Zohran Mamdani: FYPod Crossover

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Drew and Sue in Eminem's Minis.

And baking the surprise birthday cake for Lou.

And Sue forgetting that her oven doesn't really work.

And Drew remembering that they don't have flour.

And Lou getting home early from work, which he never does.

And Drew and Sue using the rest of the tubes of Eminem's Minis as party poppers instead.

I think this is one of those moments where people say, it's the thought that counts.

Eminem's, it's more fun together.

Hey, y'all, a few scheduling notes, and I want to talk a little bit about what we are seeing in the Middle East right now.

So for this podcast today, we've got a double header.

Up first is going to be Zoran Mamdani, the DSA insurgent, who might very well be the mayor of New York, is maybe the favorite right now to be the next mayor of New York, at least a coin flip with Andrew Cuomo.

We had booked it a while ago for him to do the FY pod, even though he's kind of representing as a young millennial and we try to have Gen Z's on the FY pod.

We kind kind of grandfathered him in.

By the way, the FY Pod is crushing lately.

We've had some awesome young guests, so if you've not given that a chance, this might be the moment to do so.

So, what we've got here in the first segment is that interview, the FY Pod interview, with Zora Mandani, my co-host Cameron Kowski.

And we'll also be cross-posting that over on the FY Pod feed.

And then in segment two, we've got Carrie Howley, who did an awesome, fucking depressing, scary, funny profile on what is happening in the Department of Defense.

We taped that interview last night.

And so I guess the issues that she raised became a little more acute now that the U.S.

might be involved in a military action in Iran.

And so do stick around for that.

But, you know, I didn't ask her about Iran because we taped it kind of before the latest upheaval or the latest moves from the White House that we saw last night.

And so I do want to talk about that a little bit since I didn't really get into it with either guest.

You know, for folks who haven't followed followed it closely, the quick timeline rundown is Trump essentially sends a bleat saying that the people of Tehran should flee the city,

implying that an attack on the city was coming.

He did that, and then he left the G7 early.

He's at the G7.

There's some debate about whether he left the G7 early because Mark Carney cucked him during the press conference or because it was related to the potential military action in Iran.

There were reports that the National Security Council was gathering.

There's a lot of scuttlebutt last night that kind of made it seem like maybe an attack on Iran from America, from us, was imminent.

That did not come to pass.

This morning, Trump did a gaggle where, you know, he basically kind of indicated he doesn't want a ceasefire.

He wants an end to the situation.

He kind of left that vague.

He also said that he's not too much in a mood to negotiate now.

That's great, that Donald Trump's moods and whims are going to impact the future of the Middle East and impact our foreign policy.

So, he also said he's not calling Tim Walls during that gaggle because he's a fucking child, following obviously the assassination in Minnesota.

So, that's kind of where we're at.

I want to just, in the spirit of the podcast and of my desire to be radically candid with you guys, this doesn't really make good podcast, what I'm about to say, but it is honest.

And that is, I got no fucking idea what I think about what is happening with regards to Israel and Iran and our potential involvement.

I guess there's one thing I do know.

I wish that a genocidal maniac was not leading Iran and that a

corrupt, just kind of indiscriminate prime minister was leading Israel and that a fucking moron was leading our country.

Like I wish that we had some very stable geniuses, to borrow the phrase, leading the relevant countries here.

That would make me feel a lot better.

I don't have any really faith or confidence in any of the prime decision makers involved right now.

And so I think that we're in a very precarious and scary moment with some unhinged people having their fingers on the button, so to speak.

So

I don't love that.

And that obviously informs

my concerns about what might happen.

As I mentioned yesterday with Bill and on several podcasts, like Israel's actions, both with regards to Hezbollah and Iran, less so in Gaza, have been extremely impressive.

And there's something to be said for that.

So obviously, you know, the external facing elements of the Israeli military, you just have to recognize what has happened has been, you know, much more effective to date than I think

a lot of watchers would have told you.

a couple months ago.

So you have all those kind of data points that you're thinking about.

And look, as I said to Bill yesterday, I mean, I wish for freedom for the Iranian people.

I get frustrated sometimes with some of our left friends who are like, who simultaneously hold the view that, you know, when there are missiles or there's attacks on Iran, they say, well, you can't hold the Iranian people accountable for their horrible government.

I agree with that.

I don't want any civilians to die.

At the same time, we shouldn't also condemn them to having to live under a horrible government for eternity.

So, you know, that's a view that I have long held that hasn't changed.

Obviously, our failures to affect positive change in the Middle East over my lifetime informs my views that there's limitations on what we can and should do, of course, and that we should be skeptical of our ability.

to affect change.

That said, we can still hope for change and want change and

be curious about whether this might be a positive inflection point.

I don't know.

Nobody would have predicted that Assad would fall in three days a couple months ago.

I don't think anybody predicted the scale of the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7th.

Nobody predicted how brave and successful Ukraine would be in rebuffing the Russian attacks.

Like, we're just not as good at predicting these things as we think.

And a lot of people in this issue in particular have very strong, very strong, strident views on one side or the other, which does make for a good podcast, but which, like, I don't think is evidenced by any actual facts or any actual ability to see into the future, to look into a crystal ball and to do so effectively.

I think we've just seen a lot of different strategies and policies employed in place in the Middle East, and all of them have failed, basically, in my lifetime.

So, let me just say one more thing about not just the people of Iran, but the people of Israel.

People of Israel deserve safety and security and everybody throughout the region.

And that has not been the case, though, for the people of Israel.

They've been under missile attack and terrorist attack from Hezbollah and Hamas and from Iran and from proxies that Iran has funded for a long time.

And just to be clear, I'm not at all intrigued by the concept of the U.S.

going to war with Iran and getting deeply involved in a regime change war in Iran.

I think that that does not

make a lot of sense for us.

And we have a pretty bad track record on that front.

But

like for Israel

to take out the state sponsor of terror that has

brought about so much death and destruction in Israel, across the Middle East, across the world,

for them to be able to do this with precision strikes and to have some level of support from us,

I do think that

is

a different kind of picture.

How it turns out, I don't think anybody knows.

And so, like,

as I look now 20 years into the future and you think, okay, well, what could have happened up to this inflection point?

Might it be the case that this was a moment of change for Iran and the Iranian people?

And that this state sponsor of terror that has caused so much fucking death and destruction over the course of the the Middle East might crumble and that we might look back on it and think, wow, like that was a moment that allowed for a period of peace that we didn't have before.

Do I think that's likely?

No.

Is that possible?

Yeah, sure.

That's possible.

Good things can happen, believe it or not.

It's happened before.

Is it possible that you look back at this moment and Bibi's actions and America's actions?

Who the fuck knows what Donald Trump does in the next 48 hours or further.

And thank God, you know, the next fucking bin Laden emerged out of this moment and they figured out a AI nuke to go after Tel Aviv with.

Like, yeah, I don't, like, literally anything could happen.

It's a very unstable situation, a lot of unstable leaders with deep hatreds, deep resentments.

And the reality is, I think that there are a lot of potential ways that it can go.

And I think that there are a lot of things happening domestically in America where I'm very clear-eyed on it.

And I think the picture in this case is pretty murky.

So, the way I wanted to handle that with regards to this podcast is: I'm going to have people on that have a variety of different views, probably opposite views on this, particularly if the war escalates.

Maybe cooler heads will prevail.

I don't know.

We will see.

If it does, we'll be monitoring it and talking about it and getting different views.

We will be continue to be clear-eyed about the fucking lunacy and the lunatic in charge of our government and

be skeptical of essentially anything that is coming out of this White House.

And

we'll see how it all shakes up.

So I hope you stick around with me on that ride.

Today's podcast is a wild ride in its own right.

We got Zoron up first.

begin the conversation or towards the beginning of the conversation, give him the opportunity to convince me to rank him fifth on his on the ranked choice ballot and my imaginary New York ranked choice ballot because that's about the best we can do, I think.

Maybe fourth.

He has an opportunity to get up to fourth or to be unranked.

I don't know.

And we hash all that out.

We hash out some of the issues with regards to anti-Semitism and Islamophobia and what is happening right now.

