Is Zohran Mamdani's Plan for New York Economically Possible? — ft. Bradley Tusk

Ed Elson and Scott Galloway are joined by Bradley Tusk, venture capitalist, political strategist, and writer, to break down the economics of Zohran Mamdani’s policies. Bradley also shares his thoughts on the Mayor-elect means for New York and the future of the Democratic party. Subscribe to Bradley’s Substack Subscribe to the Prof G Markets newsletter Order "Notes on Being a Man," out now Note: We may earn revenue from some of the links we provide. Subscribe to No Mercy / No Malice Follow Prof G Markets on Instagram Follow Scott on Instagram Follow Ed on Instagram and X Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Good times mean competitions between you and your friends. Like seeing who can throw some pigskin the farthest or rush the field the fastest. Winner gets an ultra. Because it's not just a superior light beer. It's also giving fans superior access to their favorite sporting events. Superior is worth playing for. Visit michelobultra.com/superioraccess to enter. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser Busch InBev Michelob Ultra Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

• 0:30Speaker 01

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• 1:00Speaker 02

  I get so many headaches every month.

• 1:02Speaker 03

  It could be chronic migraine, 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more.

• 1:07Speaker 04

  Botox, onabotulinum toxin A, prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It's not for those who have 14 or fewer headache days a month. Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection, causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease, myasthenia gravis or Lambert Eaton syndrome, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects.

• 1:52Speaker 03

  Why wait? Ask your doctor. Visit botoxchronicmigraine.com or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more.

• 2:00Scott Galloway?

  Today's number, 2 million. More than 2 million people voted in the New York City mayor election, the most in a half a century. True story, reportedly in every Asian household, the kids are freaking out as now their parents are going to say, "What? You're not mayor by the age of 33?" Also, Ed, let's be honest, this is a huge defeat for perverts all over the world, but I want the other, I want the other perverts to know that we will rebuild, we will be back.

• 2:29Speaker 06

  Markets are bigger than us. What you have here is a structural change in the world distribution. Cash is trash. Stocks look pretty attractive. Something's going to break. Forget about it.

• 2:39Scott Galloway?

  How are you, Ed?

• 2:40Ed Elson?

  I'm doing very well. How are you doing, Scott?

• 2:41Scott Galloway?

  I'm less miserable than I usually am. I'm really excited about the election results. You know, I don't, I would not have voted for this mayor. I'm not, I'm not a New York resident. I always have to feel like I have to do a land acknowledgement to my Jewish brothers and sisters. But the other races I'm especially excited about, the governor's races, even down ballot races, the probably the most important race was the referendum in California and that passed overwhelmingly. But yeah, I'm feeling pretty good this morning and how about you? How are you doing?

• 3:11Ed Elson?

  You know, I have something for you. One, one second.

• 3:15Scott Galloway?

  Who's under the table? Is that why you're smiling?

• 3:20Scott Galloway?

  Uh, boss, if it has anything to do with my birthday, it was two days ago or.

• 3:26Scott Galloway?

  But thank you.

• 3:26Ed Elson?

  We gotta celebrate it.

• 3:28Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, no, no, actually we don't. We don't.

• 3:31Ed Elson?

  We do. We do. It's your birthday. This is Scott's favorite. I mean, it was your birthday a couple of days ago. We didn't celebrate it. Your least favorite day of the year, but we have to celebrate it and acknowledge it somehow. Otherwise, what are we doing here?

• 3:43Scott Galloway?

  Okay, box checked. Let's talk about my book and my media tour.

• 3:49Ed Elson?

  Come on, it's a good day.

• 3:51Scott Galloway?

  It's good when you're 14, like fucking Ed Elson. When you're barreling towards death, like Scott Galloway. All I have is like shingles and Crohn's to look forward to.

• 4:00Ed Elson?

  I ordered these last night. Come on, this was a lot of effort from me.

• 4:04Scott Galloway?

  You really brought it there. You must be a fantastic boyfriend. It's like when my dad came home for Christmas on the 21st, four days before Christmas, and he brought home a Quiznos from Sears for my, his third wife.

• 4:16Ed Elson?

  I could do a little more than a paper hat. Next time, next time I'll get you the second Ferrari.

• 4:21Scott Galloway?

  Talk about my book, bitch. That's my birthday present.

• 4:25Ed Elson?

  Tell us about your book. Amazing book launch. You're all over the place. Number one on Amazon.

• 4:32Scott Galloway?

  I'm number one on Amazon? It's funny. I don't really buy into the modern metrics of a capitalist society and I have not, I have not refreshed my Amazon page every seven minutes. Waiting it to fall to number two behind fucking let them Mel Robbins and Andrew Huberman and telling me to eat, drink pineapple juice and creatine the rest of my life. I think the key is I, no joke, cried on The View, which felt very masculine in front of four women.

• 4:58Ed Elson?

  It was nice though. It was moving.

• 4:59Scott Galloway?

  That was, that was a low light.

• 5:01Ed Elson?

  So you've been on The View, you've been on Morning Joe, you were on the Today Show, you were on Kara Swisher's podcast. What am I missing here?

• 5:11Scott Galloway?

  I'm not even keeping track. CBS, PBS, I'm on for Times of London and today I go on Fareed Zakaria.

• 5:18Ed Elson?

  Anderson Cooper.

• 5:19Scott Galloway?

  Anderson Cooper. Today I go on The Daily Show with Jordan Klepper and then tonight I'm being interviewed by Ben Stiller, who I'd be great friends with, but he doesn't drink. He's really getting in the way of our friendship.

• 5:34Scott Galloway?

  What's going on in your life?

• 5:35Ed Elson?

  I'm just grinding, Scott. I'm just working on this podcast. Yeah. But it's going, everything's going very well and we're gonna have our, I thought we were gonna have our meeting last week. We didn't have that meeting. It's happening this week and we're gonna review how the business is doing. I, I gotta tell you, I get very excited for these meetings.

• 5:51Scott Galloway?

  That's because the business is doing well.

• 5:53Ed Elson?

  Exactly. If we were doing badly, then I'd be, I'd be a little terrified. But we got.

• 5:58Scott Galloway?

  I don't think anyone in your generation, maybe with a few of these kids are being laid off from these information edge companies. I think the majority of people with your kind of certification and your skills, and this worries me a little bit. Your life has pretty much been, and I, I'll say that having, I don't know what you face personally, but professionally.

• 6:19Scott Galloway?

  I don't know if there was a malicious clown at a little, a little birthday event. I don't know what happened.

• 6:25Ed Elson?

