Jon Stewart: So, ladies and gentlemen, we have the distinct honor and pleasure today to be welcoming the mayor of the great, great city. That is the one that never sleeps, the biggest apple of them all: New York City. Mayor Zohran Mamdani is joining us. Mayor, Mr. Mayor, your honor. His honor, your honor. How are you?
Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani: I'm doing well, man. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be back.
Stewart: Are you still feeling the afterglow, the joy of the halo effect of the New York Knickerbockers' incredible run to the championship this year? Do you still feel it?
Mayor Mamdani: One hundred percent. It is - "Knicks in five" has become a greeting in New York City.
Stewart: It's the most beautiful - one question, sir, at City Hall, at the end of the Canyon of Heroes, in the parade, there was a great deal of Knicks memorabilia that was hung up around in decorative fashion. Giant Knicks caricatures, Knicks jerseys. I guess my question to you is, may I have those?
Mayor Mamdani: You know what? I'll ask the team where they are.
Stewart: I don't know if there's a shed behind City Hall where they keep them, but they're still there.
Mayor Mamdani: I will get back to you, brother.
Stewart: I appreciate it. How are you feeling now? So, you have been the mayor for - you started January 1, it is now July - seven months. What's the reality of being the mayor? Is - how does it feel after - what is the difference between the rhetoric of running for mayor and the reality of governing as mayor?
Mayor Mamdani: Yeah, I think there's often a lot made of a campaign as if it is easier and a governing as if is a harder experience. I think both are challenging. I think what is lost though is that governing comes with the opportunity to deliver. When you're campaigning, you're asking people to believe; you're asking them to put their trust into a politics that's often disappointed them. And when you're governing, you can earn their trust by what you deliver. And so, it is much easier to have a conversation about this vision today when we've been able to pave 175,000 potholes; put the city on a path to universal childcare; win more than $60 million for tenants whose landlords made negligence into a business model. When we have that conversation now, you can point to what these last six months have looked like under democratic socialist principles. When you have it during the campaign-
Stewart: Sir, we're being recorded right now. What are you doing throwing in the D - you're throwing in the S word? Don't throw in the S word.
Mayor Mamdani: Apologies, I didn't mean to use a slur live on this podcast.
Stewart: Son of a [].
Mayor Mamdani: I just wanted to make sure that we're going to be together in the cell when we're all rounded up.
Stewart: Alright, fair enough.
Mayor Mamdani: You and me.
Stewart: But you - so that's the interesting thing. There's a caricature of democratic socialism and there's a reality of democratic socialism and then there is just governing that has very little to do with democratic socialism. So, can we tease those apart a little bit? What would - in your mind, what is governing by the principles of democratic socialist? What does that entail?
Mayor Mamdani: It means making the choice every day to fight for working people. It means that you believe that everyone in your city deserves to live a dignified life, no matter how much money is in their pocket. And what we've found is that this city is many things all at once. It's both the wealthiest city in the wealthiest country in the history of the world. And it's also a city where one in four people are living in poverty. And so, that you'll often hear the phrase, "Don't sweat the small stuff." To me, being a democratic socialist is also sweating the small.
Because for a lot of New Yorkers, it's those things that are the measure of how difficult or easy their life is, whether they're able not only to pay for their rent or their childcare, but whether they are able to also rely on City government to get around their city, to breathe in their city, to experience life in their city. And I think that we've forgotten that at the heart of what we want to deliver is not just the existence of a public sector, it's also the excellence and efficiency of a public sector. I want New Yorkers to be choosing this City government every single day as opposed to feeling as if they're subjected to it.
Stewart: See that, to me though - that statement, if a Democrat was running, or even a Republican to some extent, that feels like something that everybody would say, "We want everybody to be able to thrive in this city." Is there something about democratic socialism as a theory that brings those to bear? In other words, is it about the safety net? Is it about, you know - the caricature is "You're a communist who's going to nationalize the industries. You're going to take over Goldman Sachs."
Mayor Mamdani: I'm actually coming on this podcast to let you know that it's now my podcast.
Stewart: Wait, what?
Mayor Mamdani: I'm sorry, brother.
Stewart: But here's the thing. Here's what I love about that. You walk the walk. That's the important thing. Somebody had to seize the means of this production.
