Transcript: Mayor Mamdani Appears on ABC’s “This Week” With Jonathan Karl
Zohran Mamdani on NYC Mayor's Office transcripts.
Passages
I think we are seeing a hunger that is not just felt by New Yorkers, but frankly by Americans from coast to coast, for a new kind of politics, one that puts working people at the heart of it. And I think for far too long what we as a party have been able to say to New Yorkers who are struggling is simply to explain why they're struggling, not actually offer them a vision for how to make life better. And these candidates — Brad, Darializa, Claire — they ran campaigns that spoke to working people, and that said life in the nation's most expensive city need not be this way any longer. And I can't wait to have them as partners in D.C. in that work.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceYou know, for now, my focus is on this incredible slate of three congressional candidates, as well as, as you said, the five candidates I endorsed, who ran and won, who are all going to be heading to Albany in the state legislature. But I do think, as you said, it's not just New York City where working people are asking themselves, “Why can't I afford my rent? Why can't I afford my groceries? Why can't I find enough money in my pocket for childcare, no matter how hard I work”? And I'm so excited that these incredible soon-to-be congressmembers will be helping to lead the fight across the country on making sure that working people are right there where they should be, which is the heart of the conversation.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceYou know, I think that when you ask Americans what they're feeling in this moment, amidst reports of an economy that's strengthening, of a stock market that's booming, you will hear an exhaustion at having to try and make ends meet every single day, every single week, every single month, and that it's getting harder and harder. And so, a message of fighting for working people, we don't have to nationalize that message. That is a national message. It's a national crisis. And for far too long, all we've had to say as a party is opposition to the current administration. What do we have to say beyond that? And what these candidates offer is a vision that extends beyond the midterms, it extends beyond 2028. It speaks to what makes so many of us proud to be Democrats. It speaks to a vision that goes back to a New Deal understanding of what working people deserve. And I'll tell you that for too long that kind of politics, you can only find it in history books, and we need to bring it back to the present day.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceWell, I mean, you know, that's great, but what's a party if not its voters? And I'm proud to sit in front of you as the mayor of our city, having received more than a million votes a little over — a little less than a year ago. And when we're talking about these incredible congressional candidates, they won their races, and they won their races with a vision of what politics should be, and one that actually speaks to working people. And for a lot of people who ask themselves, “What does democratic socialism mean? And, you can tell them the answer at a theoretical level, [that] it’s choice to extend democracy from the ballot box to the rest of their lives. But in terms of what it means over these last seven months, we've seen a city with Democratic socialist principles at the heart of it within our administration. And what we've delivered has been record lows when it comes to murders and shootings. I think democratic socialism at the heart is pragmatic, because if we cannot deliver for working people, then what is this for? I'm not interested in writing a manifesto or, frankly, in reading one. I'm interested in delivering, and that's exactly what we've been showing.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceYes, here I am. Here are so many more. And I think what makes our party a beautiful party is the fact that it's a big tent that we have people—
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI think it has to stand for working people, and I think it has to be willing to fight for working people. And I think that there are some who are offended by the prospect of a party that knows who it fights for and goes every day to work for that, because what we've seen over many years is a willingness to not only explain away the status quo, but frankly, even to look to benefit from the status quo. And that's not what working people are looking for from our party.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceWell, a lot of pundits asked me about this race and what it means, and how to think about it. And at the core of Tuesday's results was a message from Democratic voters across the largest city in the United States of America about the kind of politics they want to see, and we know that we oppose the cruelty of the federal administration. What is it that we stand for beyond that? You can't. You got to have something you are not just willing to stand up for, but that you're also willing to explain how this is relevant to working people. And I think this just comes back to the fact that I'm leading a city that's the wealthiest city in the wealthiest country in the history of the world. I could end the sentence there and say that life is great for 8.5 million people. But it's also a city where one in four are living in poverty. And for far too many Americans, those contradictions have become their day-to-day life. And we need a party that's able to recognize the strengths of this economy and understand that it hasn't reached enough people.