Patrick, come on up.

It's a tremendous honor to be able to join you all, particularly in this institution and at this center that manages to take extraordinarily complex challenges and boils them down to their essentials to make them accessible for average folk across New York.

And I will tell you, Dean Crowley, that as someone who has a tremendous amount of respect and appreciation for the law, I'm spending some time right now working on issues of ballot access and voter integrity nationally for something that's gonna happen in two weeks.

This place is hugely important and consequential to me, but it's important for another reason for me.

When I'm not paying attention to politics, I pay close attention to this thing called poetry.

And one of the most important poets in American history is an alumni of a New York law school, a guy named Wallace Stevens, who really kind of helped shape the public imagination in the 20th century, but who worked for, I think, 43 years as an insurance lawyer, and he got his degree in this university, and he would spend his time between writing 400-page legal documents surreptitiously, writing sonnets.

And if you ever read a Wallace Stevens sonnet, you know that they're as impenetrable as a legal contract.

But have you heard opposition? Is it sort of usual kind of voices from people who just don't want anything to change? Any opposition out there that you've heard from that's made you go?

Do you think that as they are looking at getting aggressive and playing very seriously in areas that they couldn't have dreamed of being competitive just two years ago, that there's any risk of them spreading themselves a little too thin these last three weeks?

No, you know, I don't.

I don't think so.

When opportunities arise in politics, you have to be entrepreneurial and go hard after them.

We saw that in midterm elections in the past when we were in the White House and Republicans were able to expand the map in 2010, for instance.

So right now, you've got to go after it and go get it.

Susan, you said that Republicans are running away from him.

But where should this land on that list?

What is the real situation facing these families right now? And what do you want people to understand about the human beings behind the president's rhetoric?

Rev, thank you so very much for having me on in this difficult time.

It is painful to see those images of Pierre Damas Bell being laid to rest.

What a beautiful young man.

He represented the very best of us.

He was studying neuroscience, playing on a soccer team, wanted to be an American with all of what that means in this moment.

And that was denied him, and he was treated so cruelly.

What happens to America's standing in Africa when life saving health assistance becomes entangled with political and diplomatic demands? And how much more damage is done when that policy is accompanied by the kind of radicalized rhetoric we keep hearing from the president?

Mm, mm

... as, as Democrats.

It's dispiriting for you to have to compete in those spaces.

So right now Tech- uh, D- Republicans are s- are scoring own goals on themselves all across the state of Texas.

Paxton is an absolute disaster.

You talked about the wildfires that they have to put out.

The real wildfire is Donald Trump.

Yeah, he's a impressive guy

Noge.

Very good.

We're trying to demonstrate that progressives can govern efficiently as well and deliver for people and their real needs.

I think the mayor has been exceedingly thoughtful on this question of antisemitism in New York, and he's made it abundantly clear that he intends to extend protections to all New Yorkers of faith, uh, across, uh, communities, um, because that's the first job of, of any mayor.

Look, I, I'm not surprised that Netanyahu took that cheap shot, uh, in the rostrum at the United Nations.

What are you going to do when your corruption, your personal corruption, has been exposed, you're losing a campaign at home, the entire world has turned you personally, uh, into a pariah, and it's not abundantly clear that your friend Donald Trump is gonna stay the course on this, uh, utterly reprehensible war that you have dragged him into? So you're going to make, uh, any kind of a distraction that you can.

Uh, so I wasn't surprised that he went after Netanyahu.

... and, and your background and, and why you're here.

Yes

...

the bigotry, uh, and then the, and the tropes.

Uh, so the Frankenstein monster that he helped to build in his own basement took over his house.

That's what's happening.

I'm a little older than you a- and Alex, uh, Chris.

This has happened before, but it, but there's a difference here.

Do you in Congress, are you getting any briefing on this?

What do you make of this, Ambassador?

It's really bizarre, Rev.

You've spent a lot of time in South Africa, and you actually know that white South Africans who represent 7 percent of the population control 50 percent of the land in South Africa.

Right.

and 75% of the farmland.

They have far better socioeconomic outcomes than black South Africans do, opportunities for jobs, for the betterment of their social welfare.

Crime rates for them so much lower than it is for black South Africans.

Republicans have been making the racial motivations behind the immigration policies very explicit in Trump's second

[laughs]

So, so, uh, uh, I, I first met the mayor when, uh, many years ago when I was, uh, serving as US ambassador to South Africa.

I had a dear friend who happened to be the executive producer of the filmmaker Mira Nair.

Uh, she called me up and said that Mira Nair had a new film called The Queen of Katwe about a chess prodigy in Uganda.