Then in segment two, we've got Carrie Howley with the

Veep-style cluster fuck that is our Pentagon.

And

wow, what a great time to have a Veep style cluster fuck at the Pentagon.

So stick around for both those interviews.

We'll be back tomorrow.

And boy,

that'll be an interesting guest as well.

So stick around for both segments.

We'll see you all tomorrow.

Hey, everybody, I'm Tim Miller.

I'm Cameron Kasky, and this is FY Pod.

Today is our most exciting episode yet.

He is a socialist.

He was a rapper.

As of recently, he is married, which, you know, I'm glad you two fucking millennials can be happy.

I am so honored to have the future mayor of New York City, the Athens of America, the Lima of America, the Istanbul of America, Mr.

Zoron Mamdani.

How you doing, man?

How's it going?

How's it going?

Thank you so much for having me.

He was prepping that intro all night.

Zoron, for people who, unlike Cameron, who seems very familiar with your bio, I think probably some of our listeners went from like knowing literally nothing about you to seeing their most lefty friend start posting about you on Instagram constantly in like the past two weeks.

And so for like that person, for whom you've just like appeared out of the ether, maybe like tell us a little bit about you.

Absolutely.

Well, first of all, thank you to that lefty friend for posting.

I'm usually usually usually tell people to get off the internet, but it's been helpful.

So my name is Zoran Mandani.

I was born in Kampala, Uganda, in East Africa.

Came to New York City when I was seven years old, grew up in Morningside Heights, and I'm a state assembly member.

I represent parts of Western Queens, Astoria, and Long Island City.

I'm in my third term.

And my focus while I've been in the Assembly has been on the fact that we are living in the most expensive city in the United States.

How do we actually make it affordable for the working and middle-class New Yorkers who built it?

And initially, that meant a real focus around the betrayal that this city did to working-class taxi drivers who were trapped in hundreds of thousands of dollars in medallion debt.

And that was really the focus of my first year where I worked with the New York Taxi Tea Workers Alliance, thousands of working-class drivers to secure about $450 million in debt relief after partnering with Senator Schumer on that.

And then the next focus has also been about public transit and the fact that it's one of the most beautiful things about our city.

And also, it is one of the most glaring examples of public inefficiency that we have here.

And if you care deeply about public goods and public services, I do, then you have to also care about public excellence and increasing subway frequency, increasing the reliability of our buses, also making them more affordable.

That's really been so much of how I've approached the work in state government.

Safer?

I mean, I love being on the subway.

Yes.

You know, it's cool, right?

You see people like singing.

That's fun.

You get to see people of all walks of life.

Then you get to see naked people, right?

Then you get to see people that look a little scary.

When you ask New Yorkers where they feel least safe, you will often hear the subway system.

And a big part of our campaign's proposal around public safety is to create teams of dedicated mental health outreach workers that would be placed in the top 100 stations of levels of mental health crises or homelessness to actually both provide those services and move people out of the system.

And I think that's critically important because right now we kind of treat a lot of these aspects of New York City life as if they're innate, they're natural, as opposed to the fact that they're political choices and we can make different choices and have different results.

One of the things you said in one of the debates was like, the NYPD is getting called to do stuff that they're not trained to do.

They're getting called to be social workers for different things.

So we need experts who actually know how to handle these situations without escalating or potentially turning them dangerous, going in and managing that.

And what does that look like?

What does the assembly of that task force require?

Yeah, I think there's a few things.

One thing is do you scale up, you know, what could have been successful in our city, was it actually being pursued in a sincere manner?

And what I mean by that is there's a program called Be Heard in New York City that would redirect 911 calls that were regarding mental health crises to ensure that you actually had specialists who were trained for that to respond to that.

But Eric Adams' mayorality was just fundamentally uninterested in actually making this workable.

And the reason that I believe it is workable is you can see examples elsewhere in the country, examples like in Oregon, where they took mental health calls out of the police department, gave them to a different unit of mental health specialists.

I mean, the vibe's vibe's a little different in Oregon.

You know, people are like doing weed gummies, kind of hanging out, chilling.

Like it may be a little bit of an easier challenge for

the Salem mental health force.

I think the larger point, though, is that right now the NYPD is answering 200,000 mental health calls a year.

And you can't separate that from the fact that only 35% of crimes from the first quarter of this year have actually been solved.

Because if you're asking those same police officers to both pick up that call, go on that trip and respond to that shooting, there is just one of those things that is not going to be able to be done.

And it's interesting that a lot of times when you talk about a vision for public safety and you talk about allowing police to do their jobs, it's framed sometimes as if you were anti-police.

And yet if you listen to police officers themselves, you'll see 200 officers are leaving the department every month.

A leading cause of that departure and the fact that nearly a quarter are considering it is forced overtime.

And a lot of that forced overtime comes from officers working doubles and triples and being placed in the subway station, being placed doing this response to nearly every failure of the social safety net.

And the way that you can make that life a little bit more standard and have a little bit more quality in when they know they can actually go home is by ensuring they can focus on the seven major categories of crime and not by saying you pick up the phone anytime anyone calls.

Well, when I look back at 2021 and in my kind of reductive take, I'm like, okay, Eric Adams won because

he ran on being a cop and people were so hype about the cops.

And that's how Eric Adams became the mayor of the Islamabad of America.

How many more you got?

I try to remember as many as possible.

I watched several compilations of him doing it.

It's really entertaining.

Adams has a lot in common with Trump and it being kind of crazy to watch is certainly one of them.

But, you know, when you look back at that and everybody in in New York City's response to defund the police style messaging and just how different progressive candidates were putting together messaging about, you know, there being a difference between defunding the police and not giving them unlimited budgets to make subway robots, I feel like it's sort of been hard to get the messaging straight there.

So I guess while you're talking to the bulwark audience of the moderate lib types that normally don't like me in the comments, what is your message in terms of, hey, I'm not here to defund the police we're just working to make the city safer and innovate i i think you've said it pretty clearly right this is that this maybe cameron should be mayor yeah honestly i'm just glad that cameron can't run it's too late it's too late you know for why not go down to the zoomers okay if we're going to do a young millennial why not a zoomer

he's 33 zoron i just i zoron is 33 and i'm i i'm like one step removed from being a child and i saw your age and i was like wow i have hope for this next generation

and you're married i'm not going to be married at 33.

You might be.

There's hope.

You might be in a polycule.

I'm sorry.

Interrupt.

Defund the police, I think he was asking you about.

Yes, yes.

Somehow we got to polycules.

You know, I think what I've been very clear with New Yorkers about is that, in fact, when Eric Adams was running in 2021, of all people, he said New Yorkers need not choose between safety and justice.

And he's shown himself unable to deliver on the former, uninterested in delivering on the latter.

And what our campaign is focused on is actually that public safety.

And that means not defunding the police.

That means sustaining the headcount of the police department.

And it also means having the police be able to actually respond to those major categories of crime, whether we're talking about shootings or murders or grand larceny.

When we're seeing CompStat lay those out, we also have to ask ourselves, how do we ensure that we're solving more of those crimes?

Because part of the diminishing faith in local government is not just whether or not crime goes up, it's whether or not the actual closing of those cases is also going up.

And I think that it's interesting in that when you speak to New Yorkers, you will hear there is an understanding that so much of what we're asking police officers to do is something that goes against actually wanting to deliver public safety.

And if we were to hire those who are actually trained to do the work that we're asking them to do, that allows everyone to do their jobs.

And that actually creates a safer city, especially in the place where, when we're talking about the subway system, it's not always categorized in statistics.

It's also in feeling and the experience of going through that system and the real sense of vacancy that's permeating that system.

Whether it's the 75% of commercial units that are vacant in the subway system, or it's the fact that oftentimes you feel that you are alone on that subway platform waiting for that train that's taking too long, just having a more visible presence of the city looking out for you can make all the difference in how you actually go through that.

What about James Murphy's plan to make the sounds better on

the turnstiles?

Did you ever hear about that one?

We're gonna realize we're not gonna be be on vibier sounds.

Okay, just something to think about.

Can you give me some more information?

