The Joyce Kaufman Show 11/7/25 - Faith and Freedom in America, What does the Mamdani win mean for New York now? Politicians using positions to gain wealth and status, and the broken medical system

What's the secret recipe to making money topics interesting? I think you start off by relating money to your everyday life, like more vacations, more living, less worry about your next paycheck. And that's how we built the Stacky Benjamin Netanyahu Show, the personal finance show. It's full of good times, great laughs, and big lessons. Whether you're paying off debt, building wealth, or just trying to stop hemorrhging money at the grocery store. We got you. Find the Stacky Benjamin Netanyahu Show wherever you get your podcasts. The greatest money show on earth, now part of the Gamut Podcast Network. This is the Joyce Kaufman podcast, honest, straight and unapologelic with your host, Joyce Kaufman. Yes, indeed, they are there, always, no matter what is going on, whether there's an election or not election, whether your guy wins or your guy loses, you're always going to be on call if you serve in the military. We got some news today about a family member. who has been a long-time chaplain in the service. And he was just elevated. He is now the chaplain of the, I guess the chiefs of staff. So he's kind of like the chaplain over all the chaplains. So congratulations to my, well, by marriage would be my brother-in-law. Leander Dance, so proud of him, coupling the two things that I think are the most important to me, my faith and my freedom. You know, it's an amazing, amazing country where we get to practice our faith, and our faith is even encouraged. When I look at what's happening in Nigeria yet again and so many parts of the world where people are not allowed to practice their faith, where Christians are being slaughtered, where Jews are being harassed. And I don't know what is going to happen now that, you know, Zohran Mamdani is the mayor of New York. But I would imagine that there's going to be much more hostility towards the Jewish people. I mean, he has said some pretty outrageous things, which gives license to the haters, the anti-Semites, to kind of come out of the woodwork. And all we could do is kind of hope not, you know, and hope that there's protection for everybody, you know, Buddhists, everybody. But we saw a lot of supercharged rhetoric. Oh, and by the way, Elise Stefanik declared this morning that she'll be running to be the governor of New York. And the more I thought about it this morning, the more I realized that she has a very good chance of winning. First and foremost, she is so the opposite of somebody like a Zohran Mamdani. She's a patriot. She's, you know, conservative. But she's got all the good stuff working for her with the, you know, check this box. She's a woman. And it'll be very interesting to see what happens. But the race for the mayor's office was so supercharged with all these, all this rhetoric and all these accusations.

What can I tell you? You know, this is a man who declares that he is a socialist who wants to seize the means of production. I mean, those are his words, not mine. And they voted him in. So I don't feel... Any kind of way for the people in New York who are going to wake up in a couple of months and realize they are in a very hostile environment for businessmen, for certain faiths. So open the books, one of my favorite organizations, you know, dove into some of these organizations that are associated with Zohran Mamdani to see whether any public funds have been flowing to them. And, you know, I love hope in the books because they're relentless and they go after everybody. It doesn't matter what party you're in. It doesn't matter, you know, whether you've been a good congressperson, you know, when you turn bad and when they can find something that needs to be exposed, they expose it. So they found more than $33 million. Listen to this. In mid-October, Zohran Mamdani campaigned with Syraj Wahaj, an Islamic Imam who has been linked to terrorist activity and said that gay people deserve death. Zohran Mamdani posed grinning from ear to ear in a photo, which he shared to his ex account, you know, the social media platform X, with Wahaj and Councilman Yusuf Salam, who's a member of the exonerated Central Park Five, and I read that in the New York Post. Today, Majid At Takwa, I had the pleasure of sitting and meeting with Imam Siraj Wahaj, one of the nation's foremost Muslim leaders and a pillar of the Bedstai community for nearly half a century, Zohran Mamdani wrote on X, a beautiful Juma, referencing the prayers that they do on Fridays. Wahajaj is the decades-long Imam. at Masheed At Takwa, a mosque in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. He testified for the defense at the trial of Omar Abdel Rahman, a man known as the Blind Sheik, who masterminded the 1993 World Trade Center bombing that killed six people. He denied any connection to terrorism, instead calling the FBI and the CIA the real terrorists. Several people connected to that bombing, either attended Wahaj Mosque or visited around the time of the attack, according to the New York Times. These are not hostile reports, most of them.