Mayor Mamdani: It was this specific production that I was talking about.
Stewart: Wait, I'm doing this in Jersey. I'm out of your jurisdiction, man. I'm not even around there.
Mayor Mamdani: You were doing this in Jersey.
Stewart: Wait, you're moving me?
Mayor Mamdani: I'm moving you.
Stewart: [Inaudible] Stalin.
Mayor Mamdani: I think that to your point, there are a lot of politicians of a variety of ideologies who will speak about housing as a human right, for example, or health care as a human right or they'll talk about dignity. I think where the rubber meets the road is, are you actually willing to ensure that which no one should be priced out of, no one is in fact priced out of it? So, I'll give you an example: childcare. It's hard to find a politician who'll say childcare should be more expensive. They'll generally say it should be more affordable, right?
Stewart: Right.
Mayor Mamdani: But are you willing to take the step to provide childcare as something that is guaranteed to New Yorkers regardless of how much money they have in their pocket? So, one of our focuses has been universal childcare. Take the successes of free childcare for three-year-olds of Pre-K and extend it to two-year-olds. Now, it's not just as simple as saying, "Oh, yes, I want to do that." You have to also be willing to fight for the revenue you need to do that. And so, [on] day eight of our administration, we secure an agreement with the governor for $1.2 billion that unlocks free childcare for two-year-olds for the first time in New York City. And our dream is that this will extend not only to the 2,000 two-year-olds this year or the 12,000 next year, but every single two-year-old by the end of four years. And it's not just a dream, it's a promise and it's commitment.
Stewart: Right, so in some respects, is it about the priorities that you have are about quality of life for those even if they don't make? Because universal Pre-K or universal childcare - those kinds of things, you know, de Blasio might have brought that up or, you know, it's not something that - I think that the caricature of democratic socialism is that you're a different - it's a completely different ideology than those that we have seen, or is it perhaps just a different nomenclature.
Mayor Mamdani: I think part of it is that words have lost their meaning over time.
Stewart: There we go. This is where I'm getting to is, is it really about the label?
Mayor Mamdani: I think if you go back to some of the Democrats that we most admire - FDR, La Guardia - you will see a lot of democratic socialist principles in their vision. And if you think about a lot what we've come to accept as just the facts of life across our country, a lot it is also still driven by democratic socialist principle. Now, if today, you and I were to introduce the idea of a building that lends out books for free. We would be slandered in the same way that so many new ideas are slandering today, and yet that's the library. And the same thing with the Fire Department [and] the same with Public Schools.
And it's to say that a lot of politics has been a debate about who deserves what, and I would prefer a politics that debates how we can deliver that to everyone. And to deliver it at a standard that is so good that no matter how much money in your pocket, you opt for that. And I think, at its best, the New York City subway is an illustration where no matter how much money you have in your pocket, you understand that if you want to get from point A to point B, [the] best way is to get on that train.
Stewart: That's for sure. So, to that end, was there ever a consideration for you because of the priorities that you have, what I take on the label of democratic socialist, knowing that it comes with a lot of other baggage that may not be helpful to you in your pursuit of what are - what was it about what they were saying that drew you - as opposed to running as the things that you're suggesting to me, if you ran on these as a Democrat - it's not I wouldn't say like, "What? What the heck?" You know, it sounds very much in line with that. It sounds like what you're doing differently is you're being competent or ruthlessly pursuing those goals and chipping away at them. So, why take that on?
Mayor Mamdani: You know, I want to be honest with people about what it is that I actually believe in. And I also think what we've seen over many decades is a fearmongering in our politics where anything that we disagree with or anything that portends significant change is described as if it is socialist, you know, at times as if, as if is communist. And the intent of that is to end the conversation there and then. And it especially happens when you're talking about something that would disproportionately benefit working people. And I think it's important because we keep speaking about some of the inequities and inequalities that we see in our city as if they are bugs in a system as opposed to features in them. And if we truly want to reckon with one in four New Yorkers being in poverty, we have to also ask ourselves about if it's important to change the framework with which what we determine success to be. And also, you know, being a Muslim democratic socialist, I thought it would be pretty straightforward.
