Zohran Mamdani

Theo Von (0:00)

He's the 112th mayor of New York City, and one of the most talked about figures in politics. He's got a lot of big ideas, and we're gonna get into it. I'm thankful for his time. Today's guest is Mr. Zohran Mamdani.

I love this guy. And if you've got to move, Zohran, do you prefer Zohran?

Zohran Mamdani (0:35)

Yeah, I'm fine with that.

Theo Von (0:36)

Okay. Well, all right.

Zohran Mamdani (0:39)

Yeah, so Zohran is good. Well, Theo, I assume is fine.

Theo Von (0:43)

Yeah, that's fine, man. Thank you so much.

Zohran Mamdani (0:45)

No, please, man.

Theo Von (0:46)

There's a lot of folklore out there about who you are, right?

And a lot of people have heard your name, but they don't know you. Yeah. You were born in Uganda. Yeah. You moved to New York at age of seven. Yeah. You were a rapper for a little while. Who wasn't? Yeah, a little while. But give me the two minute, give me the two minute who is Zohran Mamdani.

Zohran Mamdani (1:10)

I would say it starts and ends with being a New Yorker. As you said, I moved to our city when I was seven years old. My dad got a job here in New York City at Columbia. And so I grew up in the Upper West Side and went to middle school in the neighborhood, went to high school in the Bronx at Bronx Science. And then I left for college and came back to this city. And the thing that has always been a part of my life is this city, no matter what stage of my life I'm in. And to me right now, I have the greatest job in the world because every day I get to wake up, serve the same city that I've loved since I was seven years old.

And I think especially with a view of how do we make this a city that not only everybody can love, but everybody can live in. Because a lot of people love this city, but not as many of them can live here. And that's because this is also most expensive city in the United States of America.

Theo Von (2:01)

Is that true? Yeah.

Zohran Mamdani (2:02)

It's the third most expensive city in the world.

Theo Von (2:04)

Wow. Yeah, what am I talking about? I gotta pay whenever I leave here. Yeah, and I'm not excited about it. Yeah, it's an expensive place to be. What made you want to be mayor? I'm a comedian, right?

You know, self-proclaimed, but there's some evidence of it, right? Because it's a weird thing to say.

Zohran Mamdani (2:21)

There's enough evidence of it.

Theo Von (2:22)

It's a weird thing to say, though, sometimes. But I'm a comedian because I need, there's something I need people's approval, right? There's something I need when I go on stage. The laughter, I don't know what it is. I need to be seen. I don't know what it is. But being a mayor, it seems like, sometimes the mayor is like, the guy in town who finally wanted to be able to say, well, everybody picked me, or it becomes this sort of, I'm the hero kind of thing. Like, why do you want to be mayor?

Zohran Mamdani (2:51)

I think the thing that pushed me the most to run for this position was both a love of the city, but also a frustration with the fact that a lot of the leaders of the city talked about the problems, like there was nothing they could do about it. It was like, somebody's got to figure this out. And I was like, you're the mayor.

Theo Von (3:11)

Oh, yeah, dude. That's where we are with a lot of- That's somebody's you.

Zohran Mamdani (3:15)

Yeah.

And I think, it's not to say these are easy things to resolve, it's not to say you can snap your fingers and people just were refusing to do it, but it's that a lot of times it felt like people weren't even trying, and if they were, they were just trying to make things worse because there was money to be made when you make things worse. I mean, this flip side of being the most expensive city in the world is that a lot of people make a lot of money in the city, and amidst all of that wealth, one in four New Yorkers are living in poverty. So to me, it was looking at the politics of the city I love and seeing a complete abdication of duty, just like a sense of somebody else's problem, not mine to fix. And the thing about being the mayor is, yeah, it's tough, but also you actually have tools that you can use to help people, to make people's lives better.