Power Broker Secrets: David Greenfield's Success Formula

Welcome back everybody to our next episode of the None of Your Business podcast. We love your feedback and we are listening. We're paying attention. Please like, subscribe, follow, get involved, make some comments, whether positive or negative, we don't care. We just want to hear your feedback. We want to get better at what we do and we love hearing the feedback from people. I am stoked. That's the best word I could use, Ushi, for this coming podcast because we spoke last time about getting my brother David, who is a very well-known ex-politician, but really influential in the political world, and the CEO of Meth Council, which is a very large organization, which I hope we're going to learn about in this podcast coming up. Um David, most of the world does not know, is actually my twin brother. And uh you know, he might be my younger twin brother, but I have to tell you I look up to him and I have been looking up to him for quite a while. Um he's probably going to call me by my Jewish name Chaim because for those of you that don't know, I have a middle name Michael, which is Angel Michael, as we learned in the last podcast. Um so my full name is Chaim Michael, so he'll probably, you know, use that name because, you know, it's common for him to use that name. So, but we know him as David. And um I'm excited because we're going to learn about probably a little bit about our relationship, our background, his entry into politics and why he went into it and so on. Um but I I just have to make a quick mention. My parents, our parents, were both immigrants. They were Israeli, they were and uh you know, the fact is that uh it was difficult growing up even though we were in the middle class, right? Um but persevering in an education system that was failing us when we were younger and trying to figure out how to make waves in the in in in a area where it's not so simple, you know, you really have to work hard. I'm hoping we touch upon all those different topics. I'm really excited. Ushi, do you know anything about my brother David? So, I heard of David Greenfield even before I met you. And I heard of him as a politician, as a councilman, um in New York. And uh I was telling my brother, my older brother, that, you know, we're probably going to have David Greenfield on, and he knew him. He knew who he was. So, he's a pretty well-known person. Even though he's not in politics anymore, from what I understand, he's still very influential in politics. But I always knew the name. And funny enough, Michael, when I got to know you, I never even connected the dots that you and David were related, let alone brothers, let alone twin brothers. I only found that out much later. But and I've met David a few times through you, and uh I could tell that he is an interesting person. Um he's accomplished a lot. And I think that, you know, when it comes to politics, he's probably very suited to have that discussion with us and give us the insight in how it all works behind the scenes. And I think he'd make it for a great guest. especially with what's going on now in the world. It's going to be exciting. But I have to tell you one quick story that happened with me and David is we were uh sitting in our car during the winter storms in New York City in Brooklyn. One of the worst winter storms that ever hit New York. Was it 1996 by any chance? Oh my goodness. You know what I'm talking about? I don't I don't know the story, but I when you said the worst ever storm in New York, I remember 1996 was, you know, I was a little kid then. I was probably like 7 years old, but I remember that storm. Yeah, no, I think I think it was a little bit afterwards because uh because he was already married at the time. But so we had uh we had we were sitting in front of Goldberg's grocery in in Brooklyn. I remember Goldberg. On 18th Avenue. 18th Avenue. They used to sell the four for one four for a dollar donuts. Those little black donuts. Delicious. the best. Delicious. Yeah. Are they still around, Goldberg? So deep fried, by the way. Uh yeah, they are. There's Yeah, fantastic. They've already, you know, expanded their supermarket and they're doing fantastic. So, I have to tell you, so um David, one of the reasons why I think he was so successful is, and you know, we're going to learn a lot about it, but I have to just mention one thing, is he listens to the people and he really pays attention to them and he gives them the attention. You know, he had uh implemented a new hours for his office for after hours, uh where he, you know, allowed people to come and, you know, talk about their challenges as a local politician. And we were sitting in front of the grocery and he got a phone call to bring back two green peppers to his house, you know, you just, you know, you I guess someone was cooking and needed some peppers. So, I said, "Hey, let's just go into Goldberg's and get some peppers." And he's like, "Chaim, I you know, he called me Chaim, he said, 'If we go into Goldberg's to get two peppers, it's going to take us an hour. I would would rather drive 10 minutes to ShopRite and get two peppers from there.' And I'm like, 'What are you talking about? It's right here. We'll just go in and get two.' And he's like, 'No, no, no, you don't understand. It's going to take' I'm like, 'I don't know what you're talking about. Let's just go in.' And he was laughing. He said, 'Okay, let's go.' And we walked in to Goldberg's. An hour and 20 minutes later we walked out. Every step of the way, "Councilman Greenfield, David Greenfield, thank you so much for everything you're doing for our community. We love you. Oh, we're so happy. Oh, I want to talk to you about the garbage. I want to talk to you about the pothole. I want to