Wahaj was named among several dozen potential conspirators, but was not charged in the case. The imam testified in support of attack mastermind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the infamous blind sheikh and spiritual leader of Egypt's then-largest Islamic extremist fundamentalist group, Jama Islamaya, calling him a respected scholar. He later gave a sermon in the early 2000s that called for an army of 10,000 men to wage gun-free jihad on New York City. Listen, I don't know what's going to happen. None of us do. But this is not going to be good and it's not going to be easy. I don't care how you slice it, how you dice it. This is going to be a very, very dangerous time for very many people who live in New York City. As if New York City didn't have enough problems and wasn't dangerous enough. I think this is going to exacerbate a lot of things. And I just, you know, I'm still just trying to figure out how, you know, a city that was attacked 24 years ago. feels as though someone who says globalize the intifada is good for this country. I just, you know, I just don't get it. But maybe one day I'll understand this. One day I'll, you know, get to heaven. I'll get to ask God. Like, what was that all about? And hopefully he'll tell you. It's funny listening to Elise Stefanik announcing that she's entering the race to become the next governor, meaning she'll run against the incumbent, Governor Kathy Hochul, who's a piece of work. And the words that she used, when she was asked on the Fox show this morning, she wants to make New York affordable and safe again. So at least she learned the lesson from Tuesday. that people in New York are going through some stuff. They don't have enough capital in their homes, in their, you know, they're not making enough money to survive in New York City. So she's got to speak to that. So she's affordability won the election for Zohran Mamdani, I'm quite sure. And then she said, I will unite Republicans, Democrats, and independents to fire Kathy Hochul once and for all to save New York. I'm running for governor to make it affordable and safe. We have seen decades of single party rule led by Democrats. And Kathy Hochul is the worst governor in America, Elise Stefanik stated in a Friday Fox News appearance. New York is the most unaffordable state in the nation with the highest taxes, the highest energy bills, the highest utility bills. We also have a crime crisis because Kathy Hochul has brought us failed bail reform and has embraced the defund the police.

Democrats. And after this week, when we saw a raging anti-Semite pro-Hamas communist who wants to raise taxes, and frankly, he barely won the majority of New York City voters, Kathy Hochul endorsed him and bent the knee. When New Yorkers were looking for strong leadership from a governor not to bend the knee to Zohran Mamdani, Kathy bent the knee. Why did she do that? Because she is hemorrhaging support even in her own party among Democrats. She has failed New Yorkers. So it will be interesting, but I just have a feeling that this might be Elise Stefanik's time. Now remember, she stepped out of her, you know, she had been nominated by the president to be in his cabinet, and she stepped away from the nomination to stay in the house because they really need the votes. But at the time, I remember her already hinting about becoming the governor. I think she would be a. I think she'd win, that's all. I think she can win this race. I think she'll need funding, the backing of Donald Trump, but she'll win. Apparently, screwing over New Yorkers is going to be the Kathy Hochul's... I don't know. What do you call it? Campaign motto. She's going to say that in Congress, Elise Stefanik's screwed New Yorkers, which is totally untrue, but what can I tell you? According to a recent poll conducted by the Manhattan Institute, 43% of New York State voters stated they would back Elise Stefanik for governor, while 42% issue support for Kathy Hochul. That's like a one point difference at this stage. It's going to be really, really an interesting race to watch, which is good because the last interesting race didn't turn out so very well, right? All right, don't forget to download the 850 app on your phone, your laptop, your cell, whatever you want. That way you can listen to podcasts like right away on Mondays when they get downloaded. You can go right away. You'll get a notification and you can listen to it immediately. You can also participate in our contests. You can get breaking news stories even over the weekend. So it's a good app to have or else just visit the website, 850WFTL.com. Derek will be joining me in the last segment of today's show. do a little celebrity news. But let me take a quick break. I will be right back. A snarl, and they're upon him. An ancient forest spirit at his heels. The only escape is in the Toyota B. Z. Woodland. John Cho stars in Camping. Test drive Toyota's new all-electric family today. Toyota, let's go places.

