The One Trait More Powerful Than Money And Status

Zoran Mamdani started his campaign with no money.

I hope very soon not to have to ask you for money, but until then, I'm asking.

No status.

How's it going, guys? Do you have 60 seconds to talk to us about the election?

And a 1% chance of winning.

My name is Zoran Mamdani. I'm going to be running for mayor next year.

And somehow he won.

This is crazy! Woo!

Now, you'd think a guy like this would have more in common with a musical Democrat like him or a fresh-faced charismatic candidate like him.

Uh.

But the person I can't stop I can't stop thinking of when I watch Mamdani is him.

Hello.

Now obviously Mamdani and Trump are very different people with completely different policies and ethical compasses. I want to be clear, I am not saying that these two are similar people, but I am saying that they used a similar playbook to win massive influence without having the most money or status. And that playbook let them overcome opponents that had every advantage except for one, charisma.

When the nights of New York get rough and Zohran can't do it, I'm here.

And ultimately, we began this race, as you were saying in the beginning, at about 1% name recognition. And that's being charitable to myself. How do you, boss? How's it going, sir? Excuse me, ma'am.

State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani from Queens is now the fifth prominent Democrat looking to unseat Mayor Adams in next year's primary. Zohran's mother is a famous director and his father is a Harvard-educated professor. But in politics, Zorn was still a nobody. Eventually, New Yorkers would stop and talk to him, and in listening to them, he found something interesting.

But the moment when a lot of people started paying attention was after he won the presidency. We talked to Trump voters and we asked them why they voted for him. Did you get a chance to vote on Tuesday?

Yes.

And who did you vote for?

Trump. Trump.

Trump.

I voted for Trump.

To be clear, these are voters in a heavily Democratic neighborhood who had turned to Trump. And I know some of you have a very fixed view of why people like Trump, but just listen to what Christian, a young man who voted for Trump and then Mamdani, actually says, because I think Trump's success encouraged Mamdani to lean into his own strengths.

I admire these folks that go against the grain. That's part of the appeal of Trump to me initially, how he was considered an outsider.

When Donald Trump launched his first presidential campaign over 10 years ago now, he had celebrity status, but he was considered a joke by the Republican establishment and media. Donald Trump has been saying that he will run for president as a Republican, which is surprising since I just assumed he was running as a joke. Trump was running against the largest Republican primary field in in history, and the establishment had already picked their guy. But we all know what happened next. A serious presidential candidate at the moment. They give him the highest marks on handling the economy. Wide margin. He is 2 times where Jeb Bush is. But what you might have forgotten was the establishment's response. He's a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot. He doesn't represent my party. He doesn't represent the values that the men and women who wear the uniform are fighting for. He doesn't sweat because his pores are clogged from the spray tan that he uses.

He doesn't represent the Republican Party or its values.

10 years later, a different candidate shows up in a different party, but you get the same establishment backlash. And just like with Trump, when the legacy media was unable to slow Mondani's momentum, he started getting attacked from the party establishment.

Zoran is not a Democrat. Democratic Socialist is a different thing. He's a snake oil salesman. Mm-hmm. He will say and do anything to get elected.

And Trump, now president and part of the establishment, had this to say about Mumdani's likely victory: I looked at the polls and looks like we're going to have a communist as the mayor of New York.

It'll be very interesting. But here's the good news. He's got to go through the White House.

So each of these men had the establishment totally stacked against them, but their charisma won out. And here's the confusing bit. How can two men who are so different in politics and personality both be charismatic in a similar way? Well, it actually starts earlier than you think. Because before either Trump or Mamdani were taken seriously, they were laughed at. And that's the thing about charisma that many overlook. The first stage requires a willingness to stand out from the crowd and risk ridicule. It requires the courage to be disliked. Expressing yourself, by rapping, for instance, opens you up to judgment. Before Trump was taken seriously, he was mocked as a cheesy reality TV celebrity.

—But Rod, you're fired.

Now, it's impossible to know exactly how those experiences shape them, but people who've already survived public judgment often become less afraid of future judgment. Once you've learned that ridicule won't destroy you, you stop spending so much energy trying to avoid it. And this gives you a superpower. You stop trying to blend in and start feeling comfortable standing out.