Stewart: You just thought like, what if I label myself something that scares people the most, "I'm a Muslim democratic socialist, and I'd like to run your public transportation system." So, is there in some regard, is this a is the idea being if I can show myself to be a competent steward of the day-to-day functioning? Of maybe certainly one of the most complex city systems in the world. I can demystify. I can maybe take some of the fear out of what it means to be a - I can take these labels that are so loaded with fear, and I can maybe take a little bit of that caricature out of them.
Mayor Mamdani: I mean, my true goal is to deliver for the people of the city, and if in the process of doing so, we can demystify so much of the fear that has become the norm in our politics, I welcome it. And I also think that for a long time, we've discussed democratic socialism as an intellectual debate. We haven't been able to point to what examples look like of it delivering for people. And now we have that just over six months and I think that - it's an incredibly exciting opportunity because there's a reason so many New Yorkers lost faith in City government and the political impulse of lecturing someone as to why they should believe and why they should vote, as opposed to asking yourself, why is it that they lost that faith?
When you're governing, you have the opportunity to not just listen, but also then respond in action, not in words. And I think that what's been so exciting is to see that New Yorkers understand that some things will take time and some things that can be done immediately. And if you're able to show that you're doing both, then it is exactly the kind of extension of an arm to say, would you like to join this movement? And I've just heard from so many that they would.
Stewart: And it is, you know, it's such an interesting thing because when you talk about the demonization, you know, I always think people always say, "Oh, that's anti-capitalist." And in some respects, I think it's the opposite, you know, capitalism, I think would have faced a much stiffer opposition from communism and socialism in the 1930s, if the New Deal hadn't been instituted. If we hadn't had created a more robust social safety net, revolution would have been much more on the table without Social Security, without better housing for people. And I wonder if that's similar today, that in some respects, what you're doing is actually a reform movement for capitalism to some extent.
Mayor Mamdani: I mean, some of the things that you've said, Social Security, if you go back and see how that was treated when it was first introduced, right, it was described as the "Sovietization of America." And now it is thought of as one of the most American things that we could ever be talking about. And I think about, you know, when you go around New York City and you see these monuments to FDR, to the New Deal, you know you go to Four Freedoms Park on Roosevelt Island - it is a sad reflection of the state of the Democratic Party that a lot of what is said in those programs and those visions today would sound as if it [were] a bridge too ambitious for the party that we belong to.
Stewart: Right.
Mayor Mamdani: And I think that's part of my hope as a Democrat is how do we ensure that New Yorkers and Americans don't have to look to the history books to be able to find a party platform that speaks about. A freedom from want and a freedom from fear.
Stewart: I think it's a question of also how you're gonna get there because I think, you know, if I may and you tell me if you think this is wrong, as I watch you pursuing your agenda it doesn't seem radical it, it seems workman-like. You know, when you talked about universal childcare, you didn't seize the means of childcare and create a "Soviet-style system" where they all get the same little uniform and they all come in at four years old and they you know pray to the gods of socialism. You didn't even really raise - you went to the governor, and she was able to help, you know, fill in a little bit of the financial gap. You created a pied-à-terre tax for, you know, second homes of the over $5 million in value, is that correct? Like these are not particularly radical reinventions. It feels like smart prioritizing, if I may.
Mayor Mamdani: Well, I think that a lot of it comes back to how do you judge the success of your work? And I think you have to judge it by what you deliver. And one of the cornerstones of our campaign was universal childcare, given the fact that in a cost-of-living crisis, childcare is the second highest expense for families in New York City. But we're talking about $20,000 a year for a single child. And in this city, you have to make $334,000 to be able to afford that kind of expense. And to me, it is, how do we move as quickly as possible?
Stewart: Is that all over the city, or is that - does that vary in boroughs or that's the average for all five boroughs?
Mayor Mamdani: That's the measure across the five boroughs that that's how much your family would have to earn to be able to absorb that kind of a hit. And people earn less than that and they find ways to make it work, but not without it being to the detriment of themselves in their financial situation. And I think that, you know, I never thought that I'd be the guy making it easier for aunties at the family function to pressure you into having a kid, but here we are.
Stewart: So, in some respects, Zohran Mamdani's mayoralty has been an aphrodisiac for New Yorkers to begin to repopulate this grand experiment.