Oh, nothing about Zohran Mamdani, although it just seems impossible to get away from discussions about it. But I don't have to be exclusively talking about it, do I? Some interesting articles I've been reading. Alex Berenson is one of my go-to guys when it comes to science. He was, even when he was still writing for the left-wing New York Times. He was the science editor. But he always, he's very real and he's much like me when it comes to drugs and stuff of that nature. But he had an interesting piece, two interesting pieces this week that I wanted to get to. One is that he had a chance to go visit West Point. with a special forces officer. And the guy's the reader of his column, so he offered him a tour. And even though he'd been there before, he'd never been there with an active duty officer. So he goes off to the United States Military Academy, which is beautiful at this time of year because the trees, they got their last yellow leaves on them, and the Hudson River is, you know, just gleaming in the sun. the big gray buildings that basically tower over the river and watching these young men and women, I guess, you know, stepping between classes. And just they're more than just students, you know, these are cadets. And they live by a code. And the code is will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do. The cadets at West Point are learning to fight to kill, sometimes to die, and to order the soldiers that they command into danger. The Code is the Academy's way of telling cadets, you will have the weightiest responsibilities imaginable, and you need to live with honor. Yet West Point has seen some scandals. Remember, they had the cheating scandal in 2020, and then... Then they had that 22 case down in here, right in Florida, where a bunch of cadets were using some kind of cocaine at a, I forgot, I think it was a spring break party. And they ended up overdosing. Look, we know that drug use is inevitable, especially in a free society, actually in any society, but the fact that West Point cadets would use cocaine, not in secret, but together as a group, shows how deeply drugs have corroded our norms. And when does the Trump administration's answer to the crisis of drug use? Well, they're blown up ships in international waters. Because it says they're carrying cocaine. It's the wrong response, though, Alex Berenson said, I'm not so sure about that. I think it might be the right response. But it does bring the question to the forefront. Is the answer to lawbreaking more lawbreaking? And that's not just true for drugs.

But everybody seems to have forgotten that. And what we're seeing, you know, the lack of morality, Joe Biden giving, you know, a pardon to his son, Hunter, for crimes after promising he wouldn't do it. You know, Democrats spent years pursuing lawfare against Donald Trump, tried to bankrupt him and his whole family, tried to put him in prison by any means necessary. And now he's doing the same thing. He's pardoning donors and lackeys like George Santos. You know, I don't understand that pardon. Not at all. And then openly going after Democrats and prosecuting them. I don't really have a problem with that, but it is, you know, we've just sunk to new levels of low as all. And I can't even believe that I'm watching this. But serving in Congress was never designed to be a path to fame and fortune. You should not get wealthy. in that civil service job. But Nancy Pelosi did and Joe Biden did. And, you know, listen, with all these cyber coins and everything else, Trump's are doing great. So you have to wonder, how low can we go? How much lower can we go? A cadet will not lie. will not steal or tolerate those who do. Those can't just be words on a wall. The military expects honesty and integrity from itself. So it should. Soldiers aren't just armed men. West Point isn't just a very expensive place for teenagers to learn to shoot howitzers. The military is a unique institution. Soldiers and officers depend on each other for life and death. But the goals that the military sets, honor, bravery, integrity, that should matter to all of us. It's not too much or too late for us to expect more from ourselves and our leaders. That's what Alex Berenson ended his article with. And I'd have to agree, when did we just get so far from who we were? Listen to this story. This is another piece that Alex Berenson had earlier in the week, right? There's a beautiful building in Miami. And in September, the University of Miami Health System opened an outpatient medical center in North Miami. And it's part of a $4 billion development project called Solemia. And last week, the building got a lot of attention. on X, but not for the right reasons. Actually, sadly, it was for all the wrong reasons. A heart surgeon of the university's medical school posted a lush filmed video of the center's lobby, which looks more like a five-star hotel complete with a giant chandelier and a pianist tinkling, a grand piano. What? Health care costs a lot.