Do you know James Murphy?

You're a young millennial.

You know James Murphy?

The L C D sound system.

That'll ring a bell to you.

The L C D sound system does ring a bell, yes.

Yeah, all right.

Well, he's a he's a New Yorker, and he had like, he had proposed that, you know, that you bring a little bit better aesthetic to the, to the subway.

But like when you're going to the turnstiles, like it, it'd have a, it'd have a vibey sound.

That's interesting.

That was the proposal.

I'm not going to pin you down on that.

Something to think about, though.

Something to if you get in there,

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You might have got a sense for the vibe at this point already.

Cam is standing you and is, you know, on the imaginary ranked choice ballot.

He's putting you number one.

I'm skeptical as a former Republican, neolib moderate, chill.

So we've got like this little kind of good twink, bad twink routine going.

And the full Abrahamic coalition right now.

We're really firing on all cylinders.

Yeah, we're doing it.

Here's what I want to give you the chance to do before I give you a little shit.

Right now, I live in New Orleans, so this isn't a real vote, but I've got a top four on my imaginary ballot.

You and creepy Andrew are not on it, okay?

But you have a chance to get fifth.

You have a chance to get fifth, which could be pretty important in a ranked choice voting system.

So I want you to make the case to capitalist moderate Neo Libs to rank you fifth.

Well, I appreciate the opportunity.

What I would say is that

one thing that many of us have in common is that we care deeply about this city.

And I think it serves no one that it is the most expensive city in the United States of America.

It doesn't serve a business owner.

It doesn't serve a worker.

It doesn't serve someone who's just passionate about the future of this place.

And we've seen that while income inequality has gone down across the country, it's actually increased in New York City.

And the campaign's focus on affordability.

It's a focus that is also about ensuring that this city continues to grow.

Because what we've seen is while we're at 8.5 million people and we're seeing a slight uptick in our population, we have lost hundreds of thousands of people just over the Mayor Adams mayorality.

And we've lost them

to neighboring states, some of which would also be considered high-tax states, like New Jersey.

We've lost them to Connecticut.

We've lost them to Pennsylvania.

And that's also a loss for our tax base.

It's also on a national level a loss in the ability for us to continue to have the congressional representation we should have.

And ultimately, what this campaign is about delivering is a city that working and middle-class people can afford.

And in making it so, it's also a place where businesses and even the wealthy can have a better life.

Because so often the question of whether or not wealthy New Yorkers stay in this city is framed as if it's entirely contingent upon tax policy.

But if you look at studies by the Fiscal Policy Institute, you find that the top 1% of New Yorkers leave at one-fourth the rate of other income categories due to that tax policy.

Ultimately, what it is, is is quality of life.

And I think too often we've allowed words like quality of life, like efficiency, fraud, waste, to almost become coded as if they are right-wing concerns, when in fact they should be left-wing concerns.

Because if you care about public service, if you care about public goods, you have to have public excellence.

Because any example of public inefficiency is then used as a justification to not have the public sector at all.

That's why I started with the MTA in the state assembly, because that's the most frequent example for New Yorkers of how government is not delivering on what was promised.

Sorry, you said in the debate, and I didn't know about this, that Cuomo had stolen like hundreds of millions of dollars from the MTA.

What went down with that?

This is a former governor who spent many years pretending that the MTA wasn't even a state authority and just completely absolving himself of any responsibility.

And the cuts that he made to the MTA were cuts both in regular funding, but also There was a moment where a number of upstate ski resorts had a bad winter.

He took money from the MTA to subsidize those ski resorts.

That's the extent to which this man defunded mass transit in New York City.

And my point that I would make is that, you know, one of the first times I worked with the Partnership of the City of New York,

which is the organization that represents businesses across New York City, was when we both came together to fight for better subway service.

And I think that's the point I would make to you and to, as you described it, a capitalist audience, is that so many of the things that I'm fighting for, they are things that actually benefit everyone.

I mean, if you're a business and you're thinking about the loss of productivity because of the amount of time spent in traffic or spent in delays or spent just waiting, that's time that can be returned back to you if someone is able to actually get to work quicker.

And I think this is also a place where I really find a lot of the conversation around abundance to be quite compelling is that

There are a lot of regulations and rules and even fees and fines that we do not have a justification for any longer.

And if there is no justification, then it should not exist.

If there is a justification, then we should continue with it.

And I think I look at an example of barbershops.

In New York City, you have to fill out 23 forms, go to seven different agencies, and attend 12 activities in order to be able to become a barber, to have your own barbershop.

So can we just start at a zero?

Can you just get rid of all of them?

Can we just go to 10?

Going to zero.

You might need one piece of certification, but I would.

why you're just cutting hair.

Are you a barber libertarian?

How many New Yorkers are just cutting hair in each other's homes?

Like, you know, your mom's cutting your hair.

Does she need a certificate?

This is crazy.

What are they going to do?

They're going to accidentally nick you?

Like, what's the worry?

Look, let me tell you, there's a lot of New Yorkers who worry about having a bad haircut, and they need to make sure that they have a life.

So we're going to have one form, is what you're saying?

Down from 22?

My point is that you look at Pennsylvania, they took an eight-week process of permitting and made it into two or three days.

That, to me is also the example of what I would deliver as the mayor of the city is one that's actually efficient.

And I find it very ironic because as you said, you know, Andrew Cuomo is not on your ballot either.

But for many New Yorkers for whom he is on their ballot, a lot of it is about the sense of competency, of managerial experience.

We're talking about a guy who's so bad at management that he chased out the most celebrated head of the New York City Transit Authority, Andy Byford, who would now rather work for Donald Trump than work for Andrew Cuomo.

That's what we're also looking at: someone who spent the most money in the history of the world on a single mile of subway.

That's also the part of politics we have to turn past.

So, we're on getting Josh Shapiro pilled there on cutting regulations.

I think that's something to note.

Do you mention something at the beginning of that answer, which I just want to drill down on a little bit, which is like the income inequality and people leaving and people being able to afford living in New York?

I saw a fun fact that kind of blew my mind the other day.

You know, that there are fewer people living in Manhattan now than there were in 1910 to 1950.

It's like the idea that like it's overcrowded or whatever is like, it's crazy, right?

Like there were more people living in Manhattan in 1910 than there are today.

And so like, how do you do that though?

Like, how do you, how do you, you know, break through the whatever, the red tape or whatever it is?

You tell me what it is that is preventing, you know, more housing from going in in the areas of the city that should be more dense.

I think part of it is that you are willing to have these political fights.

You know, it is not going to be easy to change the political norms of this city, right?

We have a norm right now in New York City where

the approach we have to land use is one that is piecemeal.

Each city council member has something called member deference, where they decide whether or not a land use project moves forward.

That's a kind of system that does not allow for a citywide approach to increasing housing production.

And I think that one of the key things I've said is that we have to increase supply.

And part of how we do so is by expediting the processes by which supply can get approved for production.

And part of that is a citywide comprehensive approach.

And another part of it is a commitment that if you align with the administration's goals, whether it be affordability goals or labor goals, then you are fast-tracked.

Because what we're seeing right now is you have many projects that general consensus would say this should move forward.

This is housing for low-income seniors.

And even that project is waiting for seven, eight, nine years and as we know time is money and it's not just the money that you spend on constructing it's the money you spend on waiting and going through that process i think the other thing i would say is you know one of the more significant zoning changes that has happened in new york city is city of yes which is something that happened under mayor adams' is his administration and that was something that was primarily driven by his deputy mayors, by his planning commissioner.

He wasn't in those rooms making that case because he was too busy facing the first federal indictment of a New York City mayor in modern history.

And he was almost entirely removed.

And I think that we see the possibility of what could happen without the presence of a mayor.

What if you had a mayor who was making that case all the time?

Because I agreed with that plan.

And I think it needed to go further in eliminating the requirements to build parking and increasing density around mass transit hubs and even in upzoning wealthier neighborhoods that have historically not contributed to affordable housing production.