  Without any real knowledge, I'm just gonna go out on a whim and say your life's been pretty good.

• 6:29Scott Galloway?

  Your life's been a fucking Easter parade. I know professionally, because your entire professional life has been with me, that your, your professional life has pretty much been up and to the right.

• 6:38Ed Elson?

  Yeah, that's, that's, uh, that's true. It's been, it's been a cakewalk.

• 6:43Scott Galloway?

  I, you know what? Just for a learning experience, I promise to fix that at some point.

• 6:48Ed Elson?

  I can't wait. Well, should we get into our conversation here with Bradley Tusk? We're gonna talk about this election, what it means for New York.

• 6:55Scott Galloway?

  I'll start.

• 6:56Ed Elson?

  Here is our conversation with Bradley Tusk, veg capitalist, political strategist and writer. Brad, thank you very much for joining us on Prof G Markets.

• 7:05Speaker 08

  Yeah, thanks for having me.

• 7:09Ed Elson?

  So we want to get into this election here. The reason why, why we wanted to speak with you, just to go over your background for our listeners here. So you ran Mike Bloomberg's mayoral campaign in 2009, which he won. You were the campaign manager. Before that, you served as deputy governor of Illinois. Before that, you were Chuck Schumer's communications director. Before that, you actually worked for the New York City Parks Department. You're a senior advisor. So you are heavily involved in New York politics, but at the same time, you're also a leader in business. You worked on Wall Street for several years. You were an early advisor to Uber. You, you started your VC firm, Tusk Ventures.

• 7:50Ed Elson?

  So you have pretty deep experience in the New York City political world and also the New York City business world. And these are two worlds which may be colliding after this mayoral election. Many believe they're about to be at odds with one another. So just want to start with the context here and then I'll throw it back to you and we'll start very broad. Zohar Mamdani is the next mayor of New York City. What does this mean for New York City?

• 8:16Speaker 08

  It's an open question. So I think part of the Challenge over the last few months is a misunderstanding of the role of city government and of the mayor. So while I did not vote for Mamdani, a lot of the sort of rendering of garments to me is overstated. Yes, he's a socialist, but at the end of the day, the mayor doesn't really control the economy directly. The mayor does not set interest rates, the mayor does not control the supply chain, he can't even really raise taxes without Albany. And so, you know, the job of the mayor, of really any mayor, is to pick up the trash. It's to make sure the lights turn from green to red. It's to make sure the clean water comes out of the tap. And if he governs pragmatically, then I think he might be just fine.

• 9:00Speaker 08

  If he governs totally dogmatically, then I think we've got a problem.

• 9:03Ed Elson?

  So you you mentioned that, you know, he is a democratic socialist. This wouldn't have a real impact, you know, on markets, on the economy, he doesn't have that level of power. What does it mean, though, that he is a democratic socialist? Does that, is that important to you? Does that strike you? Is that something that we should care about?

• 9:22Speaker 08

  Well, it's important in the sense that if you were to take the DSA, that's the Democratic Socialists of America, their platform, and if he were to truly try to apply that to the mayoralty, then I think New York City very well might be a place where a lot of people wouldn't want to live. If you truly believe that the police are evil and should be fully defunded, if you truly believe that taxes should be as high as absolutely possible, if you truly believe that, you know, every business and every business person sort of is inherently rapacious and greedy and needs to be punished in some way, then yeah, that is not a good look for the city that is the financial capital of the world, the media capital of the world, and a city that relies on its highest income taxpayers.

• 10:06Speaker 08

  About 1% of New Yorkers pay about 50% of the city's income taxes. And New York City is a value proposition. And at a certain point, if it is too expensive and too dangerous, people can and will choose to live somewhere else. And what that ultimately results in is a lot less money for poor people. It's the poorest among us who need maximum city revenue for Medicaid, for public housing, for public assistance. And if Mamdani's policies do cause a flight of capital, the poor people are the ones who are going to pay the most.

• 10:37Ed Elson?

  Do you think that that will happen? I mean, we've seen a lot of people saying, leading up to the election, a lot of wealthy people saying, I'm leaving if he gets in office. You think that's gonna happen?

• 10:48Speaker 08

  No, I don't. I, I, the odds of anyone this morning picking up the phone, calling a real estate broker and leaving town just because Mamdani won last night seemed pretty low to me. It will come down to how he governs. One very encouraging sign so far is that he said that he wants to keep Jessie Tisha's police commissioner. She runs the NYPD. She seems to be extremely good at it. If she chooses to stay and he lets her do her job, that's a pretty clear sign that he understands that the role of the mayor is to give people a clean, safe, well-run city. And if he can do that, he's gonna be just fine. And if he can't, there will be a flight. Um, there already has been. So i- in, in 2012, according to the Citizens Budget Commission,

• 11:31Speaker 08

  New York City had 12.7% of America's, uh, millionaires and now it's down to 8.7%. And that's a resulting loss of about $13 billion a year in tax revenue. And so people can move, city governments are the most vulnerable to that kind of thing. So we'll see. I think in my conversations with him, he gets that. Um, but you know, the proof will be in the pudding and who he hires will tell us all.

• 11:56Ed Elson?

  You mentioned some of those things that, that, you know, you're saying if he truly believes XYZ, i- if he truly believes that we need to defund the police. I, I'm trying to remember some of the examples that you gave, but, uh, generally speaking, they seem to be slight caricatures, but I'm not totally sure. And I, I think one question a lot of people are asking is like, what does he truly believe? We know that he tweeted in 2020, "Defund the police." So we know that that's where he stood on the issue. Now he's on TV saying, "That's not actually what I believe." And I think, I don't have a problem with that personally, saying, "I actually switched my view." But I guess my question to you, having talked with him, what does he truly believe?

• 12:37Ed Elson?

  And those, those concerns you raised, do you think that those are the kinds of policies that he will actually enact and try to enact as mayor?

• 12:46Speaker 08

  I don't think so by and large because I think he does study history really well and I think he is quite smart. And when you look at where other mayors have failed, it is typically because they either went way too far on some sort of ideological bent or they ignored. I mean, Eric Adams' mayoralty effectively was derailed, probably not by all the petty corruption, but simply that when it came to quality of life, he didn't do a good job. You know, there was a point where New York City had over 5,000 illegal weed shops, which means stores that were openly selling narcotics without a license to do so. And Adams, for years and years, just ignored it, right? We have scaffolding everywhere. We have such a shoplifting epidemic that if you want a tube of toothpaste, you have

• 13:28Speaker 08

  to get someone to open up a lock case for you. We have e-bikes roaring up and down the sidewalks. And so when the city feels out of control, people blame the mayor. I do think that Zohran gets that and, you know, we'll see how that impacts his choices as governor.

