Read the full transcript of New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s interview on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on “Reimagining NYC Through Safety and Affordability”, October 27, 2025.
Welcome to The Daily Show
JON STEWART: My guest tonight, he represents Queens in the New York State assembly and he is the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City. Please welcome to the show Zohran Mamdani.
Oh, very nice. Oh, very nice. This is it? These are the people you would like to represent?
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: Yes.
JON STEWART: The New York City people. I’m curious about that. You know, I had spoken with you months ago and I felt a real love that you had for New York City. Now that you’ve gotten to know us, still there?
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: Still love it.
JON STEWART: Really?
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: Still love this.
JON STEWART: All of it?
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: All of it. All of it. All of it.
The Final Days of the Campaign
JON STEWART: What do you got now? You got three days? Four?
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: We’ve got about eight days left.
JON STEWART: Eight days. And what is that? In that moment, do you have to keep… What do you think you need to do to close the deal, to keep this? You are clearly right now in the front running position. I can tell because they’ve gone 9/11 on you. So that’s clearly a sign of a closing argument. So what do you feel like you’ve got to do to close the deal with New York citizens?
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: You know, it is in many ways the same thing that got us here, which is canvassing.
JON STEWART: Oh, really?
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: You know, for all of the focus on rallies, on commercials, on debates, it really comes back to people speaking to other New Yorkers about the city that we all love. We have 90,000 volunteers right now on the campaign. And it’s 90,000 people who are picking up the phone, phone banking someone that they don’t know. 90,000 people who have knocked on a door of a New Yorker they’ve never met. 90,000 people who just wait for 15 seconds and hope someone will open that door.
JON STEWART: More than anything, it’s strangers coming to the door or calling them.
Building Community Through Politics
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: You know, I think this is the thing: for people that we’re often characterized as being rude, I will tell you that New Yorkers have been so kind in the experiences they’ve had with our volunteers, because what they’re speaking to is another New Yorker.
And it’s an understanding that politics is not something you have, it’s something that you do. And in this moment where politics has become just another word for division, for not just Republicans, but also Democrats, these New Yorkers are ones who’ve understood that you never hate someone more than before you know them.
Knocking on that door, having that conversation doesn’t just win the election for us. It also starts to build the city that we want to lead.
JON STEWART: What’s the kind of feedback that you get from your volunteers in the field? And what about for you, canvassing? Because I have to tell you, one of the most, I thought, shrewdest campaign moves, and this was in the primary, not in the general, is when you walked from the top of Manhattan all the way down to the bottom and just met people.
You’ve got to be very confident in yourself to do that, because New Yorkers will generally tell you what they think when they see you.
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: And even when they are telling you something that’s technically supportive, it sounds like you’re being heckled.
JON STEWART: That is what we do.
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: I was on Nostrand Avenue a few days ago, and this woman just pulled up in her car. She was like, “I’m voting for you.” I was like… I don’t… thank you. It just sounded like I was about to get my a whooped. But it was by my voter, so it was fine.
JON STEWART: And New Yorkers, by the way, no one will be as mad at you if it doesn’t go right as the people who love you. Now, have you felt that as well?
The Opportunity of High Expectations
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: You know, it’s often framed as a burden or as an obligation.
JON STEWART: Right.
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: But frankly, I think it’s an opportunity. It’s an opportunity to actually show that this whole campaign where we’ve talked about freezing the rent, making buses faster and free, delivering universal childcare—these are not just slogans. These are commitments.
And when we deliver them here in New York City, it will be also the delivery of a politics that can actually aspire for more than what you’re living through. And for so many people across the city, politics has just become synonymous with an argument of “celebrate the little you have or lose that.”
JON STEWART: And it can’t be that zero sum.
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: It can’t be.
Safety and Livability: The Foundation
JON STEWART: Do you have a Mamdani hierarchy of needs? You know, I lived in this city for a very long time, and I can tell you, livability is… if you can run this place, you will earn a great deal of leeway to do all kinds of innovative things. But if people feel disorder, man, you won’t be able to do… And I’ve lived through the eras of New York where it was disorder, and it does make it… people feel it.
