Transcript of Trump Stares Down Iran & Mamdani’s Plan To Squash Landlords | 5.28.26

Amid mounting pressure for an Iran deal and economic relief here at home, the president and his cabinet send a clear message: Trump is in control.

I think we're doing very well. I think they are starting to give us the things that they have to give us. And if they do, that's great. And if they won't, then the man on my left is going to finish them off.

I'm Daily Wire executive editor John Bickley. Georgia Howe is off today. It's Thursday, May 28th.

This is Morning Wire.

Mayor Zoran Momdani unveils a radical new housing policy for New York centered on seizing private property.

Buildings that have suffered chronic neglect, we will work to transfer ownership to responsible stewards.

And some of tech's biggest names are reeling from sticker shock on AI tools. We talked to an expert on what this means for AI adoption.

This kind of spend relative to the money it's bringing in is It's hard to justify.

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President Trump convened his full cabinet Wednesday, where he and other officials addressed a wide range of issues here and abroad. The meeting comes amid a series of defensive strikes by the U.S., including last night in response to 4 Iranian drones threatening ships in the Hormuz Strait. Joining us now with the details from the meeting and what's next on the president's docket is Daily Wire opinion editor Ben Domenech, host of The Big Ben Show. Ben, thanks for coming on.

Of course, always great to be with you.

So let's start with the top lines from this big cabinet meeting yesterday.

As we reported, this kind of session is rare for Trump, and it's called in a particularly complicated moment on the foreign policy front in particular. So what were the big takeaways, including on Iran?

Well, I think the big takeaway here is that the president wanted to send a message following the media reports over Memorial Day weekend of a pending Iran deal, one that was attracting a lot of criticism, particularly from the hawks within his party, not just the Lindsey Grahams and Tom Cottons of the world, but also people like Ted Cruz, that he was not going to accept a deal that did not achieve his aims. He says that Iranians are negotiating on fumes, which is one of the reasons why— and this is something that a senior administration official told us over the weekend, it's difficult for them to even negotiate given the lag time that happens between when you send something back to the Iranians and when they're coming back to you with a response. Personally, I think that the president wanted to just send the message, I'm in charge here. No one else is doing this. No one else is deciding whether we do it or not. There is, there is not going to be some deal done that I am not content with. I think that was the key takeaway from this cabinet meeting.

Yeah.

We also heard from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant on oil prices. He actually says prices will end up lower after this standoff with Iran is finally resolved. Is that just political messaging or does the White House really seem that optimistic about where things are heading?

You know, Bessett is someone who doesn't usually try to work in, uh, in a candy-colored universe. He doesn't, uh, view the world through rose-colored glasses. Uh, and yeah, because he's saying that, I think that gives this a lot more heft. And so I, I viewed that as not just a message to the markets, but also a message to the politicians on Capitol Hill. Stand with us on this and we'll get through it. Whether that turns out to be true or not, I mean, I mean, your guess is as good as mine. It's just a, a level of optimism from the White House that I think doesn't match up with what a lot of other Republicans and analysts are saying in Washington.

Right. Some analysts that we've had on this show, in fact. Uh, we like to ask you about the political side. This cabinet meeting, it came at a crucial time, uh, right after a series of primary wins for the president, which is notable. Uh, do you think Trump accomplished what he's set out to accomplish here?

100%. When it comes to the primaries, he has been taking names and settling all family business over the course of this election cycle. And that's something that I think sends a message to the base. At the same time, I will say there's— there is a situation here where the president, having decided all of these primaries, is making a bet on all these different candidates. And now that means that if they end up running into a blue tidal wave, there will be people who say the president made the wrong choice. Now, this time around, I will say the president is making much wiser choices when it comes to the primaries of who he's choosing to back.

Yeah, as we've seen with Trump 2.0, this is a well-oiled machine when it comes to these campaigns. Now, looking forward here, uh, what should we keep an eye out for in DC?