• 13:44Scott Galloway?

  I can't help but add on, a lot of my Jewish friends ask me why I wasn't being more vocal against Mondomian. I'm like, he doesn't set policy on Israel. It's just, let's, we've got bigger battles to fight here than, than, than who's in charge of the MTA union negotiations. Anyway, talk a little bit about some of the other races. This feels, as a, as a proud progressive, this feels like a good morning. Typically in off cycles, it goes against whoever the incumbent president is. So is this, was this a surprise to the upside for blue or just sort of an average part of the cycle?

• 14:24Speaker 08

  No, I think, I think it was a surprise to the upside for blue, in part because Democrats have been having a really rough go of it. Just quickly on your point in Israel, look, I'm a fervent Zionist, but with that said, no member of the Israeli Knesset has ever said, wait, before I cast this critical vote, let me see what the mayor of New York says. It does matter. What matters is whether and how he protects Jews in New York. I think he gets that. As long as he does that, it's fine. Nationally, look, where you can really contrast Zohran with the other candidates who succeeded last night is whether you like Zohran or not, to his credit, he did have an affirmative agenda, right? He had a clear vision for New York City. He smiles, he laughs, he's likable, whereas I think the stereotype right now, and largely it's been pretty true, of the Democratic Party is just,

• 15:10Speaker 08

  Incessant whining and complaining and no real vision, just being against everything. I don't know that Mikey Sherrill or Abigail Spanberger, who respectively won the governorships of New Jersey and Virginia last night, have a clear vision for their states. They have policy positions on their website, obviously, but I don't think it really mattered because voters were expressing their opinions about Trump and about the nation overall. The thing to me that was the most telling was an ABC News/Washington Post poll came out yesterday morning that said that 71% of Americans feel that their grocery prices have gone up, and of independents, 2/3 of them blame Trump for it directly based on tariffs and everything else. There are lots of issues that you or me or Adam or whoever might scream about

• 15:52Speaker 08

  on authoritarianism or rule of law or process. I'm not sure that most Americans care all that much about process, but they know what it costs to go to the grocery store. And when they start feeling like it's costing them a lot more money, they start blaming people. And so unless you think that Trump is going to totally revoke the tariffs, everything's going to change, you're in a position where this very well might be the same or even worse economic climate a year from now when the midterms head, and you have to be encouraged, if you're a Democrat, at your chances of at least retaking the House. So now, with all of that said, Democrats retaking the House just gets us to a place where Trump can't get his agenda through Congress. But if you have a president that genuinely does

• 16:34Speaker 08

  not care about rule of law and just does things anyway, and a Supreme Court that seems terrified of him, that may not matter.

• 16:40Scott Galloway?

  So, I want to come back to New York just for a second, because what you said about Democrats need to be more than just clutching their pearls, they need a party of ideas. So, government-sponsored food grocery stores makes absolutely fucking literally no sense to me. It's a low-margin business. 83% of bodega owners are immigrants. That's like the last business we want to be in. Someone from the DMV picking our produce is not going to make prices go down unless you subsidize those stores in the ultimate.

• 17:10Speaker 08

  No, I love the DMV. I know, yeah. A big part of the DMV trading is picking the right avocados.

• 17:15Scott Galloway?

  Listen to two of you. Rent stabilization and rent freezes, as far as I can tell, economics 101, they end up having the opposite effect, they end up actually increasing rent prices. But instead of just being the, you know, the podcaster of no, what, as someone who's been a deputy mayor of Chicago, focus on affordability, what are the structural shifts a mayor could enact, or even Congress, to make life more affordable for Americans? What are the ideas that would in fact bring down prices?

• 17:46Speaker 08

  Yeah, I mean, the first thing is, so, wasn't paid much attention to, but there were ballot measures last night in New York City that dealt with the process for approving construction and housing, and they passed, and that's a really big deal, because one of the reasons that New York City and so many cities around this country lack affordable housing is that the cost of creating new housing is so incredibly high that it doesn't pencil out for developers, like you just made the point on, the rent freeze. So about 28% of New York City apartments are rent controlled or rent stabilized. The mayor does have the power to basically disallow any rent increases for those apartments. Like you said, that just spreads the cost out to everybody else.

• 18:27Speaker 08

  So if you were to meaningfully make affordable housing easier, and if you were to reduce the cost and reduce all of the political burden and nonsense that typically goes on, that leads to more housing and just basic supply and demand. If there's a greater supply of housing, then prices will come down. So that, that's clearly one thing that we could do, and obviously, I'm sure you've had, you know, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson on one of your shows at some points, talk about their whole abundance agenda. A lot of that would, would certainly make sense. The other thing, and this is much more on a national level than local, but it's an issue that you talk about a lot on your podcast, Scott, which is, you know, what's the impact of AI going to be? And to me, at least, when I look at the job numbers, I think that AI is already having

• 19:12Speaker 08

  an impact. The companies that are laying off most people, which are the really big tech companies, are the earliest adopters of things like AI, and often they're the developers of it, too. And I think by 2026 and 2028, this will be a really meaningful issue to people. And how we go about regulating AI, how we go about making sure that we don't end up with 26 people who are trillionaires and 19% unemployment is going to be really important. I think Andrew Yan kind of kicked this whole conversation off 15 years ago or so with with his book that proposed universal basic income as a solution for AI layoffs. That's going to be an issue that the government has to deal with. And typically speaking, Congress has abdicated that role.

• 19:54Speaker 08

  If you look at kind of Internet 2.0, there's been no meaningful federal regulation of social media, and it has had an absolute disastrous impact, especially on kind of young men, Scott, as you talk about quite a bit. So, um, yeah, I, I think those are at least two things that I would jump into, definitely at a national level and someone on a local level.

• 20:14Ed Elson?

  We'll be right back after the break. And if you're enjoying the show so far, send it to a friend and please follow us if you haven't already.

• 20:31Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Good times mean competitions between you and your friends, like seeing who can throw some pigskin the farthest or rush the field the fastest. Winner gets an ultra because it's not just a superior light beer, it's also giving fans superior access to their favorite sporting events. Superior is worth playing for. Visit michelobultra.com/superioraccess to enter. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser Busch InBev Michelob Ultra Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

• 20:59Speaker 09

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• 21:29Speaker 02

  I get so many headaches every month.

• 21:32Speaker 03

  It could be chronic migraine, 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more.