—The first foreign visit by a mayor of New York is always considered significant.

Where would you go first? First visit, I would visit the Holy Land.

I would go to Israel.

Yeah, I'd make my 4th trip to Israel.

Mr. Mondani.

I would stay in New York City.

Is there anyone on stage who is unwilling tonight to pledge your support to the eventual nominee of the Republican Party?

Mr. Trump. This brings us to a crucial second point. Where other candidates soften their message after being attacked, both Mondani and Trump doubled down when the heat got turned up. Instead of defending themselves or softening, they stayed on offense and defined the terms of the entire race.

And this entire race was about the question of affordability. I'm running for mayor to freeze the rent for every rent-stabilized tenant. As mayor, I'll freeze the rent every year that I'm in office. Universal, no-cost childcare for every family in New York City.

These are concrete, impossible-to-ignore promises. Remind you of someone?

I will build a great, great wall, and I will have Mexico pay for that wall.

The takeaway for your life is that if you want to make an impact on a large scale, the worst thing is not being hated. It's being ignored. Yet almost everyone does everything they can to avoid being hated and suffers being ignored. They play it safe, like Republican candidate number 4, who you don't remember anything about, I'm sure. That's John Kasich, by the way. But because Trump and Mamdani weren't afraid of judgment, they could be way more compelling. Their ideas were often controversial. They were polarizing. But they were unmistakably theirs. And they didn't apologize for it. That conviction made them impossible to ignore. Mamdani went viral. Trump earned billions of dollars in free media. If you had to choose 3 words to describe Mamdani, what would it be? Smug, phony, arrogant.

Radical, extremist, dangerously inexperienced.

Describe Mamdani in 3 words. I would say New York City. The conventional wisdom would tell you that I am far from the perfect candidate. I am young. I am Muslim. I am a Democratic socialist. And most damning of all, I refuse to apologize for any of this.

He absolutely does not want to see Zemdami. "Mandami." "And Mandami, whatever the hell his name is." Now, Nassim Taleb has a word for how these candidates respond to attacks, and that word is "antifragile." It means that not only are attacks ineffective against them, they actually make them stronger because they get to show their grit. That's the complete opposite to almost every other candidate. And through all of the attacks, Mamdani and Trump demonstrated an incredible ability to stay with their core message and, importantly, their core emotion. For Mamdani, that core emotion is all over his face. It's warmth. Notice how Mamdani almost always speaks through a smile and greets people effusively.

"Huzzah, I'm Mamdani. I'm running to be the next mayor of New York City." "What have you ever done for anybody in New York City?" Again, you see the warmth and joy in his smile.

Now watch what happens when a CNN anchor points to his potentially embarrassing rap career. He smiles even more. "Before that, he was an aspiring rapper." Even when he's heckled, Mamdani's core emotion is unchanged.

What I want to say today, in accordance with the fact that we love that in New York City you're going to hear it from everybody. It wouldn't be our city if there wasn't somebody on the block.

Good morning, my neighbors!

I fuck you! Yes! We need to make this a city where it's affordable enough to yell at your politicians.

The most charismatic people aren't just one-emotion robots, but they do have a core emotional signature that is more stable than most people. Where other people are constantly changing based on who's in the room or what's happening, highly charismatic people feel like they're kind of holding this consistent underlying note.

How does my hair look? Is it okay?

For Matthew McConaughey, it's laid-back comfort. To that I say, "All right, all right, all right." Conor McGregor, it's effusive self-confidence. This is what confidence looks like. Donnie, it's warmth and joy. He is endlessly smiley. He puts me to shame. And it comes through whether he's speaking to a crowd, making a commercial, or joking on a podcast. Mr. Cardamom.

Yes, yes. Mayor Cardamom.

Trump has his own core emotional signature, and as you can guess, it's not warmth. It's dominance.

We are going to start winning again. This country is going to start winning again. We're going to win so much, you may even get tired of winning.

And you'll say, "Please, please, it's too much winning." Trump never allows himself to express overt signs of submission, even when he's lost. And if he's challenged, say with a heckler, he finds a way to bring it back and assert dominance. And right now we're sitting here, we're talking.

Oh, here's another one. Go home to mom. Go home to mom. And your mother is voting for Trump.

