Diabolical Lies - Bonus： Media's Mamdani Meltdown

00:00:00.000 All right, we're good. We're live. Five minutes late. Sorry, everybody.

00:00:03.600 We're live.

00:00:05.340 This always happens. Okay. Fuck yeah. Let's do this. Welcome. We are having a bonus

00:00:13.200 conversation in honor of, what are we calling today? A non-denominational socialist holiday?

00:00:21.960 Yeah. I wish I knew what his middle name was because we could...

00:00:26.100 Kwame.

00:00:27.200 ZKM Day. 0.65

00:00:28.540 ZKM Day.

00:00:29.220 yeah uh i was reflecting this morning on the bottomless pit of despair that i felt on the

00:00:34.700 morning that donald trump won the election and how this morning felt like the emotional but like

00:00:39.920 the opposite polarity of that where i was i could not believe what i was seeing it was amazing

00:00:45.040 do you know what's funny is that we recorded an election episode for that as well and for that

00:00:49.540 episode i'm gonna have the same conclusion as this episode which is that the democratic party

00:00:53.300 is not doing enough you're like six months later we have proof um okay so basically what we want

00:01:01.920 to do is something that caro and i both noticed and i think we're kind of like taken aback by

00:01:07.780 particularly in the recent weeks as it became clear that zoran was really becoming like the

00:01:14.060 more popular candidate was there was this flurry of coverage in the atlantic the new york times

00:01:20.840 New York Magazine. We saw one in the Chicago Tribune, which is really random, where all of

00:01:26.660 these different editorial boards were essentially weighing in to explain why this person should not

00:01:34.260 be elected. Not fit for office. Yeah, not fit for office. So in order to do that, I have in front of

00:01:42.080 me four of these pieces, basically, and we're going to go one by one and basically discuss

00:01:50.120 how different our expectations are and the hurdles that we create for progressive candidates

00:01:56.420 instead of everybody else. So anything you want to say before we jump into the first one? I have

00:02:02.440 one piece of overarching stuff. I think that we're just going to see a lot of consistent themes,

00:02:07.440 but I just think generally speaking, something I've been talking about on TikTok a lot lately

00:02:11.020 is that the term that I use to talk about this is intellectual credibility. Like, what do we lend

00:02:17.020 immediate intellectual credibility to? For example, nuclear warfare. We have no problem funding our

00:02:22.280 nuclear program. But how are we going to pay for it? Exactly. Like, there are just certain terms

00:02:27.000 that you see in American politics where inherently, for a number of reasons, you just don't think to

00:02:33.440 worry about it. But the intellectual credibility that we lend for very boilerplate ideologies,

00:02:38.280 like free child care or free buses is pretty wild and as you have pointed out katie like we already

00:02:44.240 have free buses in america and the extent to which people are fucking panicking about how new york

00:02:48.480 city can afford free buses is so laughable 15th largest economy in the world they're like where's 0.76

00:02:53.900 the money gonna come from i saw a bloomberg headline someone called it a hot commie summer

00:02:58.620 and i was like i hope so babe if we're lucky so the one thing that i had in my notes as i was

00:03:06.380 going through all of this and like that was the loudest to me is just this pervasive argument

00:03:11.640 even in the post-victory coverage now that we're seeing is this idea that populist extremes are

00:03:19.780 rising on quote both sides like we're kind of both sides-ing the Zoran Mamdani campaign as

00:03:25.880 though it is the leftist intellectual equivalent of like the campaign that got Donald Trump elected

00:03:30.840 as though there's anything comparable about the things that Mamdani is promoting and I think

00:03:36.360 it's really interesting the way in which in these kind of center left or center right publications,

00:03:41.660 they are presented as equally ideological and equally radical, like foils of one another.

00:03:48.940 Like I saw some headline that was like, can a leftist ideologue manage a city? As if like the

00:03:54.780 only way that you could be for these ideas is if you are an ideologue. But I think that something

00:03:59.260 that I just want people to keep in mind as we go through all of the coverage that we're going to

00:04:02.520 talk about is that it is so critical to remember that all of the policies that he is running on

00:04:08.120 and ran on are centrist positions in the rest of the world. We are just so far right as a country

00:04:14.360 that these ideas look radical. They look like far left crazy ideas, but they are center to center

00:04:21.420 left in the rest of the high income world. So yeah, I just kind of wanted to say that from the

00:04:26.500 jump because it feels like a really important level setting of like, keep that in mind when

00:04:30.680 you hear the type of language that is being used to describe these ideas well it's also really

00:04:37.860 effective work that the most extreme shit that happens in america has been basically converted

00:04:43.280 into the language of the normal like citizens v united is the most extreme legislation on the

00:04:49.480 planet it is crazy and that is uh that like runs our moderate campaigns and i think we saw this in

00:04:56.340 some of these articles which we should just jump into but like people talking about the attack ads

00:05:00.440 and the millions of dollars that were spent on attack.

00:05:03.200 And I'm like, they were only spent in one direction, categorically.

00:05:06.760 But we don't view that as weird.

00:05:08.500 And we, in fact, have quote-unquote leftists,

00:05:11.100 Annie Lowry, I'm looking at you,

00:05:12.660 who are claiming that attack ads are an effective way

00:05:15.460 for voters to be educated about politicians.

00:05:19.140 And I'm like, what American marijuana have you been smoking?

00:05:23.520 So our first one is from The Atlantic.

00:05:25.760 This one is called,

00:05:26.880 why won't Zoran Mamdani denounce a dangerous slogan by Jonathan Chait, Chait, Chait in the

00:05:35.080 Atlantic, not to be confused with Jonathan Haidt, anxious generation daddy. Similar vibes.