• 21:37Speaker 04

  Botox, on botulinum toxin A, prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It's not for those who have 14 or fewer headache days a month. Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection, causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away, as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue, and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms, and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS, Lou Gehrig's Disease, Myasthenia gravis, or Lambert Eaton Syndrome, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects.

• 22:22Speaker 03

  Why wait? Ask your doctor. Visit botoxchronicmigraine.com or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more.

• 22:35Ed Elson?

  We're back with Prof G Markets. Just going back to the rent freeze, Brad. I think Zoran is kind of a genius, as the more I've gotten to learn about him, and the way he handles himself in these debates, his social media strategy, his communications. I mean, he is like a superstar, like, no doubt about it. Generational talent. And then there are some policy proposals in here that have kind of become like the linchpins of this guy doesn't know what he's doing. Freezing the rent is a great example. The city-owned grocery store, another great example. And it's very easy to sort of categorically take those down through simple economics 101.

• 23:16Ed Elson?

  Freeze the rent, that sort of goes against, it disincentivizes construction, it sort of goes against the abundance agenda. My question... Why do you think he put those in there? I mean, I get the sense that he probably has heard why freezing the rent probably isn't a good idea.

• 23:34Speaker 08

  Of course, he knows, because he wanted to get elected. He's still a politician at the end of the day.

• 23:38Ed Elson?

  Okay, so it's all election. It's all for campaigning.

• 23:42Speaker 08

  Yeah, look, people who run for office, in my experience, and I've been at this now for over 30 years, are typically desperately insecure. They typically desperately need attention and validation, and they get that by everything that comes with holding office. I'm running. I'm running.

• 23:58Speaker 08

  There we go. So, look, and keep in mind, when you talk about the rent freeze, even though it's only 28% of apartments, my guess is that a lot of people who voted for him yesterday assume that it applies to them too. They just hear rent freeze and they're like, great, I don't want to pay more rent. The city-owned grocery stores, yeah, look, you know, a couple of times in my career, I've had the opportunity or responsibility of trying to oversee what really are private sector businesses for government, whether it's golf courses at the New York City Parks Department or the lottery in the state of Illinois. It never works when the government is trying to run private businesses. With that said, it's a very minor thing. And while the city opening grocery stores is not going to work, if he said,

• 24:41Speaker 08

  all right, I'm going to do an initiative with Whole Foods or Kroger or HEB or there in Texas, whoever, and we're going to provide city-owned land and grants and tax credits and whatever else, could you do something? Sure. Do I think it would really matter? No. But ultimately, there are lots of ways to go about achieving his agenda if he's willing to be a little creative. So, for example, and I'm sure you guys noticed this if you're in town and you're taking the subway, people just hop the turnstiles left and right, pretty much everywhere. And because we don't do anything about it, we have no enforcement, we have no real gates or anything like that, we'd lose over a billion dollars a year in revenue to fare evasion. His free bus idea, whether you like it or not, would cost around 630 million, I think. You could easily pay for it if you started enforcing the law on fare evasion.

• 25:26Speaker 08

  So there are ways to achieve a lot of the things that he wants to achieve. They may not happen the way he wants to do it, which really just gets back to that question of, are you going to govern pragmatically or dogmatically? A dogmatic mayor would say, we must punish the 1% because that is the top priority of people in the 18th percent, or the 12th percent, or the 9th percent. And I don't really care what, you know, the mayor, this mayor would say, I don't really care what the economic impact of the city is. I want to achieve social justice for my voters. Or he could be a mayor that just said, I want to maximize tax revenue to spend on the best possible thing. Sometimes that might mean not raising taxes, actually. You know, what made my, I'm biased, but what made Mike Bloomberg in many ways a really

• 26:06Speaker 08

  great mayor is Mike made every decision based on what he truly believed was best for New York. You might disagree with him. I didn't always agree with him. But ultimately, he acted in, in the best interest of the city, of the people, and I think the voters understood that, and they were willing to give him a lot of leeway as a result. The voters don't expect to agree with you on everything, but if they know that you're looking out for them, they will generally support you. Another reason why Eric Adams was such a failure is he seemed to constantly be looking out for like minor grifting opportunities and, and for all of his buddies to do that. And the voters had no confidence that he cared about them. So, and by the way, that might be some of what we saw last night nationally as well.

• 26:47Ed Elson?

  Just this divide between dogmatic versus pragmatic. I totally agree with you. I think that the, the campaign was dogmatic as it should be. I get the sense that he's going to be actually quite pragmatic. I think he's going to work with establishment Democrats, which is good in a lot of ways, but also maybe bad for the people who voted him in, who thought he was going to completely shake up the system. If you run on a campaign and say, I'm going to freeze your rent, which is a big thing to say, and then you don't freeze the rent, it sounds like you think he actually will not go through with that. Is he not losing the base?

• 27:22Speaker 08

  Well, I think he'll go through with it for that small segment. It's, it's just not what most people, it's not how most people's rent works. Look, it's it's an excellent question, Ed, because i- if you look at Bill de Blasio, who is mayor of New York City recently, de Blasio was very smart politically, and de Blasio understood that as long as the base, which was, I think he got 282,000 votes in the primary when he won in 2013, as long as that roughly 300,000 people are happy, you're gonna get reelected. If your only goal is reelection for the sake of reelection, then you just govern for the base and you don't care about the other 96% of New York City. A truly great mayor, a truly great president, truly great whatever, says, "My goal is to create as much total good as possible,

• 28:04Speaker 08

  and I'm not gonna worry specifically about the political implications of any one decision." If you are the mayor of New York City and you say, "I just wanna do the best job I possibly can," and that's what governs your choices, odds are you will be successful. And keep in mind, no New York City mayor has ever won an election after being mayor. Lots of them are for president, they were for governor, for congress. This is both the best job in politics and a total dead-end job.

• 28:31Scott Galloway?

  The last job.

• 28:32Speaker 08

  And the way to go about it is to say, "What can I do to have the greatest impact on this city for four or eight years?" And if you do that well, your legacy will be incredible and people will love you. If all you're doing is endless political machinations and how do I kinda game this thing out and then triage that thing, you're gonna fail.

• 28:50Scott Galloway?

  I just wanna press pause, cuz you said something that was very insightful and obvious, and I think that two are inextricably linked, when someone disconnects something that seems obvious in in the the light of day. You said that the companies laying off the most people were the early adopters of AI, and I hadn't even made that simple connection. You're absolutely right that the companies announcing 5,000, 10,000, 30,000 people are understandably and naturally the ones who are figuring out this whole AI game. I thought that was very insightful. Anyways, very impressed with you, Bradley.