And I think that it's,

there is another issue at hand here, which is that, you know, I talk a lot about how the election is part of a larger conversation about the Democratic Party, how it's part of a larger conversation of whether Republican billionaires can buy another race as they're, you know, sending a million dollars a day into Andrew Cuomo's Super PAC.

But there's also a different conversation in that, you know, New York City,

for example, the MTA makes up 40% of all public transit trips in the United States of America.

If we get something right here, it can be a model for what could happen across this country.

But instead of that efficiency, what we have is a continued insistence that this is all it could ever be and a reverse New York exceptionalism that points to things working elsewhere in the world and the country and saying, I just couldn't be here because this is New York.

And we have to change that.

We have to return back to that ambition that you were talking about from the early 1900s and a sense of humility that if someone else has gotten it right, we should learn from them.

Well, while we've got Andrew Cuomo's

MAGA donor millionaire PAX on the mind.

I wanted to bring up something that I saw.

So, look, Cuomo still has you beat, and he's still way ahead of you in sexual misconduct allegations and falsely reported senior citizen home deaths.

And I don't think you're going to be able to catch up with him.

That's true about everybody in the race.

Okay.

Like, he's also way ahead of Zellner Myri on those topics.

You're not going to be able to catch up with him on that.

And, but according to Politico recently, you were ahead in a poll.

And I was like, huh, if you had told me four months ago that a Muslim man in New York City who is running as a socialist and is being critical of our great friends over in the state of Israel was slaying this hard, I would have been like, well, that's not going to happen.

That's impossible.

And now I've got friends of mine who are very pro-Israel and who give me a lot of shit about some of my takes.

And they're posting your graphic that's like, oh, it's Zoran Day.

Go vote for Zora.

I'm like, I feel like a lot of the fear-mongering that's been done and directed at you by Cuomo's PAC and similar groups isn't really resonating with people.

Cuomos PAC, that was his Mag billionaire types, put out an image of Zoran where they photoshopped him, I guess, to look more like the scary stereotype Muslim they want you to be afraid of.

And look, candidly, Zoran, I think you look handsome in both of these.

So, you know, just okay for you.

It's a win-win as far as I'm

I think you look great, but it's, it was definitely very alarming.

And I think the most interesting thing for me was that it didn't seem to work.

And New York City is one of those places where I really thought it would.

So that brings me to a topic that has really been compelling to me in this conversation, which is I'm actually going to start with Tim here.

Tim, I'm going to name four things, and I want you to tell me if you can tell what binds them all together.

You ready?

Okay, great.

Donald Trump, Andrew Cuomo,

Prime Minister Modi's Hindu nationalist efforts.

Oh, man.

And my APUS history teacher.

I don't want to malign your APUS history teacher by where my head's going about how that person might have treated the women

girls in your class.

So I'll pass.

The answer is Islamophobia.

And that has been something that I've seen all over the place in this campaign.

And, you know, when I get anti-Semitism directed at me, I kind of like laugh it off because I think it's so stupid.

But, you know, I also walk through the TSA line like,

hey, everybody, how you doing?

So I feel like I have a little bit of privilege here.

Whereas for you, does that shit weigh down on you ever?

Like, do you ever get this Islamophobic shit and actually take it to heart?

Or are you just chilling?

My, my general impulse has been to not talk about it, but it's gotten to the point where I have to.

You know, I woke up

the other day to a message that said, a good Muslim is a dead Muslim.

These are the kinds of threats I get.

They're voicemails, their emails, their DMs, to the extent that I have to have security.

Because

we had a press conference where a MAGA supporter

was yelling and then eventually ended up biting one of our volunteers.

And

one of the things he was yelling was that, you know, that I'm not, I don't belong here.

And then his accomplice was yelling that I should be ashamed of being a brown Muslim.

And I think

it's sad above all other things because it's both expected, it's very much out of the Trump playbook to paint someone as an other.

But so often it's quite tempting to say that these are solely Republican styles of politics when what we're seeing right now is a Democratic primary where you have candidates in this race who've used language to describe me that is more fitting for a beast than a person, language like a monster, language such as being at the gates, language as if

this is the end of this city and of civilization as we know it.

And to have that coupled with these Republican billionaire-funded mailers that artificially lengthen my beard and darken it, it very much feels like 2002 all over again.

And

what's sad is also this sense in what we we see with Andrew Cuomo is that

so much of what Democratic critique has been of Donald Trump has been that

these actions, this rhetoric, it's antithetical to what we want our politics to be.

And yet there's too much of an echo of that same kind of rhetoric in our own politics.

And

I think it's...

it cannot be separated from Cuomo being on that debate stage and saying that he's never been to a mosque, having led this state for more than a decade.

Because you don't go somewhere if you don't believe people are a part of that thing that you represent and if you don't see muslims as new yorkers then then why would you visit them can i ask about your um as a lapsed catholic how how muslim are we like are you halal or we are you you know sneaking some drinks on the side like what where where are we on the scale there's a

you know one of the things i admire is this idea of kosher style and i think that's that's where i would deal with halal i don't hope you're not

do you ever sneak a sig you ever sneak a sig zoran sigs are are permissible.

They are permissible.

Okay.

All right, what about a shot?

You got to come.

Liquor?

Shots are not permissible.

But SIGs.

So have you ever had a shot?

SIGS, I would say you should come on Steinway for Ramadan.

Okay.

And

we'll take you 2 a.m.

You'll see every uncle you can find in the world having a slim cigarette.

Ripping Sigs.

All right.

I'm down for that.

I appreciate the invite.

Please.

Listen, I will say,

as far as Boart contributors go, I am the most halal style.

I don't drink.

I I am not.

I don't do drugs.

Here's a Muslim thing, Tim, that you should do.

Okay.

If you meet a woman for the first time, you greet her, you say hello, you put your hand gently on your heart, and you do a little nod.

Look at this guy.

You do a little nod.

Look at this guy.

If they come in for the hug, then you do the hug and you accept the hug and you give.

But doing this, and it gives them the out if they don't want to do the hug.

This started as Cameron.

Salam alaikum, brother.

Ahandullah.

Get on your shit, Tim.

I'm sorry.

This has gotten too fucking friendly.

Okay, we're getting to the hard part now.

Sorry, sorry.

Wait, can I do one more thing?

One more nice thing.

Okay, one more good twink.

That's a fucking question.

I'm

GTBT.

GTBT.

It's coming.

VT is about to come.

Watch out.

Go, camera.

Okay, so this is...

to you, Zoran, but also just directly to the audience.

In terms of dating, it has been a disaster for me lately.

My heart has been broken.

I have broken hearts.

My heart has been broken by two different women who both follow Zoron on Instagram.

So, you know, whatever that means.

But I'm trying to.

Reconsider.

I'm trying to get back on the scene.

Listen to him.

I'm trying to get back on the scene.

I'm trying to meet people.

Maybe that's the problem.

Maybe you should be dating Whitney Tilson girls, Cameron.

That might be something to consider.

I'm trying to get back in the dating scene, you know, spread my wings and fly a little bit.

And I'm seeing all these pieces about how third spaces are going away.

Places where people can all come together and socialize and, you know, halal cam can hang out without drinking and we can get to know one another and be part of a community the way that we all want to be when we're in a city where you can meet all these people.

Like in Gen Z, people aren't fucking meeting each other anymore.

Like people my age just don't even know how to interact with other human beings.

And I'm wondering, I know that COVID has played such a huge part in those spaces, you know, being harder to access, but what's your take moving into being mayor of how we're going to revitalize those scenes, make it the city that never sleeps again?

I think part of it is actually enjoying this job.

You know, people often talk about being the mayor as if it is something that is purely a burden and a responsibility.

And it is incredibly important.

There's so much that you have to do to live up to the position.

And it's also an opportunity to celebrate the city and to shine a light on what we love about about this city.

And I think to what you're saying with this demise of third spaces, what I would tell you, first of all, I would say to the two women that broke your heart to reconsider in this moment.

The second thing I'd tell you is that I met my wife on Hinge, so there is still hope

in those dating apps.

And

the third would be that it's been an interesting part of the story about

Muslims in New York City is also this moment of Yemeni coffee shops across New York City.

There are now maybe five or six different Yemeni coffee shop chains.