She's voting for Trump. Different personalities, different different politics, but the same underlying principle: the most charismatic people bring a consistent emotional identity into every room they walk into, and it makes other people step into their world. Trump turned the Republican primary into an insult-off.

This is a tough business to run for president. You're a tough guy, Jeb.

Omdani definitely had his zingers and his combative moments, but generally they were filtered through that winning smile and optimism.

Do you think that billionaires have a right to I don't think that we should have billionaires.

No matter what you may have against these men, that consistency made them feel authentic to their supporters, who in turn love them even more for it. You've called women you don't like fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals. Your Twitter account— Only Rosie O'Donnell. Some people have compared him to a left-wing version of you, charismatic, Breaking the old rules. What do you think about that?

Well, I think I'm a much better looking person than him.

Now, I have in other videos broken down the specific tactics of Donald Trump's approach, but in my opinion, a lot of people have taken the wrong lesson from those and from Trump and Mondani in general. After watching Trump, they might think you need to rip schoolyard insults, or watching Mondani, maybe you need to smile through every interview or copy their politics. But the core is much broader and it applies to you no matter what influence you want to to have on the world. You need to find the courage to be ridiculed, the preference of offense over defense, and that unshakable core emotion that invites other people to follow you. Now, all of these together highlight something that I've been thinking a lot about lately. One of the ways to think about charisma is that it is the insistence of self-expression over safety. And yes, every candidate on those stages was expressing themselves, but most of them would soften their self-expression for safety the moment that it got tough. Trump and Mamdani didn't. And no matter which of those two you may love or you hate, I really encourage you to learn this piece from both of them. When you value expressing yourself fully, you make bolder decisions than other people. Instead of calculating social costs, you put your art out there and you risk ridicule. Instead of running the odds of winning and conserving energy because you only have a 1% shot, you just run for office and maybe change the world. And your charisma does not have to look like Trump or Mamdani's. There's 5 charisma types and infinite variations, and I go deep into those 5 types in other videos. But your own type will start with you finding the thing that you've been holding back in order to stay safe in the crowd. And that could be your perspective, could be your humor, your art, your sensitivity, your goofiness, or your mission. Now, you don't have to share these things. You can choose to lean into safety as most people unconsciously do. But you'll probably find the same irony that a lot of the also-rans found at the end. He doesn't know the difference between truth and lies. This man is a pathological liar.

President Trump is exactly right.

Thinking about voting for Donald Trump, friends, do not let friends vote for con artists.

Thank you for what you've done, you, to the world.

The people who spent their careers trying to be liked ended up following people who didn't need to be.

I have not refused to endorse Well, Hakeem Jeffries finally did it.

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries just today threw his support behind Zoran Mondani. And then the biggest face in the Democratic Party did as well. Run them down! Run 'em down! There is one other guy who wasn't much of a fan of Mondani. He threatened to arrest him, deport him, and he called him a communist.

But now here he is after he won. I wanted to congratulate the mayor. He really ran an incredible race. Incredible race against, you know, a lot of smart people. Would you feel comfortable living in New York City under a Muhamedani administration? Yeah, I would. I really would. We agree on a lot more than I would have thought. And he's a very nice guy. He's a charming guy, good-looking guy.

What do you think about him constantly saying how handsome you are? Thank you. Now, you're probably not working for your arch nemesis, but if you recognize yourself as someone who plays it safe and then pays the price whether it's in your social life, in your dating life, or in work, that is exactly what the Confidence Module of Charisma University is built to work through. It's our 30-day program that helps you remove the limiting beliefs that hold you back and gives you the concrete tools to show up in a way that makes people gravitate towards you. Here's what just a few students have to say. The best part is that thanks to Charisma University, I'm not afraid of getting rejected. Yes or no, I'm happy that I've become the type of of person who has the courage to do it. I was constantly seeking validation and cared too much about other people's opinions of me. Now I find it way easier to connect with people, and I'm happy even if things don't go the way that I want them to. Now the course comes with a full money-back guarantee because the goal isn't for me to convince you that it works, it's for you to actually feel it working and get the results. So if you want to join, you can click the link in the description. Either way, I hope you've enjoyed this video, and I look forward to seeing you in the next one.