6/25/25: Zohran Defeats Cuomo In NYC, Trump Rages At Iran Nuke Strike Failure & MORE!
56:36 Share

This is an iHeart Podcast. We've all tried protein drinks on the go, but why don't they taste more like the ones we make at home or from the juice bar? They're too chalky and too sweet from sugar or artificial sweeteners. We love the health benefits, but hate the taste. Now you can finally get both with Don't Quit Protein Drinks. Loaded with 33 grams of protein, only one gram of sugar, and a cleaner approach to ingredients that use no artificial flavors or sweeteners, but still delivers that smooth texture and delicious taste we all crave.

Don't let the wrong ingredients knock you down. Fuel your perseverance with Don't Quit Clean Protein Drinks. Get yours now at Safeway. Your business deploys AI pilots everywhere. But are they going anywhere? Or are they stuck in silos? Exhausting resources? Unable to scale? Maybe you don't need hundreds of AI pilots. You need a holistic strategy.

IBM has 65,000 consultants with Gen AI expertise who can help you design, integrate, and optimize AI solutions. So you're not just deploying AI, you're scaling it across your business. Learn more at ibm.com slash consulting. IBM, let's create. And here we have a specimen from the early 2000s, a legacy investing platform. Please don't touch the exhibit, folks.

It could crash. Ready to step out of the financial history museum? At public.com, you can invest in almost everything. Stocks, bonds, options, and more. You could even put your cash to work at an industry-leading 4.1% APY. Leave your clunky, outdated platform behind. Go to public.com and fund your account in five minutes or less. Paid for by Public Investing, Inc., member FINRA, and SIPC. Full disclosures at public.com slash disclosures.

Hey guys, Ready or Not 2024 is here and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that, let's get to the show. This is the legendary New York reporter, Ross Barkan.

who has his own sub stack, the Metropolitan Report, the Metropolitan Review, also a columnist for New York Magazine, a longtime reporter here in D.C. In New York. What are you... I'm sorry, D.C. We're not in D.C. We're in New York. What are you seeing? Huge, huge showing for Zoran tonight.

Honestly, I am taken aback by how large a lead he has. What's the current numbers right now? Right now, you can look on the screen there. I've got it shared. So it's about the same. Zoran's at 43.8% with 81% of the vote in. Zoran, I feel safe saying Zoran is going to be the Democratic nominee next.

for mayor in New York City. I don't like to call elections, but I think we're getting very close to there. I don't see how Cuomo pulls this off, honestly, at this point. Maybe there's some last burst in these final 20% of votes, but he holds a really significant lead in an election where it looks like more than a million people voted, a million Democrats voted. This is a realignment election. This is what...

What do you mean by that, Ross? This means that more than any election I can remember, far more than AOC, Joe Crowley, far more than, I don't even know, some gubernatorial race somewhere, there has been a massive shift in how people vote, at least in the largest city in America, where a man who was governor for 11 years who...

had the entire political establishment quite literally behind him, who had a super PAC spending close to $30 million, is losing by a significant margin to a 33-year-old socialist state assemblyman. That is something that even the wildest...

leftist forecasts could not predict. And so I had not looked at the vote yet by neighborhood and by precinct. My assumption is with a win like this, it cannot be written off as, oh, it was low turnout. Oh, it was...

It was the gentrifiers. Oh, it was this, it was that. You have this many votes, you are getting a multiracial coalition, you are getting a working class coalition, you are getting upper class people.

and you're getting young people. So I want to dig more into the data, but right now this is a stunning, it's a massive upset. Honestly, you could call this one of the biggest upsets in American political history. I think I'm going to put it in there. Cuomo ran an awful campaign. I don't, as much as I'm going to credit Zoran, Cuomo ran an atrocious campaign, the laziest campaign I've ever seen. But...

This is still a monumental showing. Go ahead, Crystal. I was just going to ask about the attacks on Zoran, accusing him of being an anti-Semite, and what it means, this very clear rebuke of that tactic, which I think in any year now in New York City, you can tell me because you're the expert, would likely have been pretty successful, would have been a very difficult thing to overcome.

Yeah, so 10 years ago, maybe even five years ago, if you said a candidate who is pro-Palestine, openly pro-Palestine, and had been an anti-Zionist, does not identify it like that. And is a Muslim. Yeah. And is a Muslim. If you took all these things, and five years ago, you would have said, no way. And now he has run up a huge margin in a very diverse city. The Israel lobby...

Must be absolutely. I don't know what's going through their head because you don't see rebukes quite like this very often in politics. Do you remember the Jessica Ramos story from 2014? 2014. So during the 2014 Gaza war, Jessica Ramos, who has gone full circle, she went left and now she endorsed Andrew Cuomo and this and, you know, ran running and she got point four percent, I think, in the first round.

She said... There's a New York Post headline. It's one of the funniest things I've ever seen. Maybe it was even New York Daily News. It says, Lawmaker Expresses Sympathy for People in Gaza. That was the headline. No context was needed. That was a scandalous... It was understood to be a scandalous thing. She had to apologize because she wrote a Facebook post that said, like, it's sad that so many people are getting bombed and... I remember that 2014 summer very well because...

the entire democratic establishment lined up with Israel. Literally, you had massive rallies. Every so-called progressive Democrat was there cheering on Israel, cheering on the bombardment. And the shift from there has just been seismic. And we know the generational shift is happening. That has been ongoing. But now you have an election like this one. You see it's bigger. It's actually bigger. So

I am really, as someone who thinks highly of Zoran's political talent and saw him for a long time going places, to see this kind of result

And are there new results? Have new results come in? Where are we at right now? Yeah, so here, Ross, this is Adam Carlson, pollster Adam Carlson, who has said, stick a fork in it. Zoran Mamdani will win the first round of the Democratic primary for New York City mayor. So we have a pollster calling it, period. So that's it. So it's done. It's finished. Right, because he's not going to win Brad Lander's votes. Right. No, that's right.

