing where you're asking someone can I have a moment of your time to tell you about my story or our story and it also means learning how to deal with rejection very quickly got Because once you've once you've tried to be an artist once you tried to be a rapper you know what it means to be humbled on a regular basis right like you know what it means to be the opener to the opener to the opener to the opener to the opener and I think too often in politics there's a real sense of self as if people should be excited to see you when in fact you should be excited to see them right we shouldn't be lecturing people as much as we should actually be listening to them and I think that you know struggling through being an artist it was very helpful in learning that i thank God nobody told you to use any of that hip-hop stuff for your campaign because that's what they do they just how you reach certain demographics please oh thank god they didn't tell you to do that don't worry it's not coming now how did you get into politics uh what got you into politics cuz some of your policies that you want that we'll discuss I don't see happening but I love it so let's start how you got into politics at first so the the first time I knocked on doors was in 2008 for Obama the first time I knocked on doors in New York City was when I picked up a copy of The Village Voice and I saw that one of my favorite rappers he had endorsed his childhood friend for city council and I was like "Oh this guy would be the first South Asian elected official in New York City his name was Ali Nudge." Mhm and so I got on the F train I went to 169th and I knocked on doors for Ali and that was the moment where I started to get involved in local politics i joined a club called the Muslim Democratic Club of New York and then in 2017 I worked on my first race that was uh for a Palestinian Lutheran minister in Bay Ridge called Elliot Teim and that just changed my life cuz you know I moved to the city when I was seven this is the city I fell in love with the city where I got my citizenship where I got married and yet there was also a point where I knew I was a New Yorker i didn't know if I had a place in New York City politics i thought those two things were separate and then there was this campaign which showed me that there was room for all of us and you didn't actually have to give up any of yourself to be a part of it and and that inspired me to to understand that politics isn't just something that you believe in it's also something that you do as an active thing and and from there I kept working on campaigns and then in 2020 I ran for the state assembly and now I represent a story in Long Island City wow you know the USA the USA Today asked a question and the question is simple can a AOC backed socialist upset Andrew Cuomo in the New York City's mayor race i want you I want you to answer that question there's a short answer which is yes okay and there's a longer answer which is the fact that New Yorkers are hungry for a different kind of politics we have seen the same politicians with the same ideas lead us to the same results for decades and this is in many ways a question of whether we want to go back to the past or whether we want to go to the future and our campaign is one that sees this city under attack in two ways an affordability crisis on the inside where the most expensive city in the United States of America one in four New Yorkers are living in poverty the rest are living in a permanent state of anxiety about whether they can keep affording this city and then we're under attack from the outside from a Trump administration that is hellbent on going after not only New Yorkers but frankly Democratic cities across the country like we're seeing in Los Angeles right now and I am going head-to-head with Andrew Cuomo a former governor who's the son of a former governor whose super PAC is funded in large part by the same billionaires who put Donald Trump back in the White House mhm that's not the kind of person who can stand up to authoritarianism without seeing a reflection of themselves we need someone who will actually fight both of these crises at the same time and that's why I believe that that I can win and I'm so excited to have Congressman Okasio Cortez's endorsement in doing that i wanted to ask you know some of the policies that you stand on is uh free bus service in New York City yes sir could that actually work absolutely you know I break it down so I grew up in Morningside Heights i would take the one train we used the nine train back then but I I would take the one train to 231st get on the BX10 to go to Bron Science and I remember when I'd get off the one train if I could still see the bus even if it was two stops away even if I had missed it I knew I could catch up to it because that's how slow that bus was i'd be slapping the back of the bus and I could get there in time it was good for me it's bad for New York City you should not be able to catch that bus if you missed that bus but the buses are so slow so as a state assembly member I won the first of its kind fair free bus pilot we made one bus route free in every burrow of New York City and we secured $15 million to do so and it showed that ridership went up by up to 38% assaults on bus drivers went down by 38.9% and of the largest increase of riders came from New Yorkers making $28,000 a year or less and this is critical because it's not just about economic access it's also about public safety it's also even about environmentalism because we're we're seeing that 11% of the new riders they were previously driving a car taking a taxi now they're off the road they're