'He was already a failure'

Wednesday's Final Word

Zohran Mamdani ran on and won NYC's Democrat mayoral primary on the most lunatic, destructive, left-wing agenda this side of Pyongyang.  CNN This Morning host Audie Cornish had a perfect opportunity today to grill a Democrat from the leftist fringes on the party on it. Cornish's guest was Debbie Dingell, a Michigan congresswoman and a leader of the House Progressive Caucus. Cornish punted. Instead of putting her on the spot, Cornish let Dingell run away from Mamdani's pie in the sky. Audie allowed Dingell to focus instead on the tactics of Mamdani's campaign, rather than the substance. Zohran was "out and about." He was "talking to people," and employing "new media." When Cornish described a couple of Mamdani's planks as focusing on "affordability," Dingell was only too happy to agree: "Affordability is what we need to be talking about." Let's examine some of Mamdani's plans. Free bus fare on every route in the city. Even during the Soviet era, bus fares weren't free. Zohran apparently skipped his Econ 101 class at Bowdoin the day the laws of supply and demand were described. When prices decline, demand increases. So when the price declines to zero, demand will skyrocket. Result: the system would be overwhelmed and promptly become inoperable.  The same applies to Mamdani's proposal to offer free childcare for all. The system would break in no time. Making matters worse, Mamdani wants to pay childcare workers the same as school teachers. Not only would the cost of the program explode, but so would the heads of teachers and their union bosses. Expect teacher walkouts and school closures in short order. And then there's Zohran's proposal to create "a network of city-owned grocery stores." Wouldn't be long before shelves resembled those empty ones of the bad old days in Moscow. And since Mamdani says the government stores wouldn't pay rent or property taxes, their only success could be to drive private-sector competitors out of business. Liberals like to talk about "food deserts." Mamdani would be creating not just deserts, but food shortages that could turn the Big Apple into "Hunger Games: NYC."  And how to pay for his lunatic ideas? Why, tax the rich and those gr-e-e-e-dy corporations--borrowing a favorite adjective from Mamdani's endorser, Bernie Sanders. But it will be hard to hammer those golden-egg laying geese when they've decamped to Florida and other low-tax states. Again, Cornish had every opportunity to force Dingell to try to defend fellow progressive Mamdani's catastrophic plans. Instead, she murmured about "affordability" and let Debbie utterly off the hook.  Here's the transcript. CNN This Morning 6/25/25 6:49 am EDT AUDIE CORNISH: Back now to that surprising primary out of New York City and what it says about the state of the Democratic party.  33-year-old State Assemblyman Zoran Mamdani is on track to win the Democratic primary for mayor. Former Governor Andrew Cuomo, who was considered a frontrunner, conceded the race last night. Mamdani did not reach 50% of the vote, so the race will be decided by ranked choice voting, which starts on July 1st.  Joining me now to talk more, Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Dingell of Michigan. Thank you for being here this morning.  DEBBIE DINGELL: Great to be with you.  CORNISH: One of the reasons why I'm excited to talk to you is because you are a leader in the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and this is a moment where you have a democratic socialist who has kind of moved to the forefront, where establishment Democrats had backed Cuomo. Why do you think those establishment Democrats were backing Cuomo, and was that a misread of the room, so to speak?  DINGELL: So I think this is one of the things that I've been saying for years. You're starting to hear more people say it. You will recall that I predicted that Hillary Clinton was going to lose in 2016 and [I] was the bad girl of the Democratic party and the Debbie Downer. And unfortunately, I was right.  But what I noticed about these two candidates, one was out, one was about. They were talking with people. They were using new forms of media. They were using podcasts, social media. And Governor Cuomo ran a very traditional consultant ad, used paid media, and you didn't see him out and about.  So while I do think some of his ideas are exciting people, people are worried about, let's be clear, people are worried about the cost of living, they're worried about caregiving, they're worried about they have a job, can find affordable housing. All those issues were there and he talked about them.  People, I'm afraid, are going to try to turn this into, you know, what does this mean? I think it shows that Democrats have got to start getting out and listening to people. CORNISH: Is this a New York win or can you see more candidates like this gaining traction around the country?  DINGELL: I think that what we have to look at is how he campaigned and the issues that he talked about and his ability to meet with a lot of people and to be out -- CORNISH: Right, he was talking about free buses, talking about freezing rents, but affordability.  DINGELL: Affordability is what we need to be talking about. Some people are going to try to pin it up. He's a communist, he's -- What he is, is talking to people about what they care about, and he's talking to people. He's out and about. It's what I'm trying to encourage in my Democratic caucus. I want every member of the Democratic caucus to walk into a union hall or go to a meeting with union workers in the month of August. 

The current dominant spin about President Trump's bunker-busting bombs on Iran's nuclear facilities comes from anonymous intelligence sources. They are guessing that the Iranian nuclear program has only been set back about three months. Once again, reporters like CNN's Natasha Bertrand exploit shadowy sources for an anti-Trump spin, pretending all the way that there's no politics being played. All the "mainstream" media outlets that channeled Bertrand's version of events weren't going to mention that five years ago, Bertrand also marshaled high-profile intelligence professionals to claim that Hunter Biden's laptop was Russian disinformation. That turned out to be the American disinformation. The intelligence leaker here for Bertrand and for others could have been a major pusher of Trump-colludes-with-Putin leaks, but they get portrayed as authoritative and objective by their anonymity. No one can evaluate their political activity or contributions or partisan associations. We're all kept in the dark.  MRC Business associate editor Joseph Vazquez joins the show to discuss this and his articles on how The New York Times and CNN made a lot of noise that oil prices might soar after Trump's attack on Iran...when instead, gas prices went down to where they were before Israel and Iran went to war. You could guess that oil prices spike, but it's embarrassing to hype that like it's inevitable, and then it doesn't happen. Just as with tariff effects, the anti-Trump media eagerly looks forward to whatever economic pain they can highlight. We also discuss how Wikipedia how lists NewsBusters and the Media Research Center on a page about sources of disinformation. That's based on a "Toxic Ten" report from a far-left British group called the Center for Countering Digital Hate that attacked us based on our "climate denial." So can we say it was climate "disinformation" when media outlets warned of dangerous "global cooling" in the 1970s? We published a report on that called Fire And Ice.  Joseph is a preeminent research of the Soros family and their leftist philanthropy, so let's remind you of his report with Matt Palumbo on all the groups Alex Soros is funding now to suppress any dissent on the climate. Enjoy the podcast below, or wherever you listen to podcasts. 

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