I'm looking at this map right now. Zeron won three out of five boroughs. Wow. So, Ross, is this similar to an AOC moment where someone like this wins and then the squad comes afterwards and it spreads across the country to other races? Or do you view this more as a very unique race in a vacuum? What's funny is this race is far more impressive than...

AOC's race, but I don't know if it's going to be as influential. I don't know yet. I can see Zoran being turned into a boogeyman because he's Muslim, because he's openly socialist, even the way AOC is not. I can see Democrats around America, some excited and some feeling consternation. I don't know. 2018 was sort of the height of resistance, blue wave politics.

I actually do not know. I think Zoran is undoubtedly a leader on the left. He might be the leader, and this is all said and done, leading the largest city in America if he wins the general election. That's a really good point. I think, though, how other Democrats approach him is going to be fascinating. Some are going to be very excited to embrace it. Some are going to want to run the other way. It's going to be more complicated. But the scales this race was waged on

is like a statewide race. New York City is larger than most states in America. It's a very diverse city. It's ethnically diverse, religiously diverse, politically diverse too. It's not just all lefties. It's a very complicated city. And so for someone to win and win so convincingly to come from behind

Tomorrow, I'm sure you're going to hear a lot of explanations from sort of the center. They're going to say this, that. But I think it's falling flat because turnout was big.

I was just going to say, there's never been a Muslim mayor of New York City. There's never been a socialist. Some people have likened him to LaGuardia. Can you spell out, do you think that there are parallels with LaGuardia, who's considered one of the best mayors of New York City of all time? Yeah, I mean, there's certainly LaGuardia.

is sort of the progressive ideal of big city mayors. Now, LaGuardia wasn't as a come-from-behind candidate as Zoran was. LaGuardia was a liberal Republican running against the Democratic machine, but he'd been a popular congressman. He'd been kind of building a political operation for years. I mean, Zoran Mamdani was mostly unknown as recently as five to six months ago.

and is now poised to become the mayor of America's largest city. This is not... No offense to Chicago or to Boston or to any of these places, but this city is a massive, massive place. And so...

I think LaGuardia is a parallel. You have the sewer socialist mayors of the early 20th century. The mayors of Milwaukee were socialist. I think Zeron is coming from that good government reform model, delivering public services, delivering public goods. He's not running on ending capitalism, mostly because mayors cannot end capitalism. It's a very economics-first campaign. And I think it's a good message for all Democrats. I mean, he could take out Wall Street. That would strike a blow at capitalism.

We could make them pay their parking tickets. We could try. This is...

This brings up a question I wanted to ask, which is you often see from the primaries to the general election, the pivot to the center. How do you expect Zoran? You followed his campaign so closely. You've talked to him. How do you expect him to handle now actually going citywide and having appeal not just in a primary? And let me piggyback onto that. What do you think this does to Cuomo running in the general? I was very sure...

before this night that Cuomo was running in the general election as an independent with a massive super PAC behind him. That may still happen, but this is a convincing victory for Zoran. This is a large victory. This is not two points. This is very big. So for Cuomo, it's going to be harder to pivot into being the super PAC candidate. Now, I think Zoran is going to have to do outreach to a lot of different

different interest groups, communities that he did less of in the primary because he is going to be mayor, even though he ran against the power elite, the power elite sought to destroy him. You're mayor of New York City. You're going to have to take meetings with financiers, with developers. It will happen. So the pivot might not mean any new policy or kind of any rhetorical shift necessarily, but I think...

He's very charismatic. He likes to deal with people. He will talk to anyone. So I expect there to be significant outreach to a lot of the groups that have been most hostile to him. I think he's smart enough to try to attempt...

as big a tent as possible but look there are forces in the city that are going to want to destroy him and destroy his mayorality that is a fact and they tried with de blasio and this is much bigger than the deblazio was it was a center-left progressive democrat who came out of the political establishment this is something very different so these hedge fund finance types

They will think of ways to destroy him. Zoran might still have breakfast with them. Ross, it was partly... The ways they would destroy him. What could they do to him as mayor? Well, I... Yeah. It was partly Cuomo who was trying to destroy de Blasio. I mean, I remember the battles they were having. Yeah, so Cuomo, absolutely. I think they're going to appeal to Kathy Hochul. Hochul is a centrist Democrat. I think they're going to look to Hochul to kind of be a check on Zoran if he's mayor. Look, I think...

The super PAC failed miserably, but they can always spend more money. And when you're mayor, perhaps those attacks land differently. There's a media apparatus that is depending on what outlet, very hostile to Zoran. The New York Times and New York Post editorial boards were very anti-Zoran. So there is a sort of media establishment that is against him. Now, younger journalists and media types like him. So I think there's a generational divide where older media is...

younger media in favor. He will have a lot of challenges if he becomes mayor. And I do expect these forces to work against him. It'll be very interesting to see how he deals with that and how he works with them. Well, and Ryan and Ross, either one of you guys can reflect on this. It's very fraught for the left because anytime you have a leftist

who does a poor job of governing, it's an indictment of the entire left. If you have a centrist who fails at governing, that was just one guy. Like Eric Adams. Or Andrew Cuomo. Or Cuomo.

Also, if you have a leftist who is good at governing, like Michelle Wu in Boston, you never hear about it again. That's the interesting thing. With Zoran, everyone was like, Brandon Johnson, Brandon Johnson. I tweeted this, and I'm like, wait a second. There's a progressive Elizabeth Warren acolyte governing Boston with a 61% approval rating. Why can't Zoran be Michelle Wu? In fact, I think there are real parallels there. Zoran is a competent person. He's very bright.

I think he's going to hire very good people if he's mayor. I think he's going to attempt to sort of reformist, good government type administration because look,

It's important to do the progressive leftist policies, the things he ran on. But good government and anti-corruption is very important here because Eric Adams is so corrupt. It's going to be very important for Zoran to not be embroiled in any scandals because he will go down fast if that happens. If he can stay clear and have a very clean administration, it's going to go a long way. And I think he will. Are you sad to see... You going to jump?

