City Journal contributors Charles Fain Lehman, Tal Fortgang, Rafael Mangual, and Carolyn Gorman break down results from a new Manhattan Institute poll on New York City’s mayoral race. They also unpack the Israel–Iran conflict and the strange state of modern wedding culture.
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Audio Transcript
Charles Fain Lehman: The two top issues, collectively covering 51 percent of the electorate in the poll, were crime and public safety, so 26 percent, and housing costs, which is at 25 percent. And if you said that your top issue was crime and public safety, you were overwhelmingly in the Cuomo camp. And if you said your top issue was housing costs, you were pretty likely to be in the Mamdani camp. And so I think that split remains the core question in city politics.
Welcome back to the City Journal podcast. I’m your host Charles Fain Lehman, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and senior editor of City Journal. Joining me on the panel today are Manhattan Institute legal guy, Tal Fortgang, Manhattan Institute criminal mastermind, Ralph Mangual, and Manhattan Institute mind master, Carolyn Gorman. Thanks everyone for joining me.
I want to take us right into some exciting MI news. We’re coming to you on Wednesday because tomorrow is Juneteenth, so we’re all going to be off. So we’re bringing you some recreational Juneteenth listening. Something for you all to enjoy. I’m going to be grilling. I don’t know what everyone else is doing. That can be a question at the end.
Rafael Mangual: Working. I got to be on C-SPAN tomorrow.
Charles Fain Lehman: I’m grilling.
Rafael Mangual: Well, watch Washington Journal while you grill so at least somebody’s tuned in.
Charles Fain Lehman: So we’re responding to news from yesterday, which is: Manhattan Institute put out a new poll of New York City’s Democratic primary as well as the general election, which I think anyone has done before, which shows Andrew Cuomo with a comfortable lead over main rival Zohran Mamdani. I think the spread is something like 56-44 in the final round. That’s actually on top of two other good polls for Cuomo, a poll from the anti-Cuomo group, DREAM, which is “Don’t Rank”— I think it’s “Don’t Rank Eric or Andrew for Mayor” or “Don’t Rank Evil Andrew for Mayor” had him up only by four and then there was another Marist poll that had him winning so it kind of looks like, after a brief period of time where we thought Zohran might pull ahead, Cuomo is really comfortably in the lead. What do people what do people make of these developments?
Rafael Mangual: I’m not surprised at all. I’ve kind of been coming at this from the perspective that Zohran Mamdani never really had a shot in the Democratic primary. What worries me is what happens in the general, where after the primary finishes, I think the dynamics and the race can change quite a bit. Eric Adams hasn’t basically even started his campaign. Same for Curtis Sliwa. How those things shake out can both cut into the support for Andrew Cuomo, but also could create an opening for someone like Zohran Mamdani to eke out a very narrow victory with a relatively small slice of the overall vote in the general. So this is one of those where the Democratic primary is just not going to matter as much as the general for the first time in a long time in New York City politics history. So yeah, mean, it is encouraging to some extent, right? Because you do start to get the sense that New Yorkers are losing their collective mind when you see someone like Zohran Mamdani getting all of this media attention and creating the impression that he’s surging, but ultimately, I think at least in the city’s traditional Democratic Party ranks, there’s still not quite an appetite for someone like DSA Loverboy and rapper, apparently, Zohran Mamdani. Although I use that term very loosely because I actually watched his video. It was terrible.
Carolyn D. Gorman: Yeah, you should. I mean, it’s sort of nice to see that it was just hype a little bit and that people are really recognizing publicly, like the New York Times did, that he’s just an unserious candidate. He has essentially never had a job and, you know, managing a small country, you have to have some work experience, I think.
Tal Fortgang: I’m feeling relieved. I got to be honest with you. I was starting to, to get a little bit worried. There were signs, I think, that Mamdani himself was gaining confidence, and after tacking to the center on some issues, was starting to peel back towards the left, which I saw as a kind of expression of confidence, that his base was there and that he was starting to feel a little bit, ambitious. So he goes on the Bulwark podcast and says, “Globalize the Intifada.” Yeah. “Globalize the Intifada is like a call for freedom and justice” or whatever. That’s, that’s a bit of a risky thing to say. And now I just say thank you to our colleague, Jesse Arm. Thank you for your good, consistent, excellent polling. I hope your methods are as excellent as everyone seems to think they are because I’m taking a deep breath, and I hope you haven’t let me down here.