They wanted to roll it out in Sub-Saharan Africa, but they couldn't do so in Uganda, hoped that they could do it in Joburg, and that I would help co-host a major gathering and opening for her.

I'm a huge fan of Mira Nair's, uh, work, uh, going back to Mississippi Masala with Denzel.

Uh, and I knew that, of course, I'd, I'd do it, so I said yes, got to host it, and, um, the director came with, uh, twin- the then 22-year-old music producer for her film.

Sure.

Yes.

So this is a moment, if you're a Democrat, and you want to regain power but make that power durable, that you lean in hard, you lean in with values, stories.

You f- you foreground people on- average people who are doing extraordinary things on the ground in Minnesota that are about small "D" democratic values.

And then you make it very clear the demands that you're making a- to this administration and Republicans in leadership.

And then you make certain, as Harry Reid once did, that you are braiding together your, your Democratic values with also the need to carry out real enforcement at the border in the future.

You can't disaggregate those two things.

Yes

... wrong here.

Yeah

... uh, incredibly, uh, affable in an infectious, uh, kind of way, a happy warrior type.

Uh, and, uh, I, uh, appreciated the fact that he was pushing back against the polling, uh, and what the consultants were telling him.

Uh, and he had a conviction, uh, about the moment, and he was gonna see it through.

So very early on, he starts-- you know, he says, "Can I turn to you and ask for advice and, and, and guide?" I was like, "Yeah, absolutely.

I, I think, uh, I think that you're incredible," and we get into that kind of relationship.

Uh, and then the relationship with the candidate, uh, eventually expands to having a relationship with other members of the staff, the organizing team, communications, uh, team, uh, his brilliant, uh, campaign manager, Elbisgaard Church, who's now the Chief of Staff in City Hall.

Yeah.

... uh, you said frightening a second ago, uh, with your sense of, of hope and optimism in your day job, which is over there at City Hall?

Yeah.

So, um, whew, man, John, you ask some heavy questions.

So, uh, you know, uh, I'm g- I'm gonna, I'm gonna repeat what I said before, that there's nothing that's occurred over the last year that has been surprising to me at all.

Uh, because Donald Trump, uh, is a very transparent guy.

Uh, and, and literally every obsession he's had, every action he's taken, he telegraphed over and over and over again during the course of, uh, during the course of the campaign.

Uh, and given the attentive currency this guy draws in, it's n- it's impossible to say that people in the, you know, in our society were not paying cl- any attention whatsoever to the commitments that Donald Trump was making should he be elected again.

Yeah.

"... talk about making government work, and I'm gonna vibe out." You know, so like, he- he is good at that, you know? But only thing people talked about was the Intifada answer, unfortunately, that happens.

Which is how politics works, right? So I'd- I'd say a couple of things.

One, uh, I've- I've often compared the- Zoran's position on Gaza and the permission structure it created in Democratic primary, uh, in New York to, uh, Barack Obama's position on the Iraq War resolution in 2007 into 2008.

Barack Obama was on stage with Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden and John Edwards and all these other folks who had given Bush a blank check, uh, and Democratic primary voters were pissed off about that.

They were angry at the results of it, and folks were seen to be doubling down, which made it impossible for voters to hear them on health care, on the economy, on social justice and- and the social contract.

Barack Obama could get to first base against Hillary Clinton because he had a moral clarity on Iraq in that moment that was deeply resonant with voters in Iowa, South Carolina, New Hampshire, et cetera.

Zoram Mamdani had a moral clarity on an issue that folks were like, you know, staring at their screens on every day, whether they were getting their news from CNN or getting their information from TikTok, they saw a set of atrocities that they were absolutely appalled by and understood that their government, Democrats and Republicans, were making them complicit in what they were seeing on that screen because of our continued partnership with the Netanyahu regime, and they were appalled by that.

Anyway, I ne- since you've had a firsthand perspective, I'm just wondering what you're- you think about it.

And the president is coming out at the low point in his second term, and then boom, the House comes back and it's like Jeffrey Epstein saying, "Well of course he knew about the girls."

Sounds like a bl- it sounds like you just set up- established a predicate for a blue wave, uh, in, uh, 2026, right? Look, we know that Donald Trump is hovering around 37% right now in a- in approval ratings.

You have independents saying this guy is doing a horrible job on the economy.

The young folks and the people of color, Latino voters that he was able to borrow, uh, in 2024 have moved violently away from Republicans in urban settings, in the suburbs, et cetera.