• 29:25Scott Galloway?

  When you look across the landscape, you've run campaigns, you ran a very successful campaign, you ran Bloomberg's campaign. When you look at candidates on either side of the aisle, who do you think is most disciplined and effective and has the most resonant messaging? Who, if you had to pick nominees from either side of the aisle, and I realize we're kind of three years out, but who do you think, regardless of your own political beliefs, who do you think is good at this?

• 29:51Speaker 08

  If you look at modern political histories, let's just start with Reagan. The people who win the presidency are almost always not the best qualified people. It's people who really resonate with the voters. It's the rock stars. Reagan, Clinton, W, Obama, Trump. None of them were the most qualified people. The two who were most qualified, George H. W. Bush and Joe Biden, each only served one term. And so if you are either party, but especially the Democrats, stop worrying about who wins the Yale University primary or the think tank primary or whatever it is, and just figure out who's the rock star. I had this idea that I threw out there in Substack maybe a month or two ago, that kind

• 30:33Speaker 08

  of said, we should do a battle of the network stars for the presidential candidates. And instead of the normal DNC process, or maybe a year before that, put them in real world situations. Put them at a Waffle House at midnight and see how they do with the truckers and the cops and the college students. Have them calling in of baseball on the radio. Have them go to a big mall and just see who shows up, who cares, and how it goes. You know, to bring this full circle, one of the reasons why Zara Mondami won, and he's the next mayor of New York City, is he is a rock star. He is incredibly good at people. And the more time you spend with him, the more you realize that. And that's true for the presidency, too. And so all of the normal checklists that everyone looks at, do you

• 31:15Speaker 08

  have this union? Do you have this much money in the account? You know, do you have this former elected official supporting you? None of that shit really matters. What really matters is how you resonate with the people directly. And if the Democrats want a win in 2028, that's what they have to figure out.

• 31:30Scott Galloway?

  I like this. I think my first idea would be we charge fans of making 10,000 bucks in a week and only give them an OnlyFans creator account. That's my idea.

• 31:40Speaker 08

  He might, he might pull that off. You're taking a big risk there, man.

• 31:43Scott Galloway?

  He might make 100. There's an outside shot. He comes back with a quarter of a million dollars.

• 31:47Speaker 08

  Maybe in that case, he's like, screw this. I'm just gonna make money online.

• 31:50Scott Galloway?

  There you go. I think, I think that's what a lot of people are saying. What, when you look at, when you think about the nation and income inequality and polarization and rage, are there sort of two, you've been a big advocate of voting by phone. I'll give you 60 seconds of running room for vote by phone, but then come up with another two or three ideas.

• 32:13Speaker 08

  So on mobile voting, we live in a world where, in my experience, every politician makes every decision solely based on the next election. Handful of exceptions, but there are exceptions. And because of gerrymandering, the only election that typically matters, the primary. Primary turnout is typically about 10 to 15%. So who are they? They're the far left, or the far right, or special interests. And as a result, they dictate not only who wins office, but then what happens once those people are in office. So either you get the absolute chaos and dysfunction of DC, which is literally shut down, or you get totally one-sided governments, whether it's the city of Portland on the left, or the state of Texas on the right, and none of that reflects how most Americans feel. There is consensus among most people on most issues, but their voice is not heard because

• 32:54Speaker 08

  they don't vote in primaries. I ran all the campaigns to legalize Uber around the US, and the way that we beat the taxi industry, because at the time, we were a tiny tech startup, and taxi was a really, really powerful industry, is that we were able to mobilize our customers directly through the app to tell their elected officials, hey, I like this Uber thing, leave it alone. And when I realized that that was working, I created this thing called the Mobile Voting Project, and we ran pilot elections in seven states, were deployed military people with disabilities, were able to vote on their phones, turnout went up. We then built our own secure mobile voting technology that is free, will all be posted on GitHub by November 14th. And now we are about to start running campaigns in states around the country to allow people to start voting on their phones, beginning with municipal elections and going from there.

• 33:37Speaker 08

  To me, if you can get turnout from 8% to 32% in a primary, that's what moves everything towards the middle, that's what ends all of extremism polarization, that's what gets us results. So that's mobile voting. The next thing to me, Scott, would be universal basic income. I really do believe that in the richest country in the history of the world, the notion that some people don't have enough food, the notion that people who are not, let's say, mentally ill or addicts are sleeping on the streets, things like that, we just don't need to live in a world like that. There's just too much money and it's just a failure of sort of imagination and discipline and ability to not prevent that. And so, for example, out of my foundation, we fund and run a lot of the campaigns around the country to do universal school meals so that every kid gets breakfast and lunch.

• 34:22Speaker 08

  We should do that, but it should go beyond that. There is nothing wrong with saying that in a world, especially where you might have temporarily very high unemployment because of AI job displacement, that we're going to find ways to make sure that people are okay. And the third one is less economic, but it would be repealing Section 230. So Section 230 is a provision in federal law that says that internet service providers cannot be sued for the content posted by their users, and that has led to an absolute cesspool. You guys talk about this a lot, especially in relation to young men. On the internet has led to epidemics of teenage suicides, self-harm, you know, all kinds of different things. And when you have a dominant form of media that is totally unregulated and when the,

• 35:06Speaker 08

  if human nature, because of our negativity bias, which we have so that we know how to like, you know, walk the other way when we see a lion or leave the room when we smell gas, is such that we're going to always click on the negative headline first, the platforms all know that, that's what they feed us, and in order for them to make more money, we continue to sort of destroy ourselves and our society, you can fix that by changing the liability provisions. Most, even politicians of Washington agree with it, but they're just terrified of Meta and all of the different companies, and so they don't actually go through with it. But I think that if you could raise turnout meaningfully so that politicians are less incentivized to fight and more incentivized to work together, and make sure that people have the basics, and take away the toxicity of the internet, you'd have a much better world.

• 35:47Scott Galloway?

  So just for the purposes of conversation, and you and I are... We're allies, and even if you're holding the gun differently than me, we're still allies. One of the things I don't like about the Democratic Party is we have this sort of apostate philosophy where if you don't agree with me exactly, you're my enemy. And in both of us, so let's talk about UBI. My problem is with the U in UBI, and that is whenever I, both of us are friends with Andrew Yang, I think a lot of Andrew, and I agree with the narrative that there should be a base level, but it's the universal part that I think if you double click on the actual economics of it, make it near impossible to implement and would just create inflationary pressure that nets out any of the UBI payments.

