Rep. Tom Suozzi, a Democrat of New York, told CBS’s Weijia Jiang on “Face the Nation” that democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary “tapped into the same thing that Donald Trump tapped into.” “Democrats have got to do a better job learning from both Trump and Mamdani. Not their solutions, which I think are wrong, but with the diagnosis of the problem: that we’re frustrated,” he said.

WEIJIA JIANG, CBS: Congressman, I want to turn to an op-ed that you wrote in The Wall Street Journal last week, saying Zoran Mamdani’s win in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary should be a, quote, loud wakeup call for Democrats. What lessons do you think your party can learn from his campaign? REP. TOM SUOZZI: Well, you know, I disagree with Mr. Mamdani. I have to make that very clear. I’m a democratic capitalist-I’m not a democratic socialist. But you have to recognize that he tapped into something. He tapped into the same thing that Donald Trump tapped into, which is that people are concerned that the economy is not working for them. Affordability and the economy is the number one issue in the country. And too often, Democrats are not perceived as being focused on affordability and the economy and the middle class and people aspiring to the middle class and their economic concerns. They see Democrats as being primarily focused on reproductive rights and on LGBT protections-which are important issues-but they’re not the issues that people think about every night when they’re lying in bed thinking about paying their bills or when they’re talking about how they’re going to send their kids to school. So Democrats have got to do a better job learning from both Trump and Mamdani-not with their solutions, which I think are wrong, but with the diagnosis of the problem: that we’re frustrated, we’re concerned. Everybody in America-whether you’re a right-wing conservative or a left-wing progressive-should believe that in return for working hard, you make enough money so you can live a good life. You can buy a home, you can educate your children, you can pay for your health insurance, you can retire one day without being scared. People don’t feel that currently. And we have to do a better job of communicating that. WEIJIA JIANG: Well, I’m glad you brought up the perception, because you also wrote that Democrats must recognize the future starts with a message of economic security for American families. I covered the Biden campaign. I covered the Harris campaign. That was the center of their messages. So what’s the problem here? Is it the messenger? Is it the messaging? Because they have that message already. REP. TOM SUOZZI: It’s a combination. Number one, the Democratic Party as a whole has to have this platform that focuses on what the people care about. They care about the economy. They care about immigration. They care about taxes. They care about crime. They care about healthcare. But then we have to recognize that the media infrastructure is fractured. And Trump figured it out before the Democrats have-which is that it’s not just traditional media like your shows and newspapers, but it’s social media. It’s podcasts. The top 500 podcasts in America-400 of the top 500 are right-leaning. 100 are left-leaning. And of the 100 left-leaning ones, half of them beat the-you-know-what-out of the Democrats. Then you have other national media, and then you have some of this ethnic and underground media related to WeChat and WhatsApp and different types of apps that people use. So we have to communicate across all those platforms, because people are getting their messages in these fractured environments and living in these echo chambers. And we have to do a better job communicating across all these platforms and getting Democrats as a whole to focus on the economy, immigration, etc. WEIJIA JIANG: All right, Congressman, we are all trying to learn all those new languages. Thank you so much for your time this morning.

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