Charles Fain Lehman: I mean, I think part of like, you know, there has been some leaning in. Like, you know, he sort of doubled down to get asked about his views on Israel and rather than sort of backing off or just like taking what I think would be ultimately reasonable position, which is like, I want to be mayor of New York, not mayor of Tel Aviv. Like, why are you asking me about Israel? That’s like a reasonable dodge he could have deployed. Instead, he totally leaned into it. And it’s just like, we ran a piece at CJ a couple of days ago by MI policy analyst, Josh Appel—Apple, Appel? I’m not sure. Hi, Josh.—in which he pointed out that the weird thing is that Zohran is more interested in Israel than New York. And so I think he’s been unable to check his radical impulses. Part of what was happening for a while was that the public was getting to know him better, and they were liking what they were seeing. And I think at some point he stopped getting the coordinated benefit of this is the alternative lane guy for the New Yorkers who might have ranked Lander first, who might have ranked, I don’t know, Scott Stringer, any of the other sort far left candidates first. He hit the max threshold for that. And this, by the way, to get to Ralph’s point, is why I’m less worried at the general, but he started intruding into the population who isn’t going to like his spiel. They started finding out about him and they were like, no, actually we’re not interested in that.
Rafael Mangual: Yeah, I also think part of what’s going on here too is that like, you know, Tal mentioned his kind of, you know, brief dance with the center on certain issues. But I, you know, I think, you know, as he went through this campaign, he kind of got exposed to people who were maybe willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on things like defunding the police, right? I mean, he was on The Breakfast Club the other day saying he doesn’t want to defund the police and meanwhile Whitney Tilson is just like putting all his tweets up in a commercial, you know. I lost count on how many times he said that, of course, and it wasn’t that long ago, right? So it’s, you know, when you have those kinds of moments, when you have the New York Times kind of, you know, not necessarily endorsing Andrew Cuomo, but basically saying that Zohran doesn’t deserve to be on the ballot. I think those kinds of things happening back to back like that can really suck the air out of a campaign and kind of pop that little bubble that’s been created around his personality cult, mostly through social media curation. I said this on our show after the very first mayoral debate. I mean, I think he was kind of exposed as an empty suit in that moment. I don’t really think he’s done anything to kind of rehabilitate that reality that I think more and more people are coming to realize.
Carolyn D. Gorman: I hope that bubble is popped because New Yorkers do not want to defund the police. These are just… You know, his policies are just fundamentally not what New Yorkers want. Some of the most popular policies in New York, like, you really can’t overstate how popular things like addressing serious mental illness and addressing crime and disorder are across all New Yorkers, and he has no interest and no real plan to…
Rafael Mangual: Yeah, mean, well, his plan was, what, to turn the subway stations into, you know, temporary institutions and homeless shelters? I mean, nobody wants that, right?
Charles Fain Lehman: This was one of the interesting things that showed up, I think, in our polling is how people’s views and what they prioritize as their top issues affected their support. As a general rule, the people, you know, so the two top issues collectively covering 51 percent of the electorate in the poll were crime and public safety, so 26 percent, and housing costs, which is at 25 percent. And if you said that your top issue was crime and public safety, you were overwhelmingly in the Cuomo camp. And if you said your top issue was housing costs, you were pretty likely to be in the Mamdani camp. And so I think that split remains the core question in city politics.
Rafael Mangual: Well, but you have to view that split alongside the other split that we saw on the poll, which is that Mamdani’s most popular base were like progressive white college educated people, right? Who are able to live in places where they’re insulated from the crime and disorder problem to a significant degree, which is why you don’t really see that concern topping their list. And so it really kind of is a tale of two cities, you know, with respect to, you know, support in the mayoral race and, you know, ultimately, I think the New York that Mamdani speaks for is a smaller, you know, and I’ll say it less authentic, you know, New York population slice.
Carolyn D. Gorman: And this voter base also, younger, college-educated people, are they really going to go out and vote? I think that’s…
Rafael Mangual: Yeah. Well, that’s the other thing, though, too, right? mean, like, if we do see this massive unprecedented turnout of younger voters, and I think the, you know, the result gets called into question at that point, you know, the result of the poll, because that’s where, you know, Mamdani could, you know, really beat the expectations, you know, if you were to just go on what this poll is showing. I think that’s an open question, too.
Carolyn D. Gorman: But that voter turnout would need to essentially double from 2021. And I think that’s, it’s hard to see that happening.
Rafael Mangual: Yeah, yeah, no, mean, it seems very unlikely to me from here, but crazier things have happened.
Carolyn D. Gorman: Yeah, yeah, totally.