• 36:30Scott Galloway?

  Why wouldn't we just move to what I'll call, you know, more kind of basic income through things like universal childcare or free vocational programming?

• 36:39Speaker 08

  You absolutely could do that. And ultimately, you know, some of what we're talking about is a means test and that there's no reason for you or me to get a thousand dollars a month in the mail, right? Although, although I kind of disagree on the inflationary thing in that I actually think that, and I'm sure you guys have said this at various points, you know, when we make more money, it might get invested, it might get saved. If you're giving regular people more money, I think they're going to spend it. And I think that's actually going to juice the, it could arguably induce inflation, but it would also juice everything else in a good way.

• 37:08Scott Galloway?

  So, so why not minimum wage federally mandated minimum wage at 25 bucks a shift?

• 37:12Speaker 08

  Yes, totally agree. Here's the distinction. So when I was deputy governor of Illinois, I ran the state's budget. And the distinction is if when we got a dollar from you in taxes, by the time that some of that money went to all different programs you just outlined, half of it got furthered away on nonsense. We had patronage, we had all kinds of, you know, pork projects we didn't need. So many different union contracts, so many different things that when the money goes through the government, in my experience, you lose a lot of it along the way. Whereas if there was some mechanism where a dollar of your money then went to someone who's currently making $10 an hour, they get 100 cents on the dollar. So, look, I am absolutely for a higher minimum wage. I am for childcare.

• 37:57Speaker 08

  There's a lot of things that we can and should do that would make people's lives a lot easier and better. I just know from having worked so much inside of government that the mechanism is so wildly inefficient that the people that want to help get a lot less help that way.

• 38:12Scott Galloway?

  And then on section 230, and I never, I never like to be someone who defends big tech, but if you did just remove 230 in a blanket way, it would probably, it would kneecap these companies, it would cripple them. They would probably have to shut down posting for a while. What about the idea, and there's just, just some nuance here, of removing section 230 protection for content that's algorithmically elevated?

• 38:38Speaker 08

  That's a good start for sure, but human beings also have incredible capacity on their own to post all kinds of terrible shit. I think I might disagree with you a bit on that because section 230's elimination would mean that social media companies are subject to the same types of liability issues as mainstream media.

• 38:56Scott Galloway?

  That aren't good businesses.

• 38:57Speaker 08

  Right, but ultimately what would happen is there'd be enough litigation around the country on various things that, you know, Facebook, whoever failed to moderate on content, and jurisprudence would emerge, and it would become pretty clear, this is what violates section, you know, the new law, this is what does not. And especially with the use of AI as a content moderator, the companies would be able to adapt to it pretty quickly. So I just personally think that the risk to them is a lot less, and I think our addiction to internet and social media or phones is so great that we're not going to stop using it just because people are saying, kill the Jews less on, on, you know, TikTok or whatever.

• 39:35Ed Elson?

  We'll be right back, and for even more markets content, sign up for our newsletter at profitemarkets.com/subscribe.

• 39:54Speaker 00

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• 41:59Ed Elson?

  We're back with Prof G Markets. Just going back to your guys' discussion of UBI and what would work and what wouldn't work. It all goes back to wealth and income inequality, which is getting worse and worse and worse and which AI is likely to make worse. And of course, this is what Andrew Yang talked about. And it seems as though different people are coming at the inequality thing at different angles. So you've got people saying, let's raise the minimum wage. Let's have universal free childcare, which by the way, that's part of Mamdani's campaign. He wants to. Raise the minimum wage thirty dollars an hour. You've got people saying, let's go for UBI. You've also got a more socialist bent. M'Nani would fit in that camp, which says capitalism itself doesn't work.

• 42:44Ed Elson?

  We need a completely new system. So it it seems, I believe at least, that the inequality problem is the problem. And the question is, how do you come at it? What is your angle? And based on the the turnout in New York and M'Nani's win, and also just the energy and the heat that he's creating around the nation. It seems as though that is the angle going forward, that there is a socialist bent and that he could be the face and future of the Democratic Party. Seems scary to capitalists, but I just want to get your views on, do you think that is the future?

• 43:25Speaker 08

  I think everything you said is is right. And if you look at M'Nani supporters, at least in the primary, we don't really have the the general election data yet. They tend to not be the poorest people. They tend to be relatively young, pretty affluent people, but who are not in the one percent and are angry about that for a variety of reasons. And in many ways are the most ardent about things like raising taxes on the wealthy and things, defunding the police and things like that. Look, ultimately, there are two different approaches to what you're talking about, and they're not mutually exclusive. So the first is, how do you substantively solve these problems? I think everything Scott outlined, and Scott and I disagreed on some implementation stuff, but but basically that kind of stuff could make a big difference. The other thing to me is really a a question of cognitive dissonance.

• 44:11Speaker 08

  So where M'Nani is wrong, in my view, about capitalism is it has far and away been the most effective force in history to help poor people, right? Since World War Two, something like three billion people now have. Clean drinking water and electricity and much less infant mortality and a much higher standard of living, less, you know, people living in extreme poverty, all of these different metrics because of capitalism, because jobs started moving all over the globe, sometimes to the detriment of countries like the US. But nonetheless, capitalism has done more to lift poor people out of terrible situations than any economic or political system ever created. The problem with capitalism is when you take it to its final logical conclusion, which is what we do here in the US, which is to say, the only thing that matters in life

• 44:55Speaker 08

  is the accumulation of status and money and prestige and carrera, marble and gold plating or whatever else, Trump effectively. And if you have a totally zero sum approach to life, it's really almost impossible to be truly happy because you're on this hamster wheel where all you're trying to do is accumulate more and more and more, and it's never enough, and the dopamine hit from buying something kind of wears off faster and faster each time. And as a result, broadly speaking, if you have a society where everyone is in that rat race and everyone just wants to be at the very, very top where they're the ones on Instagram with a private plane and a yacht and whatever else, 99 plus percent of those people aren't going to make it by basic math.

• 45:37Speaker 08

  And as a result, they're going to feel dissatisfied, they're going to feel discontent, and they're going to be unhappy. When you look at the World Happiness Report, so the US ranked 24th last year in it despite being, I would argue, the most successful country in history. I was in Finland this summer, and they're always number one or number two, they're number one right now, I think. And I was kind of walking around thinking people were dancing in the streets, they're so happy, they're so excited, and obviously, you know, that's not the case. And from what at least I was able to learn from reading and talking to people is, it's not that the Finnish or lots of other countries, people are inherently happier or wealthier or anything else, it's that their view of what makes them content is very different, right?