And what makes them distinct is, unlike

the coffee shops that we've kind of become familiar with, these are coffee shops that will stay open until about midnight, 1 a.m., 2 a.m.

sometimes.

And so they become this kind of third space where you can go and just sit and chat and hang out with friends.

And I would tell you, that's somewhere you should check out.

You should go to this place called Kawa House, Mocha ⁇ Co., Mo Cafe.

These are a lot of the places where people are finding some time to just relax.

And I think the other point is that it's city government's responsibility to ensure that we have more of those public spaces that can function in the same way.

I mean, parks, especially during COVID, were a place where so many New Yorkers were able to actually

reconnect with their city and their friends.

And those parks are being underfunded.

And part of the result of that is that they are not at the level of excellence that we've come to expect, but also that that cutting of funding has meant that we we have brush fires in New York City that we historically wouldn't have because we're cutting funding for the Parks Department employees whose job it is to clear that which could end up going on fire.

And I think all of these things come back together in that we want a city where people see themselves in that city, they can afford that city, and they can also actually have relationships and grow friendships across the five boroughs with people that they're currently just living alongside but can never actually interact with.

All right, this tree hugger shit is a nice way to

transition me into

my areas of

BT is all right.

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I have three buckets of concern.

We'll move through them quickly.

Okay.

Are you ready?

Number one is, as I mentioned earlier, capitalism.

You tweeted, taxation isn't theft, capitalism is.

You also want to seize the means of produce production in New York City.

I would like to hear your thoughts on both those topics.

Yes, well, I would say

judging me by my tweets sends me down a long road.

I have some bad tweets too, but it's right there.

You want to be mayor?

You're saying capitalism is theft.

That seems bad.

What I have said over the course of this campaign is what I would focus on.

And what my critiques of capitalism have been and continue to be is that this inequality is a feature of it.

And if we do not have a focus on how we actually extend that understanding of dignity that every New Yorker deserves and make it a reality, you know, know, if you talk to New Yorkers, you'll say, yeah, everyone deserves public education, you know, being able to go to a library, sanitation.

But then there are certain things that we agree are just as critical, and yet we allow people to be priced in or out of those things, whether we're talking about housing or we're talking about produce.

And I think that comes to your second point is

our proposal to create a pilot program for a network of municipal-owned grocery stores.

Now, this is a program, to be clear, that would be one store in each borough, five stores across New York City.

It would cost $60 million.

So we have five communist stores.

This might be an interesting

test case to see how poorly it does compared to its neighbors.

No matter how you think about the idea, I do think that there should be more room for reasonable policy experimentation in our cities and in our country, where we actually test out our ideas.

And if they work, they work.

And if they don't work, c'est la vie.

Then the idea was wrong.

But the reason I think it would work is that this is less than half the cost of what the city's already spending on subsidizing corporate supermarkets through a program called City Fresh.

The city is set to spend about $140 million through those subsidies, and it doesn't come with a guarantee of cheaper groceries, doesn't come with a requirement to accept Snap or WIC or to engage in collective bargaining.

And over the more than 10 years that it's been in operation, we see just a few more than a dozen stores that have actually received this.

And ultimately, the reason I think this could work is it's worked in Kansas.

There's been a feasibility study done in Chicago about the urgency of it and the fee and and that it can actually be implemented and that

we are here in a city where if you're making 40k a year or 200k a year you'll still hear that sticker shock of going to the grocery store of not knowing if you can actually afford the same thing that you used to be able to yeah i'm with you on the test i'll just say we had i so i lived in oakland in in a low-income neighborhood in oakland for a while a couple years ago and they put one of the community stores in those that the city was subsidizing one of the kind of probably seems like similar to the city fresh program that you're talking about And it was like, you know, it was a half mile from the Walmart, which had much cheaper food.

And yet, and like the place shut down, right?

Like it just didn't.

So sometimes, you know, it's a question of whether or not you can actually make it cheaper, right?

Because a lot of times some of the bigger chains like will have scale and it might not work.

And I think when you're talking about Walmart, there's also larger national questions about, you know, laws that haven't been followed about ensuring that there's equal pricing across, you know, groceries and these kind of larger warehouse providers.

But I think the second part of this argument that sometimes gets lost is that even in a city like New York, there are food deserts that are disproportionately impacting black and brown New Yorkers.

Where I represent the largest public housing development in North America, Queensbridge Houses in western Queens.

I have constituents who ask me, why can't I find five fast food restaurants in a five-block radius, but I can't find a place where I can afford good produce.

And I think that that,

when you're starting with five, one in each borough, it also allows you to solve multiple problems at the same time.

It's not to say that the vision here is we will not stop until there is a municipal-owned grocery store in every block.

It's that we're trying to solve a problem.

And how do we do so?

Let me go to my number two issue of what concerns me about you.

Get it.

Other mayors of your ilk, whatever we want to call them, DSA, squaddish, progressive, aren't exactly crushing it.

Brandon Johnson is in Chicago.

I've seen a poll this year with him at 6% approval and another one with him at 14% approval.

So there's a lot of Democrats in Chicago that are pretty unhappy with him.

That's not just the Republicans.

Like, what do you think about what Brandon Johnson is doing in Chicago?

Do you have a model of a progressive mayor you think is doing a good job?

I think Mayor Wu has been doing a very good job in Boston.

And she's someone who has been an inspiration of mine, even just in my focus on fare-free bus transit.

That was built out of, in part, the results we saw when she made a number of bus routes free in Boston.

One of them was Route 28.

By making it free, they decreased the dwell time at each bus stop by 23%.

So it was showcasing, again, that you do this, it's not just economic relief, it's also the speed of this bus, the public safety of this bus.

And to Cameron's point earlier, I am two years younger.

than Mayor Wu was when she ran for that same position.

And I think when we're thinking about a new generation of leadership, having a model that works is important.

The other point that I would make is that oftentimes critiques of someone on the left's administration is seen as if it is one that has to be, that is reflective of an inability of that ideological bend to govern.

And yet when we have someone so proudly considered a centrist like Eric Adams, his failures are considered to be personal ones as opposed to political failures of his ideology.

Okay.

But Eric somehow is still more popular than Brandon Johnson, which is concerning, I would think, if you're a Brandon Johnson.

Eric is a very talented communicator.

I just, all right, I'm just i mean he's the mayor of the tel aviv of america okay sorry i'm done sorry uh we'll watch it tel av sensitive we're gonna get to israel next it's the last final topic but just really quick on brandon johnson i just want to give one specific example of something that worries me about progressive type mayors right please so so we were talking about housing earlier right and so in in in march brandon johnson tweeted that chicago invested 11 billion to build 10 000 more units of affordable housing that's a million a unit like that's just way more expensive than market rate housing yeah and one of the reasons was if you look at how they did the projects, they had these goals, you know, and if you to get a project, right?

Okay, you've seen this, right?

So it's like you got 10 points if it's green.

That's good.

I like green.

You got 11 points if it was BIPOC.

You got another 11 points if there were women on the development team.

I like BIPOCs and women building things, but like you only got three points if you contained cost.

And so it just feels like there was a, there's like this priority miss sometimes with progressive folks who like want to keep everybody in the coalition happy over doing affordable housing or whatever for the working class folks in the city.

What do you say to that critique?

I think that

it is not a model that is working to its intent.

The intent is to build as much affordable housing.

And if that is

the amount of money it costs to build, then you will simply not be able to build to the extent that's required.

And it's interesting in that, you know,

that cost per unit that you're highlighting is one of a critique of a public sector position.

And then also here in New York City, we've had a very different style of incentivizing the production of affordable housing through tax incentives for developers that

has seen similar costs of more than a million, oftentimes, for the creation of an affordable unit.

And I think that this is also where, earlier in the conversation we were having,

on the left, we have to care about excellence in public service because if our whole vision for affordable housing is unable to actually match the scale of this crisis, then it's not worth its salt.

And to me, I think we also have to ask ourselves larger questions of how do we drive down the cost?

of so much of what we build because it's very tempting to look at the Second Avenue subway being the most expensive subway mile in the history of the world and say, oh, this is because of labor costs, when in reality, Paris has just as strong, if not stronger, labor unions and their cost per mile is significantly lower.