on public transit and the cost of doing all of this is about $700 million a year now that sounds significant which it is but just want to put it into context we're talking about that in the context of a city budget that's about $13 billion a year state budget about $252 billion a year there is money the question is what we spend it on and what I've proposed is that we raise $10 billion to pay for our entire economic agenda and start to trump proof our city because we know he'll use federal funding as leverage over this city and we will do so in two key ways the first is to match the state's top corporate tax rate to that of New Jersey we are at 7.25% they're at 11.5% corporations can pay it over there they can pay it over here and the beauty of it is that it doesn't just apply to corporations headquartered in New York City because when you say this people will say "Well they're going to go to Florida wherever you are headquartered as long as you do business in the state of New York you are taxable for that corporate tax we're talking about corporations that are making millions of dollars not in revenue but in profit and the second is taxing the top 1% of New Yorkers we're talking about people who make a million dollars a year or more taxing them just by a flat 2% tax increase and I know if 50 Cent is listening he's not going to be happy about this he tends to not like this tax policy but I want to be very clear this is about $20,000 a year it's a rounding error and all of these things together they make every New Yorker's life better including those who are actually getting taxed now you also want to cut uh the police budget and people are upset about that right they feel that crime is all over the place i think a couple days ago two people got shot in Times Square the other day I think another girl got shot in the face in the Bronx so people are very scared it seems like New York is getting worse than getting better so what do you say that you know at a time like this cutting the police budgets that seems like that is taking more police officers off the street i want to be very clear we are not defunding the police what we are talking about is sustaining the number of police that we have within the police department and when I talk to those police officers themselves they tell me they signed up to join the police force to tackle serious crimes and yet what they're being asked to do today is serve as mental health professionals and social workers the same officers who thought they'd be responding to shootings are picking up the 200,000 phone calls a year of mental health calls and what we've seen elsewhere in the country is you can actually move mental health calls out of the police department that can reduce the calls that police have to deal with by 20% and in doing so you can increase police response time to those major categories of crime and I think that's important because police have a critical role to play in public safety and we also need to ask them to just focus on their job and not ask them to do every job because what we're seeing right now is these same politicians who have given us this lack of public safety over so many years telling us that their only answer no matter the question is to ask police to do more i want them to do the thing that they signed up for and to have a department of community safety with teams of dedicated mental health outreach workers at the top 100 stations with the highest levels of mental health crisis and homelessness we have to deliver public safety and when those calls come in you know and people are saying "Hey somebody's over here having an episode," the police I think should be going out there with the mental health professional let the mental health professional be the person who tried to diffuse that situation back and you know even if even if you want I think a better I don't I can't tell you how to say things but No please if the NYPD got a budget of $10.8 billion does all of that really need to go to the police they're already super underpaid so where's that money going anyway so why not take some of that money and invest it into other alternatives to respond to things like mental health crisis and and that's what I've said which is that we have to work backwards from does every dollar we spend go towards public safety the the the critiques that I've said of the NYPD have been that they don't need an 80 person communications department that doesn't actually deliver public safety that delivers us drone footage right we can actually rapidly downsize that and I've been I've been heartened to see the current commissioner took that 80 and made it 40 and and I've also said that we don't need to have a more than billion dollar police overtime budget and usually when you say that people frame it as if you are going after the police but when you ask the police there are 200 officers leaving the department every month and one of the leading causes is forced overtime because of quality of life they don't know when they're going home they're working doubles and triples this is actually something that can make it easier to do that job and ensure that we're actually responding to this because what we have right now is not working you know I sat with the family of a New Yorker named Win Rosario who's a young New Yorker who was going through a mental health crisis he called 911 himself asking for help two police officers who were trained in mental health assistance were dispatched to his home and they killed him within 3 minutes on camera in front of his mother and his brother so they were trained in mental health they were trained and and my