Well, we're going to let Ross go. Oh, you have one more question because we're going to Andrew Epstein, communications director for joining us in a second. But you have a wrap up question for Ross. I do have a wrap up for Ross, which is aren't you going to miss Eric Adams content creation? He's a great he's a great content creator and he's running in the general election. So he's going to be content creating through November. And this is what's very this is very interesting right now because Cuomo is down so much that

Eric Adams, who is left for dead, he's going to try to be the power elite candidate. He's going to go to these financiers, the Bill Ackmans of the world, the Michael Bloomers. You know what? Well, this guy blew it. Come back to me. Support me. So look out for that, too. Interesting. Ross, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I mean, I call him from New York Magazine, my sub stack, Ross Barkin, political currents. Look on the sub stack. Subscribe to it. Lots of mayoral raiders.

race writing to come. Yeah, Ross, thanks so much. Really appreciate it.

IBM has 65,000 consultants with Gen AI expertise who can help you design, integrate, and optimize AI solutions. So you're not just deploying AI, you're scaling it across your business. Learn more at ibm.com slash consulting. IBM, let's create.

Get yours now at Safeway.

And here we have a specimen from the early 2000s, a legacy investing platform. Please don't touch the exhibit, folks. It could crash. Ready to step out of the financial history museum? At public.com, you can invest in almost everything, stocks, bonds, options, and more. You could even put your cash to work at an industry-leading 4.1% APY. Leave your clunky, outdated platform behind. Go to public.com and fund your account in five minutes or less.

Paid for by Public Investing, Inc., member FINRA, and SIPC. Full disclosures at public.com slash disclosures. We're joined now by former Congressman Jamal Bowman. Let's go. Is that Crystal Ball right there? That is. What's up, Crystal Ball? What's up, yo?

Crystal, you're great. I love your work. I love your work. Thank you. That was very kind of you. Keep doing that dope shit. I'm sweating because I've been hugging people and celebrating. Because it's 120 degrees. And it's hot as hell. So excuse me for sweating and all that. What's up, homegirl? Is that Emily? I'm sorry. Emily, what's up?

Well, I'm sure you're great too. She is. She is. Ryan, you got some questions. What's some questions? What happened? Why was he able to do this in a way that candidates in the past haven't? Well, Zoran is exceptional. He's an incredible person and an incredible candidate. He has the right values. He has the right policies. He's probably one of the best communicators we've ever seen. And he's exceptional.

Number one. Number two, his team is exceptional. They have like, I called his campaign manager like a pianist. She struck all the right chords at the right time. Team, exceptional. Three, this is New York mother effing city.

So we're talking about diversity, beautiful people, language, culture, different ideas. And so the fear mongering and the BS, it's not going to work here the same because this is New York City. So you put those things together in addition to, oh, by the way, capturing the hearts and minds of the people to the point where you've got 30,000 volunteers knocking on a million doors. And Cuomo, you know, he's trying to coast everything.

Right. And the establishment, if they know what's good for them, they take this as the resurrection of their freaking party. So we'll see, man. But for me, it came down to all of that. No matter what Mamdani got asked, whether it was about Israel, whether it was about the culture war, whether it was about what didn't matter. He brought it back to affordability in New York City and freeze and freeze the rent.

Like it always back to his message. Is he just better at that than other Democrats and progressives? Or did he have a different idea about like, no, everything is going to come back to this one thing? Yeah, I mean, when you run campaigns, you have to be disciplined. So you have to be disciplined in your movements politically and disciplined in your communication.

And he was disciplined in his communication. And that is hard to do because everybody's human. You got emotions involved, all kind of stuff. But he was very, very disciplined. So you got to be disciplined. And then secondly, again, he's an excellent communicator. So it's not just about cutting and pasting.

what they've done. It's about excellent candidates who are excellent communicators. And they have to listen, they have to be orators to a certain extent, and they have to also be disciplined. So it's all of the above. Do you think this, does this open anything up for the Democratic Party? Like, does this open any... If the Democratic Party is smart...

And I'm speaking specifically Hakeem Jeffries, Greg Meeks, Jim Clyburn, Barack Obama, Kamala Harris, Biden, all the establishment leaders, they would get 100% behind. Zoran for the general, and they would do it this week.

to set the tone because they're not going to beat MAGA trying to do old establishment shit like they've been doing the last couple of years. That's not going to work. And so they better understand. I wish they would have understood this before, but there are superstars in the Democratic Party. You know, AOC is one of them. You know, some people disagree with her. Whatever you disagree with, she's still a superstar. Now, Zoran's another one.

You've got to uplift your superstars, man. Like, you know, I'm a sports fan. You've got to let your great players make plays to win championships. You can't fucking put them on the bench and say we're going to put some 70-year-old white man in charge of some committee thinking like that's what's good for America. That shit don't make sense. I'm sorry. I don't mean to cuss. Last one from me and then you guys.

Hurry up, because I got CNN in like seven minutes. Richie Torres, doesn't this suggest that Richie Torres is vulnerable and somebody like a Jamal Bowman should run against him? Richie Torres is inconsequential. Can we stop talking about Richie Torres? Not as long as he's in Congress. Richie Torres is a white motherfucker. Let Richie Torres keep doing his bullshit, and let's keep doing our shit.

We don't care about Richard Torres, son. Richard Torres is not consequential. Please, let's not uplift him by him. We don't need Richard Torres. But Congressman, was it nice to see AIPAC take this big loss tonight? And what does that mean for other candidates in the future? Listen, I don't want to underestimate AIPAC because they have a lot of resources. So I don't really see this as a loss for them. I see it more as a win for us. And so...

You know, what I hope they begin to understand is your fear mongering, your hate, your racism, your money is not enough. You got to actually like win on the issue. You got to actually win on the issues and have good values, right? Like, yo, we not support the killing and starving of children. Like,

We're not supporting that because we're actually human beings. Yep. Right? And so for them, hopefully, actually, again, I'll put them in the Richie Torres category. Not about that. For us as progressives, we got this victory, but now we got to win a general, and now we got to show we can govern. I'm sorry. Maybe Zoran's coming? Here he comes. Not yet. Not yet. Not yet. Not yet.