There weren't 100 consultants getting paid on that one.

Yeah, and I think that's the thing.

You know, in the first phase of the Second Avenue subway, we spent more on consulting than construction.

And I think this comes back to there's an addiction we have to contracting, to consulting.

But I think also what we need to do more of is say that this is the amount of money we're spending.

And we have to work backwards from this.

How do we ensure that we are actually able to innovate in the public sector?

Because there are examples of that.

You know, the mini fridge in the United States exists because NYCHA, the New York City Housing Authority, put out an RFP for a specific size fridge that could fit in a public housing unit.

That is also a story of innovation, but that story is lost when the larger story is one of betraying the hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers who live in that housing in substandard conditions.

All right.

Last one, then we'll let Good Twink close it out.

All right.

So we get to the Israel.

We mentioned the Islamophobia.

Obviously, we also have to be worried about the uptick in anti-Semitism.

And there's one thing in particular that frustrates me when talking with folks on the left.

And that is like downplaying this conversation about how there obviously is anti-Semitism on the right, but there's anti-Semitism coming from the left and coming from these protests.

And one example I think of is this phrase, globalize the intifada, which is a very popular phrase at protests on the left.

And maybe some people say that phrase with good intent, but there are certainly some people who are saying that phrase with violent intent.

So I wonder what you think about that, about the phrase globalize the intifada and what we've seen as some anti-Semitism coming from the left-wing protesters.

The first thing, as you were saying, is anti-Semitism is a real issue in our city.

And it's one that can be captured in statistics, the ones that you're citing.

It's also one that you will feel in conversations you have.

with Jewish New Yorkers across the city.

And I remember one conversation I had with a friend of mine after the horrific war crime of October 7th.

He was telling me that he went for Shabbat services at his temple and he was facing forward when he heard the door open and he turned back with a chill going up his spine because he didn't know who was coming in.

And that's more than a year ago.

And then just a few weeks ago, I had a conversation with a Jewish man in Williamsburg who told me that he the same door he would keep unlocked for decades is one that he now locks out of a fear of of what could happen in his own neighborhood.

And I think that

this is something that has to be the focus of the next mayoral administration: not just talking about it, but tackling it.

And these are the conversations that have informed our commitment around increasing funding for anti-hate crime programming by 800% in our Department of Community Safety.

You know, to the question of language that's being used,

I am someone who, I would say,

am less comfortable with the idea of banning the use of certain words, and that I think it is more evocative of a Trump-style approach to

how to

lead a country.

Like, does that just make you uncomfortable?

Like, the phrase globalize into Fanada from the river to the sea.

Does that make you uncomfortable?

Or do you think that's a good question?

Okay, those are different.

Those are

not really.

Those are like different jobs.

I'm asking Zoran, then they're not really different to me.

And so, some people people, they're not different.

I know people for whom those things mean very different things.

And to me, ultimately, what I hear in so many is a desperate desire for equality and equal rights in

standing up for Palestinian human rights.

And I think what's difficult also

is that the very word

has been used by the Holocaust Museum when translating the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising into Arabic because it's a word that means struggle.

And

as

a

Muslim man who grew up post-9-11, I'm all too familiar in the way in which Arabic words can be twisted, can be distorted, can be used to justify any kind of meaning.

And I think that's where it leaves me with a sense that what we need to do is focus on keeping Jewish New Yorkers safe.

And

the

question of the permissibility of language is something that

I haven't ventured into.

All right, Cam, we're going to close this out.

Good twink.

Give him something nice.

Okay.

While we're on Israel, I want to do two quick hot takes.

This is a new segment called Hot Takes with Cam and Zoran.

Zoran's going to rape my hot takes.

Number one, I find myself talking about the women and children in Palestine who are being indiscriminately killed.

And I try to reason with people and talk to them about what's going on and tell them how tragic it is.

And I'm always talking about these innocent women and children.

And I feel like it's kind of fucked up that I say women and children as if it's okay that the men are dying.

And I feel like when I say it like that, I'm sort of playing into the hand of the people who want me to be hateful and fearful and who want me to think that every guy who's getting fucking killed by these bombs is a terrorist.

So I don't really know how to move forward with it because saying women and children is a way to, you know, get some sympathy from people who otherwise are not sympathetic towards the issue.

But also I don't want to be part of this like general vibe that, oh, okay, but when the men die, you know, that's just how it is.

That's my take.

I think about this often, and I think about the way in which certain words convey innocence and certain words convey almost a complicity.

And there was even a time

during the height of drone strikes where

our government would define military combatants as being military-aged men.

You know, we're talking about any man between the ages of 18 and I think around 50 or so.

And you are just assumed to be guilty by virtue of being in that age range and being a man.

And I think that's,

I think that what you're saying also speaks to the fact that humanity has to be something we give to all people.

And that also means going beyond just the easy, easy aspect of who we should grieve and who we believe in some sense is actually beyond worthy of that same grief.

Well, I'm Cameron, we're over.

I'm pulling Greg.

We need to get him on the Never Trumper thing.

I forgot.

We forgot.

We're over time.

We have to get him on Trump.

This is the home of the Never Trumpers.

If I'm going to be bad, cop, I need to also let you cook.

So can we close on that?

I mean, Donald Trump is fucking militarizing our cities.

He's just put out a bleat.

yesterday saying that he wants to send more ICE agents into New York, militarize New York.

If you're mayor next year, and he's trying to send the troops into New York to hassle Americans or to hassle immigrants for that matter, what are you going to do about it?

I think we have to be able to call it what it is, which is authoritarianism, right?

What we're seeing in Los Angeles, what we're even seeing in that military parade, are endless examples of Donald Trump seeking to move beyond being a president and start to thinking of this country as if it is simply his

playground, you know, for him to embark upon his wildest fantasies about being a dictator of this nation.

And part of it is being able to call it what it is.

Part of it is also being able to actually stand up and fight back.

And one of the things is understanding the law as something that has to be followed, not just the suggestion that Trump sees it.

And that also means investing in the city's law department.

We are 200 lawyers down from where we were pre-pandemic.

And getting back to that level and also ensuring pay parity for those lawyers across city agencies is part of what could allow this city to do what Gavin Newsom did, right?

To actually pursue legal means and legal recourse.

And I think what's terrifying in this moment is we have a president for whom even that legal recourse still leaves the question of whether he follows it, right?

There's a New Yorker right now who's in an ICE detention facility hundreds of miles away, Mahmoud Khalil, who

no crime has actually been stated.

It's been said that his detention is unlawful.

He continues to be in that facility.

And I think

what is so terrifying in this moment is you have a Trump administration that is

weaponizing the very real issue of anti-Semitism as a pretext for throwing students into prison for the crime of having written an op-ed.

And that's what is so important in having a mayor who will stand up for our constitution, stand up for our city, and will actually also start to unabashedly stand up for that which has made us safe, which is laws like sanctuary city policies, which are providing legal representation to immigrant New Yorkers in detention proceedings.

Because if we all care, as we said we did, about keeping families together, these are the legal mechanisms by which we can actually deliver that.

So Ron, thank you so much for joining us.

This has been a hoot.

You'll have to come on soon because I want to ask you what you would do as mayor about Spider-Man, who people love, but he is a criminal.

I'm also sending you this link about LCD sound system.

I found it.

Pitchfork.

If we're a millennial, a millennial mayor needs to have the millennial band like putting some music in the subways.

This feels like a good priority.

appreciate it.

I want to say that I equally appreciate GT and BT.

This was a great time, and I would love to come back on whenever.

Thanks so much, man.

All right.

Thanks, guys.

All right.

Thanks to Zoran and to Cam, my FY Pod co-host.

Stick around for Carrie Holly of New York Magazine.

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Delighted to welcome a features writer at New York Magazine.

Her latest deeply reported Darkly comic, I think, takeout.

It's titled Pete Hegseth is Playing Secretary.

She's also the author of a book about Reality Winner, Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs, A Journey Through the Deep State.