point here is that that serves no one that family grieves him every single day and we all know that that was not the way to respond to this so why don't we actually look at what works elsewhere in the country and bring it here and that's what we're talking about evidence-based policy solutions that will deliver real public safety hold on maybe we stepping on our own point if they were trained they were trained when you say trained in mental health what they trained to know how to respond to people dealing with crisis the these police officers were given the training that that right now we're being we're being told is sufficient and my point here is that we should not be training police officers for mental health response we should have mental health responders be the ones who are actually the ones there got and and this this this addiction to asking them to do everything it's one that leaves them unable to do many things because right now as you were saying New Yorkers when they're worried about safety they want to know what's your plan 65% of crimes from the first quarter of this year are currently unresolved that's partially because we're asking the police to do everything i get what you're saying so you know what else they should do they should police officers should be having their own mental health evaluations like that should be part of the And and I think that's also part of why when you when you ask an officer to work triples right the longer you are on your shift the harder it is to make the same level of decisions throughout the entirety of it we need to ensure that we are creating the conditions where we can actually deliver that public safety i want to ask about uh congestion pricing as well uh you know you talk about free free buses which is which sounds great but now you got free buses but then when you drive to the city you charge me $30 to get to the city uh so what's your your thoughts on congestion pricing and and and how it's affecting businesses in New York so I believe that the one thing New Yorkers hate more than a politician they disagree with is one they can't trust so I'm going to tell you the answer I say in every room i am somebody who has supported congestion pricing i know I wanted to tell you the truth jesus i say it to your face though um I've supported it for a few reasons because I believed it would reduce congestion it would increase bus speeds it would raise revenue for the MTA and it would improve air quality and that's what we've seen it be able to do at the same time I have always believed it needs to be paired with immediate public transit improvements i launched a campaign called get congestion pricing right with the deputy majority leader of the state senate Mike Jinares the two of us won about $12 million in new bus service i'm proud of it but it's not enough and the reason I fought for that is when you look at the implementation of congestion pricing in places like Stockholm London the first day they had it they had increased public transit because I think it's important to tell New Yorkers that it's not just about raising revenue for public transit it's also about giving them a better option right there there are some people who need to drive there are also others for whom that's the most convenient option we need to make public transit the most convenient one but it's hard when you look at your app and you're told a bus is coming in 10 minutes and then you wait 10 minutes and then that bus doesn't actually show up and so we need to earn that trust that's that's where my position is how is it affecting businesses in New York City though i mean I know a lot of restaurants are charging a congestion fee tax and you know prices are everything is expensive i mean the other day I went to McDonald's i got my kids one meal and that one meal is usually $2.99 when I was a kid it's now $12 you know you bought all your kids one meal times that hard absolutely they got to split it up we got to split it up that's expensive out there that's crazy hey you want to lend me some but so you know so how is it affecting business you know especially small businesses you know the main businesses yeah you know they can get over but you know you got that mom and pop store that just can't do it you know what we've actually seen is that since it's been implemented foot traffic has increased in the in the central business district and I think that's a big part of it is that actually when you make it easier to get around that same neighborhood you actually can facilitate more business and an interesting thing that I've also seen is that noise complaints are down by a significant amount because you have reduced congestion and that's a difference also in quality of life but I think to your point small businesses small businesses are struggling in New York City they employ a majority of all New Yorkers who are working in the private sector we put forward a small business proposal where we would cut fines and fees for those businesses by 50% across the board and we would do that because you know the city has a $13 billion budget it is not funded through these fines and fees it doesn't mean that much to the city if it gets a $100 from a restaurant because they have a refrigerator every year but for that restaurant those are the kinds of things that can add up and so we're going to cut that in half and we're also going to make it easier to open them because right now I'll tell you you want to open a barber shop in New York City you got to go to seven different agencies fill out 24 forms and then attend 12 activities that does not make it easy to open a barber shop we need to