All right, we got to hurry up. I'm sorry. I got CNN in like two minutes. Thank you, Congressman. I'm listening. Thank you. Thank you. That's it. Take the earbud. Peace. Love y'all. Keep doing your work. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you for having us.

So we've got Andrew Epstein here. He was, what's your official title? The Communications Director. Communications Director. How are you feeling right now? Very confident. Very excited. I mean, we found the early voting totals. We walked into today where 200,000 New Yorkers had already voted for Zara. We've won a majority of boroughs in early voting.

and not just the kind of caricature of a left-wing insurgent campaign. We are leading in the hearts of immigrant New York and South Richmond Hill and Corona. We're winning districts in the south shore of Staten Island, all over Manhattan. We're competitive in the Bronx. We are building the multi-ethnic, multilingual, multi-generational, working-class coalition that this campaign had always set at its North Star.

And that's starting to show up in the data tonight. So what do you think you did differently to overcome the problem that the left has had, which is you can do well in what I think Michael Lang was calling the commie corner. He's calling it what? The commie corner of Brooklyn. You do well among the hipsters, but breaking out beyond that,

It's what crippled Bernie Sanders' campaign. What did you do differently that broke through? The first thing I'm going to say is just correct a little or challenge some of the caricature, even of those voters that often get ascribed as the heart of...

insurgent, progressive, democratic socialist campaigns. Yes, many people who vote for democratic socialists have college degrees. Many of them have parents who have had middle class or white collar jobs. But they are also tenants in the most expensive city in the country and have struggled to

actually realize any of that sort of educational attainment or cultural capital. You can't pay your rent with cultural capital, right? You pay your rent with money and people aren't making enough. So even among the kind of like caricature of our base voters, there's a different story to be told than I think it has been. Yeah.

But we've also fanned out long beyond that. And we did it with a relentless focus on an economic agenda, rejecting all of the narratives about what this race should have or would have been about. I think a lot of candidates and pundits and consultants overcorrected from 2021.

Zoran looked straight at the crisis. In what way? What do you mean? They thought this would be a campaign about, first, about the corruption in City Hall, about the kind of law and order messaging that became dominant at the end of 2021. Even that, I think, was quite different in reality than what was said. Eric Adams said he was running to deliver both justice and safety as a burdensome former. Mm-hmm.

We said from the beginning, this is about the cost of living crisis. This is about one in four New Yorkers living in poverty. This is about the inability to pay rent, to pay your mortgage, to raise kids in the city, to retire in the city. And we developed and Zoran went out with a program that was memorable and relevant and deliverable. And even as early as December, January,

Zoran would move around the city and they wouldn't just recognize him as like, oh, I liked your video or you're really dynamic. They'd look at him and they'd go, freeze the red.

Buses fast and free, universal childcare, right? And that is both the premise of the campaign and also how we intend to win a mandate for delivering those things. We don't want people to just elect Zoran because he's a dynamic figure. We want them to elect him to actually then hold him accountable to the exact policies he has laid out from the beginning of this campaign. And the second piece is that we would not have been able to deliver that message

to voters without the largest grassroots campaign this city has ever seen. We knocked on 50,000 doors today alone in temperatures that fell over 100. We've knocked on more than 1.6 million doors since this campaign began. More than 50,000 volunteers all across the five boroughs. It's the combination of that

on an economic agenda on what we are going to do for people, not just what we have done for people, and the fact that that was being delivered by this incredible grassroots movement across the city. And the thing I've been writing about my entire career and has never really materialized is the idea that if you excite people, they will come out and vote for you. Yeah. It never quite, but it never... No.

You can't find much evidence for it until today. And if you tell them what you're going to do for them, not just who you are or what your character is. So freeze the rent, fast and fussy, like that...

Right. And now if we win, if we win this nomination, if we defeat the other candidates in the in the general, we want to be held to account for delivering those exact things that we promised. It's similar maybe to Georgia. If you remember the Georgia Senate elections, Democrats were like, if you vote for us, we'll give you two thousand dollars. Right. And give us the Senate version of that. And that worked out pretty well. People were like.

I vote for you and you'll give me $2,000? Okay. That's a good deal. There's a weird thing in some corners of the Democratic establishment, the consultant class, that promising people things is like this is cheating. It's crass. It's kind of low. Politics shouldn't be about politics. It should be about your character, how good you sound, you know?

No. You shouldn't just do Obama voice? You should give them something? You should give them something. People deserve a lot more than they have right now in this country and in this city. And politics is about organizing those people to deliver those things and make life better and easier for them.

I had a question for you about sort of the hinge points of this campaign. What were like the key markers that this campaign was growing? Were there moments that sort of made this campaign to get you to this moment here? I'm thinking about the AOC endorsement. Was there a first viral video? What were those hinge points for this campaign?

There's a couple. I mean, it was the Breaking Points bump, obviously. It was the Breaking Points interview. It was Emily and Ryan. Can I just say, I'm actually a very big fan of Breaking Points. Thank you, Andrew. This is a little surreal. That's how we got here. We would not be let in if you weren't a fan. So thank you. I have been yelled at today by press from around the world how they are not being allowed into this

Arguably small brewery. Drop site, breaking points, you're in. That's it. That's awesome. This is what it's going to be. Some of those hinge points, like what were those moments? I mean, I think one of them is one that I think Zoran went on to talk about, which was after Donald Trump was elected and everybody was in this state of shell shock.

what was this about? What happened? What do we do? We said, let's just go ask people. Like, let's go to the hearts of immigrant New York. Let's go to South Richmond Hill. Let's go to Fordham Road. Let's go to working class immigrant and black and brown neighborhoods that swung big for Trump and just ask people questions.