• 46:19Speaker 08

  And if you feel like you can only be content if you just keep accumulating and acquiring, you can't be content. And if you feel like, hey, these are the things in life that matter, my relationships, people who give me unconditional love and support, and I give that to them, things that give me a sense of meaning and purpose, whether it's your work or your hobbies, your faith or whatever it might be. Those tend to be the happiest people. Pretty much all of happiness science and behavioral economics supports that conclusion. And in a lot of other countries, they're able to understand that. I think in part because they don't take capitalism quite to its final logical conclusion like we do in the US. So to me, Ed, you know, there's the structural stuff that kind of Scott talked about, but there's also a perception thing. I think that has to change too.

• 47:01Ed Elson?

  I mean, when you look at those countries, I think some people make the mistake of saying those are socialist countries. They're not socialist countries, but they have less intensely capitalist policies. You know, they, they do pay for universal childcare. There are more government funded programs. So it's an interesting ideological debate because on the one hand, what we're describing is like, make capitalism less capitalistic or something, which when you say that, it's like, are you saying you, you want to be socialist? Are you saying you want to be communist? And now we have a guy who won on a platform that has the word socialist in it, which seems so important to me.

• 47:44Ed Elson?

  Whether or not he actually believes in communism and socialism, I don't think he necessarily does. The point is the word is there. So that's something that we all have to grapple with. So I guess there's, there's the, the implementation. How does this all actually work in practice? But then there's the dogmatic stuff. There's the ideological side to this. What direction do you think the Democratic Party is going in? Are we in going into a direction that you think is constructive, where we're actually going to make ourselves a little more like Finland perhaps? Or is this going in a negatively socialist socialist direction that will actually be destructive?

• 48:22Speaker 08

  I think a lot of that is about the framing, right? So Trump, for example, won the presidency twice, in part because he was able to convince tens and tens of millions of people that he heard and saw their frustrations. He understood that they felt like they weren't getting a fair shake in life. And they felt like if they supported him, he would look out for them and he would get them their vengeance. And by the way, you know, Bernie Sanders and Trump in 2016 effectively ran the exact same campaign. Trump just blamed it on brown people and Sanders blamed it on the 1%. In fact, I'm gonna get you justice. Zohran many ways ran that campaign too. And so I think the first thing is you have to understand that a lot of people are incredibly frustrated. They don't feel like they have what they need, and they do have what they need,

• 49:06Speaker 08

  but they feel like somehow they're getting cheated by society.

• 49:10Ed Elson?

  Well, it's hard, it's hard to feel satisfied if you're seeing Bezos deconstruct a bridge for a yacht and you're struggling to pay for groceries. I feel like that's.

• 49:16Speaker 08

  Exactly, right. So, so part of it is helping people understand. Like, one of the things that Biden did that was such a disaster is he tried to convince everyone that inflation wasn't an actual problem, when every week people go to the grocery store and they know it's a problem because they're spending more money. And when you treat people like that, they hate you for it. And so part of it is Democratic Party has to stop being so condescending, stop being so intolerant, stop being so self-righteous, and like Zohran did, let people feel heard and understood. And the second thing is, what are the policies that could help bring that about? And it's a lot of it's in the framing, right? If you take childcare, if you frame it as, you know, we're now gonna socialize childcare and the government's gonna be in charge of raising your children and all of that,

• 49:59Speaker 08

  that automatically becomes controversial. If it's, look, everyone needs to work to make a living and people wanna have kids and you gotta do something with the kid all day, and here's the way to best help people, you know, make that work for themselves and their lives. I think people will be really responsive to that message. And so I don't think it's a lack of policy ideas that exist that could work. I think it is treating people like idiots, it is condescending to people, and it is effectively living in this little world where, and by the way, if under the current political system, it makes sense. But if you are a Democratic legislator somewhere and all you gotta do is win your next primary because gerrymandering means you're gonna win your next election

• 50:40Speaker 08

  and turnout's 10%, then that 10% on the far left and what you read on Blue Sky and what you hear from your staffers and from the different kind of institutional players around you is what you believe and how you act. And that might be what you need to do to stay in your job as a state senator or as a member of Congress or whatever it is. It is not the way to win a national election, and that takes leadership. So, part of it is who. That rock star and then part of it also is who was able to go to the Democratic Party and say, listen, guys, your message might work for you for your next reelection. It does not work for the party or the country as a whole. Here's where we need to go. That leader has not emerged yet. I'm not sure who it is, but but throughout time, those leaders have emerged and and my hope is we'll find one here, too.

• 51:23Ed Elson?

  You wrote an open letter to Mamdani. You have called for you said you didn't vote for him, but you've called for the business community, especially to embrace him, figure out a way to work with him. And you get offered some advice. What would be your advice to Mamdani over these over his his his term and now that he is the next mayor?

• 51:42Speaker 08

  I mean, the most important thing, and I saw this from my time working at at City Hall for my Bloomberg, is, you know, what I said before, which is just run the city as is this is your last ever elected position. Don't worry about 29. Don't worry about he can't actually for president ever because he wasn't born here, but don't worry about trying to be governor or senator one day. Just do what you think is right. Make people, you know, give them the time to explain their positions. Give the time to explain why you're doing what you're doing. And if you do that for the right reasons consistently, the people will understand it. They will generally accept it. They won't agree with you on everything, but they don't need to. They need to believe that you are looking out for them. And I think of all the politicians we've had in recent years in New York City, he has more ability to do that than pretty much anyone.

• 52:27Speaker 08

  But it does mean tuning out a lot of the noise around him. It means not letting the DSA dictate his positions. It means not letting the unions dictate his positions. It means not reading social media all day. One of the pieces of advice I have in that letter is stop looking at social media. I mean, keep making your short form videos. Yes, your comms team needs to look at it, but that is in no way representative. Even with the really big turnout we had yesterday of about 2 million voters, it's still only like 70, 23% of the city's population. So like 77% of New Yorkers didn't actually vote. And yet, all 8.5 million of us are impacted by the mayor every single day. And so if you want to govern for everyone and be a truly great mayor,

• 53:06Speaker 08

  you know, stop all the kind of narrow inputs that that tend to limit politicians and just do what you think is right.

• 53:13Scott Galloway?

  Bradley, if you decided to get back in the game. And you said, all right, you gotta get back in the game. You're gonna run someone's campaign. You have to pick now. Whose campaign would you want to work for for president in 28?

