ANTHONY WEINER | Scandal, 2016 Election, Hillary Clinton

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I get it.

Sometimes I critique a question,

and you do this thing of like, this is not good for you to make fun of your host on the show.

It's not working.

I'm like, all right, I get it.

I have not seen the documentary.

But you leave the documentaries over and ask you a question because I saw it.

I don't need to set it up as the documentary when I haven't seen it.

If I did it in real life, you can just say, I understand You're the one wasting time right now.

Fair enough.

Oh, my God, every faith true.

Oh, my God, a fairly true.

Almighty He.

Hello, America.

My name is Adam Friedland.

I'm extremely excited to welcome you to the premiere episode of the new season of the Adam Friedland Show.

On a weekly basis, I will be releasing episodes where I sit down with some of the world's most important and interesting people.

And for our first guest, I was joined by none other than current candidate for New York City Council and former Congressman Anthony Wiener.

Now, it would be easy for me to prepare for my guest like a tabloid fixture, but let's not forget, Wiener is a seasoned and accomplished politician and above all else, a human being.

So in order to prepare, I decided it was necessary for me to sit down with an expert on human psychotherapy, and I may have even learned a little bit about myself in the process.

So without further ado, this.

A red rose and a romantic novel.

That's how I told my guests who identify me today amongst the hustle and bustle of the High Line, one of New York City's many hidden gems.

I was here to meet James Foley, a renowned psychotherapist to the rich and powerful.

If anyone could help me get into the psychology behind Wiener, it was James.

After a brief stroll through the neighborhood, we sat down in my Hudson Yards penthouse to discuss the psychological profiles of the men that have shaped our world.

I'm James Foley.

I'm a psychotherapist.

I treat men for

sexual misbehavior such as affairs,

hiring sugar babies, and things like that.

Tell us where we can find you.

Do you have an Instagram?

www.sexuallycompulsive.com what what's the what's the general profile of your of your clients yeah so my practice is composed of high functioning men you know like CEOs guys who run banks yeah film directors

art even high-end artists musicians

I've had elected officials let's say like a man sends just like

a picture of his erection like under his underpants, but he's like, I'm not showing full meat.

Like, is that like in an psychological process?

It's like, well, if I'm not showing full meat, then, you know what I mean?

Yes.

So.

But then obviously his wife sees it.

He's like, well, obviously it's legal if I'm just showing Dick Print, but no, full meat.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, people

who engage in these things will make deals with themselves.

Yes, they'll make a bargain with themselves and obviously get themselves hurt with that bargain that doesn't

really make sense.

Okay, what is the difference between when a man cheats and a woman cheats?

You kind of indicated something.

But a lot of our programming as men and for women as women, it's different.

And a lot of our programming is behind our

irrational behavior.

So you and I are guys.

We got different programming typically than a woman would get.

And then...

But they cheat.

Oh, I'm not saying they don't cheat, but...

A lot of them do cheat on.

Yeah, I mean, nobody's immune from that, at least no gender.

But the idea is what's powering it can be different.

So why would it, like,

why would a girl cheat on her boyfriend?

Like, if he's like, especially if he's a great guy and stuff.

I wouldn't know.

You know,

that's a broadbrush kind of thing.

It's just.

But it's not.

So it's.

And there it was, straight from the horse's mouth.

women cheat too.

And with that in mind, I was finally ready to take on my biggest challenge to date, Anthony Wiener.

Our next guest is a former congressman.

He was the youngest ever elected member of the New York City Council.

He's run for mayor twice, and currently he is running in 2025 for city council.

Please welcome Anthony Wiener, everyone.

Let's get some energy in this room.

Hi.

Hello.

Hello.

It's my pleasure to be here.

We talked on the phone for 10 minutes.

We did.

It was a good talk.

Do you want this in your cup so it can, oh no, it's already got water.

We have water in the cup, and I would appreciate it if you just featured it.

No, that's what I thought.

Yeah, yeah.

I thought.

So this is like, yours is white, mine is black, like spy versus spy style.

Yeah, so you're a big fan of the show.

This one.

Yes.

Maybe the biggest?

It tells you a little something about the show.

You sent dozens of emails.

Actually, your email style is very funny, because

you just go last name.

No, like sincerely.

Correct.

Oh, yeah.

Last name.

I think there's a lot of wasted words generally in the world.

Yeah, yeah.

Like, that's why I like that your show is about eight minutes.

It's quick in and out.

Were you like a last name guy with your friends?

It's kind of a single thing.

Well, I mean, wiener kind of lends itself to that.

Right.

You know, so yeah, I mean, yeah.

So growing up, you were a wiener to your boys.

Yeah.

I saw your Patrick Bett David thing.

Have you heard of that guy?

See, this is what.

That guy is amazing.

I saw a video of him recently where he's like, four years ago, technology, three years, pandemic, two years ago,

vaccine.

This year, AI technology.

He just says sentences like that, and like guys are like,

I'm going to pay $10,000 to go to the seminar.

And he's a billionaire now.

No, I asked these questions because I'm on terrestrial.

So you went there, you didn't know who the fuck that guy was.

No, I mean, I'm not saying like I didn't do anything to get, I got on a plane and flew down there, but it's more kind of like the season of yes, of saying yes to arguing with people.

And

so I didn't quite, and I had a certain,

once I looked it up a little bit and I saw that there was no, it was just a person who just ran, I became kind of fascinated to understand what exactly was going on.

Because I'm trying to understand this a little bit.

This is okay.

You don't think you're a kindred spirit with him in terms of what you're trying to do?

Certainly not.

Not on substance, not on substance, but in general, like people want to look at interesting shit nowadays.

We don't really care what it is.

The objective with our show is this, right?

The internet makes.

Someone should have told me this sentence before, but go ahead.

I actually did.

No, no, no, no.

I'll tell you this right now.

I talked to him with the phone.

He's like, and he's like, and you make money from this?

And I was like, well, you know, we were on a podcast for morons for six years.

And then the fat one left to do crowd work.

And so then we changed it because I was kind of the schmuck, I was the nebish.

And we rebranded it to make me into an intellectual

talk show host.

And then he, he, you, this was amazing what you did.

You let like a little pregnant pause after my whole soliloquy.

He goes, and you go,

well you took me on quite the journey there but um

you did not in any way shape or form answer my question no i didn't do i don't say way shape or form i don't think people talk like that i just said you i didn't get the answer you were like vis-a-vis etc etc you did not

but a southern lawyer who did the um who did the the notes for you who did the sample question like did you do that on your own no i'm i have an excellent

you got the manager i have a room full of uh women of color who prepare who are my writers i thought it might just be i don't have a single honky air where that does not go in the episode okay you're born in 1964 in new york city i was yes okay and you're a brooklyn boy i grew up in brooklyn right where you're at park slope park slope six between eighth and the park fabulous fabulous 39 junior school 51.

how was the you oh was the food co-op there at the time no no it's a very different kind of vibe then where are you now lower east side lower east east village east village

alphabet city too loud

uh yes too loud?

It's too loud, isn't it?

There's a lot going on.

There's a lot going on there.

You have like an NYU vomit when you walk outside.

There's a lot going on there.

And your mother was an educator?

Or a math teacher.

Or math teacher.

Well, educator.

Who are you trying to impress?

She's a teacher.

Teacher.

I was trying to compliment your mother.

I'm not sure why.