Fortunately, you know, this radio show doesn't cause you anything. So you can get a good value here. So no doubt the surgeon, Dr. Yannis Chatsisi's, was sincerely proud of the U's new baby. Chatsisi seems like a good doctor and a good guy. He's not a publicity hound. He has all of 1,491 followers on X. But the reaction on X was, well, not very favorable. Rogan O'Hanley, who posts as D.C. Drano, wrote that the lobby's opulence proves they're lining pockets, not helping patients, a comment that was viewed 2.2 million times. When hospitals look like luxury five-star resorts and families can't afford even basic care, is it medicine or is it greed? A physician wrote that he absolutely loved how much this video has been dunked on. The egregious nonprofit and tax-exempt status of these health systems is laughable. Callie Means, a top advisor to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. offered an even more pointed take. She said, this is grotesque. You get the idea. After briefly trying to defend the video, Chatsisi's gave up and deleted it. But as one wise poster noted, deleting the video doesn't solve the problem. It's not even a hospital. If it were a hospital, it would have to have an emergency room and it didn't. And that might make it less attractive to the people coming in for these high profit patient cares. And just how much did the University of Miami spend on Solemia? Well, they haven't said. But in July of 2024, it applied to Miami-Dade County to sell $500 million in bonds, specifying that $239.3 million would go to building phase two of the Solomia ambulatory clinic. It seems possible the center, which is 336,000 square feet over seven floors, cost as much as a half billion dollars, well over $1,000 per square foot, as much as or more than a high-end Manhattan skyscraper. This is nuts. The building is a bunch of office and surgery suites. It closes at 5 p.m. and isn't open on the weekends. It may need some backup power so the lights won't go out in the middle of a facelift, but it does not require a hospital's infrastructure.

But University of Miami Health is a regional hospital system competing for patients in one of the wealthiest parts of the United States. High-end procedures, and to a lesser extent, donations from satisfied rich folk pay its bills, including the multi-million dollars salaries of its top executives. So yeah, it needs a new surgery center that looks like this. Okay, maybe needs is the wrong word. Does anyone really need a range rover? A Ford Explorer is basically the same vehicle for one-third the price. But hey, it takes money to make money. And you don't want the neighbors to think you aren't doing well. Pretty much the same principle here. Picking on this building specifically in the University of Miami is a little unfair. High-end hospitals all over are on a race to the top. They're spending as much as they can on new construction and figuring they'll make it back by gaining market share to squeeze insurers. If they win, they win. If they lose, they merge with the winners. True. This trend preceded Obamacare, but its expensive bureaucratic requirements have accelerated it. The bigger the system, the more widely it can spread the bureaucratic overhead that Obamacare generates. It's all fun in games, especially for hospital executives, except that American health care is now so expensive that it can only survive with massive government subsidies. Bloaded does not begin to describe the system. A non-catastrophic insurance policy without very high deductibles now runs 25 to 30,000 a year for a family of four. More in high-cost areas. Most working Americans are shielded from that reality by employer subsidies. But if they aren't, it's backbreaking. Even upper middle class Americans have little hope of being able to pay it, whether they buy a plan on the private market or through the Obamacare state exchanges. So Obamacare, the signature democratic policy achievement of the last 20 years cannot function without massive subsidies that are required in part because of Obamacare. But the portions of these subsidies that are aimed at middle class and upper middle class people are expiring. The Democratic answer to this is not to consider working with Republicans to fix Obamacare, much less start to work on broader changes to the system. No, it's to shut the government in order to force another zero or two onto the blank check that Washington now writes to subsidize Obamacare policies. For now, Republicans are saying no. And that's why a seven-story ambulatory surgical center in Miami has shut the government. The bigger question is whether Republicans will give in once Obamacare price increases go through, and the full extent of premium increases for next year become apparent. Experience suggests they will, especially with the media braying at them. Since World War II, the American solution to our broken, inefficient, over-medicalized health care system has always been to throw more money at it.

