Transcript: Mayor Mamdani Appears Live on “The View”
Zohran Mamdani on NYC Mayor's Office transcripts.
Passages
I'm pretty slow going. Just clock in, clock out. It is lovely to be back.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI'll be honest, it feels incredible. You know, this is the dream of a lifetime. And we've always wanted to build a city government that moves as fast as New Yorkers do. You know, when a New Yorker's trying to walk somewhere, you don't get in their way. But, you know, with a city government, it hasn't felt like that for a long time. So we've wanted to say that there's not gonna be any problem too big or too small for us to address. So, day one, we put bad landlords on notice right after that inauguration speech. You know, day six, we fixed a bump on the Williamsburg Bridge. Day eight, we announced more than a billion dollars in funding for universal child care.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceThat's coming from the state. And what that does is it allows us to fix universal child care for 3-year-olds and deliver it for 2-year-olds. We actually have a mother in the audience, Mallory, who is here with us and who, when the announcement was made, texted her husband to say, “It might be time for a second kid.” And I think so often we think that these are decisions families are making on their own, but really we're giving them no choice when we say that child care costs $25,000, $26,000 a year. Now it's something that they can actually get for free.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI think my intention is about being honest and direct with the president. I think there are many disagreements the two of us have. There's no shortage of them. One thing that we do have in common is that we both love New York City. We're both New Yorkers. And so for that entire meeting, I made the case about this city and what it can look like for this city if it's a place that New Yorkers can afford or if it's a place that they're pushed out of. And every single policy that the federal administration puts forward, it impacts on this city.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI don't have an award. What I will say, though, is that I'm going to exhaust every possibility. I mean, when New Yorkers elect a mayor, they're looking for someone who's going to turn over every leaf to see what is something they can do for the city. That's what I'm going to do.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceLook, I think, first, I don't know how else to describe what we saw in Minnesota. People ask me, why did I say the word murder? I asked them to look at that video and tell me what they would call it. And we are being asked to not believe our own eyes. It's time to be truthful with people. It is terrifying to see what's happening there. And it's terrifying to see all of this happening in the name of public safety. And I've said this directly to the president, [that] these ICE raids, they are cruel, they are inhumane. They do nothing to deliver that public safety. In fact, what they do is leave a sense of fear amongst so many. And, you know, I represent a city of 8.5 million people. More than 3 million New Yorkers are immigrants. I'm one of them. And what we've seen this administration do is transform the very places that we used to associate with the American dream. You know, 26 Federal Plaza, you go there, [you have] your citizenship interview, [and] you hope you can start to call yourself an American. Now it's the sign of the American nightmare. It's where people go there for what should be a routine immigration check-in. They don't know if they're going to get detained or deported. And so my job is to stand up for those New Yorkers, stand up for every New Yorker, and to say that we're going to use every tool at our disposal to ensure that what we're seeing elsewhere is not what we see in this city.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceWell, what I've said is that our values and our laws, they're not bargaining chips. I'm not looking to have a negotiation with New Yorkers' lives. We're talking about sanctuary city policies. These are policies that used to be defended by Republicans and Democrats alike, ones that keep New Yorkers safe. And I've told the president this directly, which is that what we are talking about is not people who are convicted of serious crimes. We're talking about people whose crime simply seems to be being in New York City. And if they were to make good on this threat, it would rip the civic fabric of the city apart. And so we're going to use every tool, whether that means the tools of city government, the tools of the court, to make our case direct.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceYeah, I mean, I think–and this is the other thing, just–masked agents. You know, I am trying to inspire amongst New Yorkers a sense of faith and belief in what [the] government can do. And it's very hard to do that when they look at masked agents and see them as another face of a similar government. Because then they ask themselves, am I supposed to trust or am I supposed to fear? And what we want is for New Yorkers to be able to look to [the] government as a place to solve their problems, not as a place that creates their problems. And I think, you know I’ve–