Why are you trying to shit on your

why are you downbranding teacher?

I think it's an umbrella term.

Which one?

Educator.

Right, and a more precise one is teacher.

She's a teacher.

Okay, your dad?

An attorney.

He was like a little neighborhood attorney.

He kind of hung a shingle outside our house, that kind of vibe.

Just like a family law practice?

Yeah, some real estate stuff, yeah.

I don't really know for sure.

Like did some real estate closings, that kind of thing.

Wasn't big enough.

He's like for people who wouldn't have Jacoby Myers, but they wouldn't have a big firm.

They'd have like Grow and Wiener.

And did they split up when you were a kid?

When I was in college.

When you were in college.

Your parents were together?

My mother passed away.

Oh, sorry.

They were together for 40 years.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

My thing was like, like, my dad passed away recently.

My thing was when my parents, man, I can tell the story.

The story's really not apropos of anything.

Go ahead.

Tell the story.

What?

No, it's just when they split up.

Let me tell.

Okay, when I pause.

Political pause or just

a pause in the conversation.

Shut the fuck up.

Okay.

People want to know you as a human being.

Okay, that's fair enough.

All right, so let me continue.

So when

they broke up when I was in my 20s, okay, hurry up.

And I'm like, exactly.

Exactly.

That was like, so that was a jack.

Come on, I'm a schmuck.

Kind of weak.

It got a pop.

What is that?

It got to pop.

It got to pop.

I understand what that is.

It got to pop.

No, no, I wasn't beefing about you.

Like, you.

Oh, God.

You know,

there's the.

Sorry, I'm not.

I'm not trying to laugh.

No, I'm not beefing about you.

You never, you know, what is it?

Okay, sorry, I gotta laugh.

I'm not trying to do a whip of a

pork barrel backroom deal in the fucking halls of

whatever.

It just takes a little while for me to figure out where the crowd is.

This is not a very very strong crowd.

I mean, they're just laughing at like four guys.

Yeah.

I mean, not a strong crowd.

They laughed at Wiener.

Sorry,

your last name means me.

It's not a big deal.

Fair enough.

Okay?

There was a.

Did you think that you were like, I'm fine, dude?

There's another guy in Congress named Dick Army.

Here's the thing: is oh, yeah, Dick.

You're like, what?

Compared to Dick Army, this is not that bad.

There was Norm Dix, too.

Norm Dix?

Yeah, in Washington.

You see, this is what I'm, this is what I look to say.

It's funny.

It's funny, okay?

And you're not a coward like that goddamn Jon Stewart Leibowitz trying to erase our culture.

New York City, my girlfriend grew up in the Upper West Side.

I didn't grow up here.

And I feel like you guys grow up faster.

Like, my friends that grew up in the city, they're like, I had my Coke phase at 13.

Yeah.

They kind of become adults.

I guess so.

I mean, that's the kind of the argument of public schools.

You bounce off a lot of different types of people.

Plus, growing up in the 70s, you mugged a lot.

Like, yeah, I guess so.

Yeah,

and you were going to Manhattan with your friends

in high school?

High school, yeah.

Actually, the same neighborhood I live in now, we would kind of go and it would, just to see how edgy it was, that kind of stuff.

Where are you going?

Studio 54.

No, no.

And the factory.

We would go to like Rocky Horror, walk out.

Yeah, on St.

Mark's, that kind of style.

But that's for like that's for fucking nerds.

Yeah, I mean, that thing where you throw things.

It's a fair characterization of like where it was.

Yeah, I would have been at CBGB's if I was you.

You?

Yeah, if I was your age in New York City.

So

you're going to say you were cool then, now what happened?

I've always been one of the coolest guys.

No, so I mean, I guess New York in the 70s is characterized as like a completely different place.

Yes.

You've lived here for most of your life.

Except when I was in college and in prison, I was here.

In Washington, I would go back and forth.

Yeah, yeah.

I used to live in D.C.

I went to college there.

Where?

GW.

You're just like this.

Yeah, you're Jew through and through, huh?

No, they gave me the most money.

Your girlfriend Jewish?

Why are you out?

What are you my fucking major?

Just curious, just just curious.

She's 20%,

her mom's half-Jewish.

25% is my max.

Okay.

Oh, my God.

I can't stand it.

Sorry, sorry.

No, no, it's not.

No, I'm trying to gauge the level of the back and forth.

You do the questions.

Oh, we're having fun.

I'm just doing a shtick where I'm like, oh.

And I'm doing my mother.

And I'm doing a shtick to being offended by being apologetic.

We're just all doing it.

Listen, you could have been a nightclub comedian in another life.

I could have been a member of the U.S.

House of Representatives.

You probably could have been.

In parallel universes.

Yeah, where did you grow up?

I grew up in Vegas.

Yeah, you could have.

You could have been like Shelly Berkeley or something like that.

I worked for Shelly Berkeley.

Yeah, you could have been that.

That could have been you.

I was an intern when I was a junior in high school at the Congresswoman's Field Office.

Yeah.

Me and my friend, me and my best friend Alex were interns there, and we'd wear a shirt.

Do you remember what office were you in?

Do you remember?

Do you know the...

the field offices of Shelly?

Oh, you were in the district office.

She was my congresswoman.

Got it.

So you weren't really committed.

You were like just doing it.

What do you mean, committed?

I was in high school.

I had to go back home afterwards.

There are people that do internships in Washington.

Not in the middle of school.

I just did it to get out of eighth period.

There you go.

Okay, so I don't.

I think that's the definition of not being committed, is when you say, I just want to get out of eighth period.

I got good.

What kind of, what was your GPA graduating?

It's a little bit.

Was your,

I don't think I had a three.

You didn't have a three?

I don't think so.

I was not a great student.

But listen, I still get, have you heard of Harvard?

What?

I mean, I'm just saying I still got there.

Oh,

Harvard University.

Yeah, I didn't go there, but I just want to make sure you've heard of it.

Well, I went to the state,

you see now I know the room.

You went to Plattsburgh.

I went to Plattsburgh State.

Me and my friend Alex, when we were working at our

Congresswoman's office, we'd have to wear a shirt, so we felt like we were businessmen, and we'd go afterwards to Hooters.

Because we thought that we were like adults.

This is in Vegas.

Yeah, when we were like 17, 16-year-old boys.

Got it.

Yeah.

It's a great place.

Have you been there?

Las Vegas, Nevada.

No, Hooters.

I don't believe I I don't believe I have.

It's demeaning.

Which part?

The fact that they don't let like...

Oh, I thought you meant.

Just

generally being here.

I was gonna.

This is good for you.

I'm telling you, this is good for you.

So you're city kid, you uh Mets Islanders.

Correct?

The Mets are the team of the Jews and the Redheads, right?

The the

the Brooklyn.

Was

Your family were Dodger fans?

No, but

you would not if you grew up in the future.

You kind of seem like a Yankee fan, though.

No.

You're a Met fan that acts like a Yankee fan.

What?

You were like, oh, I'm a middle-class guy.

I'm like, oh, you go toe-to-toe in Congress.

That's a Yankee fan.

27 rings.

The Mets are a blue-collar team.

That's my team, yeah.

No, the Mets are like, I'm sorry.

The Mets?

I've been at City Field sitting next to people, and they're like,

more of this again with this you're a you're like an abused wife that keeps going back

to him not anymore.