Why'd you do it? And we really made a sign that said, let's talk politics. This was five days after the presidential election. Stood on the corner and said, let's talk. And we heard again and again and again, I used to have more money in my pocket. Things used to be more affordable. The government is not delivering for me, but there are endless wars around the world. You know?

And obviously Trump cynically and disingenuously spoke to those things. In addition to also promising to punish his enemy and playing on a kind of cruelty as well, he also said cheaper prices end the wars, right? And those are the things that we heard all over the city, especially in those neighborhoods. And when Zoran then said...

I'm running for mayor to freeze your rent, make buses fast and free, deliver universal child care. They said, I'll come back and I'll vote for you. And we are actually seeing that tonight. How much of that? And then if you guys don't have a question, but how much of that agenda is affordability, freeze the rent, buses fast and free kind of flowed out of those conversations? So the kind of three pillars of this campaign preceded that. We launched the campaign on October 23rd, just a few blocks from here.

at a different venue in Long Island City. And we launched with those three signature promises. We have added more. We have talked about more since that. But those have been the core three, and those are the ones that people remember and literally shout at Zoran as he moves around the city. And those have always stayed the same. And I think it's that...

focus, that relentless discipline on that agenda that has popularized it around the city and allowed us to stay the course despite, as you know, a lot that's been thrown at us. A bit like Bernie with the Medicare for all thing. That's the phrase that we...

Crystal or Emily. Yeah, Emily, do you have any questions? Can you hear us okay, Andrew? Yes, absolutely. Okay, perfect. I just wanted to ask you a little bit about all the attacks on Zoran as, you know, anti-Semitic and how you guys thought about those attacks and also how he coped with them because I know we saw a moment where he got emotional on the campaign trail in response to a question about that. It's painful. You know, it's really painful, you know,

to have those accusations, terrible, terrible accusations leveled at you when they're not true. And they've never been true and they've never been who he is or what the spirit of this campaign has been about, which has always, in all of his politics, has been about universality. Every single person deserves the same thing. Freedom, justice, dignity, peace, everybody, no exception.

That's been what's motivated his politics and to have that twisted into bigotry or hate against any group of people, to have that and then to be relentlessly hounded about a very narrow set of questions when he has spent the whole campaign focused on lowering costs, delivering affordability, making the city work better for working people is...

And he has had moments of vulnerability where he's also said, I haven't been more vulnerable because of what happens, especially to people of color, to Muslims, when they express emotion. It can be twisted in a different way. He had that authentic moment, the genuine moment of profound sadness about that. But...

But he's incredibly resilient and has spent and just every single time gotten back on why we're running this campaign. And that has broken through. It really has. You know, I mean, so please.

Oh, no, I was going to say, actually, now it looks like you guys are in a position, remarkably, to be talking to New Yorkers who are voting outside of just the Democratic primary. And if that's the case, people have been sort of relentlessly battered with that message from the Cuomo campaign and also the message that businesses are about to flee en masse and the city is going to collapse if Zoran becomes mayor. So as you guys kind of

may have to broaden your messaging now to people outside the Dunn primary. What is your message to people who have heard all of the scaremongering about what could happen under a Mamdani mayorship?

You know, one thing Zorana said throughout this whole campaign is there is not an ideological majority in New York City. But there is a majority of people who feel disillusioned with the political system and alienated from the economic system and feel the strain of the cost of living crisis. And so I actually, I don't think the message really changes. I think it continues to be this...

relentless economic agenda, this focus on cost of living, on our core policies, we're already seeing that resonate beyond registered Democrats. And I think Zoran, in the same way that Bernie Sanders is one of the most popular politicians in America, outside of... Can you just call it? It's Brad Lander. Let me move. Okay.

It looks like there's a little bit of chaos. It seems like is Brad Lander taking the stage? And Griffin, can you thank Andrew for us? We don't have audio yet on this, but Emily, what are you saying? Can you thank Andrew for us? Of course, yeah. Thank you, Andrew. My pleasure. This has been such a pleasure and honor. I can't wait to listen to the pod. We'd love to have you back sometime. My pleasure, anytime. Thank you.

Whether you're hitting the gym, powering through your workday, or tackling your seemingly endless to-do list, Don't Quit is your go-to drink for peak performance and recovery. With 33 grams of protein, only 1 gram of sugar, and no artificial flavors or sweeteners, Don't Quit provides the fast, easy, on-the-go nutrition you need to power through your busiest days. It also features a smooth, creamy, next-level taste.

Don't let the wrong ingredients knock you down. Fuel your perseverance with Don't Quit Clean Protein Drinks. Get yours now at Safeway. You know what's great about your investment account with the big guys? It's actually a time machine. Log in and Zoom. Welcome back to 1999.

The best AI assistant isn't one that knows the whole world. It's one that knows your world.

A custom assistant built on Watson X with IBM's Granite models can leverage your trusted data, be easily trained on your workflows, and integrate with your apps. It can be tuned to do just what you need, because the more AI knows about your world, the more it can help you do. Learn more at IBM.com slash productivity. IBM. Let's create.

Guys, thanks so much for everyone who joined the live watch party of the Zoran versus Cuomo election last night. We're supposed to during that live stream get to covering a bunch of the new details regarding Trump and Iran and the leaked intel report that actually the attacks on the Iranian nuclear sites were not fully successful.

But we were so busy covering the election results that came out much faster than anyone predicted because of the margin, the extraordinary margin of Zoran's victory. Didn't actually get to it, but that's okay because we've got some new comments from Trump out this morning that I want to go ahead and bring to you. So let me go ahead and put this up on the screen. So as I just said, Trump is raging.

that a leaked Intel report came out in multiple news outlets indicating that contrary to what he had said, those Iranian nuclear sites that we dropped dropped massive bombs on, they were not actually completely destroyed. So he is very upset and he is disputing, by the way, that Intel and we'll get to more on that later. But just take a listen to what he is saying about the news outlets that revealed this information.