Well, we've seen, uh, Donald Trump, the national security, foreign policy president, you know, insistent that Iran won't have a nuclear weapon. We've seen him as a domestic policy, uh, president, you know, creating these Trump accounts, doing all these different things. But we also have to remember this is Trump the showman, and what everybody's buzzing about in DC right now is the fact that they are building this massive UFC fight set in front of the White House that everybody can see when they're— when Mayor Margaret Ollian is walking into the, to the, to the White House. This is now so large it looms over the White House itself. Everyone driving past is, is rubbernecking, and so it's creating traffic problems. So look, Trump is looking forward to this. On June 14th, they're going to have this, this fight, and Dana White's been going around promoting it this week. And that's, I think, something that's going to be a reminder— look, as much as Donald Trump 2.0 is someone who's very serious about his legacy. He also wants to put on a great show for the people.

Yeah, and he does that better than anyone. Ben, thanks so much for joining us.

Great to be with you, as always.

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Through our new citywide campaign, Fix the City, we will focus on the worst landlords in New York City. When necessary, we will take aggressive legal action to remove negligent owners and property managers. And for buildings that have suffered chronic neglect, we will work to transfer ownership to responsible stewards, stewards that include community land trusts, nonprofits, or even the tenants themselves.

That was the mayor of America's largest city openly announcing that the government may take buildings away from the people who own them. Daily Wire reporter Brecca Stoll is here to discuss. Hey, Brecca, welcome on.

Thank you, John.

So you called attention to this online, this particular moment from this announcement. What are we seeing from Momdani here?

So on Tuesday, Momdani laid out his plan for New York housing. And part of that plan is really interesting because he's going to take properties from what he calls bad landlords and turn them over to nonprofits, community land trusts, or even the tenants themselves. And how he's able to do this is through legislation if the New York City Council passes it. That is called the Third Party Transfer Program, which would allow the city to take properties from those landlords if they've had property taxes pile up, utility bills piled up, or housing code violations. And John, New York housing has very strict violations, so it is easy to rack those up. This basically puts any landlord who has violations up for risk of losing their property. The reason why some of these buildings are in such bad shape is because they cannot maintain a building with the level of rent that's being paid by the tenant. I'll give you an example. We went to one of his rental ripoff hearings, and we talked to tenants in these buildings that they're saying are run so badly. And I talked to one girl, her rent is $300 a month in Brooklyn for a 3-bedroom apartment.

That's her share. And so when she tells me— yes, and so she tells me, you know, the building is in horrible shape and she wants Mondani to mandate that her landlord fix it. You can see it right there. That's not possible. You can't keep up a building in Brooklyn at $300 a month for rent.

So the government creates the problem and the government comes to fix the problem.

Yes, that's the story of Mamdani right there.

Now, Mamdani has pulled back on some of his radical campaign promises.

What have we seen so far from him in terms of walking some things back?

So he's already walked back his free busses, and that was, you know, one of the core components of his campaign. But he essentially realized he doesn't have the money to pay for these busses. Same thing when he said we're going to freeze the rent.

Everywhere.

It was a blanket statement. It was for all rent-stabilized apartments. Your rent would stay at one place and the landlord couldn't raise it. But he's realized that he doesn't have money to do some of his promises. And Mumdani was planning on enacting more taxes to raise revenue for these programs and basically take that capital from New York's, you know, 1% and redistribute it, their wealth, in forms of services to New Yorkers. He's not able to do that with how strict Kathy Hochul's being.

So you mentioned the financial constraints here. There's a $12 billion budget gap for the city, but Mamdani says he's zeroed that out somehow.

Is that true?

So he has, but he's done it in a way where he's gotten money from Governor Kathy Hochul. And so the same problem is going to happen year after year because for New York City, it is mandated by law that they have to have their books balanced. And this is because back in the 1970s, New York City almost went bankrupt. And they went to the president at the time and they said, you know, you got to bail us out. And he said no. And so since then, New York has been, you have to balance your budget, which has become an issue for Mumdani because he wants to run his budget at a deficit because all the services he wants to enact, you know, free childcare, free busses, freezing the rent, he doesn't have the money to do so. But whether you like or not, he's one of the most popular Democrat socialists in the country. And this year he seems to have gotten the money to appease a large base of his voters.