Yeah, you keep going back to him the Mets and saying he's he's he's changed He's not gonna hit me anymore

Who tunes into listen to Mets Yankee banter on this show?

I was on a good riff right now you just killed it not so sure because I'm not you're a Mets fan But you act Yankees.

I know you did that line.

It wasn't that great the first time.

I'm saying no.

I am a Brooklyn guy.

The Mets are a middle-class team.

You guys buy your rings.

We earn them.

The guys that have two families that live three blocks away from each other are Yankee fans, right?

Guys that are like,

like, have chronic allergies and, you know, like get sensitive

when they listen to Paul Simon.

86 Mets were like the iconic bad boy team of Ganesh.

Yeah, but you were there.

You were with Dykstra doing lines.

First of all, no.

Is that the measure of like what team you fall?

I've lost the thread here.

What do you mean?

Can we edit the sports parts of this show?

Why is this the offensive part of the show?

No, I'm just saying.

See, this is the thing.

He is a Met fan.

He's acting like a Met fan right now.

No real New Yorker is a Yankee fan.

I mean, I'll give you the Bronx.

You want to do the geography thing?

I'll give you the Bronx.

I think a lot of

Italian and Dominican guys would disagree with you.

In the Bronx.

No, and Benzenhurst,

yes, they are.

That asshole Giuliani.

That was it.

You think Bayer Giuliani was an asshole?

No, I think, no, that wasn't the hard part.

The Yankee, the Yankee, Yankee?

Yeah.

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Okay, let's get back to it.

You went to Plattsburgh College.

No, Plattsburgh State University College of Arts and Science.

I know for PISA.

Plattsburgh IV College.

I'm sorry.

Yeah.

Okay, go ahead.

Yeah, they call it the Yale of the SUNY system.

They totally do.

Okay, and when did you get involved or become interested in politics?

Probably there.

Probably there.

I ran for student government there.

What was your platform?

What were you fighting?

Vote for Wiener, he'll be frank.

Okay, that's just a saying.

Well, like, what did you want to do for that?

What do you think you need in college?

It's really, you know, no more fish sticks in the cafeteria?

A pun about hot dogs.

Yeah.

And then they were like, that's good.

Vote for Wiener, he's on a roll.

But what, but that was your entire platform.

You were like,

I want an office of

Palestinian investigations.

So the division in student government, at least at Plattsburgh, it's probably other places, is you have these guys, these resident assistants who basically, they're the professional

guys on campus who are hired by the college just to be in the dorms, the RAs.

We all know what they are.

But there's student government.

So my whole thing, right, so my whole thing is those people should not be allowed to be on student government.

Why?

Well, because they effectively worked for the administration, so there's like, you know, so I don't think they should be.

Those are always the ones that were most ambitious to run.

So I ran, it wasn't a platform, who gave a shit.

I kind of like that as spite running.

Yeah, so that's what I did.

And I didn't win.

I came in.

Anyway, I came close.

And then there was a vacancy.

You want to keep hearing the rest of the story?

I don't think I've ever told it on any podcast before.

This is what people want.

I'm dubious, but I'll continue.

We'll see.

We'll see if the dial groups do well for this.

We'll cut it if it's boring.

So

there was a vacancy because some kid didn't come back for whatever.

He ran and then he didn't come back for whatever reason.

What was this guy's name?

I don't remember.

I don't remember the guy's name.

So there was a vacancy.

I definitely remember full names.

I remember names for the rest of the story.

Okay.

Okay.

So then

the charter of the Student Association of Plattsburgh State says that the...

the president who's elected gets to choose a vacancy and has to get ratified by the Senate, right?

So

the

president was Christine Sloban, and she chose someone, not me.

And I'm like, that's not fucking fair.

I was the next person votes.

So I lobbied all the members of the Senate to reject her appointment.

Oh my God.

And they did.

And she was your first enemy in politics.

And she said, all right, fine.

I said, who the fuck wants this job?

Fine, you can have it.

And then I made the rest of the Senate miserable the rest of the time because I was constantly complaining.

So you love the game.

I got a taste for it then in college, yes.

Okay, and then you worked for Chuck Schumer in the case of in DC right afterwards.

And that was kind of your was he your first like mentor in politics?

Yeah first and only really.

What did you learn about how politics actually works?

I learned a couple of things.

One I learned the

I learned the combination of the inside outside game.

And I also learned that relatively few people run Congress.

That there are 435 of them, but there's really only a handful that actually do a lot of the work.

So that you actually can really influence things a lot easier easier than people might think.

Like you run for Congress, if you can figure out the 25 or 30 people that get shit done, you can really get a lot done.

And who are those people?

Sometimes they're staffers to committees, sometimes they're members who are super insider kind of people.

Like, you know, Nancy Pelosi, knowing Nancy Pelosi was going to be someone early on, like I supported Nancy for Whip and majority leader and whatever else.

She's like a real wolf of Wall Street.

She really knows how to pick them.

She's a very good, she's very good at her.

She's incredible at her job.

She was very good at her job.

She's a good job.

She's very good at that.

No, no, no, no.

She's unreal.

Yeah, people have nothing.

Why the hell does she know what stocks to get behind?

A lot of people are rich.

Yeah.

Are you not familiar with that?

I'm making a joke about how, like,

and I'm not playing along.

Why?

Do you think that members of Congress should own

stocks?

Why shouldn't the members of Congress own stock?

It's the most transparent fucking body on earth.

I think that you should own it.

Every fucking word is published somewhere.

Every word that says that if you have an investment in something

and there's a piece of legislation that would threaten that investment, do you think that that is conflict of interest?

No.

What the fuck are you talking about?

Because every fucking piece of legislation is incredibly public and anyone who's investing based on pieces of legislation is not on the same page.

Let's say you already have an investment and this would threaten that investment.

Is it morally a piece of legislation that threaten and enhance every investment on earth?

Go ahead, give me an investment.

I'll tell you, there's legislation on both sides.

I don't think for the relaunch.

I don't think this is a good one.

Okay, here's me tell you this.

And this is a good one for you.

And this kind of like superheroes.

You shouldn't bumper sticker nothing.

There are so many.

It's not bumper sticker.

There are so many.

This is like wafer thin, man.

Oh my god, the conflict is a good thing.

It doesn't matter being right.

It doesn't matter being right, right?

And it sounds bad to people that members of Congress come in with not a lot of money and leave incredibly wealthy.

Dude.

My dude, listen, I understand.

Yes, brother.

People have a wafer-thin,

virtually translucent knowledge of politics that gets reinforced by assholes like you.

And I'm supposed to be like, oh, yeah, I'll talk to you.

Why is that assholes?

You're choosing the wrong correlative.

The correlative is that these are people that are exposed to a lot of rich people.

So the idea that investing on inside information, every single thing that goes on in the economy, sometime or another the United States Congress touches upon.

So basically you're saying, well, you've got all this inside knowledge about everything on earth.

Literally, as a member of Congress from Brooklyn, I was voting on agriculture policy.

It didn't mean that I have inside information on soybean prices.

It's a stupid premise.

Now, if you want to say that rich people become members of Congress, bounce off other rich people, have information and investment opportunities that normal Mrs.

Crappalucci doesn't have, 100% right.

But it has nothing to do with the the work of Congress, with being in a committee and saying, hmm, this line 17 here, which no one can read, says that we're going to start investing in AI.

I'm going to go invest in AI.