Charles Fain Lehman: I do want to look ahead very briefly before we run and we’ll look ahead to the general. And there we actually also have it comfortably Cuomo. So we polled three hypothetical general elections. One is Cuomo, Sliwa, Adams, and Jim Walton, who’s the independent running. And Cuomo wins that comfortably 45 percent. Although 27 percent are undecided. In a Mamdani-Adams-Sliwa election, Mamdani still wins. He gets about 33 percent, but Adams picks up about 8 percent of the vote and Sliwa picks up about 3 percent, and then a Cuomo-Mamdani-Sliwa, a five-way race all of them…
Rafael Mangual: Cuomo still wins, I think he said, right? Cuomo still wins in that.
Charles Fain Lehman: What? Well no, so that’s if Mamdani wins and Cuomo doesn’t run, Mamdani wins. If Cuomo and Mamdani are both running in the general, which seems like the most likely outcome Cuomo wins, gets about 39 percent to Mamdani’s 25 percent. Sliwa and Adams are both down 12 and 10 percent.
Rafael Mangual: I see. Got it.
Charles Fain Lehman: So I think that’s pretty bullish for Cuomo as well. Ralph, you seem sort of less certain about that. Do you think the race dynamics are going to change?
Rafael Mangual: Well, yeah, I mean, you like I said, Eric Adams hasn’t even really started his campaign, neither has Curtis Sliwa. And what I fear, I do think you’re right that Mamdani’s kind of pretty, pretty much maxed out his, you know, his high watermark for support, even in the general. But if Eric Adams and Cuomo and Sliwa are able to cut into each other’s support enough and water each other down, you know, in theory Zohran could win with as little as 26, 27 percent of the vote. And that’s like, that’s my fear because the race dynamics I do think change once Eric Adams starts spending his campaign money and starts emptying those coffers. Same thing with Curtis Sliwa. And, you know, who knows what happens between now and November. You know, I know that doesn’t seem like a long time, but in politics, you know, a lot can change in that period of time. And so, you know, I wouldn’t, I’m sort of reserving my relief for now about the general, but I do think that this poll is probably as good as what you could have hoped for.
Tal Fortgang: What’s interesting is not just that our politics changes, but that the political personalities themselves are able to change seemingly on a dime. Maybe it’s a function of our news cycle moving so quickly or people’s attention spans getting shorter. But it was just yesterday that Governor Cuomo was, you know, a granny-killing, Italian exuberance, like redlining synagogues in COVID, you know, everyone was just, he went, he went from the, the Cuomo-sexuals following him around during COVID and loving his charts and all that to being persona non grata and back again. And my point in bringing that up is not just to remind us of how silly the last few years have been, but to say that that kind of reinvention for someone like Eric Adams is still possible, right? Right now he’s kind of like, he’s corrupt, he’s not making anyone happy, he’s too left for the right, he’s too right for the left, whatever. That stuff can change when he has to pick a lane in a general election, so I don’t even know what kind of candidate we’re going to be assessing at that point.
Charles Fain Lehman: Yeah. I mean, right, I do think- I do think that- and this is purely- this is the best kind of evidence which is purely anecdotal, talking to my friends, uh, very reliable. But I think that there are more than a few shy Adams voters out there, and, you know, maybe they would show up in the poll, people don’t feel bad about saying it, but like, there people who look at him and go, he’s connected to Trump, he’s being paid off by the Turkish and the Hungarians and who knows who else, and that’s terrible. And then people are like, I don’t know, like, crime has declined pretty precipitously… His “The City of Yes” stuff seems good. He put all the trash in the containers. Like, I don’t know, Andrew Cuomo is also a crook, and Zohran Mamdani is crazy. Why shouldn’t I vote for Eric Adams?
Rafael Mangual: Listen, I think that’s exactly where the rubber’s going to hit the road because, I mean, what you did see in this poll is that crime is still a very highly salient issue. And what Adams has working for him is a recent record of supporting a more aggressive posture at the NYPD, more enforcement, a growing jail population, a record of very staunchly advocating for upending disastrous criminal justice reforms done up in Albany, right? Bail reform, discovery reform, raise the age. He’s been consistent on that. And guess what? Each one of those reforms has one person’s name on them, and that’s Andrew Cuomo. Andrew Cuomo has yet to denounce those moves, has yet to say that he would call on Albany to change them.
