When New York City’s now mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani was polling at just 1% last December, we had him on Zeteo’s ‘Mehdi Unfiltered’ to talk about his campaign in an interview that soon after went viral.
After he won the Democratic primary, galvanizing more than 100,000 volunteers into “an unstoppable force”, Mehdi sat down with him again just weeks before the election, as he was facing a coordinated campaign of Islamophobic attacks.
Now, six weeks from inauguration on January 1, 2026, Mehdi sits down with the mayor-elect again, this time to talk about how he’s going to implement his ambitious FDR-inspired affordability agenda – and how the pressure is on to deliver.
The two also discuss:
His transition team, and ‘uncles' offering him unsolicited advice;
How he plans on interacting with Donald Trump, a man who threatened a federal takeover of the city if Mamdani won;
The state of US politics, with Mamdani saying: “Republicans, they have a sense of imagination that is ever-expanding. It can extend to purchasing Greenland. And Democrats, it feels as if we are often in an exercise of an ever-lowering ceiling of possibility;”
The “toleration” of Islamophobia;
Serious concerns he’s revealed about his phone number;
How well he really knows Bollywood, with a ‘guess the song’ game that had him sweating more than the interview itself;
And more…
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