actually follow the example of Pennsylvania where they took an 8-week permitting process and made it just a couple days and that's why we said we're going to have a mom-and- pop zar we're gonna increase funding for onetoone small business services because we have to make it easier to survive in this city and and city government has to understand its role and responsibility in that because I'm tired of politicians pretending like we're just bystanders to all these crises you know I'm texting out thoughts and prayers to the small business just closed but actually my policies are helping it to close we need to make sure that that's not the case any longer you know I want to ask you um I want you I'm ask you to define something but when I when you answer it I want you to you know think about how you would define it to somebody if you was writing a rap like now I don't want you to rap but what I'm saying look I know you don't like the raps i'm just saying that the way you would approach a rap you know the audience you're trying to talk to and you would probably keep things on the ground this is where I lose the election right here how would you define being a democratic socialist to just a to just somebody that So you know some of my favorite songs they they start with with an old quote that's how that's how a song might begin and so for me one of them is from Dr king call it democracy or call it democratic socialism there must be a better distribution of wealth for all people in this country for all of God's children and ultimately to me it's about dignity for each person you know the the the the person who gave me this language of calling myself a democratic socialist is Bernie Sanders when he ran in 2016 and his relentless focus on income inequality it taught me that things could be better than they were so often when you're voting it feels like you're voting between somebody who wants to wipe you off the face of the earth and someone else who wants to tell you to celebrate the crumbs that can't feed your neighbors and to know that it could be more that you could be voting for something that has inspired me and I think that you know as a as a Muslim democratic socialist I am used to bad PR and having to explain what all of these things mean and what I found though is when you actually get into a conversation a lot of this is common sense right if if I believe that every New Yorker should be able to live a dignified life and that it's city government's job to ensure that New Yorkers will agree with me when I bring up the example of public education free so free education free healthcare what else i mean anything that's necessary it's like when people whatever you need to live in this city that should not be something you can be priced out of and we agree with that when it comes to school we agree with that with libraries with sanitation with the fire department but there are certain things we've picked and chosen and said you know what you don't need that for housing or you know what you don't need that for food and and I think that we can't let the market determine who gets to live that dignified life this is not to say that it's city government's job to deal with everything but for that which is necessary we have to ensure that that we are doing our part and and that's why I have said I'm going to freeze the rent for more than 2 million rent stabilized tenants because that's the mayor's power the last mayor did that three times this mayor raised the rent 9% he wants to raise it again up to eight percent we have these tools it's just a question of do we want to do this and I know why politicians don't because there's a lot of pressure you know I'm the candidate running to freeze the rent cuomo's the candidate running to raise the rent that's why the landlords of those same units just gave Cuomo $2.5 million the same landlords that say they don't have enough money to be able to freeze the rent just found two and a half million wow to give it to him the single largest check in this entire race but it helps let people know that's what's on the ballot it's straightforward it's do you want your rent to to to be the same or do you want it to raise i saw your rent was 2,300 a month yes sir 2,300 for a onebedroom Atoria jesus Christ yeah was 500 square feet it's not too much more than that let me tell you you know you know it's interesting right cuz Democrats have created all this new politically correct language for everything gender sexuality you know pregnant women how come y'all haven't found a better way to discuss socialism why is socialism a dirty word when essentially all you want to do is take care of people i don't think it should be i I think it's actually a word that when you break down its meaning like you just have done is one that many Americans agree with and we've seen that that despite all the attempts Bernie Sanders continues to be one of the most popular politicians in America congresswoman Okasiocortez similarly and they have both defined themselves in that same language and I think it's that but I think it's because they tell instead more so nowadays instead of just leaning on the word socialism they just tell people you should have free healthare you should have a free education you should be able to make a livable wage you know they should increase the minimum wage like those are just simple concepts that are all socialism but for some reason y'all still find yourselves tripping up over that word or letting letting the other side use it i mean I mean I I think it's it's because there are a lot of people making a lot of money in this moment who would want Americans to think that