You know, like Tal was saying, I mean, you know, political personalities can change almost on a dime. Well, it wasn’t that long ago that Andrew Cuomo was the criminal justice reformer in chief, right? mean, within a few weeks of George Floyd happening, he signed 10 police reform bills into law. He was bragging about closing something like 17 state prisons while he was governor. You know, he defended bail reform, he defended discovery reform, and now we’re all supposed to buy him as like the leading public safety pragmatist. I mean, I don’t…
Charles Fain Lehman: Right.
Rafael Mangual: I think that’s a harder sell once Adam starts spending money to make that case.
Charles Fain Lehman: Once Adams is there, not right, because Cuomo has nobody, has nobody has to his right in the primary.
Rafael Mangual: Exactly.
Carolyn D. Gorman: You know, the other thing that Cuomo has his name on, he has cut a lot of psychiatric hospital beds and what underlies a lot of the crime and disorder is untreated serious mental illness, which Adams has been, you know, steadfast on more than any mayor in recent history. He has really refocused the priority to the seriously mentally ill, not, you know, the average New Yorker who is stressed. Well, the average New Yorker who is stressed is going to be a lot less stressed if they can safely ride the subway. So Adams definitely has made that a real priority.
Tal Fortgang: Can I just applaud the City Journal Podcast for a second, as a born and raised New Yorker who has strayed in every way. I’m back in New York. I’m talking about mayoral politics. I’ve returned to my roots, and I owe that to you, Charles. You’ve really, you’ve brought me back to focusing on the things that really matter.
Charles Fain Lehman: On that, on that.
Carolyn D. Gorman: Well, I currently reverse commute from Dallas, so I’m in New York like every week because I’m trying to get my fiancé to move us back there.
Charles Fain Lehman: Where, it depends on who, if it’s Zohran Mamdani, it’s going to hurt.
Alright I want to take us out so I want to ask, I want to ask the whole group, it seems like everyone is in agreement that Cuomo is going to win the primary, so I want to ask what the margin is. I think our margin is about twelve points. We’ve seen four points, you see a bunch of different numbers, so what do people think? What do you… What are you handicapping? What’s the line?
Rafael Mangual: I’m taking the under here. I think Cuomo wins, but I think it’s going to be tighter. And I secretly hope it is because maybe that wakes him up to where his vulnerabilities are and makes for just a better campaign and more pressure to adopt better policy positions. So I’m going to say Cuomo wins it, but only by eight.
Charles Fain Lehman: Okay, Carolyn, where are you at?
Carolyn D. Gorman: You know, I like that take Ralph. I don’t know who said, was it Ken Galbraith who said there are two types of forecasters, those who don’t know and those who don’t know they don’t know. I’ll second Ralph’s.
Charles Fain Lehman: Okay, okay. Tal, what are you? Eight over/under?
Tal Fortgang: No, I’m taking the under. I’m a little bit of a pessimist by nature, which leads me to say that actually a primary race could lead Cuomo to say, you know, I got to win some of these Mamdani guys. And that just worries me more. Look, all faith and confidence in the great Jesse Arm. Praise be his name. I’m sure his polling is exactly spot on. But I err on the side of things are going to be tight, they’re going to be a little less comfortable than we might want.
Charles Fain Lehman: Yeah, you know, my guess is turn out it’s going to be a little more aggressive than we think. I would go six points. That would be, that’s my guess. That’s what I’ve been on.
I want to take us into our next topic of the day. Obviously, Israel has engaged in an extensive bombing campaign in Iran. President Trump seems to be moving towards engaging as well, although it’s impossible to say with him. We didn’t talk about this on Monday because we’re not a – the City Journal’sa domestic policy concern. We don’t concern ourselves with other nations. Obviously, I’m monitoring the situation, but so we do here. But I do think there’s an interesting domestic angle that I want to get at with this group, which is, you know, there’s been this emergent debate among the American right, which is focused on like, you know, basically, what should be the American stance, and in particular, this split between what I might call… It’s a little bit odd. Usually, you know, we sort of think about this as like Trump is the restrainer president who’s being pushed towards action. And here, Trump is the aggressive president who’s got a large part of the bass on his side and this much smaller, more vocal, ultra-restrainer position that doesn’t want him to get involved. Folks like Tucker Carlson, folks like Candace Owens. So, you know, I’m curious if people make of this divide. What do you think is going on here?