You did very bad, demeaned by fake news CNN, which is back there, believe it or not, wasting time, wasting it. Nobody's watching them. So they just wasted a lot of time, wasting my time. And the New York Times, they put out a story that, well, maybe they were hit, but it wasn't bad. Well, it was so bad that they ended the war. It ended the war.

Somebody said in a certain way that it was so devastating, actually. If you look at Hiroshima, if you look at Nagasaki, you know, that ended a war, too. This ended a war in a different way, but it was so devastating. Also, they have out of Dubai just came that Iran's foreign ministry spokesman, this is Iran's foreign ministry, says it's near. Its nuclear installations were very badly damaged by Iran.

the American strike. So what bothered me about these reports with fake reports put out by the New York Times, failing, I go out the failing New York Times because it's doing terribly. Without me, it would be doing no business at all. But and by fake news, CNN and MSDNC, all of these terrible people, you know, they have no credibility.

You know, when I started, they were at 94% credibility. The media now it's at 16%. And I'm very proud of it because I've exposed it for what it is. But when I saw them starting to question the

The caliber of the attack wasn't bad. Well, it was really bad. It was devastating. They obliterated. Like you can't get into the tunnels. They just put that over. That just came out. They can't. There's nothing. There's no way you can even get down. The whole thing is collapsed in a disaster. And I think.

So there you go. That's what Trump is saying about all of this. And this is a pretty extraordinary development as well. Let me put this up on the screen here. So our own Intel, this is the New York Times report that Trump is referring to here. There was clearly a leak from the Intel community saying preliminary classified findings indicate the attack sealed off the entrances to two facilities, but did not

collapse their underground buildings. I'll read you a little bit of this. Preliminary classified U.S. report says the American bombing of three nuclear sites in Iran set back the country's nuclear program by only a few months, according to officials familiar with the findings. The strike sealed off the entrances to two of the facilities did not collapse their underground buildings before the attack. U.S. intel agencies had said if Iran tried to rush to making a bomb, it would take about three months after the U.S. bombing run and days of attacks by the Israeli Air Force. The report by the Defense Intelligence Agency now estimated the program had

been delayed, but by less than six months. That report also said much of Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium was moved before the strikes, which destroyed little of the nuclear material. Iran may have moved some of that to secret locations. I suspect basically

you know, based on publicly available satellite information and other analyses of people who know a lot more about this than I do, I suspect that assessment is in fact correct. But also I strongly suspect that the people who are leaking this assessment of saying like, what are you talking about? You obliterated these nuclear sites. You didn't, you did, you barely accomplished anything. They moved all of the enriched uranium beforehand and,

because they had such a heads up here and you didn't even destroy these facilities. And oh, by the way, there are other facilities. So, yeah, you've set them back a little bit, but ultimately not that much. I am quite sure the people who are leaking that assessment are people who want us to go back to war directly with Iran. So the information they're putting out, which again,

I believe is accurate based on what we know publicly of what we were and weren't able to accomplish with these bombs that we foolishly dropped on Iran. They're trying to say, listen, you're claiming victory. You're claiming that Iran can no longer pursue a nuclear weapon. You, President Trump, have laid down foolishly again a red line saying Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.

You didn't accomplish that. So they're trying to push a continued logic to war. Now, this is all Trump's own fault because we've all been saying, you know, myself, Sagar, Emily Ryan, like Dave Smith, all, you know, plenty of people who and plenty of people probably within his own administration as well. And the Steve Bannon's and the Tucker Carlson's the world have been saying, no, if you actually want to try to prevent a

Iran from racing towards nuclear weapon, you've just done the worst possible thing. The best thing you could have done is remain in diplomatic negotiations and be able to pursue an actual diplomatic settlement like, oh, the JCPOA that Trump got out of in his first administration. So by bombing them, he has created more logic for the

for them now to pursue a nuclear weapon and made that much more likely. So he has given ammunition to the hawks and the neocons who want to keep this war going and want us to fully commit to total war with Iran. So this leaked intel report

This is the next sort of salvo from that group. Again, I think it's accurate. I think he's you know, I think he's lying when he says this is these were completely obliterated and is just trying to be able to claim a victory. And so what they're trying to do is give ammunition to those who say, no, you did not. You did not destroy the nuclear weapons program. You yourself said they can't have a nuke. So that would mean you have to go back to bombing them. You have to reengage in.

in this conflict and, you know, and get more fully invested in directly using bombs, destroying the Iranian capability because Trump himself really blew up the possibility of a diplomatic, very likely destroy the possibility of a diplomatic resolution at this time. So the next move from Trump, and this is, again, absolutely extraordinary. This is from Barack Ravid.

He says the White House sent to reporters a statement by the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission that claims U.S. strike on Fordow destroyed the site's critical infrastructure, rendered the enrichment facility inoperable. Ravid goes on accurately to state.

This is a highly unusual case of the White House releasing a statement on behalf of an Israeli security agency. The statement was not distributed to the Israeli or international media by the prime minister's office, which is responsible for the Atomic Energy Commission's press. So.

Just like the U.S. Trump relied on the Israeli assessment that the Iranians were actively pursuing a nuclear weapon, discarding our own intelligence community, discarding the assessment of the IAEA, the international body that was monitoring this. He relied on the Israelis convincing him, no, no, no, I promise they were pursuing a nuclear weapon. That's why you have to bomb. Now you have.

the president sharing not our own intelligence community assessment of what happened here. Again, the Israelis assessment of what happened here. Just absolutely extraordinary and so unusual what is going on. And the same time, you know, there's a lot of indications that the Iranians were able to strike significant blows against Israel. Let me just show you a little bit of the Iranians after this

quote unquote, ceasefire, however long this holds or whatever it means at the moment. There are a lot of Iranians who were out in the street. You can see them celebrating here because, you know, if you think about it from their perspective, they took much more very likely, although it's kind of difficult to tell. They took much more significant blows, certainly in terms of the death toll and the infrastructure toll than the Israelis did.