That's bullshit.

Okay.

When someone becomes a president, there's a custom where they detach from their private financial interests, right?

President Trump, I don't believe, has done that.

He did not do it, right?

Okay.

When a member of the public sees that, we lose faith in that institution, right?

Because the people that we elect to Congress shouldn't have any financial interest in what they are legislating, right?

So even if you're saying I'm wrong, right?

And then I'm undereducated, okay?

In principle, we are in a time where people's faith in our institutions, especially in the fucking government, is

at a low point.

In my opinion, people just don't fuck, they think it's all bullshit now.

Correct.

Here's the problem.

Here's the problem.

When I ran for mayor,

and I wanted to put pressure on Mike Bloomberg because I was going to run against Mike Bloomberg.

I said, I don't have any money.

You should put everything in a blind trust.

And so I said to my staff, I said, let's figure out how I do this.

They said, well, you can't, because you have to report every quarter what you're holding.

So I said, I can't, so it's blind.

I just can't read my own filings?

Well, no, you have to sign your filings.

It's a conflict.

But I'm saying it's bullshit.

You, you, not you particularly, but you people like you, want to find an easy pat boogeyman for these things.

Even if you're a middle-class guy like me, who am I calling up for money?

A bunch of rich rich people.

Yeah.

Right?

So it is, now, you know, in the city, it's a little bit different.

They incentivize you to call regular New Yorkers.

Your guy, Pete, lives in my district.

I'm going to ask him for $10 on the way out of here.

I mean, Pete, yeah, he lives in my district.

Don't give him $10.

It's worth $8.

It's $18.

That's kind of me giving you $10, just so you know.

You've just pleaded guilty to a felony.

Why?

What's the felony?

You can't.

That's a

straw donor.

Being a good friend?

He's a straw donor.

You're a good friend?

Okay, so Chuck was your mentor, right?

Yes.

And you took his seat in the House.

I did.

Okay, and

after you were in D.C.

Also, can I ask you another question?

Sure.

You were in, I used to live in D.C.

Yeah.

I mean, like, how ugly are these people?

Physically?

In the government.

I mean, the only two pieces I asked, I think, in Congress when you were there were you and probably Mitch McConnell.

Let's move on.

Okay, so what is your relationship with Senator Schuber now?

Not great.

Not great.

I've kind of given him a lot of space because I want him to be able to say, I don't know what that Wiener's up to nowadays, that kind of vibe.

You feel like you've become a pariah?

I feel that I let him down, yeah.

I mean, yeah, I do.

I do.

You let him down during your scandals and stuff?

No, he was very kind actually during my scandals, et cetera.

But I think that obviously, you know, I caused him a lot of aggravation and he was I was closely associated with him so when my shit happened I think a lot you know the blast radius for my stuff included him so yeah all right I want to talk about being a Democrat during the Bush era and I want to talk about your rise to prominence because you're your viewers are really into the Bush era right now that's their what do you mean what I am the Bush era is largely forgotten I did my my A work then and like no one remembers it but go ahead I mean we shouldn't forget it I mean you did vote for the Iraq war I did, yeah.

I did.

That was a crap war.

That was a bad call, but that was a bad call.

Bad call.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

I really.

I thought actually.

Did you know at the time it was a shitty call, or because you were such an art and Zionist, you were like, yeah, get in there?

I did a walkout.

I did a walkout of my high school.

That's good.

And everyone was like, fag.

But that was just angels.

It really upset me.

It upset me.

I hated, I fucking hated Bush.

I hated him.

No, Bush wasn't an I hated Bush.

Well, right, okay.

But you weren't a New Yorker on September 11th.

Were you?

No.

In spirit, I was.

I was listening to Howard Stern on the radio, so I was there.

Close enough.

You know that someone called in from the tower to Howard?

Oh, shit, I did not know that.

He was like, Howard, Baba Bui, I'm in Tower.

Not funny.

Not funny.

Too soon.

Not funny.

Because the rest of America,

we thought it was pretty funny.

Anyway,

of course, you rose to prominence in national attention because you had that fiery speech about the 9-11 9-11 first responders bill.

And there used to be this notion of like there were Democrats in the party that were also fucking killers.

You were a Democrat who wasn't a pussy.

You were a macho.

You were known for going on Fox News and smacking them down.

And that did something for a lot of people because that was during the rise of Fox News.

That was during the Bush era.

What do you make of the state of the modern day Democratic Party?

Do you think there are people that have that fire?

Well,

the comparison doesn't fit because I was kind of

a bigger fish in a smaller pond at the time.

Like, there was this notion you don't go on Fox News and fight with these guys because why do it?

Like, what does it get?

And I thought, one, it's the sport of it, and two, it's elongated.

It's idiots.

Yeah.

And

but now you have, it's now the entire institution of politics has gotten to be performative of people who just say shit for the purpose of having it echo for no particular reason.

So there are a lot of people that do that well.

What is that?

People that just want to be in it for the clicks and just want to say the outrageous things because they know it'll get picked up.

But they're in the modern-day Democratic Party.

Or Republican Party.

No, no, no.

I'm talking about the, because you're a Democrat.

The party is kind of, they don't have a defined message against Trump right now or a unified message against Trump right now.

They just lost an election to the apprentice for a second time.

You know, the party is kind of in a bad way right now, but they are perceived, perceived, I think, by the electorate as perhaps a feat or

lacking in passion or

kind of empty.

Like, yeah, I don't know.

I mean,

one party won by 1.3% of the vote, and yes, you can make this narrative of, oh my God, we fucking suck.

Or we were like a few hundred thousand votes away from being, oh my God, it's amazing how great the Democrats are doing.

We've had three elections in a row that are tied.

You've got a lot of fucking people in the country who apparently don't take this stuff very seriously and just want to like make visceral screams every four years.

All right, we know that.

Now, how we as Democrats, we have more fidelity to...

Do you think there's anyone in the party right now that possesses like kind of the skills that you presented in 2008?

I know, but what I was doing, what I was doing.

Just talk shit about some people right now.

What I was doing was

I was expressing genuine, that moment in 2000, whatever it was, I was angry and tired and over, hadn't slept enough and I yelled and screamed a lot.

And people are like, oh my God, that's amazing.

Now everyone's fucking yelling and screaming.

No, that's not true.

Can you tell me one speech on the House or Senate floor that has garnered the attention that you got?

I know, that's the point I'm making, is that everyone is doing the same shtick now.

No, they're not doing the performative outrage.

No, they're not doing it.

Congress is now, it's a little bit, it's true.

It's become somewhat of a legion of skanks, if you will.

I mean, it's become,

what can I say?

It's white.

It's trash.

What does does Marjorie Taylor Greene do all day?

When I saw that fight between AOC and the other congresswoman and Marjorie Taylor Greene, and they were like, with your butch body and your bad haircut, what is that all about?

It's the government.

They're acting like fucking Jerry Springer right now.

When I see that slightly,

if there's anyone who does that like I used to do,

that's not like what you used to do.

What you were doing was like, were like you were standing up for a piece of legislation and you were standing up for people.

You were talking shit about someone's haircut,

but I made your outfit look bad.

You know, seriously,

it's trash.

When I see that slob, that lurch Fetterman, I'm like, put on a fucking shirt.

You're in the government.

Have some fucking respect.

It's the government.

You know, the only time he wore his suit?

Was

when Netanyahu came and spoke to the Congress, and he looked worse in the suit.