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: I mean, look, public safety is the prerequisite for an affordability agenda. Job one, right? People have to be safe. And we also know that safety is something that you not only deliver with the NYPD, it’s also something that you deliver by ensuring that there are actually jobs that can pay people enough to stay in the city. All of these things are integrated.
JON STEWART: Tell me that last part again.
Addressing Homelessness and Inefficiency
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: Today I was taking the 1 train downtown with a reporter from ABC, and we were having a conversation, and we walk on the train and there’s a homeless man sleeping on the train.
JON STEWART: And is he with the Cuomo campaign?
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: No, but my…
JON STEWART: That’s just bad humor.
Bad humor.
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: But my point is that we get on the train and we see this, and this is an illustration of the fact there are about 4,300 New Yorkers who are homeless between our subway platforms, our parks, our streets. There’s almost the same number of vacant supportive housing units that are built for those very kinds of New Yorkers experiencing homelessness. They’re vacant.
And so I tell this to you as an example. It’s not all going to be about a fight for funding or a fight for transforming city government in the ways that are only big. It’s also the ways that are small. The efficiency of the bureaucracy. Because that is an example to New Yorkers that we have a city government that’s complacent with the fact that one in four New Yorkers are living in poverty in the wealthiest city in the country.
Quality of Life for All New Yorkers
JON STEWART: That’s unexpected, and it’s interesting how much New Yorkers judge the quality of life in New York City from the quality of life under New York City. I can remember the subways, you know, in the bad old days. I’m going to tell you a story.
But when I first moved here in the more chaotic days back when, you know, I was a purveyor of, I guess you would call them recreational park vendors. We would buy from their, let’s say, cart.
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: Don’t tell me this after January 1st.
JON STEWART: No, no, no. But it was the… I was young then, and I didn’t… But when I got a family, it was a very different. And the city that I embraced for its chaos as a younger man, I don’t think I would have as an older person. Does that quality of life issue, because that’s not just Manhattan, that’s everywhere.
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: And I think it’s a frustration of mine that we’ve allowed the words “quality of life” to become seen as if they’re bywords for the Republican Party. They should be at the heart of any progressive politics. If you care about working people, you have to deliver an excellent quality of life for those people.
JON STEWART: Man, oh man, is that… And I got to tell you, it always freaks me out when progressives don’t push for… People in communities that have less money deserve the same security and quality of life that people on Fifth Avenue deserve. And I think we’ve forgotten that.
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: Yeah. And I think it’s… you just think about the incentives in city government right now.
JON STEWART: Right.
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: You have a trash can in New York City that’s overflowing. City government’s response is often remove the trash can, not increase trash collection of the trash can.
JON STEWART: Really?
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: This is…
JON STEWART: Now, I didn’t know we had trash cans that weren’t overflowing. I thought that New York City bought them filled.
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: Just permanently at the top.
JON STEWART: I assumed it was just some sort of illusion. You buy a house for your cat, that’s just for the rats to have somewhere to climb.
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: But I think this is in a city where we’re saying we don’t have enough money to take care of those who have the least. We have enough money to pay McKinsey to design that trash can. That’s the city we’re living in. It’s not about money, it’s about will.
Making an Affirmative Case
JON STEWART: And what I love hearing about this is one of the things that’s been so frustrating in our politics is so much of it has been defined over these last 10 years as the negative case against someone. And finally, and I think this is not blowing smoke, I think you’ve made an affirmative case for people.
I think the enthusiasm that they have for you is because you’ve made an affirmative case that’s not about protecting something that’s going to be lost or a bad man that’s over there. It’s about an idea that you have.
And it surprised me that the Democratic establishment did not embrace that energy. And is that something that has bothered you? Is it getting better? I mean, Hakeem Jeffries with a brave, brave endorsement, I thought, 24 hours ago. What’s that been like for you?
Beyond Endorsements
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: I think it’s interesting in many ways, because our politics and the media that covers it is often focused on the question of endorsements. Right. And it’s part of what gave Cuomo the sense of inevitability in the primary. He just seemed to pick up all of these different endorsements.
And I think what we showed in many ways was that the days of endorsements deciding elections, those days have come to an end. It’s the people that build up a campaign. You know, I appreciate having Congressman Jeffries’ endorsement, and I appreciate more than that that when we’ve spoken, it’s been about how do we deliver for our shared constituents, because these are the same New Yorkers, whether we’re representing them in City Hall or in Albany or in D.C.