Mayor Mamdani: I can see the attack ads now.
Stewart: Exactly. "Zohran Mamdani, the aphrodisiac." So, what about what you're trying to deliver [that] has been slightly more complicated than what you thought it would be? We can walk through it. Housing. So, you were able to get through a rent freeze, a two-year rent freeze. Yes?
Mayor Mamdani: Yeah, the independent Rent Guidelines Board established a two-year rent freeze for over 2 million New Yorkers who live in rent-stabilized housing.
Stewart: Right. And again, not when they - when people immediately cried communism, it's not unprecedented. The two years is unprecedented, but this has been done for one year by others.
Mayor Mamdani: Yeah, they have done it in the past, yeah.
Stewart: What about in terms of housing? What have you been able to deliver? What's frustrated you? What's the next step?
Mayor Mamdani: Well, I think I'll just take a step back to tell you, Jon, that the most challenging thing overall was when I came into this position, I expected that it would be difficult in terms of the finances of the city, especially given my predecessor's approach to those finances. What I did not expect was $12 billion worth of difficulty.
Stewart: You're the fiscal conservative, like even with the City Council you've got uh, uh, what is her name? Menin? Sue Menin?
Mayor Mamdani: Julie Menin, Speaker Julie Menin.
Stewart: Julie Menin. Upper East Side - wealthy Upper East side lady, we all know the caricature, you know, they don't pick up after their dogs, you know what I'm talking about. You're the fiscal conservative in that relationship. Did that surprise you?
Mayor Mamdani: You know - it is - when I've talked about wanting City government to be remade in the image of a struggling New Yorker, one aspect of it is that we be as careful with our money as working New Yorkers are with theirs. And one of the many reasons for that is that this is their money. And when we're looking at - when we looked at that fiscal deficit, what was hard - one of many things that was challenging about it, is that you couldn't blame it on an external reality. You couldn't say, "Oh, it's the fiscal crisis of 2008. Everyone can see what's going on across the country and the world."
This was, in many ways, purely of City Halls doing. It was mismanagement and under budgeting, and it had been building for years. And I think that one of my goals is how do we right the ship, not just in a 12-month interval, but frankly on a medium- and long-term. Because if you're just trying to survive on a calendar year basis, you're in many ways going to have to rob Peter to pay Paul. And eventually that bill is gonna come due. And the thing that I'm looking forward to next year is that we're not gonna have to inherit a $12 billion fiscal deficit, no matter how tough it is.
Stewart: Right, right. Although that's - what do you do with - there are certain things that, they sort of call them gimmicks as you start to balance the budget and a lot of the mayors have done that. They're sort of these things that they pass along to other - I think Bloomberg was one of the ones who did it. How does straightening out that without pulling from different pension funds that are going to, you know, mature in 2032? How do you begin to straighten those finances out without having to use kinds of, you know, it's in some ways it's like you're the GM of a football team that's got a salary cut, you don't want to go into that second apron for New York City, man. And so, how do you begin to do that in a manner that is more objectively grounded and not really budgetary magic.
Mayor Mamdani: Well, first, you brought it up, so I just got to say I'm already missing Mitch.
Stewart: It's very, it's very hurtful. It's very hurtful.
Mayor Mamdani: We'll continue on. Did you see his comment on the Boston Celtics Instagram page?
Stewart: No - oh, when he went after the Celtics fans, when he said, "I own you"?
Mayor Mamdani: God bless.
Stewart: Can I tell you something? There is a monster truck-sized hole in my heart.
Mayor Mamdani: Yes, it's one of the best TikTok pages to go to.
Stewart: He's the best, so, so funny.
Mayor Mamdani: I never appreciated those cars until I saw those videos.
Stewart: I know, seeing him stand - I think that was his truck in the parade, by the way. I don't even think that - I think actually he just drove. He drove there that day and just got in the back of it. I think that's how it worked.