talk to you about the park. I want to talk to you about my taxes. I want" And he paid attention to every single one of them. And there's a reason why he was successful and I saw it that day and it and it was just amazing to see. Wow. There aren't that many religious Jewish religious politicians in the game, but a lot of successful. Yeah, a lot of Jews in politics, but religious Jews is hard to come by. Um so and unless maybe local politics, you have a little bit. He was on Senator Lieberman's campaign for presidency. He made waves. He really made waves. Took over Simcha Felder and made laws that Senator Lieberman ran for the presidency Yeah, yeah. He was on his campaign. Yeah, and and he made a name for himself. Graduated Georgetown University, top of his class, political science in Touro College, really made waves. I mean, super impressed, very excited to get on with it. And now he leads, and that from my understanding is he's the CEO of the largest charitable organization in the country, Jewish organization in the country. Yes, yes. The organization that gives out the most food. food, interestingly enough. And I I I think we'll find out more about that. So, I'm excited to get on with it. This uh episode, like every single one so far, has been sponsored and funded by Prime Source, so, you know, we must mention that. And I love the road that we're taking, learning from our experiences, learning from our journey, understanding and adapting ways to grow from what's happening in the world around us, current events. And uh it's happening and I'm super excited. Okay, as am I. Let's go. Let's do it. Welcome David, my dear brother. It is so exciting for me that you're here with us on our None of Your Business podcast. I love the podcast. I've been loving the clips that have been coming out, you know, the stuff that has gone viral on Instagram and TikTok and Twitter's been very cool. So happy to be a part of it. Okay, I'm I'm happy for you to be here. And um Michael, can you tell me a little bit about David? Can you introduce him, his background? I know he's a councilman, that's about the only thing that I know, which by the way, I'm going to want to ask you what a councilman is cuz I'm not quite sure. Yeah. Uh sounds like you give counsel to people. That's what we do. You give counsel to the city. Yeah. Committee people. We're councilmen. So, we council men, not women. [laughter] So. If you would tell me that, I might believe you. So, be careful. Yeah. You know, as as uh But he's not a councilman now. He It's of course a prestigious position that he had and he now is the CEO of Meth Council, which we just uh we'll we'll get into it more, hopefully. But one thing I want to tell you about David is that we used to go to the Borough Park Y together. Do you remember You don't know what the Borough Park Y is. I don't. Cuz you're from Monsey. Is that like the JCC? It's the JCC, exactly. The Borough Park Y is like a place I see for Charedi people, right? The JCC is like more of a modern Orthodox crowd. Right. Or a secular crowd. This is like the JCC for the very frum world. Oh. I'm just I love that, by the way. That's great. Why don't we have that here? We have that. Is it not around anymore, the Y? It it's around. It's in disrepair. They actually sold, interestingly enough, to Bobov, so they can build a new facility because it's been a struggle for them financially. And hopefully the next few years they're going to reestablish. But so if you think about it, like they had separate swimming, they had programs for men, programs for women. So, very similar to a JCC, but really targeting the frum community. And uh on Sundays, when we had a half day yeshiva, we went to Torah Vodaas. When we had a half day yeshiva, we would go to the Borough Park Y. So, tell me, are you going to tell them about how what a great swimmer I was? What's the the You never know what Chaim's going to say about me. So, I'm excited. Like Michael Phelps of the the Jewish Michael Phelps. Exactly. Exactly. What's the story? going to get into all the karate classes that we took together and how Yes. Do not mess with us, by the way. We are We're serious. I mean, we're brothers. We fight, you know, so we prepared to fight. Yeah, but Michael, you're not a fighter. You're not that type. I'm a fighter. He's not a fighter because after the 1,000th and first time that I beat him, he was like, "I probably shouldn't be in the fighting business." So, he left. I I see where this is going. [laughter] Every single Sunday, I'm not joking. I have to say this, David. I got to I got to say background. I'm going to say I'm going to give a little bit of context of who David Greenfield is to me and who he was for the community and who he was to the world when he was 13 years old. We used to go to the Borough Park Y every Sunday, and I would stand at the end of the day at the bus stop at the B11 on 14th Avenue and 50th Street, and I would wait for the B11 to come. I had my 75 cents in my pocket. He would take the same 75 cents every single Sunday, and he would go to the corner and he would buy the New York Times Sunday edition, and literally in my face and all of Borough Park's face who was on the B11, would read the newspaper as he walked home and beat me home every single Sunday. Really? And he would just read the New York Times. He would go one section after the other, and he would laugh. And every, you know, that B11 stops at every block, and I've been on the B11. to go on the bus than it is to walk, and David proved that to us at the tender age of 13. And he would just open that paper and walk, and he would laugh. He would say, "Hi, I just finished the sports edition. Just finished the politics." Did you buy that paper for the politics? Is that what you enjoyed early on or