But the Israelis goal was regime collapse, a regime change. Israelis goal was to destroy the Iranian nation. The Iranian nation was not destroyed. The government is probably actually stronger and enjoys more credibility based on the reports we've gotten with the people. So from that perspective, the Iranians feel like they've achieved a success because they were able to exact enough damage on the Israelis that the Israelis kind of had to take this ceasefire and at least take a break.

Now, you know, I'm very skeptical that this is going to be an end to the conflict because I don't think Bibi Netanyahu woke up today and was like, you know what? Iran can let's live and let live. My multi-decade goal of destroying this country. I'm all finished with that. I'm all through. And you can see that from the, you know, the leaked intel report is an indication that.

that the people who want more war, they are still going to work and they have some tools and some leverage because of the corner Trump has backed himself into in a lot of respects. They still have some leverage to try to effectuate their outcome of total and complete war. So the Iranians feel actually that they have something to celebrate right now because they feel like they were able to do enough damage to Israel that

That's what created the compelling reason for Israel to need to regroup. We had the reports that there were low on interceptors. You know, the military sensors really kicked in hard to keep us from seeing how widespread the extent of the damage was. But let me go ahead and show you this. President Trump himself admitted that.

that the Israelis took quite significant damage. Let me go ahead and play this for you as well. This is also from that NATO summit. Look, you know, they've got a country and they've got oil and they're very smart people and they can come back. Israel got hit very hard, especially the last couple of days. Israel was hit really hard. Those ballistic missiles, boy, they took out a lot of buildings and they've been great. Bibi Netanyahu should be very proud of himself.

And they've really been great. So he says there that Israel was hit very hard. Steve Bannon echoed a similar sentiment and explained, and I think he's right about this, explained that part of the reason for the ceasefire right now is that Israel needed to be saved in his words. Let me go ahead and play for you what he had to say. Yesterday they took the ceasefire was as much to save Israel. That's the hidden story here.

They bit off way more than they could chew. They were played out as far – yesterday was a brutal day for the citizens of Israel. It took horrible incomings, particularly in Tel Aviv and I guess Beersheba also. They needed this because they were running a defensive ammunition. And President Trump stepped in there with the help of Qatar. Look, we've come a long way since –

seven years ago when Qatar would not work with us on stopping the financing of Islamic terrorism, the financing of it. And they've come a long way. They've stepped in the middle of the situation in Gaza, and they stepped in the middle here, and President Trump is going to have his way to praise them. And he's not going to have his way to praise Netanyahu's government, which I think is getting to be an issue

So pretty interesting comments there. He said, you know, the ceasefire really was to save the Israelis. Very counter the media narrative. But as I said, I think there's something to that. That's not to say that the especially the initial Israeli onslaught in Iran was quite devastating. You know, the number of officials who they were able to assassinate, you know, the amount of infrastructure they were able to destroy. But.

It's also very clear they were depending on they could not accomplish their objectives and they still can't accomplish their objectives, which are regime collapse.

without the assistance of the United States. And so we were reading all these reports from Wall Street Journal and other places that as this war went on, it was a race between, OK, how many missiles do the Iranians have and how many interceptors do the Israelis have? And some of the tension between Israelis was spilling out into the public. The

The at the amount of damage that the Iranians were able to, you know, were able to effectuate within Israel. You had citizens who, of course, are, you know, having to go into underground bunkers every day. Life is completely disrupted. The airport is completely closed. And so I do think that the reason why Israel was willing to accept the ceasefire at this point was a chance to regroup. Now, that doesn't mean they're done far from it.

I guarantee you Netanyahu is scheming right now how to get this thing kicked off again. And those are incredibly powerful, powerful forces. We also don't have a track record of Donald Trump in any way consistently standing up to Israel at all. In fact, I think you should continue to be, you know, maybe he's earnest in his frustration with Netanyahu. We don't know. But it's also possible that this is also theater because we've seen theater deployed in the service of furthering this conflict directly from Donald Trump.

before. So in any case, where we are this morning is Trump is very upset at the leaks from the neocons about the assessment that the nuclear sites were not destroyed. He is using Israeli intelligence to try to assert that, no, no, no, it accomplished the goals. But because of the way that he has backed himself into a corner of destroying his own diplomatic negotiations and

Putting in place a hard red line of Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. He's left himself vulnerable to these sorts of, you know, these sorts of manipulations to try to get this thing kicked off again. And that's assuming that he himself doesn't share the goal of the Israelis of getting back into this conflict after some sort of a pause, which I don't think we can put off the table either.

The last piece that I wanted to share with you is we're getting the first polling in about how popular Trump bombing these Iranian nuclear sites ultimately was. I will tell you with the Republican base and specifically with the MAGA base, it's now that Trump did it. It's very popular. Ninety four percent of MAGA aligned Republicans say they support the strikes, even though before Trump did it, the numbers were not that great.

For, you know, they were still like kind of favorable, but pretty mixed. Once Trump did it, you now have 94 percent of self-identified MAGA Republicans who are like, oh, Trump did it. So it must be great. Broadly, though, the public much less supportive, you know,

And let me go ahead and play this Harry Enten clip, and then I'll tell you a little bit on the other side why I think this is actually pretty extraordinary that these numbers even initially are as low as they are. Yeah, these things are moving quite quickly, but these are initial readings. And I will say from a historical perspective, I am surprised that the net of

approval rating is so low on these strikes and it's in two different polls. It's our CNN SSRS poll, 12 points underwater, one thumbs down. How about the Reuters Ipsos poll? Look at that, the exact same reading, minus nine points underwater, two thumbs down. And why am I so surprised from a historical perspective? Because usually airstrikes rate fairly highly. What are we talking about? Let's go back through the time machine. Net approval of US airstrikes, you see it here, Iran, minus 11 points underwater on the average. Compare it to ISIS back in 2014,

58 points in the positive direction. So this is a nearly 70 point difference. That is why I'm so surprised from a historical perspective, because normally these airstrikes rate quite highly. But this one, you go back through history, it rates as the lowest that I could possibly find on the historical record. And that is exactly why it surprised me as well and why I was

wrong, somewhat wrong in my assessment of what the popularity of these attacks would be. I was concerned that actually, you know, among certainly I knew the Republicans would support it and they do. But I thought some significant chunk of independents would as well, simply because throughout my life,

People in this country have supported bombing other nations, and that's just the unfortunate fact. The propaganda machine ramps up. People get the sense that this is going to be mission accomplished, that it's going to be quick and easy and painless, and we're going to accomplish whatever goal we're being sold at the time. And so at least in the very early days, there are usually, as Harry Enten points out there, there's usually pretty broad support. The fact that there's not really is so noteworthy, so incredibly noteworthy. I would attribute it to a few things.