Carolyn D. Gorman: Well, I mean, look, the right is just not homogenous, so the fact that a split exists is not really all that surprising. What I’m sort of curious to see in terms of how things play out is how people kind of react to each other on the right. I don’t know if anyone saw that video of Ted Cruz talking to Tucker Carlson about this yesterday. They basically just evolved into shouting at each other. And this is sort of interesting to me because one of our MI colleagues sent me a recent substack of Noah Smith’s making the case that social media is sort of preventing American society from spreading out and we’re kind of losing it a little bit. I think this is interesting because I’m always sort of focused on the fact that we all receive different information and that’s like, thinking that’s definitively a bad thing but maybe there’s some benefit to being able to sort of sort into more agreeable communities and relationships and if we can’t get away from each other, does that make it worse and are we going to see people on the right who are just sort of, you know, not necessarily aligned on every issue because that is the nature of the right, blow up at each other a little bit more?
Rafael Mangual: Yeah, I don’t know. watched that clip that’s going viral now between Senator Cruz and Tucker Carlson. It just struck me as really weird all around.
Charles Fain Lehman: And this was just, for context for those of you seen it, this is the clip where Carlson is asking him if he knows the population of Iran and Ted Cruz doesn’t know the population of Iran and they start yelling at each other, as Carolyn alluded to.
Rafael Mangual: Population of Iran and Cruz doesn’t know.
Yeah. I mean, it’s this weird kind of, you know, silly thing. I have a few thoughts on this, like, you know, you have Tucker Carlson saying like, wait a minute, you support stopping Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, in part because Iran is, you know, wants to destroy the United States and our main ally in the Middle East. You know, but before we go on, I mean, do you know, and then just, you know, kind of goes into this like game of trivial pursuit and it’s like, I mean, it’s as if you’re like, you know, at a political event and you see some group of masked Antifa folks, you know, preparing Molotov cocktails. And as you walk over to stop them, you know, someone else, you know, gets in your way and says, wait, wait, you can’t proceed unless you can tell me their shoe size. It’s like, what does it matter? It’s kind of silly, but it’s also like, you know, I’m sure you all remember the debate that our colleague Douglas Murray had with Dave Smith on Joe Rogan, you know, where Dave Smith and Joe Rogan were taking issue with this very same tactic, this whole idea that if you are not an expert on every matter associated with, you know, the jurisdiction that you’re talking about, that you can’t have an opinion, right? They were sort of mischaracterizing Douglas’s position in order to chide him for that. But that’s exactly what Tucker Carlson was doing in that clip. You know, it’s like, well, you’re disqualified, you know, from taking a position on a relatively basic question, which is like, should a hostile nation that is dedicated to the destruction of your main ally in a region where a lot of people hate you, be allowed to develop a nuclear warhead. I think that’s an easy answer, which is no.
But it’s also shouldn’t at all be surprising that Donald Trump is sort of taking the position that he’s taking. I mean, Ted Cruz is pointing this out on his podcast, I think yesterday. Donald Trump has a very long record of saying that Iran should not be allowed to get a nuclear weapon. He’d been saying that on the campaign trail since his first campaign back in 2016. Criticizing the Iran deal was a huge part of his campaign rhetoric. So A, I don’t know why we’re all surprised that Donald Trump is supportive of this move. B, I don’t know why you wouldn’t be supportive of this move. I mean, the idea of the Iranian regime having nuclear capabilities is, you know, insane to me and anyone who’s just okay with allowing that to happen, I don’t think necessarily has the best interest of the United States at heart. But three, it’s like, we’ve kind of devolved, to take a word from Carolyn, into this like silly game where these major questions are, you know, turning on, you know, these like little mini performances where, you know, you get to like signal virtue through a social media clip. It’s just, it’s not productive.
Tal Fortgang: I personally think that one should not weigh in on any issues of any importance until you can list the average wingspan of the national bird of the country at issue, or the state bird for domestic, I think, ornithological tests.
Charles Fain Lehman: Honestly Ted Cruz lost me there because I’m the kind of guy who compulsively reads the Wikipedia page for like different countries. I was like Ted Cruz is a weirdo. Like he’s my kind of weirdo. I expected better of him.
Rafael Mangual: He’s busy though. He’s busy. He’s a busy weirdo.
Carolyn D. Gorman: I mean the other thing is, look he is an elected official, he has to weigh in on a lot of things that, you know, elected officials don’t always know a lot about. They have to make decisions, so.
Rafael Mangual: And again, this is not a hard decision to make. You have people saying…
Charles Fain Lehman: I cut Tal off, so sorry.
Rafael Mangual: No, no, I’ll you.
Tal Fortgang: No, that’s okay. I welcomed it with my starting, starting with a joke. Ralph, go ahead. I want to hear what you’re-what you were saying.