just general? interesting thing about the New York Times is that the New York Times, even though we don't like the coverage, right? Cuz the coverage is very far left and it's certainly biased against Israel. It is by far the best quality newspaper in America, right? So, qualitatively, in terms of the product that they put out and the information that they have in that paper is better than any newspaper. So, yeah, when I was young, I was interested in government and politics and news. And so, we weren't super rich, we were comfortable and we had a budget just like everybody else. And part of the budget was, "Okay, I'm giving you a dollar to buy a slice of pizza and a soda from Mendelson's, which was the package, right? It was a pizza and a soda for $1." It was Mendelson's and Mendel's. Those were like the two competing pizza stores. No, this is You're right, but the truth is Mendel's wasn't open before Mendel's. It was Amnon's point, right? Exactly, it was Amnon's. It was Mendelson's, Amnon's, and then Mendel's opened, which by the way, I'm not sure it's really fair for another pizza shop to open named Mendel's, even though his name was Mendel's, right? You had Mendelson's down the block. A little tricky, if you ask me. But it was good PR for both of them. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but let's put that aside. The bottom line is we were growing up for a dollar, you could get a soda and a slice of pizza. And so, we had a dollar 75, which was a dollar for a soda and a slice of pizza, which was Baruch Hashem, very nice, very comfortable middle-class upbringing. 75 cents to pay for the bus. And the reason was because on Sundays they didn't take the bus passes, right? So, you had to pay the actual cash. I thought a better use of 75 cents was to read the paper. I was interested in the news. And so, yeah, every Sunday I did read the New York Times. And the funny part was that my brother would make fun of me and say, "Oh, wow, you're never getting home." But the bus was so slow But that I could read the paper and get home and I beat him. And honestly, I got a couple of miles in, so it was good for my fitness. And you got smarter as well. By reading the paper, you learned a lot of new things. you know, you know what's interesting is, you know, we'll talk about, you know, I guess we're talking about my background, right? So, I'm a CEO of a large Jewish charity, one of the largest Jewish tzedakah in the United States fighting poverty. And obviously, I was an elected official and I'm a political strategist. And I always tell people who come to me for advice, and I think this is actually is very relevant to what we're saying, which is do what you're passionate about, right? Think back to when you were a kid. When you were 12, 13, 15, what were you excited about, right? For me, news, government, politics, law was always very interesting, right? And so, it's easy to be successful at something if you are passionate about it, right? Because it is very difficult to be the world's best wood maker, right? Or the best chair maker, or the best artist if you don't like art. It's very difficult to be very good at singing if you don't like to sing, right? You've never met a singer in your life and you've had singers on your podcast like, "Oh, I hated singing, but you know, one day I woke up and realized this is how I'm going to make a living." No, that's crazy, right? No, you loved singing since you were a kid and you became a professional singer. I think similarly, for me, Baruch Hashem, the reason among other things, with Siyata Dishmaya, why I've had a lot of slacha in government and politics is because I feel passionately about it. I've been doing it since I've been a kid. I've been interested in government, news, and politics. What is it about politics that drives you? What do you like about politics? I think it's the way the world runs. To me, it's so fascinating, right? Like, you know, the world runs on politics, right? So, if you're curious about what makes the world go around and round, why do we have highways instead of roads, why do we have smaller houses instead of big buildings, why are some people getting help and other people are not, why are certain people allowed into the country and other people are not, why are some people going to jail and other people are not. Politics runs the whole world. So, to me, it's a very fascinating topic, right? The topic of power, influence, operations, who's in charge. So, I've been studying this my entire life, as Haim will tell you, right? For over 30 years, since I was a kid, I was studying this and reading about it. And so, for me, it's a fascinating thing. And then to take that try to use those skills to help the community, which is what I've been doing for the last 20-plus years, I think that's very impactful, right? So, take these skills as it relates to government and politics and use that to help the community, to me, that's really interesting. David, when he was younger, I asked him why he got into politics. And besides the fact that he loves it, which was the first thing he said, the other thing that you told me, and I remember and I've mentioned it quite a few times, you know, I've quote I've quoted you quite a few times in my life. Me, too. I appreciate that. Wow. Yeah. I appreciate that, too. Yeah. Look at that. We're getting along. [laughter] Um you told me that you know, imagine you have a message to say and you have an impact that you can make on the world. And you know, if [clears throat] you do something in your local community, you can have an impact in your local community. But if you could do it broader and bigger and better, you know, and you have a voice and you have something that you can make a real impact on life and the people around