I got you there.

I got you there.

What?

Yeah, that's great.

Fetterman's clothing.

I don't.

I think you should put a shirt.

Fair enough.

It's Shabbist.

Put a shirt.

By the way, am I underdressed for the show?

No, you asked me before what you should wear.

I did, because I didn't have enough excuse.

No, this is a great outfit for you.

Okay, thank you.

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And now back to the show.

Okay, so

I want to ask you about the ACA in 2008.

Affordable Care Act.

Who do you think the audience is for this show?

I want to ask you about the ACA, right?

Khan,

don't talk down.

No, they know it as Obamacare.

I coined Obamacare.

Well, I didn't coin it, but I called it when the Republicans were calling Obamacare to to be derisive, I called Obamacare to say, yeah, we're going to, we should own this.

They didn't own it.

I mean, the Heritage Foundation owned it.

But that's the point.

And I was saying, why are we running away from it?

Either we're proud of this thing or not.

You want to call it Obamacare if you're proud of it.

You should call it Obamacare too.

And they call me up from the White House and they're like,

you mocking the president's accomplishment.

I'm like, no, I'm just calling it what they want to call it this.

We're proud of it too.

It felt like Bush left office with an atrociously low approval rating.

He did.

It felt like there was this guy,

I lived in D.C.

at the time.

I remember the night Obama won.

And I was with my friends.

I was in college.

We were like listening to Born in the USA.

And we didn't realize it was a song about how America abandoned the veterans coming back from Vietnam.

But we're like, it was the first time we felt like, yeah, we're fucking patriotic.

A black guy became the president.

Right.

And he's incredible.

He's an incredible speaker.

I ran to the White House and I was shouting at the building and I was like, fuck you, Bush.

And I was like, a black guy's moving into your house, you fucking piece of shit.

And girls were showing their tits.

But going back to the ACA, so we had an opportunity to finally give people the ability to go to the hospital as a human right.

And

it,

on a personal level, I became jaded probably for the rest of my life because they immediately gave up on it.

Give up on?

On single payer?

Oh, no, they never,

they made a decision early on.

I mean, look,

you've got to decide.

A lot of our economy is a single-payer system in Medicare and Medicaid, the Indian Health Service, and then a lot of it is employer-based.

And they had to make a decision early on what they were going to do, and they learned from the Clinton failures to double down on the insurance model and give insurance companies a bunch of money to

give you money to give to insurance companies.

It wasn't the transformative thing that maybe a young Adam

Freedom.

You're doing the Patrick Bett David thing to me again.

Friedland.

Shortened?

Friedlander, was it?

Was it shortened?

Anthony Peeners.

Wow.

No, okay.

So

do you think that

that caused a problem with you in the White House?

I had some conversations with the President himself and with his,

but I repaired them.

Let me be clear.

I repaired them when I had an opportunity to bring a single-payer system to the floor, and I chose not to do it.

After the passage of the ACA?

After it passed out of committee, I had received a commitment to bring a single-payer system to the floor of the House and it became clear that it would both go down and put a lot of my Republican colleagues in a situation they might not be able to vote for Obamacare that I decided not to offer it.

And still to this day, I wonder if that was the right decision that I made.

But I made that sacrifice and they appreciated it.

You haven't seen the documentary, right, about

your

run for...

I mean, I imagine that would be fucking stressful as fuck for you to watch it.

The main reason I haven't seen it is and I don't have to talk about it.

I'll say this, as a person that just watched it.

Right, I haven't seen it.

It's incredible.

I mean, but like, it wouldn't be the way I'm watching it as, like, this is an incredible

film.

You wouldn't feel the same way because obviously it's your life, right?

And it's you in an incredibly stressful moment of your life.

Yeah.

That's probably.

Do you know about the sandwich?

The sandwich?

Oh, you don't even know.

Well, you could say anything is in the movie, and I would not know.

There's a moment on election day.

There's a moment on election day.

It's like the greatest actor in the world could go to Juilliard and they could study acting for 40 years and not eat a sandwich in a moment of stress like you ate that sandwich.

You were like, it was election day, you were like, everything's fucked, and you were eating this like Philly cheesesteak or something.

It's like the way that Tony would go into the fridge and just like

eat deli meats, right?

You.

Right, I was falling apart.

As a viewer,

it's an incredible story because

there's a turn in the middle of it, right?

I haven't seen it, man.

Don't, I'm not telling you to see it.

I'm just telling you.

Well, you're asking me to get into like the experience of seeing it.

No, no, no, it's not about, that's not what I'm asking about.

I said, obviously, don't see it.

Please don't see it.

That would suck.

But, like, at the beginning of the documentary,

they

detailed what the first scandal was, which was the accidental sweep.

Right.

And the first thing that came to mind to me.

By the way, do you think your audience knows about your wonderful questions?

Now I'm condescending the audience.

No, I'm asking you.

Because we're having this conversation as if the audience is completely tuned in on what my scandal was and was not.

It happened a long-ass time ago.

Okay, then they should watch the documentary.

I don't fucking know, dude.

It doesn't matter what they know.

It matters if we're having an interesting conversation.

Fair Fair enough.

Okay.

What do you think?

No, it's just because this is a little bit of a meta question I'm experiencing in my life.

Let me just finish my thought.

Is that like I'm now in this process of returning to public life to some degree and some people are really tuned into my scanner like how are you doing this with your scandal?

And some people are like, what?

What are you even talking about when you talk about your scandal?

What people are saying that?

No, there are a lot of people who, for 2000 is a long SI.

I mean in New York City, I think that you're not going to be able to do that.

So that's your, yeah, it's a Royce access.

You, to some degree, are in that first camp, but there are a lot of people in the second camp that I experienced that when I start to talk about it, they're like, what was that?

Tell me about the scandal again, so I'm refreshed.

Like

the dude at Wingstop, I sent my son to pick up an order at Wingstop, and they're like, tell your dad he should run for governor again.

That was ridiculous.

How do you know his son?

How do you know his son?

Because it had my name, Anthony Wiener, on the thing, and they thought I was Elliot Spitzer.

They conflated the two stories, confused or conflated.

They confused the two stories.

You guys should be on a ticket a little little bit.

Spitzer Wieners.

Yeah.

So, okay, that didn't work.

Okay.

Okay, so

I'm going back to the White House thing in the ACA.

There's a moment at the beginning of the documentary that details the first scandal, and

they play a clip of Obama saying, if it were me, I would resign, right?

And it was kind of like,

the thing I picked up on was like, oh, if the president kind of like took the shot, right?

And I was wondering if

the origin of that was like through from the ACA or from like something else that had happened

in Washington, D.C.

that had nothing to do with this, where it's like there was tension between you and the White House.

I was not a particularly popular person in Washington.

Why not?

Because Washington doesn't, it has a weird relationship with ambition.

So like young...

What are you talking about?

I'm about to finish.

Did that seem like the end of politics?

What do you mean, a weird relationship?

That seems like a bullshit sentence.

Did it seem like the end of my thought, though?

Yeah, but I'm telling you, it's a bullshit sentence.

You let me know when I can continue my thought, and then maybe we can draw a conclusion about the thought when I'm done with it.

I'm helping you out.

You're not.

You're like the Lee Harvey Oswego stories.

You're like just sniping at me while I'm talking.

Can I continue?