It's Carrie Halley.

How are you doing, girl?

I'm great.

How are you?

I'm doing pretty well, all things considered.

I mean, I was, I just devoured the Pete Hegseth story, which which had, I mean, how many sources do you have?

And you're talking to all the fired people and a bunch of other folks.

And so over a dozen is what we're saying, source-wise.

Yeah, I'm very surprised by the response.

As I was reading it, I thought, there are so many white men in the story.

There's no way anyone is going to be able to keep track of them.

This was exactly where I wanted to start.

So I'm glad that you mentioned that because I did have to, I almost had to create a cheat sheet for myself.

Yeah.

So let's just do it here for everybody.

We've got Joe Casper.

We're just going to do a character breakdown at the start.

Joe Casper

was the man that was the chief of staff at the start.

He's the former chief of staff, Pete Hegset's chief of staff, yeah.

Okay.

And he was noted, he was most notable for this sentence in the story.

You know who else is hard to follow?

Elon Musk.

But would you say he doesn't have creative elements of opportunity to incite and excite you?

That was Joe Casper on himself, I guess.

So, yeah, Joe Casper,

he had been press liaison for Duncan Hunter Jr., disgraced congressperson who, I think, known as a hard partier, was

sentenced to 11 months in jail, but then pardoned by Trump.

Anyway, this is a guy

who has some experience in politics, is an extreme extrovert, and someone who Hegseth really connects with.

Okay, so that's Joe Casper.

Then we had the three fired people, Dan Caldwell, Darren Selnick, and Colin Carroll.

And these are all very senior advisors to Hagseth.

They're former senior advisors.

Okay.

And then we had, this is, he isn't really in your story, but I might mention there's a guy named John Olyot, who is an, who is a press advisor to Hagseth and then wrote that politico article about how he's a disaster and Trump should replace him, even though they're old friends.

Oh, yes, it was called The Month from Hell.

Okay.

And then there's a mysterious man with a cane.

Did we ever identify him?

We don't identify the man from the cane.

We just know that he requires a cane because he he injured his leg, pulling people to safety on 9-11 from the Pentagon.

We appreciate his service.

Okay, so there we go.

So I just wanted to set the table there.

Joe Casper did not get fired.

He was, but he left.

It was the chief of staff.

Caldwell, Selnick, and Carol were the fired.

And essentially, the story

takes us through

the most insane workplace that you could possibly imagine.

Like it's a little bit, you know, there's paranoia, there's elements of the office in it, and it's kind of how Pete Hegseth ended up getting rid of a bunch of his close advisors because he thought that they were leaking against him, I guess.

Is that the best way to summarize it?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's a workplace in which everyone, straight up all the way to the top, is constantly feeling paranoid about the possibility of being dismissed, of being fired.

And this story centers on these three top advisors, two of whom were very close friends of Pete Hegseth.

I mean, decade-long friends, professional friendships, personal friendships, who were targeted in a kind of botched leak investigation and ended up being unceremoniously escorted out of the Pentagon and then badmouthed by Pete Hexeth on, I think it was Fox and Friends and also at the Easter egg roll.

It's tough to catch strays at the Easter egg roll.

So they were escorted out by the men at the cape.

And the interesting thing about all of this is to your point, like Caldwell, the two that were longtime friends of his, and it's like Pete is in over his head, right?

Like, which is, I kind of, I guess, the premise of all of this, right?

Like, he goes in there, and you would think that

if you had a weekend talk show co-host, you know, becoming the leader of the military, they would want to bring in like reliable advisors around them, people who know their way around.

And so he does this, and he brings at least loyal advisors, longtime friends, and then immediately cans them in like an imaginary imaginary leak investigation, I guess.

Is that like it's hard to navigate why that is?

I think the hope of a lot of people is that Pete Hegseth would kind of acknowledge the limits of his capacities and surround himself with people who had deeper knowledge bases, or, you know, as one source put it, like the patience to learn the details.

And

he did that initially to some level,

but he seemed to believe a rumor he heard that there was evidence that, in particular, Dan Caldwell had leaked information about military plans in Panama.

And, you know, there's no indication that he ever saw this evidence.

I mean, there's no indication that this evidence exists, but he took that to be true and then basically implied that on national television.

And it led to these three men being ejected from the building.

And I guess, and the other one was, I guess, in the case of Carroll, like the case against him was that the Politico reporter, like he took a phone call from a reporter, but he's a press liaison.

So yeah, Colin Carroll had taken a phone call from Daniel Lippmann at Politico.

And this phone call was about the possibility that there was an inspector general report into Joe Casper.

And Colin Carroll just, he just just told the press liaison, Sean Parnell.

He said, he sent an email and said, hey, you know, I got this call.

I said no comment.

And then in a conversation with Dropsight, which is Reingrim's website, Joe Casper indicated that he found this suspicious.

Like, why does Politico have Colin Carroll's phone number?

But it was actually easily explained.

They had his phone number because they'd written a piece on him like, a week previously or something like that.

Yeah.

Why does Dropsight have Joe Casper's phone number?

I'd be another interesting

thought of that.

Yeah, there's layers upon layers here.

I guess like that to me, like when you're reading the whole thing, I mean, it truly

feels like the military is being run by somebody that is not just

unprepared and unqualified for the job.

And it's not just like a total disaster in his personal life, but like also like the paranoia is an extreme.

I just keep coming back to that word.

It is like, it is at a level that like it feels like he's unmanageable and prevents him from being able to manage the the department i mean it's interesting because it's it's clearly his instinct when faced with any kind of conflict to cast the media as the enemy right the media is against me russian hoaxters hoaxters hoaxers like russia hoax um

and you know to his detriment because he doesn't have good like crisis management.

He's constantly just throwing it back on the media.

And yet so many people in his office, like close advisors, seem to have a very different relationship to the media because there are a ton of leaks coming out of that office.

And it creates the situation where people, many people say

he's just spending an inordinate amount of his time

with this paranoia about leaks.

And he's so worried about it that he's also like not sharing information with people who need information.

So, and he's making his circle smaller.

And it's a strange circle, right?

It involves like his wife, his brother, his personal lawyer.

Whether this troubles you depends on whether you want

an effective DOD under Donald Trump, right?

Like this, you know, it's not necessarily the worst outcome, as Pete Hag Seth, you know, huddled in his office.

Yeah.

I mean,

you might have a clown show DOD that like throws a $45 million military parade that looks like less professional than what the North Koreans do.

You might, for example.

That's what you want to think.

That's a hypothetical.

Just one idea.

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So, just one other thing on the leaks.

So, he's threatening because this was going around, you know, at the time, and you can cover some reporting.

Like, there were two little anecdotes where he was threatening with polygraphs, like, he was starting to polygraph his own staff in one case.

And also, maybe there was some discussion that there was a wire tap, that there was

they had been tapping the staff.

What did you kind of find out on either of those points?

I mean, at first, the story, you know, they kick Dan Caldwell out of the Pentagon

as the man with the cane who leads him out.

So it's a slow walk.

And then there are press reports that there's evidence on his personal phone that, you know, there's photographic evidence that he leaked the Panama stuff.

Then it's like, well, how do you guys know about that?

Because no one has searched his personal phone, according to him.

And so now there's a new rumor that there was a wiretap on his phone.

Some people allege that Tim Parlator, Pete Hagseth's personal lawyer, cooked up this story and told it to a bunch of people in the DOD.

And so the White House is like, wait, his phone's being a wiretap?

That's like an incredibly big deal.

That's extremely illegal.

That's a much bigger deal than the leak that you're talking about.

And then people stop telling that story.

Like it disappears.

And there's no evidence of any of this.

Like as I'm writing this, I'm wondering, what is an investigation, right?

Like, what are the bounds of that word?

Because it doesn't, it seems like we're dealing with many rumors of an investigation and somewhere else there is a real leak investigation happening but this isn't it this is interpersonal warfare in the front office of the dod right they're trying to scare people essentially they're trying to threaten them by saying you're gonna get you're gonna get polygraphed we might tap your phones but like when the reality is they can't tie their shoes like they don't know how to polygraph people or tap people's phones.