Number one, there was so little effort at a propaganda campaign buildup. You know, it just was like all of a sudden we're supposed to be kind of out of nowhere, convinced that what was going on in Iran was existential over the assessment that we got from our own intel community just a few months ago. I mean, I do think that that testimony from Tulsi Gabbard, which was played everywhere, where she's saying, no, very clearly, no, our assessment continues to be they're not pursuing a nuclear weapon.

I think that really undercut the very haphazard and unimpressive propaganda efforts that came out of the Trump administration to try to justify this. So I think that's part of it. I think the fact that you now have this much more robust independent media landscape is another significant part of it where it's just –

you know, if you're going to manufacture consent, you're going to have to do a lot more work than they were ultimately able to do. And so people just weren't really buying that this was necessary right now, that this was going to accomplish the goals, that this wasn't going to create incredible, tremendous risks.

And then a third factor is just, you know, most of the country is very wary, understandably so, of getting involved in some new Middle Eastern quagmire regime change disastrous boondoggle. So maybe most of the elites in this country haven't learned the lesson. But according to these numbers, the majority of independents and Democrats certainly have learned the lesson and are not afraid.

willing to gamble the way that President Trump really did with these strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. Now,

Where we are today, there's a possibility that things quiet down for a while. Again, I'm very skeptical and I know Sagar is also very skeptical that this is the end and it's wrapped up in peace forever, as Trump says. But we're also very fortunate that the Iranians decided in response to our dropping these dozen giant bunker buster 30,000 pound bombs on one of their key nuclear sites and attacking two other key nuclear sites.

that their response to that was so muted and so theatrical. You know, it was just meant to be a show of, hey, we could get you in Qatar at your largest airbase in the region, but we're going to tell you in advance to make sure there's no damage so that there's a possibility of some sort of a de-escalatory attack

Now, I think the logic of the Israelis, again, in agreeing to this ceasefire in this moment is not because they want the war to be over. It's not because they feel they've accomplished their objectives. Their objectives are regime change or regime collapse that obviously hasn't been achieved.

It's because they needed to regroup, as Trump himself seems to indicate, as Steve Bannon says there. Israel needed a chance to regroup so that they could continue a sort of phased approach. But their desire to destroy this regime has not ebbed. They still continue to be incredibly powerful within this administration, as we saw in the first Trump administration as well. And so, you know, my fear is that right now this is far from over. There are also some reports

And I want to see this confirmed in more places that the Iranians, the Iranians, oh, my God, the Iranians are withdrawing from the nuclear oversight regime, which I mean, many I'm not the only one to John Mearsheimer tell you this. Jeffrey Sachs will tell you this. Anyone who is looking at this from an objective perspective will tell you that what we have done.

has created all the incentive in the world for the Iranians now to develop nuclear weapons outside of an inspections regime in the same way, by the way, that the Israelis did and will create a similar logic for other countries around the world. So we already have some early indications that that's exactly the direction that they're moving in. So that's what I've got for you this morning. So I

Sagar and I will be back with a regular full show tomorrow. We've already got some fantastic guests booked. I'm excited to bring that to you. We'll have a full breakdown of all the latest with regard to Iran. Sure, we'll continue to cover. There's been a delicious meltdown over Zoran's victory, both from the Morning Joe types who are –

real hard coping on the Democratic side. The Republicans are losing their minds. You've got these psycho groups, Zionist groups like Beitar Worldwide is saying that the Jews must evacuate New York City. I mean, based on the margin of victory here, I'm quite confident that Zoran probably won Jewish voters overall in New York City. So anyway, there's so much to talk about with that race, continuing to talk about what it's going to mean for the future and what the reaction has been. So I'm sure we'll have more of that

for you as well. In the meantime, guys, enjoy your day. Thank you for your support and I will see you soon.

Whether you're hitting the gym, powering through your workday, or tackling your seemingly endless to-do list, Don't Quit is your go-to drink for peak performance and recovery. With 33 grams of protein, only 1 gram of sugar, and no artificial flavors or sweeteners, Don't Quit provides the fast, easy, on-the-go nutrition you need to power through your busiest days. It also features a smooth, creamy, next-level taste.

Don't let the wrong ingredients knock you down. Fuel your perseverance with Don't Quit Clean Protein Drinks. Get yours now at Safeway. You know what's great about your investment account with the big guys? It's actually a time machine. Log in and Zoom. Welcome back to 1999.

It's time for an upgrade. At public.com, you can invest in almost everything. Stocks, bonds, options, and more. You could even put your cash to work at an industry-leading 4.1% APY. Leave your clunky, outdated platform behind at public.com. Go to public.com and fund your account in five minutes or less. Paid for by Public Investing, Inc., member FINRA, and SIPC. Full disclosures at public.com slash disclosures.

Career changers, including veterans and active duty service members. Your transition starts here. Go from GI to IT in a matter of months. Become a certified cyber warrior with training at My Computer Career. Cyber security specialists are in high demand, offering IT pros great opportunities and a rewarding lifestyle while protecting our people, liberty, and treasured institutions from cyber threats. Deploy your career in IT today. Learn more at mycomputercareer.edu slash CWP.

Skillbridge and other VA benefits are available to those who qualify. This is an iHeart Podcast.