And like you said, we’ve been telling them time and again that all we have to offer is “not Trump,” but this is also the city that created Trump.
JON STEWART: Right.
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: We have to reckon with that. And when you think about…
JON STEWART: Did you hear… there was an audible gasp. “This is the city that created Trump.” And everybody was like, “Oh, my God, that’s right. Are we Dr. Frankenstein?”
Engaging Young Voters
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: No. But it’s, you know, after the presidential election, there were all of these obituaries written about the Democratic Party’s ability to motivate young voters. And there’s just this condescension in the language that we use about young people.
And I can just tell you that what we found in this campaign is that young people have been at the heart of believing that something could be more than this. And I would say, you know, throughout the primary, this quote from Ed Koch: “If you agree with me on 9 out of 12 issues, vote for me. 12 out of 12, see a psychiatrist,” right?
And I’m in Washington Square Park. I’m filming a video with David Hogg. This young guy comes up to me and goes, “12 out of 12, baby, send me away.” It took me a moment. I was like, “What are you talking about?”
And then today, on that same 1 train, I meet a guy who’s like, “Yeah, man, I’m so hyped about the corporate tax being the same level as New Jersey.” You look at the fluency that people have with what it is that we’re talking about, and it comes from the fact that we’re talking to young people like we would talk to anyone.
JON STEWART: You’re not patronizing.
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: We’re not patronizing. We’re not condescending. We’re not hanging a shiny little thing and saying, “Please come follow it.”
Connecting with Skeptical New Yorkers
JON STEWART: And those are the people. Look, that is a natural constituency. You’re a young man. You’ve got an energy. That’s a natural constituency. You’ve also, though, been trying to connect with those that still see you as more of a caricature.
I’ve watched you try and open a dialogue with certain people that are really concerned, some of them in good faith, some of them in bad faith, about are you experienced enough to handle the city’s bear for even the best manager? There are real issues. What’s been your experience meeting and reaching out with those that look at you existentially? Because we live in a culture now. You’re either a savior or the death of us all.
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: Yeah.
JON STEWART: So what’s it like reaching out to that other group?
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: I don’t begrudge New Yorkers who are skeptical because they’ve also lived through tens of millions of dollars of commercials telling them to fear me.
JON STEWART: Right.
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: They have lived through waking up every morning and seeing a photo of me and just feeling like, oh, my God. Because the language that’s written around me is as if I’m a threat to the city that they love. And so when I meet with them, just the mere fact that I don’t strangle them within 30 seconds is often a surprise.
JON STEWART: You’re doing well based on the low bar that’s been set.
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: And then I think it’s an opportunity where I both can tell them the things that I will do and the things that I won’t do. Right. I will freeze the rent. I won’t defund the police. I will make buses fast and free. I won’t decriminalize misdemeanors. I will deliver universal childcare. I won’t require everyone to eat halal food. This sounds like a punchline. This is literally—
JON STEWART: This is 8News.
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: This is literally in a push poll to New Yorkers saying that I’m going to make halal mandatory. And it’s like, if you do want to eat halal, go to 34th Avenue and Steinway, go to Mahmoud’s. But I’m not going to force you to go there. Right?
JON STEWART: You wouldn’t force them, but you would describe it in such delicious terms that people would have a whole—
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: If they wanted chicken and rice, there would only be one place, resistance.
The Question of Feasibility
JON STEWART: What about those who worry about feasibility, who say, and this is another thing, because not just there’s a character presented, but we’ve also lived through decades of people who promised idealism, who promised a lot of things, and didn’t either run the city well or be able to deliver on that. And those are not easy things to deliver.
You know, I’ll give you an example. You were talking about a couple of taxes that you wanted to raise. It was a millionaire’s tax, and I think—
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: One other corporate tax.
JON STEWART: Kathy Hochul last night, and you were talking about that, and Kathy Hochul is on stage, and she goes, “We’ll see.” She couldn’t even—she, in the middle of it, she’s like—
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: “I’m going to fight that.”
JON STEWART: Okay. How are you going to deal with the reality when it meets rubber meets the road when you get in there?
