Dave Rubin has been busy pulling back the curtain on the mainstream media’s fawning treatment of radical left candidates. He shared a direct-message clip of a roundtable conversation with Michael Malice and Alex Stein that highlights how Republican strategist Scott Jennings confronted CNN’s David Axelrod with uncomfortable truths about Zohran Mamdani. The clip lays bare how easily cable pundits can be startled when a conservative actually calls out the left’s class-warfare script.
Make no mistake: Zohran Mamdani is not a moderate likable personality to be patted on the head by anchors; he’s the democratic socialist who stunned New York by winning the Democratic mayoral primary in June. His victory lit up the left-wing machine and forced even establishment Democrats to acknowledge a very real insurgent movement in the city. Americans who value prosperity and public safety should pay attention to how someone with radical economic plans went from niche activist to party nominee so quickly.
CNN’s own panel reacted like deer in headlights when the conservative perspective landed on air, with David Axelrod and Van Jones visibly thrown by elements of Mamdani’s victory speech. Republican Scott Jennings didn’t mince words, warning that Mamdani “sounded like a national candidate,” and other panelists struggled to reconcile their earlier soft interviews with the sharper rhetoric on stage. That awkward pause on live television was not a technical glitch; it was the sound of mainstream media being exposed for mistaking youthful energy for practical governance.
What Rubin and Jennings pointed out — and what CNN hesitated to press — is that Mamdani’s language frequently traffics in the old leftist playbook of oppressors versus the oppressed, a framing that demands sweeping government solutions and punishes success. Conservative viewers should notice the pattern: when questioned, sympathetic hosts revert to defense mode rather than challenging how those policies would actually work in the real economy. When outlets reflexively defend or rationalize those talking points, they do a disservice to everyday New Yorkers who will pay the bills for these experiments.
It’s even more galling that the same networks that lionize his TikTok charisma and viral clips are the ones who blink when his policy math and rhetoric are put to the test. The media played up Mamdani’s charm and online reach while downplaying the radicalism behind the smiling soundbites, and that calculation produced a nominee who now faces real scrutiny. Conservatives have a right to be angry — not at the voters who felt ignored, but at a news industry that acts as an amplifier for ideological theater.
The stakes are not abstract. Promises of rent freezes, free buses, and punitive taxes on the wealthy will not create prosperity; they will chase capital and careers out of the city, lower wages, and make life harder for the middle class and working poor the left claims to champion. That’s not fear-mongering — it’s common-sense economics and lived experience from blue cities across America. If conservatives don’t push back with clear alternatives and relentless scrutiny, the same media that cheered Mamdani on will report the inevitable fallout as if it were just another unavoidable tragedy.
This is a moment for principled clarity and political muscle. Thank Scott Jennings for speaking up and thank Dave Rubin for amplifying the exchange, but don’t leave it to pundits and podcasters to save the city. Patriots who love New York and the country must organize, inform neighbors, and demand honest debates about what prosperity actually looks like before the socialists’ promises become everyone’s burden.
