Will Zohran Mamdani Become the Democrat Party’s Trump?

Americans’ trust in the corporate media has cratered. And with good reason: After decades of deception and distortion—considering its uncritical coverage of the wars in the Middle East, its peddling of the Trump-Russia collusion narrative, its inconsistent reporting on COVID-19, its selective ignorance during the 2020 election, and its efforts to conceal President Biden’s cognitive decline—the corporate press has earned every ounce of the public’s suspicion.

Now, Americans are tuning out the noise and tuning in to new voices to stay informed. UnHerd Washington Correspondent Emily Jashinsky has emerged as one of those voices. She joined “The Signal Sitdown” this week to discuss her new show with Megyn Kelly’s MK Media, “After Party with Emily Jashinsky,” the fallout from President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” and whether or not Zohran Mamdani represents the future of the national Democrat Party.

“I’m very weirdly optimistic,” Jashinsky said of the alternative media’s rise. “I feel so strange about this because one of the reasons I got into media is because I’ve always been obsessed with media and I’ve always been so pessimistic. But the last, I don’t know, year or two, I’ve started to feel optimistic about media, not because there aren’t still very powerful bad actors, not because some of the new actors aren’t also bad, but because the demand for transparency from the audience, I think, is pushing us in at least a better direction.”

Jashinsky told The Daily Signal that the age of new media will be dominated by journalists who are able to “establish trust with [their] audience and to best establish transparency.” Jashinsky cited how “60 Minutes” selectively edited the interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democrat presidential nominee. “People were demanding the transcript, and I think that’s the way people like us, our age and younger, want to consume news.”

“They really don’t want it to look or feel edited,” Jashinsky added. “There’s probably always going to be some editing, but they want stuff that’s live. We want stuff that’s transparent.”

The same can be said of alternative media’s class of commentators like Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson. “I think we’re in the golden age of reported commentary,” Jashinsky said. On digital shows and podcasts, “you’re able to do reported commentary on the fly in a way that, I think, is even more authentic and in a way that really resonates.”

President Donald Trump’s ability to tap into the independent media ecosystem and the public’s craving for authenticity helped build a political coalition that propelled him back to the White House. 

The breadth of that coalition, however, is both a blessing and a curse as the variety of interests within Trump’s camp compete for the president’s ear as he tries to act on his campaign promises. On July 4, Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill, the massive budget reconciliation package that delivered on many of those promises, into law. 

”When you have very narrow margins in the House and a very narrow margin in the Senate, you end up absolutely having to keep a coalition together that includes Chip Roy and either Lisa Murkowski or Susan Collins,” Jashinsky said. That is no easy task. “What they need to do is get Chip Roy to a place where he is sufficiently satisfied, and they need to get Lisa Murkowski to a place where she’s sufficiently satisfied,” she explained. “In order to do that, both of those things are necessarily going to mean swallowing a very bitter pill, and it was always going to be the case.

“I think that’s why Trump started, from the very beginning of the process, by branding this as the one big beautiful bill because he knew that tax cuts expire at the end of the year,” the journalist added. “Republicans were facing the choice of either do a ugly reconciliation bill or let taxes go up. Obviously, they’re going to decide with an ugly reconciliation bill.”

“That’s something I think Elon Musk missed,” Jashinsky said of the feud between Trump and Musk that started during the budget reconciliation negotiations. “I think Elon Musk has been shockingly naive throughout this process, and I do really think that it’s naive thinking that you can just kind of come into Washington and convince the Republican Party that has these narrow margins that they have to do some type of generational action to take on government spending when the only way to pass legislation and get it to the president’s desk is, again, to please either a Murkowski or Collins and the moderates while also pleasing the Chip Roys and the Freedom Caucus guys.”

“It was never gonna happen,” Jashinksy said.

Nevertheless, Trump was able to accomplish much more of his agenda in this budget reconciliation package than budget reconciliation packages from his first term. The One Big Beautiful Bill not only extended and made permanent tax cuts in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act but also procured billions to secure the border, deport millions of illegal migrants, and revitalize the military.

Some Democrats, however, are plotting the party’s comeback—New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani among them. Mamdani is officially infamous, constantly drawing ire from the long-time New Yorker who now lives in D.C. at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. and courting support from some of the nation’s top Democrats. Will Democrats remake the party in Mamdani’s image?

Potentially, Jashinsky said, but Mamdani’s coalition in New York might be much more fragile than it seems, and his victory in the Democrat primary for mayor might have more to do with New Yorker’s hatred for his opponent, disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo. To maintain his coalition, Mamdani needs to thread the needle.

“You have to bring the progressives in with the cultural libertarians, and then you need to bring them in with the … upwardly mobile, affluent, educated, higher income people,” Jashinsky explained. The catch? To earn the support of New York’s cocktail party class, “you do have to do some of the cultural signaling, which is very interesting. And that’s what puts off the [cultural libertarians].”

“I think the likeliest case scenario is that Mamdani has a somewhat embarrassing defeat at the hands of Eric Adams, another terrible candidate, and that sort of chills the fever for him nationwide, but who knows,” Jashinsky told The Daily Signal. Certainly, stranger things have happened.

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