Uh, and it does feel, despite the fact that I feel like my good friends like Tim Kaine made a huge error in how they, uh, pulled- pulled back, uh, from the shutdown, we still did manage to win the narrative about the s- shutdown and center-

these exact emails, right?

Oh, I mean, Chris, we have the president of the United States on record documented calling Lauren Boebert and pressuring her to pull back from the petition.

That's an astonishing thing.

Horrific act, but you're saying that was the result of people feeling on the outside and hopeless?

No, no, no, I'm not saying that the murder was, I'm saying that the response to the murder was this dynamic that's really different in our societies now.

I think it's a post-pandemic reaction.

You know, uh, some years ago when we were running Barack Obama for president in the US, we were in the wake of the Great Recession, of course, that had a long tail, difficult, uh, recovery in all of our nations.

But there was a sense that somehow we were working with one another towards better ends for all.

On the tail-end of that, folks were feeling really dislocated.

A lot of people lost, uh, their housing.

So that is so fascinating because the rest of the Democratic Party in terms of, you know, whether it be Chuck Schumer, whether it be Hakeem Jeffries, they're treating him like he's radioactive.

(laughs)

Right? And this man is coming out and saying, "We are a DEFCON1 right now in our democracy.

This is an existential moment." Why is he saying it? Because it's not just about the gerrymandering that's taking place in Texas.

It's because we're sitting in a reality, uh, Chris, at the end of the first summer of the second term of Donald Trump, where you have that situation in Texas and you have lawmakers who are being followed by state troopers under a kind of bizarre house arrest, uh, and you've got federal authorities in the streets of Washington, DC.

You have people being abducted from, uh, our institutions, you have major corporations showing up with gold bricks to present to Donald Trump, and you have, uh, an overturning of the liberal world order where Donald Trump-

This is an important point.

... seven of the nine congressional seats are already in the hands of Republicans.

And conservative Republicans in that state are saying, "This is b- a bad thing to do.

But it does seem to me like they are, they are taking on enormous political risk here.

Well, their real argument to pass it is that they are terrified of Donald Trump and the Frankenstein monsters that they've unleashed in their primaries.

Last month, Josh Hawley, Republican senator, wrote in The New York Times that to pass this bill with these cuts to Medicaid were b- both morally wrong and political suicide.

I agree with the Republican senator on both points.

It is political suicide.

They're gonna get hammered in the midterm elections, like, as a consequence of these vicious cuts while also significantly increasing, uh, the, the national debt.

It's an astounding political calculation that's entirely based on fear of the big guy in the Oval Office.

What do you think that does?

He still will make these points, I'm sure.

J- John, John loves to push me, uh, off the plank.

So I, I'll say, I'll say this.

I got out of the prognostication business in November of 2016 'cause, you know, something happened then that no one could, uh, really foresee.

So, uh, I'll just, I'll just say this about the race.

First, I wanna rewind and dial back for a second 'cause every election, uh, is part of a continuum.

And the election here in New York is the first actual wide open participatory election that we've had in some time because in 2021 when Eric Adams won, we were still in the pandemic.

And it goes to what Elissa Slotkin was saying about what she hears in small towns in Michigan.

He says the argument that Mamdani is too inexperienced, a critique Obama faced as well, is cutting both ways in this race.

Zoran Mamdani has attempted to make an argument about-... how that experience hasn't always served, uh, the interest of working people, right? 'Cause this experience question is a double-edged sword.

I think that Andrew Cuomo came into this race and drew a picture of a kind of a dystopian New York that interestingly was not dissimilar to the picture that Donald Trump drew of New York.

Everything's falling apart and I alone can save you from it.

I am Donald Trump's worst nightmare as a progressive Muslim immigrant who actually fights for the things that I believe in.

Democrats at large, but especially Democrats in New York, are looking for pugilists against Donald Trump, are outraged by the violations of the Constitution and Democrats want to see us fight against him.

the United States' global influence at this point?

Catherine, thank you f-...

so much for having me on, and thank you for your extraordinarily powerful essay that you, uh, wrote this week.

Uh, you're right, Trump is finally building his wall, but it's not about what he's keeping out, he's b-... he's locking in fear, he's locking in ignorance, and ultimately locking in a new kind of American weakness.

The United States has been the envy of the world.

This is not a new phenomenon, this is a decades-old phenomenon.

Some would say it's a two-centuries-old phenomena.

Democrats have been running away from this issue.

(laughs)

You know, I- l- t- to understand why Donald Trump put on that humiliating spectacle yesterday and why he's so obsessed with this white genocide meme of his, you have to appreciate the domestic political audience that Donald Trump is always playing to.Even though he was sitting having a bilateral conversation with a foreign head of state, he's trying to have a conversation with Tucker Carlson's audience all the time.