Mayor Mamdani: God bless. But to your actual question, I think one of the key things is you have to ask yourself, is this arbitrary or does this have a rationale? And what I mean by that is, for example, with the pension system, we had a deferred payment that was spread out over about 22 years or so. And every year, the cost to the city was increasing, and then it was going to just fall off a cliff in terms of the city - it was gonna go up about maybe $6 billion a year, and then the next year it's gonna be $0. And some of the challenges that we're facing are challenges of this moment specifically because of just how much under-budgeting there was, how much money the city was spending, but not showing on its books for a lot of its different social programs and services.
And so, when we looked at that and we said, if you just spread what had already been 22 years, if you'd just extend it by a few years, you would then be able to take savings that you will get the year after as you're scheduled to but instead spread them over. Then you can actually make sure that you're able to steward this in a way that's more healthy, in a medium-term level. Now, I know that there are others who've seen municipalities move around their pension obligations and there's a worry of what does this mean for, you know, are you going to honor that, this, that and the other. The thing that's different in New York City is that we are not only funding our pension systems at a much higher level than many of the other municipalities that are being cited, but also that it's not a question of if we're going to get to 100 percent funded. It's just a question of when in the 2030s we would do so.
Stewart: And so, that's, and then do you have to look at it? Cause I guess there's sort of different areas like we'll spend less here, but we need to raise more revenue here. Is there a kind of interplay between the kinds of taxes? Cause Albany, I imagine is not going to go along with really raising taxes in the same way that you might want.
Mayor Mamdani: I think what you'll find, actually, is there are a lot of people in Albany who do agree with the vision of raising taxes a little bit more on the wealthiest so that everyone can afford life in New York City. But what it is, as you said, is it can't just be one thing. It has to both be a conversation about revenue and a conversation or about savings. So, we actually created something called Chief Savings Officers for the first time, where we had in every single agency and department-
Stewart: Oh sure, CSOs.
Mayor Mamdani: CSOs, come on.
Stewart: It's sitting right there.
Mayor Mamdani: You're at the water cooler. You know, you're talking to your friend, you're like, "Hey, have you heard about the CSOs? What do you think about the CSOs?"
Stewart: Hey, you know the CSOs coming in here. Yeah, I've got like five CSOs over here.
Mayor Mamdani: Me and my CSOs were hanging out, catching up.
Stewart: Beautiful.
Mayor Mamdani: And the CSOs, they found about $1.7 billion in savings across City government, and they're actually going to continue that work. Because when you look at the size of our budget, and you also look at what the approach has been to the finances of our city, we know that there are more savings to be had. And sometimes these are the efficiencies that come from when you're actually pressure testing how we've been doing things. There's savings to had when you actually say that you know, could that contract that you're giving to a consultant actually be done in house? And it can be a lot of times.
Stewart: Were there stuff in the budget as you went through, you're like, "$100 million on mittens, what is this?" Did you find things that you couldn't believe? You were just like, "Where's these love seats? What's going on?"
Mayor Mamdani: I haven't seen that specific example.
Stewart: You don't comb it through like that.
Mayor Mamdani: No, but we do comb through. And there were a number of things where you can't provide a justification for it. And if you can't provide one, then why should the city be spending that money? And a lot of times, it comes from a vision of government where you want to hollow out its capacity and privatize as much of its responsibility. And oftentimes, it's done in the name of fiscal prudence. And yet what you find is you end up overpaying for that external capacity than what it would look like if you invested internally. I mean, you know, we've talked about in the past this - you know, the previous administration had an AI chatbot that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars that was not even usable.
Stewart: Was it just like the Microsoft paper clip that just pops up?
Mayor Mamdani: It's like - I thought you lost your job. It's just "Ask Jeeves," he's just back.
Stewart: Right. That's all they do is they just run it through that.
Mayor Mamdani: And you look at that, and it's not just the amount of money, it's also the number of vendors that we went through to get to that point. It just speaks to an approach to contracting that does not actually save you money, and it doesn't build any kind of long-term fluency. What it does is just lock you into commitments that will cost you money and oftentimes won't even perform those services.
Stewart: And this gets us back to - so the contrast between the caricature of you - if you spend any time speaking to you, there's a grounded seriousness and reality to the way that you're approaching these problems. Look, there's gonna be mistakes, there's going to be - first snowstorm is not gonna be the same as the second snowstorm, as Fat Joe has in his song. Today's snowstorm is not, but-
Mayor Mamdani: That was the first draft of that song.