So Washington has a weird relationship with ambition in that people get rewarded, obviously, for being ambitious.

They run for Senate.

But if you're someone who thinks, well, this guy's not waiting in line, he's out there doing things on cable that we didn't think of doing.

he's jumped over five members of Congress to run for mayor, et cetera, et cetera.

People don't like that.

Institutional people in Washington don't like that.

Now maybe voters do, and maybe donors do, and maybe TV producers do, but other politicians don't.

So the fact that I was a relatively backbencher and I was someone who had become the spokesman for and against Obamacare and for single payment and everything else,

there was a little bit of like, you're too big for your Britches kind of vibe.

You were getting airtime too, you know?

And I was getting airtime, et cetera.

And so people would be, there were insiders who were like, who is this fucking guy?

That kind of thing.

Who was the guy?

Who was doing it?

I think that there were times my colleagues here in the New York delegation didn't like that I was running for mayor when I had only been in office for a few years and was being successful at it.

So there's that tension as well.

And then the executive branch doesn't.

Who is it?

Gerald Nadler?

Nadler was not a big fan of mine.

Still isn't.

Still grimaces at me when he sees me.

Well, I think he just looks like he's grimacing always.

You know, he pooped his pants.

I thought it was you.

Me, McConnell, and Nedler.

We all pooped our pants on tree.

Okay, anyway, zooming out, right?

The assumption is

for a long time is that power and celebrity and powerful men is an aphrodisiac.

That women are attracted to power.

Sure.

Powerful men.

And we celebrate.

You're crazy about me.

No, no, we celebrate our

JFK.

I think it was a 2011.

It was indicative of a shift in society I think if a congressman a congressman's underpants with a with a little bit of a

right you know okay you know print was tweeted out in 2025 what I would say is it wouldn't make the top hundred news stories of this year right so it represents an intersection between of like an old kind of

New York tabloid press, which is like that was kind of an old world thing.

Correct.

And then the new world introduction of technology in that's one version.

The other version is it was a relatively snow news period, and I'm a guy named Wiener who tweeted out a picture of his dick.

So you're the first guy, too.

No, I'm saying that there,

I'm not dismissing that idea.

I'm saying that there was an element of it.

But Matt Gates fucked the kid.

Right, and if his name was Matt Kid fucker, then the story would no no, that's not true.

Think about it this way.

Think about it this way.

Trump almost got shot on TV two days later, we didn't even remember.

I'm not sure I see the transition in those.

If it was today, it wouldn't, like, it would be a 48-hour news cycle and it would be forgotten.

Yes, but yes.

Technology, if similar technological norms were around, Kennedy would have been the same.

Yes, but therefore what?

Yes, yes.

It's not there for what.

It's an interesting moment in like our culture, right?

Yeah.

Because not necessarily original thought, but yes, it's that's yes.

Now people have said that about my case.

Oh my God.

I'm the Carlos Mencia of original thoughts.

Sorry, anyone stole someone's bit.

Whose original thought was that?

The movie was basically that from us.

Yeah, what are you going to do?

Yell at me that congresspeople should have fucking stocks?

Okay.

I mean, like, when this subject comes up,

it's unpleasant for you to talk about, right?

Yeah,

look, we can do it.

It's just, we're going to do it.

Let's move off of this one not terribly novel idea that technology played a part in my inner.

What I'm saying is this.

You're running for office right now, right?

This is the fourth time.

The fourth time you've kind of given me advice on how to do something, how to do, I criticize.

Because you're doing a bad job right now.

Okay, I'm just telling you,

you're defensive.

You've got to be like a little bit smooth.

You got to be smooth.

You've also done this four times already.

I get it.

Sometimes I critique the question you're asking

and you do this thing of like, this is not good for you to make fun of your host on the show.

It's not working.

I'm like, all right, I get it.

I get it.

I get it.

All right.

You turned the paper over.

I thought that was a good sign.

I thought we were going to go to some new material.

I'm ready, man.

I'm sorry.

Go ahead.

Let's do some more of this.

Yes, technology thing.

Let's do some more of this.

I just came across.

Okay.

No, no, no.

I'm not doing the technology thing.

You know what we should have pivoted?

Yeah.

Gates kid fucker was the chance to pivot.

Yeah.

That was the...

All right, now we move to the next thing.

You got the big laugh.

We move on.

You're showing your hands a little bit right now.

Which is what?

That it's annoying that I'm asking any of these questions and you're sick of talking.

Incorrect.

I just think the movie as a jumping-off point is not great.

But go ahead.

Why is that not great?

Because there's interesting questions about the movie, maybe, but by and large.

I have more questions about the movie.

By and large, people haven't seen the movie.

I haven't seen the movie.

I think a lot of people have seen the movie.

I don't think a lot of people have seen this movie.

Guys?

I said, it's great.

He's had multiple times.

Yeah, multiple times.

Okay, there's another moment that's really sweet.

And my mother passed away four years ago when

your mom, she looks so sweet, that lady.

She goes back in the phone bank for you while everything's falling apart.

Yeah.

And I started crying because I'm like, I miss her so much.

Like, I was like, it's so nice.

Is she still around?

She's still around.

No, no, no, not.

I don't miss your mom.

Your mom's an educator.

In the documentary, midway through.

No, you can't do it this way.

I think I can.

I have not seen the documentary.

But you leave the documentary, so I'm going to ask you a question because I saw it.

You have to set it up as the documentary when I haven't seen it.

If I did it in real life, you can just say, I understand you.

You're the one wasting time right now.

Fair enough.

Go ahead.

Obviously, it was something documenting your comeback, and then midway through, there's a shift.

Was there ever a moment in your mind where you were like, just like, let's stop doing this?

So the documentary came to be.

It was a staffer, right?

This guy that used to work for me.

said, let me document this stuff.

And I'm like, look, dude, here's what I do need.

I need someone to videotape everything that I do on the campaign for our own purposes.

One, we might need it for ads, but two,

I was very concerned about people making accusations about something that happened on the campaign.

I want to document it.

Did you have it in the back of your mind that there was a possibility of something else derailing your chances of becoming mayor?

Oh, constantly.

So you were under constant stress even before this.

I always knew I had this scandal in the background and it was going to be hard for me to get behind it, to get ahead of it.

Because one way or another, I'd have to persuade 50% of the voters to vote for me, either in a runoff or in the primary.

So I always knew it was going to be tough.

So I don't know if I ever thought for sure, even when the polls were showing me ahead, I always knew it was going to be tough because I'm a smart political person.

I knew that when you have these kind of negatives.

Obviously, like opening yourself up to another run right now.

Presently, yes.

Presently.

Very different.

Like you think it's a different vibe.

I don't think I would be running if I thought good people were running.

I think that there's kind of, like, it's been 10 years since I've run, so it's not like I've been, and I've had other opportunities and people say it to me all the time, you should run, you should run.

I just think that there's no good reason not to run, right?

If I think I'd be do a good job at the job and I have,

if I'm better than the other people, why shouldn't I run?

It happened for a third time, and

Many people have asked you this question.

I'm going to ask it again.

Go ahead.

Because of the proximity of the Comey letter to the election in 2016.

In some ways, you are considered kind of like

an Archduke Ferdinand of

Do you have to set this part up at all, or you're kind of hamming it hard.

You have to see this.

You're doing this thing again where it's an annoying access to the music.

Maybe you don't.

Maybe you don't.