you, you have an obligation to do so. And you know, you took your talents and you know, congratulations to everything you've done till now. It's amazing. I appreciate that. Thank you very much. Are you still embedded in politics right now in a big way, or have you taken a step back from that? Yeah, you know, I I think the the very big difference is, right? I'm no longer a politician. I've left elected office as of 6 years ago. I'm more of a strategist and an influencer, right? So, I'm very involved in political issues. I have a lot of deep relationships with elected officials. I work with people around different policy issues that I care about, especially issues that I care about for me, which is I'm very focused on being pro-Israel, pro-New York, and fighting on behalf of people who don't have resources, right? Those are the three issues that I'm passionate about. I I don't feel like you can do a thousand things in politics. One of the lessons that I learned over the years is that if you really want to make a difference, don't focus on a hundred issues. Pick two or three issues that you care about. I care about New York. I care about the community. I care about Israel. I care about helping people who are struggling. Those are the issues that I care about and I spend all of my time focused on those issues. I spend it operationally running an organization with hundreds of staffers who help hundreds of thousands of people a year. That's very important to me. But also, on a policy issue, fighting on behalf of Israel, fighting on behalf of the community, fighting on behalf of making New York a better place to live, fighting on behalf of people who are struggling to make ends meet. That's where my focus is. And I think there's a value to that, right? I think one of the big mistakes people make, not just in politics, but in business, right? The name of the podcast is none of your business, right? I think a big business mistake is people are generalists. I always tell my students, I happen to be a law professor in my spare time. I teach at Brooklyn Law School. I always tell my students, "Today, do not become a generalist, right? The guy who has a sign that says, 'Yankel Schmerlovich, attorney at law.' And they say, "What do you do?" I do everything. He's not making any money. People want experts today. You have to be an expert in your field. Do contracts, do real estate, do business, do litigation. Find an expertise and do that. That's what people want to pay for today. Similarly, my work in government and politics, I focus on a very specific few areas. And I just focus on those areas. So, if you came to me and said, "Hey, look, David, you know, I want you to get involved in environmental issues." Look, I hear that and it's important, but that's not my issue. And I got people calling me a lot about this. They're like, "You should get involved in X and Y." And they're like, "No, nope, and nope." And they're like, "Why not?" That's That's in general. Don't spread yourself thin, you know, in general, just try to focus on something, get really good at it. And I think it'll have a better result. Um I'm curious, do you guys think that today, more than ever, people are much more aware politically of what's going on? I think people are very in tune. I myself, I could tell you just from my own perspective, you know, growing up, even up maybe 10 years ago, I didn't really care about politics. I didn't even know what was going on, what the president was. I knew what the vice president was, but I had my limitations as to what I cared about and what I knew. I feel like today, me as just your average political consumer taking it all in, I think I know a decent amount. I think I know a fair amount of what's going on. I'm pretty educated. I can have an intelligent conversation with someone. I I know, you know, about the, you know, the three different branches of government, which I probably didn't know about 10 years ago, how the Senate works, how the House works. I watch all the committee hearings. I'm actually very intrigued by them. I watch all the highlights. Like, I know a good deal amount. And I think a lot of people are like that right now. And it wasn't always like this. What was What happened in the last period of time, 5 years, 10 years, that all of a sudden people are invested in what's going on in politics? Yeah, it's it's very simple. Social media changed everything. That's the answer to your question, right? It used to be that politics was a a secret business, right? So, meaning unless you could take the time to go to DC and to wait online 2 hours and go through security and stand in the back and waiting for a hearing to start, then wait throughout the entirety of that 6 hours to hear the one person that you cared about testifying, there's no way that you're an expert anymore. Social media has changed everything. Cuz what happens now is instead you have it's all being produced online and someone just takes a 30-second clip of that 6-hour hearing. So, now you don't have to go down to DC, you don't have to wait through security, you have to wait online. Someone takes a 30-second clip and boom, they put on that 30-second clip and it goes viral. So, social media has made politics a lot more accessible and interesting to people. And the truth is, the person who invented that, you know, for better or for worse, the person who really has utilized social media most successfully in our time is actually somebody in his 70s, which is kind of remarkable, which is Donald Trump. Right? The entire reason why Donald Trump was elected president of the United States is because of social media. Wow. And so, he understood how to capture this new technology. And ever since that has happened, things have really spiraled, I would say, out of