from WNYC studios. I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Friday,

November 14th. New Yorkers and others are continuing to ask, what does it mean that mayor

elects Iran Mamdani calls himself a democratic

socialist? What will that mean in practice? Now, we know from polls and from our callers that the

word socialist is not as toxic in American politics as it was during the Cold War when the

main threat to democracy in the world was perceived to be the USSR,

the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Younger Americans don't have that in their experience and are frequently down on capitalism,

which I don't have to tell you.

They experience as failing to provide them a path to financial stability as much as it did for their parents

or grandparents or maybe never did on mass for African Americans and other economically

marginalized groups. So the word socialism was not a disqualifier, obviously, because Mom Dani

got elected, and arguably it was even a political plus.

And maybe that's why antagonists of Momdani have ascribed other labels to him and his politics.

Jamie Diamond, we talked about this earlier in the week, CEO of J.P. Morgan Chase described Mamdani as, quote,

more a Marxist than a socialist back in July of this year. I guess he thought socialist was

becoming benign. He had to up the ante. Then there's President Donald Trump,

who's repeatedly called Mamdani a communist. You've heard this probably, but here's 15 seconds

of the president

addressing the American Business Forum the day after the election. If you want to see what

congressional Democrats wish to do to America, just look at the result of yesterday's election

in New York where their party installed, a communist as the mayor of the largest city in the

...