Rafael Mangual: I was just going to say, I mean, it’s not a hard call. You have a regime that chants “Death to America” that wants to destroy your only ally in the Middle East. And they are trying to get a nuclear weapon. I mean, this is very simple. We say no. We stop them. That’s it.
Tal Fortgang: There’s something going on here with people realizing that the phrase America First meant very different things to different kinds of people. And that’s a debate and an argument that’s been going on for a while in the sense that some people have said, America First is like a Charles Lindbergh isolationist dog whistle. And other people say, no, it’s just like the very basic patriotic obligation of sort of a thin, bare-bones nationalism. We put our own national interests first. And now we’re seeing that come to a head as some people say, like, I thought we were dedicated to a kind of isolationism that doesn’t want to pay any attention, much less get involved in, even the lowest-risk, highest-reward endeavors, such as letting the Israelis bomb the crap out of the ayatollahs, and then we just come in at the very end, finish them off, or force them to the negotiating table, bring them to their knees, show American strength, like that’s the best version of America First, and some people are like, I didn’t realize that’s what I was in for, while others were like, I thought we were just protecting American interests. Like, a rogue nuclear regime is not in our interests.
Charles Fain Lehman: Yeah, I mean, I think that’s…This is the interesting thing about the president’s positioning here, right? And why I think he has played this very well is on the one hand, is, you know, he does not believe in nation building. He’s not a sort of idealist of the Bush administration variety. On the other hand, he has been unequivocally clear about this, you know, his views on Iran getting a nuclear weapon. And this is consistent with his sort of peace-through-strength foreign policy posture. The thing that’s really interesting to me in this story is, you know, there’s this dynamic, where folks on the left or the right who are critical of Israel will point at Zionists, and I would probably call myself that, and point to Zionists and be like, why are you so obsessed with Israel? And there are times when I think this is a reasonable criticism. I find it a little weird when American senators display Israeli flags. I get the point, but it’s a little weird. I don’t love it. But on the other hand, I think what the president has done here is turn to the table there and say, you’re with me on 95 percent of these issues. I don’t want a ground war in Iran. I don’t want to invade Tehran. I want to get rid of a nuclear threat to the American homeland. Why are you guys so obsessed with this as an issue that this is the one thing you want to fight me on? Like, why is this the one thing that Tucker Carson needs to pick a fight on as opposed to all the other stuff where he’s totally happy to be on the president’s side? Like, why is it this?
Carolyn D. Gorman: Yeah.
Rafael Mangual: Yeah, I have no idea. I mean, I really, again, I just, I don’t understand it. I mean, there is, there are very clear circumstances under which, you know, defense through offense is acceptable. When you have a foe telling you that they are going to attack you as they are trying to get the means with which to attack you, it is not, you know, overly interventionist to stop them from doing that. Right? I mean, you know, and we, this is reflected in all sorts of ways in our own domestic policy. mean, the whole idea of like, let’s say a red flag law, for example, right, is rooted in this, here’s this crazy guy who’s, you know, you’re writing fantasy stories about shooting up a school. Let’s see if we can’t head this off before it actually happens. You know, the law does not require you to suffer an injury before you can, you that’s what an injunction is. That’s what, you know, you can take action under the Eighth Amendment, for example, for cruel and unusual punishment, even before the punishment has come to pass, right? I mean, you’re not required to suffer the injury before you’re justified in taking any action. That’s a pretty simple concept that I think people like Tucker understand in various other contexts.
Charles Fain Lehman: I do, I do think it’s interesting, and I want to, before we go, bring this in, this interesting sort political coalition question. Because Israel’s, and particularly American support for the war in Gaza, has been waning steadily over the past couple of years. There was Pew polling a few months ago that I found striking that asks about approval of Israel, per se. And about 2 thirds of Republicans still say they approve Israel. That’s up from, that’s down. It used to be 3 quarters. Now it’s 2 thirds. But if you look at the Republic, I think it’s under 45, a majority say they disapprove of Israel. So that’s like a selected group, you know, Republicans 18 to 45 is kind of a weird population. There aren’t that many Republicans under the age of 30, but still that’s a remarkable trend, so you know, I’m curious whether we expect that to be a durable effect and if we expect sort of this split in the coalition to remain salient going forward or if, you know, and sometimes it’s just a conclusion of what happens in the war, but do we expect that to fade?
