As 33-year-old Zorhan Mamdani rises in New York, older Americans are told to be afraid—of a Muslim democratic socialist with ideas about public groceries. Meanwhile, the world is run by 80 and 90-year-old men dropping bombs, and people chanting in tongues on the White House lawn. Mark Whitney contrasts youthful optimism with geriatric dysfunction, challenges the collapse of church-state separation, and reminds us that the real threat to democracy isn’t a city-run grocery—it’s the people who think they were chosen by God to govern forever.
Show Notes — America's Coach (June 25, 2025)
Recorded Live In San Diego, CA · 9:00A Pacific
Theme: Youthful Enthusiasm v. Geriatric Dysfunction
“You're meant to be scared of Zohran Mamdani? Have you seen who’s running the rest of the world?”
“Trump lobs bombs. Netanyahu calls him the greatest. History says this ends one way.”
“These old men have old arguments—and their answer to everything is still bombs.”
UNOFFICIAL TRANSCRIPT (video is authoritative)
BRAD LANDER TO STEPHEN COLBERT
I’m glad you're having Idris Elba on today so that Zoran's not the best-looking guy on the show.
HOUSE ANNOUNCER, SHADOE STEVENS
Ladies and gentlemen, from San Diego, California, Mark Whitney!
MARK WHITNEY
Thank you, Shadoe! And here we go, everybody. It is June 25th, 9:30. We're running a little late this morning. Had a lot of show prep to do. Really interesting day yesterday in New York City. The New York primary for mayor. It took a minute to put this show together because everything going on. There are two conversations going on these days. There is a political conversation among the elders. I'm 66. There's a political conversation that my generation is having. There's another political conversation that people are having who say are half my age. And the guy who looks like he's going to be the next mayor of New York is exactly half my age. He's 33. So I want to talk about what's scary and what isn't scary. So you're 33, right? You are 33 years old. Student loans. You can't buy a house. The robots are coming. You got some dopey degree from some not-so-great college.
Medical insurance, benefits, things like that, really tricky, really hard to come by. And you live in New York City. You live in New York City. And the guy who wants to be mayor is Andrew Cuomo, whose family has been around since dirt running New York.
And this guy shows up, and he's 33, and he's charismatic, and he's optimistic, really optimistic, and really patient. I watched Zoran Mamdani's interview on Stephen Colbert. Colbert did 18 minutes with Mamdani and his tag team partner, BRad Lander, the comptroller of New York. So you got a Muslim and a Jew. That's the old conversation. That's the conversation that my generation is stuck with and generations before mine have been stuck with since the beginning of time: Muslims and Jews. Everything is framed that way. By the way, this isn't the first time that Colbert had Mamdani on. He's had him on three other times. He had him on here. Actually, that's Zach Penn. And they had him on this other time. Oh, wait, that's Keanu Reeves. And then he had him on this one other time. Oh, that's Mark Ruffalo.
I do that to point out that these are three people who, in my opinion, have mannerisms similar to Mamdani. But they're not Muslim. They're not Muslim. Again, if you're 33 and you're looking around, and you're looking at the world, you've got Benjamin Netanyahu who runs Israel, you've got Putin who runs Russia, you've got the old President Xi there who runs China, and we got a 79-year-old—going to be 80 on his next birthday—Donald Trump, who is showing signs of dementia,
showing signs that he's not on his game. And then the guy that runs Iran is 86.
And you're meant to be scared of Zoran Mamdani? That's who you're meant to be scared of? Look at this. This guy right here—we’ll go to the Skycam. Here we are. That's Chuck Grassley. He's a senator from Iowa. He's 90. Here's Dianne Feinstein. She was a senator from California, recently passed away. She was going in to vote shortly before she passed away. This is her. That really happened. Strom Thurmond, he stayed in there until he was 100. If you're 33, you got to be ready to pull your hair out. You just got to be ready to pull your hair out. And this guy comes along, Uncle Bear. Let me play this clip for you.
“I think, by foregrounding that humanity. And in many ways, that's the most New York City thing we can do, because for so many of us who've grown up in this city, difference is something that we celebrate. It's something that we know is actually a part of the fabric of this place that we call home. And, you know, many years ago, I was the campaign manager of a Jewish candidate for state senate, and I took him to a mosque in Bay Ridge. And after he gave his speech at Friday Prayers, an older Palestinian man came over to him, and he looked at him and he said, ‘Cousins.’ And I think that there is this possibility of building a shared life in our city, because ultimately that is the story of New York City. It's a shared life of people from across the world. And it's one that we know, even in the language of the hostage families themselves, everyone for everyone. We are tied together as one.”