Colin Carroll, one of the ousted men, has a quote in the piece that's like, these aren't people who know what to do.

They don't know the limits of their powers.

I mean, the outer bounds of their powers.

They don't know how to run the building and

they don't know

even where to search for answers.

And so you just have people kind of making it up along the way.

And this happened in a very public way with this like, quote-unquote, leak investigation.

So you talked to these three guys that were ousted,

who I assume, despite the fact that they're smeared by the the Secretary of Defense, have some sympathy still with either Pete himself or at least MAGA or Trump.

Is there any version of events that they offer that tells a story that

might make you think that people know what they're doing in the White House?

I mean, most of the sources to whom I spoke are in sympathy with what they call the president's agenda, right?

And one source used the word heartbreaking to describe watching Hag Seth kind of tie himself in knots on Fox and Friends.

I mean, the defensiveness, the kind of sense of panic you can feel behind his words, that nervous energy.

I mean, I think these are people who wanted Hagseth to succeed, but increasingly see that that isn't possible.

Are there any

people around him that

seem

qualified to be top advisor?

Like, do there remain any people around him who are qualified?

And or are there any women in the building?

Or is it besides his wife?

He's fired a number of women.

You know, I don't, I haven't done a deep dive into everyone in the front office, but I think what we can see from this episode is that he really has trouble sifting good information from bad, knowing who to trust.

And so that problem doesn't go away, even if there are some good people there.

Yeah.

The other thing that you wrote about was that kind of after Signalgate, like he started to act different.

Yeah.

Talk about that a little bit.

So this is something that many sources wanted to talk about.

That after Signalgate, there was a marked change.

More paranoid, less likely to be clean shaven in the morning, like more slamming of doors, just a kind of a fearfulness had set in.

And remember, many of these people came into the building hoping for big changes.

They were like, this is a completely different administration and things are going to run differently now.

And so there's a disappointment, I think, that instead of seeing those big changes, what they're seeing is Hegseth just waiting for executive orders.

Like, he's so frightened of displeasing Trump when source said the building had ceased to be creative.

Like, it's just a mechanism for, you know, whatever Trump tweets or whatever that day for making that happen.

Right.

And so, what does Pete Hegset feel comfortable doing under these circumstances?

He feels very comfortable talking about how the DOD used to to be so woke, but that's changing, right?

So there's a lot of talk about expunging trans service members.

We're getting Harvey Milk's name off the boat.

That's a significant thing.

Right, thank God.

Right.

And so

I think this is frustrating to people who are interested in the day-to-day business of the DOD.

They're like, we already did that.

That was an executive order.

We took care of it.

Why are we still talking about it?

Hike Seth is media trained and he knows that that hits.

He knows he gets a good response from that.

And so he's, this is, this is for him a comfortable place to retreat to.

But he's not making any of those big changes that other people were hoping for.

This gets a little bit outside the scope of your story, but like it's just worth talking through because Trump probably likes that, right?

Like for a Secretary of Defense then to get to a place where he's so scared and so paranoid and worried that he only is going to do whatever Trump wants.

And when you get to situations like, oh, we want Marines in the streets of LA or we want to have a birthday parade, you know, we know that you're going to have somebody there that is willing to do it, right?

So when you get to the question of like, why is Pete still there, even though there are MAGA folks who don't want him to be there, that seems like the best answer to the question to me.

I mean, I don't know what Trump wants.

At one point, he said, I think Heg Seth is going to get it together, which is like, honestly, not something you want your boss to say about you.

But someone did describe...

They were describing the two factions in the office, and they described it as loyalists versus people who believe in the mission.

And so there's kind of the stated thing that they all said they're going to do, which is say, I don't know, make procurement more efficient or something.

And so there are people who really care about that.

And that's a different mission than like pleasing Donald Trump.

And it seems like those two factions are kind of at odds.

I have to ask this question because, you know, that's what the commenters are going to want to hear.

And because you did mention that he's not clean shaven in the morning.

Any sources of any thoughts on Pete's drinking or lack thereof?

What people told me is that he's not clean-shaven.

After Signalgate, he ceased to be as frequently clean-shaven in the morning.

So that's the reporting I have.

Okay.

It did feel like a note.

Like you do a lot of profiles, and you don't necessarily need to mention people's shaving regimen.

I'm not shaven at the moment.

You may or may not mention that.

It felt notable, I guess, is all I'm saying.

There was a change.

I mean, and I was surprised because it seemed like such a subjective thing to say.

Like it seemed like such a something that one person might notice and another person might not so i was i was surprised at the number of people who jumped to affirm that and then just one other specific question about the story you did mention like some mrs kim jong-un style photos of his wife

yeah so what's happening there there are these poster-sized pictures in the secretary's office and I have never been in the secretary's office but apparently typically these are pictures of like tanks and military stuff and generals doing stuff

and

they have been replaced with pictures of jennifer hegseth mostly in the same pink dress with bows down the front that she wore to the aforementioned easter egg roll it's like there are like six posters of his wife in the office six or seven six or seven

i love my spouse but that's I like that.

I mean,

that's unusual, I would think.

I'm trying hard to think about an office I've been into that had that many photos of a wife.

My understanding is that's unusual.

That's your understanding?

Yeah.

Huh.

Okay.

Well,

when you write a story like this, sometimes afterwards, you know, you get pushback.

You know, people, you get some phone calls.

People will be like, you really, you got snowed.

That guy called well.

That has a bone to pick for Pete.

And like, actually, things are really under control.

Any of that, anything in that nature

you know I've been surprised at

the uniformity of the response

no one believes in this investigation like I can't find a single person

who will now defend the idea that there's credible information that these men leaked so a response you might get would be like you know, here at the Pentagon, we're focused on the mission, right?

Like there's an attempt to deflect, but I think a lot of people

feel done with exeth, but understand that Trump might not be done with exeth.

I mean, if they were serious about the leak investigation,

again, like at this level, like leaking sensitive materials, as you would know, better than anybody having written about the Reality Winter case, like leaking sensitive war plans about Panama is a crime.

And like, if they really thought that was the case, they would continue to be pursuing these guys.

And there's no evidence of that, right?

Right.

That's something we should have talked about.

So, like, what would a normal leak investigation look like?

It would look like very possibly their house getting raided as happened to Daniel Hale, or they might be arrested as happened to Reality Winner.

Instead, it's just been them at home kind of refreshing, like finding out new information about themselves that's been leaking from the Pentagon to the press.

It's bizarre.

It's a bizarre situation.

I do kind of wonder like.

So if you do a follow-up story, I do kind of wonder, like, who's on the call about

our assistance assistance in the iranian strikes like it does feel like there's some missing links in the in the chain of command

yeah i mean

a persistent concern is that there's just not enough people like it's understaffed they can't hire people because

there's a new times report about this recently people don't want to work under hexeth experienced people don't want to work under hexeth and so jobs are going unfilled often one person will be doing two jobs Many people are quitting because there's a sense that, like, well, maybe I wrote something four years ago that someone might dig up.

And so, I should just get out of here.

Like, there's this unprecedented level of opposition research into career civil servants that makes people very nervous.

So, after having reported through the story, my producer, Katie, she was reading it and she said she's scared.

Do you feel reporting it?

Do you feel scared or kind of

just bemused about

the weekend talk show co-host that's that's kind of in charge of protecting the homeland?

I mean, I think like

the nature of chaos is that there's too much for the mind to keep track of such that you can't make predictions.

And so again, do I think a paranoid, like kind of smaller

hindered DOD?

There's a fear that they might lash out and panic, right?

Yeah, I don't know how to weigh that against the danger of a hyper-competent DOD.

I don't.

That's fair.

Okay.

We'll let people sit with that.

That's nice.

Carrie Howley, thank you so much.

It's quite the read.

I encourage everybody to do it.

We'll put the link in the show notes and

keep in touch.

Look forward to whatever you're working on next.

Thanks so much for having me.

All right.

Zoran Mamdani, Carrie Howley, what a show.

Appreciate them both for coming on.

We'll see you back tomorrow for another edition of the Bulwark Podcast.

Peace.

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