'You voted for this New York': Zohran Mamdani under fire over radical property push

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]And it begins. The socialist, heck, let's call him what he is, the communist mayor of New York City, Zoran Mandani, has started talking about seizing people's property. Yes, taking people's property and transferring ownership to tenants or what he calls responsible stewards. You voted for this, New York, you reckless ninkham poops.

[00:00:23]>> When necessary, we will take aggressive legal action to remove negligent owners and property managers.

[00:00:31]And for buildings that have suffered chronic neglect, we will work to transfer ownership to responsible stewards.

[00:00:44]Stewards that include community land trusts, nonprofits, nonprofits, or even the tenants themselves.

[00:00:57]Let's bring in Center for the American Experiment president and co-founder of the popular Powerline blog, John Hinderken. John, seizing properties and transferring ownership. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

[00:01:11]>> Yeah, Mom Donnie says that he wants to take legal action to remove negligent property owners. I have no idea what that means. But what Mandonni won't acknowledge is that if a rental property is run down, it's probably on account of the people who live there. And if the landlord has trouble keeping up with maintenance, it's probably because the building doesn't generate enough revenue. And that may be due to the fact that in New York City, it can take over a year to evict someone after he stops paying rent. So Ami can get votes maybe by demonizing landlords, but it's not going to solve the problem.

[00:01:47]And if you have landlords exiting the market, selling their properties, then the rental pool decreases, rents go up further. I mean, this is simple economics 101. John, what's he not understanding here?

[00:02:03]>> I don't know, Rita. I mean, New York City has dabbled in rent control.

[00:02:06]Really, more than dabbled. They had rent rent control for a long time. They they've tried all kinds of failed methods to address the fact that there's an imbalance of supply and demand.

[00:02:16]There's a lot of people who want to live in Manhattan and and not enough housing units. But demonizing landlords is not going to get you more housing units.

[00:02:26]>> Absolutely not. And you see some of the astronomical rents people pay in Manhattan for a shoe box, a a fairly unpleasant shoe box, some of these ones.

[00:02:37]and and you can see why that market exists the way it does. When you impact supply, well, you're going to push up prices. Now, let's hear an important update on the White House task force to eliminate fraud. They have in quick time uncovered an astronomical amount of fraud. Here is Steven Miller.

[00:02:58]>> This is the fastest in history that a government task force has traveled from creation to action. Your typical lead time is going to be a year of meetings before anything happens. And that's if you're lucky. And within weeks of this task force being established, we've seen the largest ever slate of indictments, recovered funds, search warrants, raids, seizures, investigations, and new legal actions to stop, disrupt, and prevent fraud.

[00:03:27]>> John, your home state of Minnesota has been in the midst of a systematic fraud crisis. How widespread is this problem in America?

[00:03:38]>> Well, it certainly is widespread in Minnesota, Rita. Just last week, our US attorney's office announced 15 new fraud prosecutions covering a number of programs under the Medicaid umbrella, but it's it's elsewhere in the United States as well. Now, now people in California and Ohio, which are much larger states than Minnesota, are also reporting that they're finding a lot of fraud. So it appears to be very widespread all across the country.

[00:04:07]>> Now Steven Miller said the fraud is so bad that they could balance the federal budget if they could manage to eliminate the current levels of fraud. And he said something very interesting, John, about the limits of the honor system.

[00:04:21]>> Welfare benefits were set up based on the honor system. They're set up based on the idea that you could trust the average person through their own morality to abide by the rules and comply with the law. And so the way most welfare works in most states and most places is we take your word for it. If you fill out a piece of paper and you say your kids are hungry, you are going to get food stamps. We don't check as a country if you even have kids. In fact, as basic as that, we don't even check if you even have children. You will just start getting the checks. And so what's happened to our country is we became a society as we've seen with the Somali refugee problem in Minnesota where you have a large number of people that are not following the honor system. They're not playing by the rules. They're not abiding by our laws. And the amount that has been fleeced from us is in the hundreds of billions of dollars. I believe based on what I've seen and what I've heard is that we could balance the federal budget if the only dollars that went out of the Treasury went to individuals who were properly, lawfully, correctly eligible to receive them.

[00:05:30]>> John, the VP, JD Vance, was also there and you said that in just two months they have uncovered billions of dollars in fraud.

[00:05:40]>> Well, what Stephen Miller says is is correct. We have basically had an honor system. You know, my state used to be a really high trust society and then we imported a lot of a lot of lowrust people and frankly that was the the genesis of the problem and I think we're seeing something something similar across the country. Read. One thing that's worth pointing out is that JD Vance had this uh summit you know at the White House. I believe he invited all of the attorneys general from the 50 states to come and participate in this fraud uh uh effort and not a single Democratic attorney general showed up. Every single one of them boycotted the event. So, it's a big problem when we've got one party that is really not interested in in combating fraud.

[00:06:27]No, I think they kind of like it because they can see it benefits uh a new voter base that they're trying to uh ensure secures them power and and that's why possibly you see so much of this Ford concentrated in those blue states. Now, before I get to some incredible footage of RFK Jr. and a couple of snakes, let's talk geopolitics. The Trump administration is nearing a deal with the Iranian regime. It is said to be 95% done and according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, it has to be good for the US or they won't do it.