Measureed by lobby quality, it's working. Measureed in almost any other way, it's a disaster. Let me take a break, a quick break. You stay right where you are. Definitely makes me wonder how much lower we can go is the way politicians now feel so comfortable cursing. And I don't just mean like an occasional slip, but, you know, the former vice president, Kamala Harris. Let loose with the F word and there's some guy out, a mayor of Cordelaine, Idaho. This guy, Dan Gugan, said that Christian conservatives are mindless cult member morons. They are white, racist, supremac, and they can F themselves and go to jail. What? This is a mayor? It's so full of hate. It's it looks like this guy, now they've dug into some of his previous posts on X. He posted this. Tell me what has to be on your mind to post this. He said on July 1st, the state of Idaho is banning porn hub. If you're a Christian nationalist, a regular churchgoer, or a staunch Republican, you probably want to know how to access your online porn starting next month. If so, DM me about how to use a VPN. I'd be happy to tell you. He's encouraging pornography, which is now... Being distributed online and the state that he lives in and he's the mayor of a city within has banned one website. And then he says, this is another posting. The BS that this, and he didn't say BS, he said the word. The BS that this country is founded on Christian values and principles is a lie. They keep repeating without foundation. This country blossomed from the Enlightenment, which was the purging of religion from government. It's the foundation of modern Western civilization. No, he's wrong. You can't. You just can't. understand when we descended into this sort of netherworld. It's gross. I mean, that's like demon talking. It makes me not just uncomfortable, actually fearful. And by the way, he's from a red state. So don't, you know, this is not a blue-red issue in the traditional way. Unbelievable. You look at these subpoenas that are being sent out right now by a grand jury with this James Comey prosecution has unearthed some new revelations, right? Okay. So every day we see more revelations about the Department of Justice under Joe Biden.

DOJ watchdog Michael Horowitz's 2018 report criticized the FBI's mid-year exam investigation into Clinton's illicit use of a private email server to send classified information while she was Secretary of State, concluding James Comey's actions were extraordinary and insubordinate when he announced Clinton wouldn't be charged in that speech on July 5th of 2016. James Comey had said in the speech that Clinton's email practices were extremely careless, but that he was also allegedly believed no reasonable prosecutor. would take her to court. You can't make this stuff up. The files were actually on Anthony Wiener's laptop in a folder labeled Life Insurance. You can't make this stuff up. Well, let me take a break because Derek's going to come on for the last segment of the show with me. Don't forget, coming up after me is Guy Benson followed by Will Kane and Joe Pags and then Lars Larson, and then it's officially the weekend. So stay right where you are. We'll be right back. They say that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. But in the case of Derek Kaufman, the apple rolled all the way to L.A. The one thing Derek and his mother share in common, however, is the love for breaking news. TMZ is breaking news faster than the New York Times. So sit back and enjoy the news from Hollywood as only the Kaufman family can bring it. And oh my goodness, a breaking news story that I saw first on TMZ. Hey, kid, what's up with Daryl Strawberry? Yeah, well, the Mets great just got himself a full and complete pardon from President Trump, Daryl Strawberry. This is a pretty wild thing to happen randomly on a Friday because he wasn't in current trouble. This is relating back to a 1995 tax evasion case where he was sentenced to three years of probation. He didn't get any jail time or anything, but he had to pay, I think, $350,000 in back taxes. And Trump said, you know, you were a great met and you've turned your life around, which he has. He's really, since, you know, he had a cocaine possession case in 2002. But since then, he's really committed himself to sobriety and taken care of his wife. And Trump has given him clemency. Yeah, listen, one thing I like about when Trump does this stuff, unlike Joe Biden with the auto pen, he like called Darrell Strawberry on the phone and said, I'm going to give you a pardon. Like he is personally involved.