00:05:39.840 Similar vibes. Okay. So one thing that jumps out at me, I wish I could like put this up on the

00:05:43.940 screen, but as I was like going through and pulling little quotes, one thing that jumped

00:05:48.120 off right off the bat, he calls rent freezes and a public option for grocery stores offenses to

00:05:55.360 econ 101 this is like rhetoric that you're going to see constantly in critiques of mom donnie this

00:06:02.240 idea of like anytime anyone invokes econ 101 they are almost always referring to the chicago school 0.99

00:06:08.920 of economics like neoliberal principles i was just about to say chicago ass lion ass yeah chicago ass 0.97

00:06:16.120 milton friedman ass and like to be fair to be abundantly good faith and clear some of that 0.97

00:06:21.160 stands up to scrutiny for sure much of it does not and i saw one person in the comments of like 0.94

00:06:26.900 a different new york magazine piece that we're actually not even going to talk about today

00:06:29.820 about zoran in the primary basically saying like oh he's promising things that like he can change 0.98

00:06:34.680 the laws of supply and demand look at the photo they chose for him look how fucking evil he looks 0.58

00:06:40.780 can we talk about that i didn't even notice that in my non-payballed archive.is version that is a 0.93

00:06:47.460 psychotic photo of him that they chose. Yeah, that's crazy. Very like Dr. Evil. But yeah,

00:06:54.140 so like we talk about these things. You'll hear this all the time. Econ 101, oh, the laws of

00:06:59.180 supply and demand. It's just so important to remind people and ourselves that like the laws

00:07:05.380 of economics, it's all theory. It's not like gravity or physics. Like these things are

00:07:10.980 theoretical and more government intervention or less government intervention, like whichever you

00:07:16.440 prefer can absolutely affect supply and demand like famously so that's literally the entire

00:07:22.180 premise of Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson's abundance principles that are like beloved by

00:07:28.700 the democratic establishment is that government should be building more government can create

00:07:33.600 more supply so it's just it's telling to me because to me that is essentially always a dog

00:07:39.520 whistle for this is not in line with status quo mainstream economic thinking and we don't like that

00:07:45.940 i appreciate you taking like a good faith time to talk about his econ 101 claim in an article where

00:07:54.280 he made the biggest islamophobic dog whistle in the world he's like running around naked with

00:07:59.260 10 different party whistles whistling islamophobia and you're like i just want to and i'm like this 0.99

00:08:04.460 motherfucker likes milton friedman guys i just want to give him the credit supply and demand 0.97

00:08:09.540 it's like no he doesn't deserve that no we will we're gonna get to the islamophobia because i 0.98

00:08:13.720 I think the Islamophobia is a much bigger conversation, but I just, at some point today,

00:08:18.500 we should talk about what the policies are that people are attacking. Do you want to go

00:08:23.080 Islamophobia first and then we can circle back to the policies? Would that tickle you?

00:08:27.520 Oh yeah. I always want to go Islamophobia first. 0.64

00:08:30.240 Okay. Send it.

00:08:31.660 I'm Islamophobia forward kind of woman. So let's just, let's get it out of the way because frankly,

00:08:36.900 I am shoring up a lot of my time and anger for the other Atlantic piece. And so I feel like we

00:08:42.680 can get through this one pretty quick okay great do you want to read a quote we want to do you

00:08:47.380 pick the pull quote i don't even yeah i just here here here i have one you want me to read this is

00:08:53.760 this was the one that that got me you tell me what you think about this sure but when miller asked

00:08:59.000 mom donnie about the pro-palestine slogan globalize the intifada the candidate's pragmatism and

00:09:05.120 intellectual humility evaporated quote this is what mom donnie says to me ultimately what i hear

00:09:11.680 in so many is a desperate desire for equality and equal rights in standing up for Palestinian

00:09:18.120 human rights. Son of a bitch. That's son of a bitch. What an asshole. Can you fucking believe? 1.00

00:09:24.400 What a son of a bitch. Mamdani may sincerely believe this, as do some of his supporters, 1.00

00:09:31.060 but he then delved into the semantics of Intifada, citing the United States Holocaust Memorial

00:09:36.600 Museum's use of the word as the translation of uprising in an Arabic version of an article the

00:09:42.120 museum published about the Warsaw Ghetto. This comparison to a Jewish armed rebellion against

00:09:47.600 the Nazis hardly dispels concern about the incendiary implications of the slogan. If the

00:09:54.000 Intifada is akin to the ghetto uprising, then it is a call for violence. If its theater of operations 0.75

00:10:00.340 is global than it is necessarily directed against civilians. Oh, I'm sorry. Do we have a problem

00:10:07.320 with violence against civilians? This dude is doing like the Simone Biles of rhetorical gymnastics

00:10:16.080 to try to claim that Momdani has incited any sort of violence. You cannot watch 15 seconds of a video

00:10:24.400 with Momdani without being like, well, that's the most unproblematic king I've ever seen in my life.

00:10:28.500 That is the least violent, most intellectually patient and gentle person on the planet. 0.95

00:10:34.400 And he even acknowledges it in the freaking article. 1.00

00:10:37.920 It's so stupid and it's so obviously Islamophobic that I almost don't even want to make large intellectual arguments against it because that would further legitimize and make more credible what he's doing. 0.99

00:10:48.240 And what he's doing here is just like making us think terrorists in our heads. 1.00

00:10:52.080 That's what he's trying to get you to do.

00:10:53.420 He's saying, look at the brown man and think terrorists. 0.92

Diabolical Lies - June 26, 2025

Bonus： Media's Mamdani Meltdown

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