that's the only way life can be and I don't hide this you know it's it's it's how I see the world it's the world that I want is one of dignity and it's funny there's this one guy who comments under almost every one of my tweets and he's like "He's a socialist." I'm like "Yeah it's in my bio you know this is this this is who I am." And I think it's it's about being honest with New Yorkers because I found you know Mayor Cotch said this that if you agree with me on 9 out of 12 issues vote for me 12 out of 12 see a psychiatrist and I found that in New Yorkers an ability to say look maybe I wouldn't call myself the same word but I want the same things and ultimately you have to have a coalition that asks people of just one thing we need to make the city affordable we can have disagreement we can have tension but we have to have agreement on that one thing so that we can build a coalition that looks like the city of New York now sorry but you are climbing a poll like you just came out of nowhere right why do you think the young people are riding with you you know I think it's it's because people are hungry in the beginning they didn't throw your name in the hat at first they was it was just Look let me tell you I was I was sitting in a coffee shop in Atoria this is right before we launched the campaign somebody in politics showed me a poll and I was looking at the beginning of the poll and they were like "No no keep looking keep looking." And then I was there at 1% damn they were like "That's what you said." Right how'd you make the poll rise pause you know I think I think I think just by being consistent you know from from the beginning of the race from October 23rd the first day I said this was a campaign about affordability i said this was a campaign about New Yorkers who have built this city who are being pushed out of this city and I said that I was going to do three things i was going to freeze the rent mhm i was going to make the slowest buses in America fast and free i was going to deliver universal childare and it got to the point where I can go to a rally and I can say I'm going to freeze the and the crowd will say rent buses fast and free universal child care people know and I think for too long politics has become about a person as opposed to a platform and New Yorkers see themselves in that and you know growing up in this city so many of the people that have helped to raise me that I've grown up with they haven't always seen themselves in our politics they have you know they they haven't voted in a lot of these elections the last mayoral primary 26% of Democrats voted and most New Yorkers when you ask them when's the election they'll tell you it's in November not in June most people don't know about the importance of the primary but I've been getting text messages from people that I've known for years and people that I've just met just screenshots of voter registration that I'm going to vote for the first time and and that's meant the world to me because if we really want to protect our democracy one of the best ways of doing so is that people see themselves in it people see themselves as participants you can't protect it at an intellectual level you have to protect it in an everyday level and ultimately going back to your question about democratic socialism it's about extending that democracy from the ballot box to the rest of our lives if you get to choose your own leaders why shouldn't you be able to choose the economic conditions that you're living in why shouldn't you be able to ensure you have that dignity and and I think that what's so exciting is as you said a lot of this is powered by young people you know young people who so often political analysts will say "Don't worry about them they don't vote at the same rates they don't come out." And it's been so exciting to see those same young people be part of the 34,000 volunteers we have you know it took us months to knock 150,000 doors in this city last week we knocked that in seven days alone that's the level of momentum we're at where people are just going all across the city and my mother is one of these canvasers she has her weekly canvasing shift on Sunday she's paired up with a 25-year-old who she complains walks too fast they go up sixth floor walk up and she goes through 10 consecutive not doors not homes and then when she finally meets a voter and they say they're going to vote for me she says "That's my son." And and it's it's that sense of everyone is a part they say they not she She don't even tell him she don't tell him she don't tell him she's like you know I have my concerns as well let me ask you you know if if you were the mayor and you see what's going on in LA how would you handle that problem if there was protesters they were you know breaking stuff looting smashing police cars vandalizing things uh of course Trump sending the troops uh how would you handle that if you were mayor of New York City and that actually happened here i think first and foremost you call it what it is it's authoritarianism this is the Trump administration looking to arrest enough migrants that they can say they fulfilled their campaign promise of building the single largest deportation force in American history and too often we think about it as just an attack on immigrants it's an attack on the fabric of this country and it's not just in LA i mean we have New Yorkers who have been arrested and detained today you know few days ago marked three months since a Palestinian New Yorker named Mahmud Khalil was arrested in his apartment building lobby taken away from his pregnant wife Noir and has since been in an ICE detention