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI think what the Democratic Party can win on nationally is a focus on working people, and I think that what I saw from Darializa when I would walk the streets of her district was a focus on what she describes as the politics of life. She would talk about how we have to invest in babies, not bombs. She's now going to represent what is one of the poorest districts in the United States of America. And what people in that district are exhausted by is a politics that has justified the spending of tens of billions of dollars in killing civilians overseas, while working people are struggling just to do the basics.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI think what the focus of her race was, what the focus of her candidacy was, was about the struggle that working people are facing. And I think that we can have disagreements on policy positions. What we have to agree on is what are we fighting for, and who are we fighting for? She showed that in her race, and I think that many people will come to appreciate that in her leadership to come.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceAnd what we're also showing in this city is that safety is not something that's up for debate. It’s something that we're actually delivering on. And I'm proud to be the mayor of a city that currently has the lowest recorded number of murders and shootings in recorded history in New York City.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceLet them. We don't have to ask ourselves what life looks like if a socialist wins. I won last November, and over the course of these last six months, what we've delivered for working people are the very things we were told were impossible. We've delivered free childcare for two-year-olds for the first time in New York City history. We've delivered tens of millions of dollars back to tenants who were taken advantage of by bad landlords. We've delivered 165,000 potholes being paved. And we've done all of these things while also delivering the lowest recorded crime in our city's history. That's what it looks like to have democratic socialism. And what you're seeing is that New Yorkers experienced this for six months and made the decision that they wanted to see more of it on the national stage as well. I think a Democratic socialist can get elected anywhere across this country for any position. What I think we need to bring is a focus on working people.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI think the direction that the party should go in is how best to fight for working people. I think we need to have a platform and a vision that doesn't sound as if it was cooked up by consultants, but instead one that you would say in response to someone who's asking, “Why can't I afford my rent? Why can't I afford my groceries? Why can't I afford my childcare”? We need to make clear who we stand for, how we're going to stand for them, and that we're actually willing to fight for them when the going gets tough.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceWell, I think what we've seen is that the time for us, as elected officials, to pronounce what the party should be is one that should come to an end, and we should let Democratic voters themselves take the lead. We've seen on Tuesday evening, we saw Democrats turn out in districts across the city to make clear that they were tired of tens of billions of dollars being spent in our taxpayer dollars to violate international law, to kill thousands of civilians. And you and I know that right now, the way that Palestine is described is as if there is a ceasefire. That's the language that's typically used. More than a thousand Palestinians have been killed in that ceasefire. And what New Yorkers want to see is a politics of conscience, a politics of clarity, a politics of conviction. And to follow international law, to believe in the humanity of all people, it shouldn't be a journey too far. And I think that our party needs to hear what Democrats are telling them.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceThe way I see it is, equal rights for all people. And I think that that's the truth for Israel. It's the truth for any country in the world. And frankly, as we're coming up close to the 250th anniversary of our nation, one of the things that makes me proudest to be an American is the belief that equal rights are at the bedrock of our notion of what it means to be an American.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI've said time and again that I support the state of Israel as a state with equal rights. I believe that any state that— I think any state that privileges one religion over the other is one that I can't tell you I support, whether it be Israel or Saudi Arabia or anywhere else. And a lot of that comes back to a fundamental belief that we should all be considered equal, no matter what our faith is.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceWe've seen antisemitism rise in this city. We've seen the fact that Jewish New Yorkers comprise a minority of our city's population and yet continue to constitute a majority of the hate crimes that have been purveyed in this city. And that's something that's unacceptable. It's something that we will never come to see as if it is a part of life. It's something that has to be fought and rooted out of every one of the five boroughs.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI've said that I have political disagreements with Congressmember Goldman. I do believe that that's a response that goes beyond that. No, I think — I think it's much better to keep that critique in the way that we’ve done it.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI think the Constitution looks good the way it is. Just the way it is. I'm very excited to focus on New York City. But thank you for reminding me of my upcoming mortality. Yes, sir. My pleasure. ###
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the source
Every passage above is taken from this recording: NYC Mayor's Office transcripts, Transcript: Mayor Mamdani Appears on ABC’s “This Week” With Jonathan Karl.