• 53:26Speaker 08

  To me, the only rock star is AOC, but I really don't share her kind of views. And the thing actually even more than her views is just this notion of endlessly criticizing everyone for ever deviating from her, you know, ideology or her dogmatism. To me, it's just a horrible way to live. Look, I would love to see someone who is maybe not a traditional candidate, someone who was built and run a really big company or a really big movement, something like that, as opposed to saying this governor or that governor. Of the people who are currently in the mix, if you're talking about just sort of who politically makes the most sense, you know, it's probably kind of a Midwestern moderate type like a Shapiro

• 54:11Speaker 08

  or a Whitmer. But, you know, it what makes sense on paper, what makes sense to voters in the booth are two different things. And so I don't know the two, like Newsom, on one hand, maybe the easiest to caricature and stereotype and everything else. On the other hand, he's got a lot of talent. He is not, does not seem to be afraid of different points of view or big ideas. And so someone like him, even though I could see all the reasons on paper why he doesn't make sense, I could still see how he could sort of have it in a way that a lot of the governors who are thinking of running probably do not. And by the way, California is would be what like the fifth biggest economy in the world if it was its own country. So I don't know, I guess I'm sort of landing on Newsom of the people.

• 54:55Ed Elson?

  Is Newsom a rock star in your view?

• 54:56Speaker 08

  I think he could be, you know, I think on one hand, he's really, really easy to caricature. But you know, there's also his character, Donald Trump, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan.

• 55:05Ed Elson?

  Yeah, I think he's a rock star.

• 55:06Scott Galloway?

  So just, just give me a quick, quick reaction to some different candidates. Mark Cuban.

• 55:11Speaker 08

  On paper, I love Mark Cuban. He liked Trump as a reality star on TV. The what there is there, I'm not sure. And that Luca trade still kind of kills it for me.

• 55:22Scott Galloway?

  Um, I love that. What about a guy like, uh, Dwayne Johnson?

• 55:26Speaker 08

  You know, he is very charismatic, but I, I don't like so, okay, so Ronald Reagan was an actor. But he was also the governor of California and Reagan had very clear, strong political and ideological views. Whether you agree with them or not, he was not stupid despite what his critics said. And he was not uninformed. So, you know, with The Rock, just being able to sort of, you know, pop into a movie and, and have the box office, you know, receipts go up in and of itself is not necessarily a great candidate. So if I knew more about what he believed in, I could certainly consider it, but I just think what we know right now, no.

• 56:01Scott Galloway?

  Beshear?

• 56:01Speaker 08

  You know, I get it again, you know, he's a Democratic governor in a red state. He's, he's popular. He got reelected. It hasn't so far struck me that he has that sort of, you know, other thing. You know, I, I, to me, there's something called a vote getting gene, which is obviously intangible, but some people have it and most do not. Um, take the Bush family. W, who was sort of the least impressive between his brother and his father and him, had it. They became president. His brother very much did not. His father very much did not. Um, the Clintons, Bill Clinton has the vote getting gene. Hillary, for all of her competence, did not. And so I don't know if Beshear has it or not. It doesn't feel like he necessarily does.

• 56:43Scott Galloway?

  So competent, they feel boring. Senator Chris Murphy, who, by the way, I'm a big fan of, I didn't mention, made his own.

• 56:47Speaker 08

  Yeah. I mean, I, I like a lot of what Murphy's done on, on guns and other things like that. You know, lots of highly competent people with amazing resumes run for president all the time. And most of them never even make it to Iowa. So, you know, if Chris Murphy has that kind of intangible quality, he's got to start showing.

• 57:07Scott Galloway?

  Vice President Harris?

• 57:08Speaker 08

  No. I mean, I think, I think the, the country had every opportunity to choose her and they've definitively chose not to.

• 57:14Ed Elson?

  I think that, I think what we're learning is we don't really have rock stars. But I agree, AOC is a rock star. Mamdani is a rock star. Bernie is flaming out, but rock star.

• 57:25Speaker 08

  Yeah, he's very old, but he certainly was. But, but I think that's the reason why, Ed, to maybe consider an alternative process of some kind, which is let's find the rock star, even if it's among the dozen or so people.

• 57:36Scott Galloway?

  OnlyFans. I'm telling you, first person to make 10 grand, president.

• 57:41Speaker 08

  There you go. All right. OnlyFans it is. So we're adding Waffle, Waffle House, calling in at a Cardinals game, going to the Mall of America, and now you're an OnlyFans accountant.

• 57:51Scott Galloway?

  I like that. I like that.

• 57:53Ed Elson?

  The decline of America is coming. I see it.

• 57:57Speaker 08

  This is the fight. Scott is the one to put us over the edge. He moves to England and he's like, all right, now I'm going to like the man.

• 58:03Ed Elson?

  You guys have the only fans. Okay.

• 58:04Scott Galloway?

  I think it's been here for a while. You guys are just waking up to it. Bradley Tusk is the founder of the political consulting firm Test Strategies and the CEO and co-founder of Test Venture Partners, the world's first venture capital fund investing solely in highly regulated industries. Bradley is the author of The Fixer, My Adventure Saving Startups From Death by Politics, writes a column for Fast Company and hosts a podcast called Firewall about the intersection of tech and politics. Previously, Bradley served as the Deputy Governor of Illinois, the campaign manager for Mike Bloomberg's 2009 mayoral race, the communications director for US Senator Chuck Schumer. There's a candidate. Let's find someone who brightens up a room by leaving it.

• 58:42Speaker 08

  Exactly. We didn't get into it, but Chuck would not endorse Zohran. And I think because effectively, if anyone needs Zohran to be a disaster, it's actually Chuck Schumer, because if AOC primaries Chuck in 28 and Zohran is successful, I think Chuck's in big trouble. But if Zohran's a disaster, he's going to hang that around her neck.

• 59:00Ed Elson?

  The infighting that makes me depressed. Yeah.

• 59:02Scott Galloway?

  There we go. And also his last thing, he was Uber's first political advisor. Bradley, really appreciate your insight and your time today.

• 59:09Ed Elson?

  Thanks, Brad.

• 59:10Speaker 08

  Yeah, guys, thanks for having me. This was really fun.

• 59:15Ed Elson?

  This episode was produced by Claire Miller and Alison Weiss and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our research team is Dan Shalane, Isabella Kinsel, Kristin O'Donoghue, and Mia Silverio. Drew Burrows is our technical director and Catherine Dillon is our executive producer. Thank you for listening to Prof you Markets from Prof you Media. If you liked what you heard, give us a follow and join us for a fresh take on markets on Monday.

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