[00:07:04]>> And it's going to take a couple days uh to settle on even down to the disagreements over a word uh sentence.

[00:07:13]So, we'll have to work through that. If there's going to be a deal, we're going to have to work through that. But this is uh you know, it's either going to be a good deal or there isn't going to be one.

[00:07:21]>> That was Marco Rubio earlier today. And the Iranian regime has responded with a statement from the Supreme Leader supposedly saying America will no longer have a safe place for aggression and military bases in the region. John, >> yeah, we're getting very different signals from the Trump administration and from the regime in Iran. Rita, all I can say is I've got my fingers crossed.

[00:07:46]Everybody knows that any promise of future performance on anything from this Iranian regime is meaningless. About all we could really get in in an agreement is to promptly reopen the straight of Hormuz and give us what Trump calls the nuclear dust. The regime has been stalling for over a month now and I'm frankly skeptical that a meaningful deal can be struck and I think we may find ourselves in a position of of hitting any remaining targets and punishing the regime if they don't immediately open the straight of Hormuz and then take the bulk of our forces home.

[00:08:22]>> How much of a factor is this conflict in domestic politics right now? Has some of that noise quietened down? some of that panic that we saw uh a couple of months ago or is the Trump administration still desperate to really put this conflict behind them as they go into the midterms?

[00:08:42]>> It's a big problem, Rita. You know, the American people, generally speaking, don't care very much about foreign policy. What most voters care about here is the price of gasoline. The price of gasoline has spiked. That is a big big problem for the midterm elections. And even though he would never admit it, I'm sure that President Trump does feel under a lot of pressure to get the straight open and get the price of gasoline coming back down.

[00:09:10]Now played in lefties losing it tonight.

[00:09:12]A fantastic new ad by the Lonear Liberty Pack highlighting just how weird Democrat James Terico is. Here's just 10 seconds of the ad.

[00:09:22]>> God is non-binary.

[00:09:25]There are many more than two biological sexes. In fact, there are six. It is now existential that we try to reduce our meat consumption.

[00:09:35]>> But John, I've seen polls in the past month saying this character is leading the Republican candidates. How can that be? Is this weirdo any chance of being elected by Texans in the midterms?

[00:09:49]Well, Republicans have a problem because Ken Paxton, the Texas Attorney General, has challenged incumbent Senator John Cornin in the primary. That primary was today and it looks like Paxton has won.

[00:10:02]So, there's a lot of disunityity among the Republicans. But, Rita, we've seen this before. Democrats like Bato Oorc would do well in early polling and the Democrats would get their hopes up and then on election day they would get crushed. I think that despite the turmoil on the Republican side, there is no chance that a candidate as bad as Taller Rico can win in Texas. He's running against meat in Texas. I mean, there's no way that platform.

[00:10:32]>> He's running against the consumption of meat. He's running against pretty much God, saying God is non-binary. He is running against biological reality. He claims there are at least six genders. I mean, he is an absolute Froot Loop, the guy. I can't believe Democrats keep coming up with these candidates in red states. Now, I would ask about a piece you wrote for the excellent Powerline blog about people leaving blue states in droves heading to the red states like Texas, Florida, Tennessee in part because of lower taxes. But John, you argue that's only half the story.

[00:11:11]>> Yeah, that's right, Rita. Of course, lower taxes are a factor, but in addition, what may be more important is that the red states are where most of the good jobs are being created. And an analysis just came out that shows that personal income is growing 50% faster in red states than in blue states. And that's before taxes. So, I think the exodus from blue to red is going to continue for the foreseeable future.

[00:11:38]>> Now, I've been waiting to play this footage to get your reaction. Let's have a look at some astonishing footage really. Here is Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at Dr. Oz's house naturally just casually wrangling a couple of snakes that are furiously biting him. And as you watch this, listen out for actress Cheryl Hines, RFK's wife, who is clearly freaking out.

[00:12:06]>> What are they?

[00:12:16]Okay. Okay.

[00:12:16]>> Are they fighting?

[00:12:17]>> Yeah.

[00:12:18]>> Honey. Honey, let us go. Oh my god.

[00:12:21]Jesus. Bobby.

[00:12:22]>> The mouths are huge.

[00:12:24]>> Bobby, please.

[00:12:25]>> Bobby. Bobby, please. Oh god.

[00:12:29]>> I've got to say, I have a lot of sympathy for Cheryl there. You could hear her saying, "Bobby, please. Oh my god." Uh, but the man is fearless. He he I just can't believe we've got these individuals leading the country. I love it.

[00:12:46]>> Reed, it scares me just to watch that video clip. I mean, people knock my state because it gets really cold in the winter and everything ices over. But at least we don't have to worry about being bitten by snakes on our patio. I mean, I take my hat off to RFK Jr., but I would not want to be in that position.

[00:13:06]I tell you, he was fearless. He was very happy to go in there. And I think those snakes were either having sex or fighting. That hasn't been established, but that's probably why they were so angry and biting him. He's an honorary Australian, I think, after that performance. John Hinderka, thank you so much for your