Rafael Mangual: I don’t, not unless there’s some kind of, you know, wake up style event like a 9/11, right? I mean, which I think characterizes a lot of older Republicans positions and ideas on this, right? I mean, it certainly affected how I view the whole Israel, you know, Palestine debacle. mean, one of my first sort of memories about that region, right, as a 15 year old kid who didn’t really think about much outside of his own immediate life was that, you know, on 9/11, as I’m watching Brit Hume report on Fox News, they cut to a foreign correspondent in the Gaza Strip and people are dancing in the streets celebrating the murder of 3,000 of my compatriots. Like, you know, these are people that I’ve never met in a part of the world that I hadn’t really thought much about and yet they hated us enough, you know, that the idea of slaughtering 3,000 innocent American men, women, and children was worthy of a dance party. And so that, you know, has absolutely colored how I’ve come at this issue,and you know, but for a lot of people who are in that age group, I mean, they don’t have that kind of experience to push them along, to wake them up to the reality that these are dangerous people, some of whom really want to kill you. And playing footsie with groups that are sympathetic to American destruction and Israeli destruction, like Hamas and Hezbollah and the Iranian regime, is not in your interest.
Carolyn D. Gorman: I think, like, especially young people, you saw it with these college campus protests, they just don’t really get how good they have it. It’s almost like, you know, the protesting is like a social thing. A few months ago, my Nana was asking me, how did they all get the same tents? You know, and I was like, Nana, it’s like when I was in high school, you had to have UGG boots, you know, right now…
Charles Fain Lehman: Affiliates of Hamas handed you Ugg boots? What was going on there for the record?
Carolyn D. Gorman: No, but you know what I mean? you’re… The protesting is like the socially popular thing to do and you know that because as Renu was saying last week the people with like their Bean bags. Like this is just like the popular thing, and maybe the problem is people really don’t understand like we have it pretty good. You know, we should protect what we have and maybe they don’t have the experiences that you’ve had Ralph and…
Rafael Mangual: Well, I mean, I think some people, you know, at least on the more extreme just recently got that. I don’t know if you saw these protesters that had planned to march from Egypt to Gaza, who got thrown out of Egypt and attacked. It was somewhat satisfying to watch, but you know, like I do think that it’s going to come down to whether or not people get that type of wake-up calls and realize that these are not your friends. They’d kill you in a heartbeat. Shout out Queers fom Palestine.
Tal Fortgang: There are interesting social trends at play on the right among young people on the right as well. There’s a flirtation that I’ve certainly seen in my little legal circles with a kind of traditional Catholicism that often tends to mix with a bit of Christian chauvinism, which does not look so kindly upon Jews for theological reasons. I don’t know to what extent that’s catching on among young conservatives or young heterodox types or just Republicans 18 to 45. But you might extrapolate something from the example of Tucker Carlson himself, who, you know, 20 years ago was one of those young conservatives with the bow ties. He was a country club guy, right? He was writing for Weekly Standard and City Journal and was on Fox News defending Israel, defending the West, defending the free market. And I don’t know if he’s a bellwether or if he’s following a kind of trend or if he’s a trendsetter himself. But there are some things afoot on the right that do deserve our attention. One thing that I think about as a young Jew is how we actually do, this is like a super cliche, but like interfaith dialogue, right? Speaking to Christians in ways that might prevent or help mitigate some of the effects of some creeping forms of chauvinism that I’ve noticed in a way that’s not manipulative, but like actually speaks to our shared interests, our shared heritage, and the things that we have in common in terms of what we want for the West.
Charles Fain Lehman: I want to take us out. And so I want to ask people yes or no. Do we think Israel, Palestine, Iran are going to be what’s called “significant issues” in the 2028 Republican primary? Do we think they’ll get more? They may get a passing question on the debate stage, but is it going to be more than that? Ralph, you’re shaking your head? No? Carolyn?
Carolyn D. Gorman: There’s two kinds of forecasters…
Tal Fortgang: But Charles loves to ask forecast questions. It’s like,he’s constantly prompting.
Charles Fain Lehman: I love forecasting. Yeah.
Carolyn D. Gorman: No, I know. I won’t take the bait.
Charles Fain Lehman: The person who makes the most predictions, the most correct predictions of the next year wins the grand prize for participating in the CJ Podcast. I will not tell you what it is. Tal, what’s your prediction?
Tal Fortgang: I’m going to flip the question, not by asking you a question, but by saying that the Iran story will be over. What will be a live topic will be expanding the Abraham Accords, normalization among the Arab states that have been conspicuously quiet at worst and supportive at best of Israel’s actions in Iran because they hate Iran and they recognize that it is destabilizing. I think that what will be a live topic of discussion is who will claim the mantle of the Trump administration’s diplomatic successes in the Middle East.