facility in Louisiana he wasn't able to even witness the birth of his of his first child Dean and we have another New York City public high school student named Dylan who was snatched at a regular check-in at Federal Plaza is now hundreds of miles away from his mother and his two siblings and this is personal for me because I got my citizenship just blocks from where those arrests are happening those blocks used to be my favorite part of New York City it's where I got my citizenship where I got married and those are now the same blocks where when I took my father for his immigration interview this year I hugged him so tight because I didn't know if I was going to see him in the afternoon there are too many New Yorkers who are feeling that and so I think you you call this what it is you also make clear that Trump is reversing historical precedent in that calling the National Guard is typically something a governor requests of the president it's not something a president puts on a governor and Kathy Hokll is someone who as the governor of our state has been able to fight Donald Trump and defend a lot of his potential attacks on this state one of the first things I would do is work with her to make it clear that this has no this has no room in our city and our police force should not be assisting ICE in what they are conducting you know we recently saw arrests where the NYPD was then arresting a pastor and other New Yorkers who were observing ICE arresting migrants coming in for their check-ins we don't need to be accompllices to authoritarianism we need to show that there's another way of of running this city and this country and and that's who I'm excited to be could Could you explain to people why federal overreach is dangerous you know it's it's so funny to see Republicans for whom so long their rallying cry has been states rights and now here they are they don't have a concern for that at all it's the same way that they used to care about free speech that's gone as well ultimately these are principles they only hold when are convenient to them and what's so dangerous about this is that we have a clear delineation of what is a federal responsibility what is a state responsibility but Donald Trump wants to make every responsibility his he wants to run a country in a manner that is more befitting of an authoritarian state mhm and I think what's so concerning is he's looking at the example of someone like Naib Bule and saying that this style of leadership of having mass prisons where we send so many people who we allege are criminals no matter whether we can find it or not that's Salvador yeah that's what that's what he wants to bring to this country and and I think what we need are Democrats who are willing to stand up and fight that you know we have a mayor right now who has wanted to fearmonger around sanctuary city policy this is a policy we've had in this city for decades it's a policy that's been defended by Republicans and Democrats alike it allows for the city to work with the federal government if someone is convicted on 170 serious crimes what it says however is outside of those there should not be that collaboration and you know I'm sure you know you've heard of of Kilmar the man in Maryland who was taken to El Salvador if the city he was arrested in by ICE had sanctuary city laws he would not have been able to be picked up that's what we're preventing from happening and still with what we have in place because we have a mayor who doesn't want to enforce it because we have a mayor who wants to collaborate still we see New Yorkers being picked up let me ask you a question right why is Donald Trump the Democrat's boogeyman because none of y'all are running against Trump and to me the biggest hurdle to the Democratic Party is the Democratic Party the inaction of the Democratic Party over all of these years is the biggest hurdle for the Democratic Party now I I don't disagree with you that's part of my critique of Andrew Cuomo is that he's the very kind of leadership that helped give rise to Donald Trump you know before Donald Trump was a president of this country before he was a reality TV show host he was a real estate developer in New York City and he was someone who both parties had room for in time for and I think that our ability to accommodate the very kind of real estate developers that have broken law after law after law is also part of what has given rise to an era of politics with no accountability i mean Andrew Cuomo had a video of Donald Trump playing at his own bachelor party like that's the level in which all of this is imshed together and I'm trying to chart a new course with this campaign alongside thousands of New Yorkers for a politics that is clearly distinct from that of Donald Trump and I think when when New Yorkers are shocked at Donald Trump's record of cutting Medicaid of trying to steal hundreds of millions of dollars from the MTA of giving tax breaks to billionaires of hounding the many women who have credibly come forward to accuse him those are the same things you could say about Andrew Cuomo we don't need a reflection of that in New York City we need someone who is the opposite of that and as a progressive Muslim immigrant who's willing to fight for the things I believe in that's what that's what makes me Donald Trump's worst nightmare but and I I saw you say that in the debate you know you would be Trump's worst nightmare but once again why should that matter to anybody voting for you now you're not running against Donald Trump no you but but you are running against the authoritarianism that he's bringing to this city so you think Cuomo is an authoritarian