Maybe you don't.

Maybe you don't.

All right.

A third accusation arose in 2016.

And as a result of it,

your laptop was seized, and there were emails from Hillary Clinton.

And 10 days before the election, James Comey wrote a letter to Congress.

And in a razor-thin election, many people perceive it to the idea of the idea of the idea of the idea

that pushed Trump over the line.

Right, right.

So, Comey,

they had my laptop, they had it for weeks and weeks and weeks.

They knew there wasn't anything on it that was relevant to the campaign, that was relevant to the investigation.

The prosecutors in New York said, Why are you guys just sitting on this?

And it turned out they were sitting on it because Comey

did this 11th hour thing that is against the law where he announces the announcement.

I'm not saying it was your plan to do it, but it threw a butterfly effect.

Right, except it wasn't accidental.

It was intentionally done that way.

Giuliani leaked about it long before we've got this.

We're holding it until the very end.

So, James Comey was working in concert with the Trump campaign?

Well, it's not really clear.

I mean, he's never answered exactly why it was he held on to this so long until 10 days before the election.

They had it weeks before.

The inspector general that looked into this asked the same question.

People in the FBI, and the FBI was pulling against Hillary Clinton and Giuliani was getting leaked all this information.

They had it for a long time.

Why did Comey wait till 10 days before to talk about it?

That's a question for Comey.

So if you have a the butterfly effect is Comey holding on to stuff until 10 days before.

Of course, of course.

I mean, like, I'm not saying that it was your intention to get for a third time and then have Donald Trump accidentally become president.

Say that it was...

I'm not saying that it was.

No, saying the Anthony Wiener butterfly effect is like it was held for weeks.

It was before a laptop, though.

I know, but it was held for weeks after that.

The butterfly effect was not me, it was Comey, how Comey did with that.

He wouldn't have had the laptop, and that wouldn't have had, you know.

Right, but he could have had the laptop.

My point is you could have had it for six months and held on to it.

It was weeks.

It was not that close to the old.

You're still part of the butterfly.

You're still, you're still.

Someone could make that argument.

You're still a beautiful butterfly.

Someone could make that argument, but they'd have to construct a fairly convoluted butterfly.

But I'm saying like you are tangentially related to a historical.

If you believe the Anthony Wiener part about it, you have to ignore the James Comey piece and the Rudy Giuliani piece and the FBI piece.

No, that's the butterfly effect.

We'll say the human centipede effect.

You have the Anthony Wiener, you have Giuliani, you have Comey, you have Trump.

Right, but Adam.

You have Stormy Daniels.

But Adam, it could have been, if it's not Anthony Wiener, there could have been something else that was the butterfly.

But

in the material universe, what happened was that...

Why are we debating this?

It's a ridiculous point for you to be taking.

You know that

tangential answer of mine in three years.

Because you're taking some sort of abstract issue with it, but it's a simple.

I am.

You asked me what do you think about the butterfly effect argument, and I'm saying I'm dismissing it, and here's how I'm doing it.

You're dismissing it because James Comey could have used anything, but I'm saying what happened was he used your thing.

Right, or you could have a thing.

So it's still a butterfly effect.

You can say that Hillary Clinton is the butterfly.

I think she's gorgeous.

When you look at your life as you were like

now, the, what is it, the minority leader of the Senate was your first mentor.

Correct.

And then your wife was the assistant to the Secretary of State.

Correct.

President Clinton officiated your wedding.

You were around incredibly powerful people.

And

I mean, you're somewhat of a Forrest Gump.

Yeah, like a Zelig?

Well, Zelig isn't good, too.

You know, Woody did Blackface in that movie, too.

Yeah, I don't think also Zelig works with.

You know, I met him.

Zelig or Woody Allen?

Zelig's not a real guy.

I know, but I thought maybe...

What I mean, Shrek?

I thought maybe

you would appear.

I met him at Ross.

Yeah, that's Zelig, and then that's also, it's Friedlander over there.

Look at him.

No, that movie's incredible, actually.

And it has become a cultural term of me.

I know.

I don't know quite what I'm supposed to do about watching Woody Allen movies.

Are we allowed to do it?

I don't know.

I don't know.

Yeah, we're allowed to do it.

The joke, obviously, is, to a comedian, when we see this, right?

Is this.

Oh, good.

I'd love to see the comedian mind at work.

When we see that news story, we see that all of us as men possess the capacity to

ruin our own lives with our own penises, to trip over our own penises.

But that Western civilization perhaps tripped over your penis.

It could have been the penis that changed history the most.

Got it.

Got it, seen it, read it, done it.

Yeah, go ahead.

Who read it?

Who said it?

People have written, said it, and done it.

But yeah, we can do it again.

I mean, I'm saying that to a comedian, that's kind of obviously how we're going to view it.

And you?

But right now, the way I view it is that there's a human being that was an incredibly stressful situation.

We have obviously an attitude towards

addiction in society now.

And that if

we can accept that your behavior, and I know you're in recovery,

if we can accept that your behavior was impulsive or compulsive,

that you were doing it after you resigned from Congress, you were doing it after you ran for mayor,

that

that was a product of a disease.

I think

society has that view nowadays.

But what I think probably complicates matters for you is

the jail sentence and the final time that it included someone that was underage.

Correct.

You now are on a registry, right?

Correct.

And

I'm just wondering, you've been in the system now, right?

I have.

You know, and I read your 25

ideas for New York City, and

I didn't really see much about

criminal justice issues.

That's fair.

And I wonder

what impact it had on you to be in the system, and what impact it has on you now to

still be on this registry and have something that follows you the rest of your life.

Yeah, well, first of all, the registry part is something I had to agree to.

The crime I committed, obscenity was not included in that.

But the prosecutor, look, it's informed me in the following ways.

One, that prosecutors make decisions for political reasons.

The higher the monkey climbs, the more you can see his ass, and that

I accept.

I was a famous person, so someone that might not get charged for a crime, it was ridiculous for me to get charged with a crime and to do prison sentence for the things that I did.

You think that?

Well, no one.

Is that your claim?

No one generally gets prosecuted.

No one in the Southern District's ever been sentenced for obscenity, for transferring obscene material.

So

I did learn that there is an element of prosecutorial discretion that I think everyone should be concerned about, that people being made examples of and the idea of people being over-incarcerated.

I learned, I was a very privileged person to be in that system, but I experienced a lot of men in that system who were also charged with things they probably shouldn't have been for periods of time that they shouldn't shouldn't have and their inability to get a trial, a fair trial because of the trial penalty in the federal system.

So I learned a lot about that stuff that informs how I talk about this stuff today.

What was your experience being incarcerated like?

It was hard.

I wouldn't recommend it.

How did you politic?

I formed relationships with a lot of different elements inside.

Yeah.

Like there were guys at the prison library, these more senior black guys, and I would kibbits with them about what's going on in Washington.

I worked in the wreck wreckyard and so you know those guys I got a relationship with.

I lived with the unit storeman.

What's the storeman?

It's the guy who has stuff that he sells.

You can only go to the commissary every so often but if someone wants to go watch a movie and they want to get a bag of chips, the storeman

will take care of you.

And I lived with that guy and no one really fucks with the storeman.

And so there are ways that I stayed safe.

Being on a registry, like

if you kill someone, right?

If I if I murder someone, I get out of jail, I don't have to tell my neighbors that I'm a murderer.

