The ‘Red Apple’ Panic Is Pure Media Theater

The Red Apple Panic. Murdoch media script, not New York's reality. According to the Times, right wing media outlets torched Mayor elect Zoran Mandani as a socialist menace with a viral New York Post cover and Fox host warning New York could turn into Caracas, as in Venezuela. Strip out the theatrics and the data tell a different story. New York is not the New York of the 70s. It's certainly not Caracas. Let's just look at some facts regarding crime. For example, murders peaked at 2,245 in 1990, roughly 31 per 100,000 residents. In 2023, however, New York recorded only 386 homicides, about 4 per 100,000 now. Still too many, but it's a sustained, sustained, dramatic decline. Yet New York remains a national stage and a convenient foil. So crime coverage rises even as crime trends improve. Some commentary veered into Islamophobia simply because the new mayor is not Christian or Jewish, which is the situation for a New York City mayor. But the broader narrative is politics first, facts later. Many Republicans represented metros today have higher homicide rates than New York, despite the outsized focus on the city. Add New York's mystique and the fact that roughly 4 in 10Americans have never visited New York City and the perception gap widens. The panic is less about public safety and more about national conservative branding. Okay, what's the real message here? Conservative media, the New York Post, Fox News, they are absolutely freaking out about this new mayor of New York City. Is it because he's really done anything scary? Or he can even raise taxes by 1%, which he's not going to be able to do? No, it's about political branding. Rupert Murdoch realizes that the easiest way to get people agitated, scared and angry and clicking and sharing is to tell them their life is about to be destroyed. Not that there's going to be small incremental change from a new mayor whose policies aren't that much different from any other mayors. So New York City becomes a symbol to many red state voters of liberal extremism and socialism and communism. Unchristian behavior. And Rupert Murdoch and his minions in the media, his various henchmen, realize if you just hit it again and again, again, you can taint the entire brand of the Democratic Party. So if you are a right of center or a centrist Democrat running for Congress in Iowa and you've never even been to New York City, now you're giving ammunition to the Republicans and saying, hey, you're just like those socialists in New York City. Aren't You. And that is why you're hearing about this, not because of any real threat or danger. Let's dig a little bit deeper here. This has gone on for a long time, this hysteria, because let's face it, it sells newspapers, it gets people glued to their TV sets. As I mentioned to you earlier in the week, I, I think that both sides are misunderstanding the significance of Mandani's win and what it's going to do. Because the reality is political power in New York City is very diffuse. Yes, it's a strong mayoral mayorship, it's not a city manager type of thing. But he can't just raise taxes. The legislature has to do that. He can't just run huge deficits to give everyone free stuff because there's a balanced budget, budget requirement. There's so many things that he might want to do to make the United States, no, not more like communist Cuba or 1980s Soviet Union, but there are plenty of things he might like to do to make New York City more like Copenhagen, which is a fantastic place and is often run by social Democrats and Democratic socialists. Very similar ideologies to his. But. But he's just not going to be able to do it because the legislature has the power, Governor has power, the city council has power. He has the power to put a spotlight on problems, to come up with 5, 10, 20, 30 ideas of things that he think might improve it. And then maybe he'll get half a loaf or in this case, a slice or two to make things better for his pet issue of affordability. And I'll just go ahead and go on record as saying, I think one of his suggestions, rent control, always backfired. I've lived in New York City and I knew plenty of rich people who lived in rent controlled apartments. And I couldn't get one, even though at the time I was poor. And it helped create an environment where most developers, real estate developers, are like New York City. It's too much of a headache. You can't make money. And the regulation, the rent control, it stifles development. So I'm not endorsing certainly every one of his proposals, but the idea that this is going to become Caracas is an absolute absurdity. Let's not forget New York City has more successful people, more successful capitalists per square inch than any city in America and arguably the world. It is a city of. It's the finance capital of the world. And he didn't come in and steal the election. I mean, he got more than a million votes. Now no one's gotten a million votes since John Lindsay in the 1960s. I mean, this guy has a huge, huge groundswell of support. Now, I do want to give credit to a number of capitalists. Jamie Dimon, the CEO of Chase, Bill Ackman, very controversial hedge fund managers. But both of those men reached out to the new mayor, and they didn't just say, well, we're big billionaire capitalist and we hate you and we're moving to Florida. No, they said, let us know if we can help you. Let us know if we can work with you. You, of course, didn't see them get tons and tons of airtime in conservative media. Why? Because it's not scary. Again, I want you to understand the media ecosystem we live in. If you are an editor at a major newspaper or a TV station, you're not going to get a reward. You're not going to get a ratings bump saying, there's been an election, there's a new mayor or governor or senator, and chances are things are not going to be that much different. There's going to be small incremental change in one direction or another. You'll be fired if you run that. The problem is, that may actually be the truth. If you are in the media, you're trying to find the most extreme thing that you can highlight to agitate people, especially people who are part of your base, core audience. But you're being manipulated here. Let's not make any mistake about it. I could go around right now in any rural district in America and ask them, hey, where's crime? Higher, New York City or your town? And I guarantee you, about 98% of people say, oh, it's much higher in New York City, because if someone's pushed off a subway in New York City, there's going to be news editors from Fox and the New York Post and other places putting the spotlight on that and talking about it nonstop. When someone is shot at the local filling station in a small town, chances are no one even hears about it. It certainly doesn't get national news. And especially when their local news reporter probably went out of business a few years ago, even people in the neighborhood might not know. Let's look at some interesting facts here. Because again, New York City is such a symbol of liberal excess of Democrats gone wild and is supposedly such a hellhole that people's perception is crime is so much worse there. And that's one of many reasons of why you wouldn't want a someone like Mandani running it. So in Oklahoma City, the fifth congressional district, you have 10 to 11 people per 100,000 murdered. 10 to 11 people out of every 100,000 people in conservative Republican state like Oklahoma were murdered in 2023. Much higher than the murder rate of New York City. Tulsa, Oklahoma. Again, this big conservative Republican state. In the 1st congressional district, 11 to 12 people are murdered in 2023, dramatically less than what has happened in New York City. Again, now it's only 4 per 100,000 in New York City. Jacksonville, Florida, another big Republican stronghold. Double digit murder rate in 2023. So there is perception and there's reality. There's the perception that big cities that are controlled by these far left liberals, and in this case Mondami actually is a far left Democrat, it is run in such a way that there's massive crime everywhere and the facts just don't bear it out. Now, you might still not want to vote for Mondami. Not sure I would have. You might not even want to visit New York City. That's okay. But you owe it to yourself to get an accurate picture of reality. Now. I. A lot of people do like New York city. It has 65 million visitors in 2024. I was one of them. I used to, I lived there for many years. Still have family and friends there. And I like to go back frequently. If the airports are actually working. I will be back there in the holiday time. And I got to tell you, I will feel much safer there than walking around the streets of South Florida where it was like Fort Lauderdale. Crime, the violent crime is much higher than New York City. Even though we have nice law and order governors down here.