00:00Greg, just looking back at the year, do you think the Zoran Mamdani electoral win in New York was a bit of a pivotal moment?
00:06Because in the campaign, President Trump was, you know, not particularly, let's say, complimentary about Mayor-elect Mamdani.
00:15But then they had that Oval Office meeting and they seemed to get along pretty well.
00:18And I'm wondering, just listening to what Angie was saying as well, whether perhaps a bit of the Mamdani effect rubbed off on President Trump.
00:25Do you think that there's an argument there?
00:27Yeah, there is, because, you know, they are similar in a certain way in the fact that they both ran on sort of a populist message.
00:36And Mamdani, you know, he embraced the affordability issue and took it head on.
00:43And, you know, his solutions are quite different than what President Trump's solutions are.
00:47President Trump wants to fix that problem by liberating the private sector, which he did in the first term quite successfully.
00:53And you had a fantastic increase in real wages.
00:58You know, wages adjusted for inflation were fantastic in the first term.
01:02Real wages adjusted for, you know, adjusted again, adjusted for inflation were down in the Biden years.
01:08So wages went down four percent under Biden.
01:11So the average American lost buying power to the tune of thirty three hundred dollars a year.
01:17And now, you know, we've recovered twelve hundred dollars in real wage increases this year.
01:23But that's a long way to go.
01:24We've only recovered around a third of of the losses suffered under the Biden administration.
01:29So I think the Democrats were were quite cheeky to avoid that topic during the campaign in November.
01:36However, they did it well, you know, sort of sidestepped that that they caused it and they all voted for for the bill, the bills that increased government spending, that caused the inflation, that really hurt the private sector and hurt real wages.
01:49So, look, I think the president, again, is wise to to focus on that.
01:53Reaching out to Mamdani was a smart move that, you know, New York is still an important city.
01:57And also remember that, you know, he only got 50 percent of the vote.
02:02Right. And it was basically a Democrat election.
02:04Only 10 percent of the voters were Republicans in New York in November.
02:08So I don't see it as a massive shift toward the progressive left.
02:13You know, we've we've already had a progressive mayor in New York for for in the in the form of of the mayor from 2014 to 21.
02:24You know, that was a disaster for New York.
02:26So I don't think it could get much worse.
02:28We've had the same thing in Chicago with Brandon Johnson.
02:30So we've already experienced the downside of these progressive left mayors.
02:35And I'm seeing Mamdani already pivot.
02:38He's embraced in many ways, embraced free market capitalism by his visit to the bodega last week.
02:44And he's he's already looking and sounding like Milton Friedman more than a more than Vladimir, you know, than than a communist or a Marxist.
02:52So I think that's going to work out.
02:54And I don't think that the Democrats will shift.
02:57There is that that split in the party.
02:58No doubt about it.
02:59You had the same thing in Seattle with the mayoral race there.
03:02But the other winners, New Jersey, Virginia, they sort of moved to the center and focused on affordability without going, you know, totally Marxist.
03:12So I don't think that's as big a deal as we thought in November.
03:15So I don't think that's as big a deal as we thought in November.
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