Correct.

What is it about this category of crime?

Why is it treated differently?

I don't know.

It's kind of the last...

I mean, it's kind of weird.

Obscenity is usually not considered one of these crimes.

And so it's kind of weird.

But I guess

sex crimes have their own special thing in people's imagination because they take in such a broad range of different things.

Is it all sex crimes or is it just involving minors?

No, it's all sex crimes.

All sex crimes.

All sex crimes.

Yeah.

Do you know that this individual was underage at the time?

I don't want to, I didn't have a trial.

I didn't have a trial and I'm reluctant to do anything that sounds like I'm not accepting responsibility for what I did.

However, there are elements of this case that made it winnable for me.

Let's just put it that way.

If it was winnable, why wouldn't you try to win?

Because they said to you, you can either accept this charge, or we're going to charge you with something else that has a mandatory minimum.

And so the risk is called the trial penalty in the federal system.

So it's very risky, and that's where so few people go to trial, because you can plea bargain for 21 months and see your six-year-old again in a couple of years, or take your chance going to a trial with the name Anthony Weiner and all that goes with that, and hope that you win the case and spend a lot of money, and then you could then get charged with, then you're found guilty of a 10-year mandatory minimum because they charge you with something else.

Not many people go to trial in the federal system, like one or 2%.

Yeah.

Because they have the ability to really raise the cost for you if you decide to.

How has it affected your life though being on a registry since you've been out of registry?

Well it's very hard.

It's a thing that people can say about you that taints you and that makes it seem like you're scary and that people can make up stories.

My whole thing is I'll accept responsibility for things I've done, not for things I have not done.

The prosecutors said you have to accept this as part of the penalty, as part of your plea bargain, and so we said we would.

I mean obviously you're running for office again.

Like

it must make it like...

You intend on winning, do you?

I do run for office.

Right.

So

how do you account for that?

Like,

in the eyes of a voter?

Well, it depends on where they enter the conversation.

If they say, you're on the sexual registry and I can explain it, if they say, some people...

I say to them, look, I have done my time, done my probation, I have accepted responsibility, and why can't I go back and work for this community doing the job that I'm best at?

To me, people who talk about the idea of justice in the justice system, they're full of shit if they believe that I can, that I'm not entitled to run even though I have done my time and accepted responsibility.

And

my notion of criminal justice is you pay your debt to society no more.

To what extent do you want to expose yourself for a third time now to that?

Yeah, I get versions of that question a lot.

Like, why are you putting yourself through it?

And I guess the question,

shouldn't the question be well what is what why shouldn't I like what is the alternative is the idea okay there's this whole body of things that you're good at doing but you shouldn't do it because people are going to say mean things to you Well, the alternative is what?

I only go into job spaces where people won't say mean things to me.

I'm also on the radio, on a conservative radio station where people call up and yell at me about stuff.

There's a lot of things that people don't like candidates for.

Maybe they don't like me because of these things in my background.

But I guess the question I would have is like, well, what is the illogical extension of that?

That I curl up under a table somewhere or I just disappear.

If I would have been elected in 2013, we would have had a better city.

I would have been a better mayor than de Blasio.

So if someone wants to say, I'm not going to vote for that guy for city council, I'm going to vote for someone less good because I don't like what I know about this embarrassing thing I know about that guy.

All right, well, fuck you.

That's your decision.

If you want to vote for a less good city councilman because you know embarrassing things about me, then so be it.

But as the person, what am I supposed to do?

If I think I can be of service, if I think that I can add something, if I think I'm really good at this and I'm better than the people running, what's the argument for me not running?

Oh, I'm gonna, people are gonna say mean things to me?

Well, it feels shit to lose, right?

If you lose.

I suppose it does, but you know, you're asking a different question.

You're saying, do you have to get, I could lose because I'm a Zionist in the district that's very lefty.

I could lose because of any number of reasons.

You can always lose if you're in an election.

Is this a liability?

Yes, but I also have assets.

I mean, I'm the far better candidate than any of these people.

I've got better ideas than them, etc.

So if you're saying you only go into a race that you think that you're going to win.

You know, in a lot of cities, like a dog gets elected mayor.

Do you think New York will ever have a dog?

I just saw a thing on Instagram that there's a dog mayor now of New York.

Right now?

Yeah.

Mayor Adams, you're calling him a dog?

No, I think dog mayor is like a different thing, kind of.

He's got that dog in him.

You know what?

You look kind of like a silent film star a little bit.

Except the talking part.

You know any jokes?

I don't.

Yeah, you do.

I know you do.

No, you're the comedian I hear.

Do you headline your show?

How do you do people advertise on the show?

I mean, how does it work?

Don't worry about it.

Okay.

Do you wear this when you do your stand-up?

Is this like the nebishe, like, Jewish thing you could.

Why would I say nebish?

Forgive me.

You're right.

You're right.

I apologize.

I apologize.

You're a Rodney fan, right?

Rodney Dangerfield?

Yes.

You want to give us a couple of Rodneys?

Oh, did you?

Would you read this?

I used to do Rodney's when I was in college, but no, I'm not going to do Rodney's.

In the documentary, the Rodney.

Did I really?

Yeah, well,

everything was turning to shit.

You were in the car.

It was a great moment.

Sorry to bring up the documentary.

No,

I didn't realize that.

Do your favorite.

I'd rather not.

Why not?

I'd rather not.

Come on, do that.

Is writing influencing you at all?

Who is your guy?

Who is your guy that you're like, that's the guy I want to emulate?

Is it Stuart?

No, okay.

My guy?

Not Stuart.

No, I'd say Woody, for sure.

Oh, of course, yeah.

Woody.

I love Larry.

Yeah.

You know, the fucking joke.

I get it.

What?

I don't know.

Give us one joke.

Give us one Rodney.

Just let it on a light level because it's got so heavy.

It's the way you're structuring this.

You could have done the yucks at the end.

Just give us one joke.

I'll give you my dad's favorite joke.

Go ahead.

Okay.

A Rodney joke?

No.

So there's a Jew who gets shipwrecked.

My neighbor's dangerous, boy.

Really?

A lot of crime in my neighborhood, boy.

A Jew gets shut.

The other day,

I asked the police officer, what's the nearest subway station?

He says, I don't know.

No one's ever made it.

Talk about your wife.

I get no respect for my wife.

The other day I was at a bar.

The bartender says, what do you want?

I said, I don't know.

Surprise me.

He shows me a naked picture of my wife.

Oh, I got no respect.

I'm all done.

I'm all done.

Go ahead, go ahead.

I interrupted your thing.

Now you got to compete with Rodney, but go ahead.

Knock yourself out.

My dad's favorite joke.

Yeah.

He said, a Jew washes up on a desert island, right?

Ten years later, they find them.

He's been alone.

He's built an entire city.

There's a town hall, there's a postal office.

There's a synagogue.

That's the one I was never going to.

Yeah.

All right.

Thank you, Pal.

Really enjoy it.

All right, thank you.

All right, here's a a scenario, right?

It's your

Super Bowl, right?

The birds just freaking won, right?

You're there with your best friend, right?

Had a couple too many.

Is it cheating if you if you one time just

get a blowjot from your male best friend one time?

No, that's not cheating as long as you know.

All right, thanks a lot.

Okay, cool.

Okay, okay, thanks, guys.

You're amazing.

I hope you had fun.

I had a lot of fun.

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