no I think that there's too many commonalities between him and Donald Trump's record and my point is that you don't want to have a mayor who has to pick up a phone call from someone who cut a $250,000 check to both him and Donald Trump you want to have a mayor who's willing to fight for this city and have the that be the thing that he's ultimately responsible for and I think to your point we also have to be honest about how we lost this presidential election you know New York is the state that had the largest swing in the country towards Donald Trump 11 and a half points and it happened far from the caricature of Trump voters it happened in the hearts of immigrant New York City i went to form road in the Bronx i went to Hillside Avenue in Queens and when I asked New Yorkers there almost all of whom were Democrats who did you vote for and why many told me they didn't vote many told me they voted for Trump and they told me they voted for him because they remembered having more money in their pocket four years ago for their rent for their child care for their groceries even for their metro card they remember how they feel and and as insincere and ridiculous and horrific as we know Trump's policies to be that is how people felt those are the decisions that they made and when I asked these same New Yorkers "What would it take to bring you back to the Democratic party?" They said "A relentless focus on an economic agenda." I said "What would you say to a candidate running to freeze the rent make buses fast and free deliver universal child care?" Said I'd vote for him and that's when I introduced myself and that's my point here is that there are some Democrats like Andrew Cuomo who think that we we went too far left in in how we ran a campaign and my point is that we actually betrayed working-class voters a long time ago and it's time to own up to that and finally fulfill the promises that were made decades ago well that I mean that's interesting right because you know you say Cuomo and Trump have so many similarities but Cuomo has been a career Democrat and that's why I feel like anybody who who is going to be the future of the Democratic party you do have to throw that old regime under the bus because it's not just Cuomo that bus is going to be free sure but it's cuz but it's not just Cuomo in the Democratic party it's a lot of old leaders absolutely it's the Chuck Schumers it's the Bidens you got to throw all of that under the bus and run it over and people have to hear you say that cuz I keep hearing y'all you know you keep talking about Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump no but your party has been just as ineffective and just as corrupt in a lot of ways trust me I have I hear you because I've been critical about the style of leadership that gave rise to Donald Trump is also a style of leadership within the Democratic party and I think for too long it's been a party that has valued insider politics pay your dues the words and advice of consultants over the people that are Democrats themselves and I do think it's time for a new generation of leadership you know Cuomo would be the oldest mayor elected in New York City i would represent a completely new generation and I think it's important for that because it's not just about age it's not just about vision it's also about what has your record been and who have you been fighting for and is that distinct enough from what got us here yeah i just got a couple more questions you said Delasio was the best mayor in your lifetime for New York and you gave three reasons you said uh because he ended stopping frisk quote "Yeah he ran on ending stopping frisk taxing the rich and funding universal prek." You said he got a lot of that done how much how much of it did you get done universal prek I think is one of the most shining examples of what city government can do right this is something that took tens of thousands of dollars off New York famil family's backs and made it easier to raise a family here you know I'm tired of hearing New Yorkers tell me that they're going to settle down and I know that the next sentence is going to include the words Long Island or the suburbs because they just can't make it work in the five burrows part of making it work is making it easier to have childare you know today the average cost of childare is $25,000 a year that's more money than it cost to send that same kid to CUNI 18 years later those I think are accomplishments now it's not to say that there there is no critique of that time in office i mean I'm somebody who was on a 15-day hunger strike alongside thousands of working-class taxi drivers fighting that same administration for debt relief and we were able to come to an agreement where we won $450 million in debt relief for those taxi drivers and and ultimately I say this though because we have seen what's possible if we have someone focused on delivering it and to me that the greatest mayor in New York City history is Fierel LaGuardia because he was someone who transformed our sense of the possible and he put working people at the heart of his politics and he did so while also confronting this rise in anti-immigrant hate all at the same time and I think we need a mayor who has that ability to fight multiple crises at the same time and show what it means to be a New Yorker you you said if you're elected mayor Israel wouldn't let you in and you mentioned some legislation but would that legislation apply to you if you're actually mayor we've seen elected officials even Congress people of this country not be allowed into the state of Israel and my point was I've been asked this question many