Yeah, look, and Strawberry has been supportive of him and apparently wasn't even by his phone. You know, he was caring for his wife after she was recovering from a surgery and the phone just kept ringing and ringing. And he started talking to the president of the United States and telling him how much he loved him in the 80s and loved the Mets. So this is a pretty happy thing. I wonder how much it factors into if he's got pardoning on the brain and figures from the past, how much he's thinking about Did he? I'm sure you'll want to talk about what's going on with him. Yeah, and I can see him applying some pressure to the Baseball Hall of Fame. I think, you know, the fact that Pete Rose didn't live to see himself get in there makes it just sadder, but I still think that should be done. Yeah, you know, look, Donald Trump is a guy with very specific interests, and I think he does like to apply his power in... you know, strained ways sometimes, but he's interested in sports. And maybe he wants to write some perceived wrongs. He harbors about Pete Rose and other Hallfamers and people who played the game. So this might be an indication that his mind is on those things right now. Yeah. And what about Diddy? He got busted for drinking. I mean, I thought he was in jail. Yeah, you know, this is, he is. He is at a low security prison called Fort Dix, where, you know, you can do a lot of different things. He was at MDC. Brooklyn, which is an absolute hell. And it was very restrictive. And during his sentencing, he said, you know, I haven't been sober for 25 years. The first time in 25 years I've been sober because he was locked up and he had no bail. So he was... He was committing himself to that, or he was forced to sort of detox in jail. Now he had a low-security prison, and apparently we're told that they made some alcohol out of some fanta, a soft drink, sugar, and apples, which that plus time for it to ferment, you know, this is what some prisoners do. They make toilet wine called Pruno. This is another variety. And apparently they were plain to move him from one unit into a different one, and now they've reversed course and said he's going to stay put, so it must have been a serious enough infraction. This makes me, you know, is a reminder that sobriety is a journey. It's a very, very difficult undertaking, as you well know, and it's not always a linear path towards being clean. Right. Well, but listen, he can use this opportunity to, you know, he doesn't have to buy the toilet wine. He can maintain his sobriety as long as he's in jail, I would suspect that that would please Donald Trump. If he's thinking of pardoning him, Donald doesn't drink, doesn't do anything. You're right. Donald is a T-Toler, and he actually has a family history. His brother was an alcoholic and it really interrupted his life. And so President Trump has strong feelings. It's unclear to me whether those are sympathetic feelings for someone who is struggling with this disease or whether it is something that would harden him and make him think, you know, he doesn't deserve to be pardoned. So unclear how it cuts, but I could certainly see it having an impact on the decision.

Yeah. And what about this Mark Sanchez story? I mean, they just let them go at Fox. Yeah, you know, he's still under that cloud of doubt about what went down on that night when he got stabbed by the truck driver, where there was a scuffle and a lot of people, you know, he's facing criminal charges over it. And Fox has now, you know, sort of quietly put in place Drew Brees. And then a spokesperson told us, we can confirm Sanchez is no longer with the network and they had no further comment on it. It's obviously... somewhat related, it seems, to what went down that night where everything just changes in an instant. He was apparently intoxicated and things got out of hand with this truck driver, and now he's paying the consequences for that. His brother recently told us, you know, look, it's been a long month. Mark is still recovering from those stabbing injuries that he suffered, and he's also grieving the loss of a friend, and it's disappointing that he no longer has his job on Fox. Yeah, and it's disappointing that Ariana got snubbed by the Grammys, but it looks like bad bunnies in. Yeah, you know, the Grammy news is fascinating. The biggest piece for me is not necessarily the Ariana snub, but how big K-pop is. Have you seen that Golden, which is a monster hit, if you have kids, you play on an endless loop in your car and on your television at home from K-pop Demon Hunters, they were nominated for that song. And another Korean pop hit. APT, Apatapete, which is by Rosei and Bruno Mars, that song is also being considered for Song of the Year. So it's pretty incredible, the sea change that's going on. Do you know that there's no rap songs in the top 40 anymore? So that has dominated the charts for many, many years. Now, K-pop is ascendant, and obviously Taylor Swift controls the charts, and rap, which is for the past 20 years, has been all there is on. on Billboard Hot 100 is no longer dominant. Wow. Well, the world just keeps on changing, Derek. That's certainly the case. Thanks. Yeah, thanks for the celebrity news. I'm booking my flight out. I'll let you know this weekend. Well, wish Nixie, good luck in the playoffs. We've got some tough matches ahead for our little golden boot. She scored 20 goals, led the whole league in goals this year. So your granddaughter's really killing it out there. That's my girl. All right, kid. Talk to you soon. Thank you for your time this time until next time. My plan is to be back here on Monday at 3 p.m. if it be his will and he delays his coming. In the meantime, what lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are so what lies within us, so wherever you are, just be yourself. Everybody else has taken. God bless you. God bless Israel. And God bless the United States of America. I will see you all on Monday. This has been the Joyce Kaufman podcast, available everywhere you get your podcasts.