Was no doubt very effective in messaging to his constituents so far. Brecca, thank you so much for coming on.

Thank you so much for having me.

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Companies have been pushing artificial intelligence as a way to cut costs, but some of the biggest names in tech are now running into a different reality. AI can to be extremely expensive. Uber burned through this year's AI budget in just 4 months, while Microsoft is cutting back on coding tools. Joining us now to discuss is Allison Schrager, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering financial topics. She's also the author of An Economist Walks Into a Brothel. I want to hear the end of that joke, Allison. Uh, great to have you on.

Thanks for having me.

So when you look at companies like Uber and Microsoft pulling back or reassessing at least some of AI spending. You know, is this a, a normal growing pain when it comes to new technology, or does this tell us something more fundamental about the economics of AI and the reality of it?

Well, I think it's a little bit of both. There is this fundamental growing pain. Uh, they're actually having to account for the cost of, you know, heavy AI use. And like a lot of new technologies, it's not really so clear it's showing up in productivity numbers yet, certainly not in profits. Now, whether or not long-term that is a sensible strategy, whether it's worth taking a loss to get your employees more AI-oriented, you know, is a question. It probably comes down to individual companies.

Yeah.

Why might the cost be showing up so much faster than the savings or revenue generation?

Well, sometimes it takes a while for productivity numbers to reflect a new technology. It took more than 100 years for the steam engine to show up in productivity numbers. One thing we are learning about AI and workforce, they're finding that a lot of the sort of more average mediocre employees benefit a lot from it and makes them more excellent, but an excellent employee who's probably already driving productivity numbers doesn't get the same boost. There's also some evidence that you become more productive from AI and then spend those saved hours like goofing off at work.

Fascinating.

Uber has reportedly encouraged employees to maximize AI usage, but then they've discovered that the bills were exploding. You know, is this a case of a specific company adopting technology before it actually fully understood the economics behind it?

Well, I mean, there is a bit of a learning curve. A tech firm tends to be more hungry to adopt new technology. I mean, that's their ethos. There's an irony here that, you know, Uber became so popular by initially launching their product and not charging people the cost of it. So people got used to using it. And initially AI also did seem free. So I think they're also just sort of learning the ups and downs of that business model.

Yeah, for sure. Now, there's been a lot of fear that AI is just going to replace a lot of jobs, but is it possible that we, we actually see a trend of layoffs and then rehiring down the road when companies realize they actually can't use AI to, you know, replace aspects of the workforce like they thought?

What's probably going to happen is that you have a recession and you're sort of tightening your belt, and that's a good time to say, hey, maybe AI can replace that role. So it will look like a recession-oriented job loss, but AI might exacerbate it. I think a lot of these AI doomsayers about jobs tend to be tech people. Who maybe don't have a lot of work experience outside of tech. They're engineers. And so they look at a job and they look at the output that they can observe that maybe took 30% of your time, and they think AI could do that. So they kind of dismiss the 70%, all these sort of intangibles that actually make up a big part of your workday when you've actually had a job. In the past, when you had technology that made people more productive, it didn't reduce jobs. In fact, made employees more valuable.

Yeah.

And on the flip side of this, are there any broad fields you see AI generating far more jobs?

It's so hard to predict. It's like, imagine it's 1910 and you're sitting down with someone and you're telling them, in, you know, 115 years, there are only 2% of the population's gonna work in agriculture, but there'll be this other job called a cybersecurity expert.

Yeah.

Like, I mean, It didn't— first of all, they probably wouldn't get past 2% working in agriculture. Right. If AI works like any other technology, it will create jobs that we can't even imagine right now.

Really just a fascinating moment for all of us. We've done a number of segments here on AI because it keeps coming up in ways that we haven't expected already. Allison, thank you so much for joining us.

Anytime.

Thank you.

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