times and I've said directly that I believe one need not visit Israel to stand up for Jewish New Yorkers what I need to do is to meet Jewish New Yorkers at their synagogues at their temples at their homes subway platforms parks wherever they may be to hear their concerns and actually deliver on those concerns and then when I have been asked about this what I've also said is that even if I was going to make that trip there is legislation that does not allow anyone who supports a non-violent movement calling for the compliance of the Israeli government with international law to be allowed into that state and I say that to say that there has to be a greater recognition of of what is going on and the fact is for me my politics come back from a politics of the universal i believe that freedom and justice and safety liberty these things have to apply to everyone for them to be meaningful and that also includes Palestinians why does it also seem like elected officials care about what's going on in other countries more than they care about what's happening here in America because you know you do realize it's hard to think about starving kids somewhere else when your kids are starving right now my my focus is right here in New York City this is a question that's been asked of me time and time again and ultimately I think it's actually a question that as you're saying is not actually in line with the top concerns of New Yorkers not even in line with the top concerns of Jewish New Yorkers you know when you see in a poll what are those top concerns the number one is affordability after that it's child care it's elder care it's discrimination these are all New York City issues and I think that we need to have a mayor who is focused on New York City and that's why when I was asked in the debate where is your first trip abroad going to be i said I'm going to be here in New York City and then I was asked followed up are you going to go to Israel and I said one need not go to Israel to stand up for Jewish New Yorkers and then I was asked you know it just continues continues continues um but for me the focus has to be the five burrows i mean you are running to be the mayor of this city this is a city that is losing hundreds of thousands of people in the last few years alone because they can't afford it they're going to Pennsylvania New Jersey Connecticut anywhere their dollar can go a little further and we know that you know as the saying goes when when white America catches a cold black America catches pneumonia that inequality is compounded for black New Yorkers we lost 200,000 black New Yorkers in two decades about 9% of the city's population of black New Yorkers from 2010 to 2019 nearly 20% of black children and teenagers had to leave this city and that is a crisis that has to be focused on that would be that would be at the heart of what my administration would do yeah i don't understand why conversations about affordability free healthcare making buses free freezing the rent on rent stabilized apartments why is that considered far left come on i'm just saying why is that it's common sense why can't y'all message that better like why like I I think you got to get rid of that word socialism you know my man Killer Mike used to tell Bernie Sanders to use the term compassionate capitalism or maybe just talk about what it is you want to do constantly instead of getting caught up in those labels i mean I I think it's both important to tell people where this belief comes from but what I always foreground is what this belief will mean for someone you know it's it's pe people want to know "How are you going to help them in their life in their struggle?" The reason we focus this entire campaign on affordability is that's what New Yorkers told us when you ask them "What are you struggling with?" They'll tell you rent they'll tell you childare they'll even tell you public transit because I know to many people 290 doesn't feel like a lot mhm one in five New Yorkers cannot afford a metro card that's the state of inequality in this city while income inequality has declined in the country it's increased in New York City this is the wealthiest city and the wealthiest country in the history of the world and so to what you're saying these are common sense policies and also when they're pled they even sometimes have support of majority of Republicans because they speak to what people are actually going through that's it all people want is some more money in their pocket and they want to feel safe look that's it well if they want to support you how can they go out and support you well what I would tell them is come to zon fornyc.com don't donate to us we've already raised the maximum we can spend in this campaign but do give us something more valuable which is your time we're building a team of 34,000 people New Yorkers from all walks of life knocking on doors talking to their neighbors come on out Canvas it would be a joy to have you and I would also say that if the three of you want to come canvas we'd love to have you as well well thank you are we residents in New Jersey but oh come so look you know just bring that corporate tax rate bring that corporate tax rate over from New Jersey when's the election june 24th early voting starts June 14th and we're confident we can win this but only with the help of New Yorkers well good luck thank you so much Zoranwami mama Donnie I appreciate Mi hit it one more time hit it one more time all right zoranwami manny there we go my goodness my goodness pose up let's get the pose up there you go it's the Breakfast Club good morning wake that ass up in the morning the Breakfast Club