Charles Fain Lehman: I hope that’s right, but I’m skeptical. I think the divides we’re talking about aren’t going to go away.
On that cheery note, before we go, let’s talk a little bit about us. Minor news stuff. We always like to follow page six Vogue here at the City Journal Podcast. Democratic power couple, Huma Abedin and Alex Soros were wed over the weekend at a ceremony attended by a variety of luminaries. I think the Clintons were there, which caused me to ask.
Rafael Mangual: Yeah.
Tal Fortgang: That was like a serious makeout, by the way. They were like really making out under the chuppah. Some classic Jewish wedding.
Charles Fain Lehman: They were at it. I respect that. I respect that.
So no, here’s my question. Which major political figure would you invite to your wedding if you could have?
Carolyn D. Gorman: Well, my first job was working on the Senate floor, and as like, you know, a 20-year-old, it’s pretty scary to, like, tell a U.S. Senator they can’t bring their Coca-Cola on to vote. And Cory Booker was always so low-key and fun, and I am getting married in August and so I’m thinking about, like, who is going to bring the party? So that might be sort of like a wild card, but I can see him having a good time.
Charles Fain Lehman: That’s good answer. Okay, fair enough.
Rafael Mangual: That is a good answer. I have a Cory Booker tie with his face printed all over it, which was a gift from Jim Copeland because the first time I ever testified before the Senate was during COVID and I forgot to put my tie on. So after I delivered my testimony, Cory Booker gets up to question me and he goes, “You know, that was really wonderful. So good in fact, that I suspect you’ll be back, at which point I hope you’ll wear a tie.” And it was like the coolest call out.
Carolyn D. Gorman: That is so funny. So funny.
Charles Fain Lehman: Wait, wait, so who’s your pick? Which famous person would you want to have invited to your wedding if you could have> Luminary. Notable.
Rafael Mangual: Well, famous person, that’s a much broader…
Charles Fain Lehman: Oh no, right, it’s right. It’s a major political figure.
Rafael Mangual: I mean, does Clarence Thomas count?
Charles Fain Lehman: Yeah, totally. That’s mine!
Rafael Mangual: Well, I’ve met him a couple of times and man, is he just fun to talk to. My wife would hate me. I’d probably be divorced by the end of the night because I wouldn’t spend any time actually, you know, beginning my marriage. But if I could, I would just, you know, talk to that guy 24/7.
Charles Fain Lehman: Tal, let’s see who’s yours? Yeah.
Tal Fortgang: Those are great answers. Possibly stealing some of my answers. Cory Booker, of course, is known to recite appropriate Bible verses, sometimes in Hebrew, which I think would have worked very nicely at my wedding.
Charles Fain Lehman: He does love the Jews.
Tal Fortgang: But here’s what I’ll say. There’s an article from like 30 years ago. It can’t be 30 years ago. There’s an article from, like, 20 years ago talking about some young Washington policy wonks and their social lives. And it recounts one Reihan Salam like boogieing to a bunch of dance music.
Charles Fain Lehman: Isabella, we cannot link that article. He will fire all of us.
Tal Fortgang: No, no. Those who want to search it will search it. But our fearless leader, Reihan Salam, would be the life of the party. Jewish weddings are notoriously rowdy and full of raucous dance. And I feel like Reihan would really be in his element there.
Carolyn D. Gorman: Wow, I’m going to need to bug him then because I need some party stories. Reihan, August 31st, you better be there.
Charles Fain Lehman: Alright, yeah, my pick has to be on theme, which is the only man who is committed to respecting diverse cultures, to embracing nightlife, to keeping things clean and orderly, which is obviously Mayor Eric Adams, who made a great wedding guest, assuming he was not in New Jersey at the time. On that note!
Tal Fortgang: Did we all just pick- Did we all just pick bald men of color? Is that what we just did here?
Rafael Mangual: I think we did.
Charles Fain Lehman: Clarence Thomas has hair. It’s kind of…
Tal Fortgang: That’s true. That’s true. Very short.
Charles Fain Lehman: We did, we did.
All right. On that note, that’s about all the time that we have. Thank you, as always, to our panelists. Thank you to our producer, Isabella Redjai. Listeners, if you’ve enjoyed the episode, or even if you didn’t, please don’t forget to like, rate, subscribe, comment, do all of the other things, leave us questions if you possibly have any of them for us. Until next time, you’ve been listening to the City Journal Podcast. We hope you’ll join us again soon.
Photos: Yuki Iwamura-Pool/Getty Images (left) / Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images (right)
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