So that is the story of every world-class city in the United States—whether it's South Beach, Miami, whether it's D.C., whether it's New York, whether it's Boston, whether it's San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, L.A., San Diego, Chicago. Everybody gets along. We have a huge Iranian community here in San Diego.
The young people from Iran love the United States, but they got this 86 year old guy running the place who's been in there since 1989.
Peter Welch, I think is 70 now. U.S. Senator from Vermont. When I was—I was either 20 or 21—and my advertising agency did his campaign when he ran for state Senate in Vermont. So I was 21. Forty-five years ago. This guy is still doing politics. Bernie Sanders. Still doing politics. Donald Trump. What's he even doing there? How did that happen? Well, the Democrats put up somebody for president who didn’t get any primary votes. That's a problem. That's a democracy problem. That actually is a democracy problem. This guy is the least scariest guy on the planet, but only because the word Muslim is associated with him.
It’s not about his policies. Policies get hammered out. The conversation that my generation is having is about Muslims and Jews, and it's against the backdrop of a world that is so modern. It's a really old-fashioned thing to do—what Trump did this week—to lob some huge bombs into a country that didn’t attack you. That’s a really old-fashioned thing to do. And then Netanyahu goes on TV and goes, “There’s nobody greater than Donald Trump.” This is not going to end well. It never does. All you have to do is know the history. It never ends well with bombs.
And if you're 33, 9/11 happened, you were 11 years old. And all you've heard about is terrorism, safety, security.
Everybody's scared of everything. This guy is the least scary guy. I’ve got scary for you. You want to see scary? I got scary.
The clip I'm going to play for you—these are the people in charge:
“We just thank you Lord from the east, the west, the north and the south. You will shake America with your power and your glory. We cancel every assignment... This nation is worth to be one nation under God and we are standing on the soil of the White House and we are declaring your word. Every place that our blood will trod, you will give it to us. And we are taking the land. Thank you Lord, you have brought us to the kingdom for a time to do this. And this is the time. And so we declare right now from the capital of our nation that America will come back to God. We will come back to God. Nothing will stop this nation and we speak right now by the authority of heaven. You told us to bring heaven to earth. Heaven is being released from your people right now.”
So here's the question I have for you. One of the cool ideas that the United States was founded upon was this idea of separation of church and state—or, as I like to say, the separation of state from church. Now, those people have no concept of that idea. We're on the land of the White House. We're here to take the land.
Now, one of the things that's lost on them is we have another election. We have an election every couple of years. We have a presidential election every four years. One of the great things about our system in the United States—and this isn’t even true in what you think of as enlightened democracies like Britain—you can look at the calendar, and you know that on the first Tuesday in November 2028—the first Tuesday in November 2028—we're having another election. These people are temporary. They have no concept of temporary. They have no understanding at all of the United States Constitution, of the Bill of Rights, of separation of church from state. Zero. That’s fundamental. That’s bedrock. These are principles that we are all meant to agree to. And they have no concept of that. And people are meant to be scared of a democratic socialist who thinks you ought to have, you know, a city-owned grocery store. My son and I were talking about this the other day. Listen, a city-owned grocery store?
Fine. Have a city-owned grocery store. See how it works out. It's probably not going to work out that well.
How are these people working out? These lunatics.
It's interesting how things offset, right? You get—it's like Newton’s law of motion, right? Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. So when you have nut jobs like these people in the White House who just see the world through their own religious lens—that’s how they see everything, regardless of the principles that hold together our secular system and that provide a framework for these world-class cities that we have in the United States where people from all over the world get together all the time and do stuff and get along and it’s all fine—but then you have these old men. These old men in Israel. These old men in Russia. These old men in China. These old men in the United States. The old man in Iran. Having old arguments and trying to solve it the old way—with bombs. At a time when the young men are designing amazing systems that just almost make borders irrelevant.
Because we all can see everything now.
That's it. That's all I got for today. Just a simple point. Scary, not scary. We'll see you tomorrow. My name is Mark Whitney, americascoach.com. To reach out: coach@americascoach.com. Have a great day.
CLOSING BILLBOARD · SHADOE STEVENS
Keep Banging!
Music
Share this post