He's somebody who tries, with a religiosity, never to move far away from his base.

And let's be clear what his base is.

As he went on and on about white genocide yesterday, social media, not just the periphery of it but the center that's dominating the mainstream conversation on the right wing, were all frothing that this guy was standing up for white Christianity and he was all that stood between them and an existential cliff.

He has spread this for years now, starting back at around 2017 or so, uh, amplified, fanned by Elon Musk.

But always, always they're speaking to a domestic audience.

... how dangerous is it to our domestic foreign policy that you have someone like Elon Musk whispering into the ears of the president of the United States and guiding our foreign policy?

Yeah.

Listen, he knows who his constituents are.

They're the folks who were lining up at the feeding trough at the, at his inauguration, um, you know, two months ago.

Uh, and they're clear that now's the time for their payday, and he's gonna deliver for them.

It is gonna be the most significant upward transfer in the history of this country.

75% of Americans support Medicaid, including 63% of Republicans.

Like, he waved a picture of, like, the bodies of people in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and said that it was in-

The bodies of Black women who were raped and burned in a civil war in the Congo.

(laughs)

... history there, but the reality is that Black and white South Africans are working closely with one another towards a new future in that country.

And tragically, now that we're several decades removed from apartheid, there's still this extraordinary economic, uh, uh, uh, discrepancy there, uh, in the country and disparities between Blacks and whites.

Whites that represent about 7% of the population in South Africa now still control and own almost 70% of the private land in South Africa.

Those Afrikaner farmers that he's going- that Trump is going on and on about, they have, uh, amassed, uh, farmland that represents about half the geography of the actual country, uh, right now still, uh, to this day.

Uh, white South Africans who, uh, again are about 7% of the population represent only 2% of all the homicides in all of South Africa despite the propaganda video and all the stuff that Trump was throwing out there today.

Last thing I'll say, Tim, is, you know, there, there are extraordinary, um, leaders, uh, in the, uh, Afrikaner community who understand the historic advantages that they've had in education outcomes, in economic outcomes, in security outcomes, and they're doing all they can to turn around the fraught history of South Africa.

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

... millions of people who are gonna be slashed off of Medicaid.

And the third piece with Donald Trump is always about the art of the grift.

Elon Musk has been in a contentious policy debate argument with the South African government for some time now as he's tried to get the Starlink system into South Africa.

There is a regulatory body that makes sure that if a, uh, a foreign-owned business is coming into South Africa, that there's equity in it for Black South Africans who traditionally have been boxed out of the middle class of the economy in the country.

Uh, Musk having failed to get his way, started then lifting up all of these descri- discredited myths about white genocide in South Africa.

It all then migrated on the air to Tucker Carlson, who of course, uh, is the bullhorn, the, if you will, to Donald Trump.

Mm-hmm.

They do seem to relish and want to have this fight, right? At the same time, like, it's kind of a fight you gotta have if you believe in (laughs) human decency in the country, but what do you think?

Yeah.

You know, defending us from a slide to dictatorship is not a distraction.

Donald Trump is literally pulling people off of the streets, off of college campuses, off of communities, and without any due process whatsoever, not only deporting them, but sending them to gulags in other countries.

And he has said publicly that he's prepared to do this to American citizens as well.

So yeah, no, it's not a distraction to, like, put your 10 toes down and to fight that fight.

And guess what? Uh, uh, polling, polling is interesting.

And I think part of m- the way that I see this here is that actually this is the, the f- There's a contestable public here on these questions, and if you tell people that there's a 23-year-old guy who came here from Venezuela who was working in a bakery who's got an autism awareness tattoo who's now in a prison he can't get out of, most Americans are not okay with that.

But as we're taping right now, the NASDAQ's down 4% again.

Yep.

And this 10% thing is a misnomer because we still have 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico, on auto, and huge tariffs on generic pharmaceuticals from India that's gonna be hugely problematic for everybody in this country.

Particularly our seniors are gonna be hit in a really pernicious way as a result of this.

So all that said, on the economic front, really important, uh, Tim.

But let's talk about that conversation that Steve Horsford had yesterday with the trade rep, as the trade rep is clearly finding out in real time that his boss has pulled the rug out from under him as he's, like, defending the indefensible.

And Steve Horsford and many others say, "Well, what, what exactly is going on here?" Because we know that a few hours, uh, earlier in the day, Donald Trump, the president of the United States, is going on a social media platform and telling people, signaling, wink, nod, now is a really good time to, like, go and buy.

Okay.