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: We have seen that that reality is in many ways a result of the political coalition that you build. The coalition you build can change that reality. We changed it from October to now of last year. We can keep changing it, because what we found is talking about raising taxes on people who make a million dollars, increasing it by just 2%, increasing the state’s corporate tax rate to match that of the socialist utopia of New Jersey.
These are things that are not just broadly popular. They also have precedence. And most importantly, though, you’re not looking to do them in and of themselves. You’re looking to do them to fund an affordability agenda that would transform quality of life for every New Yorker. And I think the question—
Making New York Affordable
JON STEWART: To make this city affordable. I mean, I’ll be honest with you, I moved up here again in the early days. I can’t remember a time this city was ever affordable. That truly would be—I worry sometimes if you make it affordable, if you make it nicer, more people will want to come here, which is good. And then the prices will go up.
It’s such a—do we just need—you know, we talk about housing and all those different things. Do we just need more land? There’s this park that I’ve been to in the middle of the city.
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: What an incredible opportunity.
JON STEWART: Right. But is what makes it so difficult here just the density that you’re dealing with?
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: Well, I think it’s actually the absence of imagination more than the density. Right. We obviously have a finite amount of land, but the ways in which we restrict ourselves from building on that same amount of land—it means that Jersey City’s building seven homes per thousand people. Tokyo is building ten. We’re building barely at four.
And that’s not because of the lack of land. That’s also because we don’t want to build enough around the little land that we have. And, you know, I think—you were asking earlier about the feasibility. The experience part of this is also not having an understanding of leadership that you yourself make every decision, and you yourself are the person who must know every single thing. You actually create a team around you. And they’re not all going to be 34. Right. This is a team of people who—
JON STEWART: Younger. Yeah.
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: This is the retirement age.
JON STEWART: And the K-pop demon under—they’re going to go in and knock it out. But even now, I have to tell you, and again, you know, I’m just—I’m impressed with—there’s a certain humility to that that I don’t think a lot of politicians come into the game with to say, hey, man, I probably don’t have all the answers. And I’m going to be looking at some experienced hands that I think might be able to help with that.
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: I think it’s a part of youth, frankly. I think youth gives you an innate sense of possibility and a humility that you don’t know everything. And I think it’s, you know, it’s time to have people around you that are not just characterized by the quickness with which they say yes to every idea you put in front of them.
JON STEWART: And I don’t want to keep harping on it.
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: Harp.
JON STEWART: Are you sure you don’t want to go with the more land thing? What if we just built, you know, I know they do this sometimes in the Middle East. They just build islands out of nothing. Can’t we do—but can’t we connect lower Manhattan to the Statue of Liberty and then just throw up a couple of high rises?
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: I actually just want to take this moment. That is the policy idea I came here tonight to perfect.
JON STEWART: We need something in these last eight days.
The MVP of the Campaign
JON STEWART: Lastly, before you go, I want to, you know, we were talking earlier in a meeting about the interview that we’re going to go, and one of our writers, Devin, came up with something that I thought was really interesting about who the real MVP of your campaign is.
You really seemed to take hold when you were out at Madison Square Garden outside of MSG after basketball games, talking to people about how much are tickets, all those things. Do you remember all those videos?
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: I do remember that.
JON STEWART: Fantastic. Right?
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: Thank you.
JON STEWART: They really took hold because of how deep the Knicks went into the playoffs.
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: That’s what it was.
JON STEWART: So in many ways, isn’t the MVP of your campaign Jalen—Mr. Jalen Brunson, isn’t it?
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: Jalen Brunson, isn’t that—I’m—sir, at long last, I am glad you said Jalen Brunson. I thought you were going to say James Dolan.
JON STEWART: No, I was not going there. Jalen Brunson.
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: I’m glad he’s not running for mayor.
JON STEWART: Yes. I wish you all the best, honestly. You know, I think any New Yorker who looks at someone getting an opportunity, who’s representing communities that have not been as representative—a Muslim, a young person, a progressive, a democratic socialist—you know, there are so many different communities that are looking to you.
And this, I hate to put it on you as a bit of a Jackie Robinson moment, and I know that that probably wields some weight, but man, oh, man, what an exciting opportunity. And I wish you the best.
ZOHRAN MAMDANI: Thank you.
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