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceSo what I would say is that if you want to know my views or my opinions, you'll find them in my words, as the mayor of New York City. And I'm someone who's looking to make this a city that every New Yorker can afford. That includes those who are tenants, those who are homeowners, those who aspire to be homeowners. Because from this, we find that stability. And I think, frankly, what New Yorkers are also looking for are the outcomes. And that's what I care about, the outcomes and the excellence we deliver. And so one example, the Mayor's Office to Protect Tenants, the executive director that we hired about 20 days ago. In those 20 days, we have taken on a landlord that had more violations than I could count. And we have secured $30 million in guaranteed repairs for thousands of those violations. And sometimes when a politician tells you this, it sounds intangible. It just sounds like stats and statistics that you'll never feel and know. We have someone in the audience, Josie, who was a tenant that I met on that first day I was the mayor. I went into her apartment. She showed me living conditions that no one should ever see in this city. And I could see and feel the rust falling off my hands. And I asked her, “How long have you been living with this?” And she pointed at her 20-something-year-old son and said, “Before he was born.” And now that $30 million, that commitment, that's going to fix her apartment and so many other tenants.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceNo. I think oftentimes [when] you try to talk to a New Yorker, you show them statistics, you show them how good things are, and what they'll show you is their life. And what I hear from New Yorkers is they cannot afford their life anymore. And it's not about lavish desires that they have. We're talking about housing. We're talking about their rent payment. You know, we're talking about child care, groceries, Con Ed, you know, just getting on the bus. And, you know, one of the reasons that on January 1st we had our inauguration, that I then went to meet with tenants, is that, yes, it's the inauguration, it's the beginning of a new term, a new administration. It's also the first of the month. And New Yorkers, frankly, don't care who the mayor is. If it's the first of the month, they have to pay their rent. So that's what we need to be focused on. And I think that's my job, frankly, in the most expensive city in the United States of America. How do we make it affordable, not just in a way I can point to, not just in a graph I can open up my suit and say, “Look at this,” but you feel it.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI think one of the key things is child care, frankly, because $26,000 is a good deal a year for child care. For a single child, it's more expensive than if you sent that kid to college 18 years later. The other key part here is housing, right? We have–yes. Housing. Look, we have–the housing crisis is the number one crisis in this city. We have 8.5 million people, more than 2 million, [who] live in something called rent-stabilized housing, where every year the city decides if their rent's going up or if it's staying the same. For the last four years, all they've seen is their rent has gone up and up and up, more than 12 percent. And I told those New Yorkers, I believe they deserve a rent freeze. They deserve to have the peace of mind to wake up one day and know– You can do that. That's what the Rent Guidelines Board can do, and we appoint every member to that board. And I believe that they're going to see tenants deserve that relief, because landlords are making [a] 12 percent increase in their revenues, [where a] tenants' median household income [is] $60,000.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceSo this is an administration that will root out antisemitism across the five boroughs. And you're right that we signed an executive order on the first day revoking every order that the previous mayor had taken after he was federally indicted. The reason we did that was because it was a day when New Yorkers looked at City Hall and said, I don't know what's motivating these actions anymore. Is it the indictment or is it the interests of the city? And another order that we did ourselves was to keep the Mayor's Office to Combat Antisemitism. This is an office and an administration that looks to fulfill those words, that commitment we've made, increasing funding for hate crime prevention programming, increasing security for Jewish New Yorkers outside of synagogues and temples, and also saying that the rubric we judge ourselves on cannot be, are we keeping Jewish New Yorkers safe? It has to also be, are we celebrating and cherishing them? Because that's what it means to feel like you belong in a city. That's what we want to do forever in New York. Especially in New York. Absolutely.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceNo, I think oftentimes there's a condescension that people have when they talk about young voters. They kind of finger wag. They lecture. They tell people, you should just get out there. We don't actually ask them, what would it take to bring you out here? You know, what would it take if we went from lecturing to listening? And when I talk to young people, what I hear from them is they feel like the only way they can stay in the city is if they keep living with their parents or they leave the state entirely. And we have to make it a place where they can actually aspire to dream in the city and also treat them with the seriousness that they deserve, because what we'll find in our young people is leadership. You know, we always hear stories of parents who bring their kids to the polls. I met a lot of grandparents who told me my grandkid told me if I don't vote for you, they won't let me home. It's a reversal sometimes of who's leading. And I think that can come if we give people an opportunity to tell us what it is they want to see in their politics.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceYou know, I am in support of abolishing ICE. And I'll tell you why. Because what we see is an entity that has no interest in fulfilling its stated reason to exist. We're seeing a government agency that is supposed to be enforcing some kind of immigration law. But instead, what it's doing is terrorizing people, no matter their immigration status, no matter the facts of the law, no matter the facts of the case. And I'm tired of waking up every day and seeing a new image of someone being dragged out of a car, dragged out of their home, dragged out of their life. What we need to see is humanity. And there is a way to care about immigration in this city and in this country with a sense of humanity. What we're seeing from ICE is not it. And we have not seen that from them in a long, long time.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the source
Every passage above is taken from this recording: NYC Mayor's Office transcripts, Transcript: Mayor Mamdani Appears Live on “The View”.