control. And I'll tell you why, right? You're looking at it as a good thing. It's a good thing and a bad thing, right? When you're not an expert, you have too much information, it can easily lead to misinformation and conspiracy theories, right? Because to your point, you're not an expert, right? But you spend, let's say, 2 3 hours a week and this is cool and it's interesting to you, right? It's kind of like when someone shows up to the doctor and says, "Hey, doctor, I I think I'm having a headache, but let me tell you what's wrong with me." You're like, "What do you mean What are you telling me what's wrong with you? Like, I'm a neurosurgeon." No, no, no. I read on the internet, I saw on TikTok. Dr. Google. Yeah. People are doing the same thing with politics and that's very dangerous, right? Because now you have people who are not experts, but they're interested. And that's how you get misinformation. That's how you get conspiracy theories. Now, it's good. Well-informed voters It's a flow of ideas. Yes, I agree with that. But we're also living in a very dangerous time because as we've learned in recent history, we can very easily manipulate social media and that's what Russia, Iran, and China are all doing right now, whether you know it or not, they're manipulating the information that you're getting. Wow. That's a scary thought. Because news information is power. It That's everything. Yeah. And if they have the ability to twist and turn and to get their narratives out there, that's like that's cyber warfare. It's exactly what it is. Yeah, that's what's happening. I mean, it's one of the biggest unspoken stories that's happening in this election cycle, right? Is that you have a situation where the most obvious and blatant example of this is TikTok, right? People are upset like why was TikTok forced to sell its business? Have they sold? The answer is no, they're forced to. They have a certain timeline that they have Oh, they have to have that still happen or what's going to happen if they don't? They're going to will ban it We'll we'll see. I mean, it's tough to see how it's not going to happen, but the reason why TikTok is being regulated and think about what I'm saying right now, which is that any government employee in America is not allowed to have TikTok on their phones. Like why why is that? Any government employee in America is not allowed to have TikTok on their phones. Why? Because TikTok is a security threat. And the US government knows that China controls TikTok, which means they can potentially control your phone. TikTok has been weaponized and the most obvious way it's been weaponized is look at the war between Gaza and Israel, right? Which is that if you go on TikTok, the Chinese have a narrative they want to keep going. The comments that are anti-Israel are 1,000 to 1 for pro-Israel. 1,000 to 1. And that's an algorithm that TikTok creates where they push a certain narrative. They want people to be anti-Israel intentionally. So, that's one of the fascinating things. So, getting back to your point, it's the best of times and it's the worst of times. It's the best of times cuz people are super informed. It's the worst of times because when people are super informed, but they're not experts, you can have people manipulate them into all sorts of things including trying to tell them what to think and try to have them buy into conspiracy theories and that leads to a very dangerous time. I want to make sure that Michael usually has a lot to say as a piece of this. Michael, what do you think about all this? I mean, Michael, I mean, how do you respond to like half the things he just said? No, I I don't think there's a lot to respond. I think he's educating us on on a very fascinating topic in general. I mean, we use social media to promote good and it's a very tough battle. I've heard recently that X formerly known as Twitter is also a cesspool of anti-Semitism and hatred also 1,000 to 1 and it's kind of alarming listening to all my friends that are are promoting their brand or their thoughts on X and how it really affects you know, people in a terrible way. I want to go back to what you said earlier. I think one of the reasons why we're also more aware of politics is first of all, as you get older, you start paying taxes and you know, it it starts making a difference to your pocket. So, the second it starts making a difference to your pocket, so you say, "Whoa, one second. What's going on here?" Who's making these decisions? Exactly. How was this even happening? And the second thing is you know, and I'd love David your perspective on this. Democrat, Republican, New York, does it matter? Why does my vote matter? What am I getting out there for? One thing I could tell you is that after leaving Brooklyn for so many years, being in a community where you know, your local mayor and your local government actually can make a difference. Forget the Democrat Republican war in New York or the challenges with the unions and you know, all the the voting going to one way. When you go out of Brooklyn, New York, out of the five boroughs, your vote actually makes a difference. It makes a difference on your school taxes. It makes a difference on your local roadways. So, as you get older and you move out of the five boroughs or you become more familiar with it, politics does make a difference and I'd love your perspective on New York politics. going to say something very controversial, which is Can you look in the camera when you say it? Yeah. No, I'm joking. And can you also speak up, please? I'll tell you what's interesting actually. Thank you, which is you know, when when you go on TV shows, I've been on Fox, CNN, other TV shows, they generally want you to look at the host. But if you want me to look at the camera, I'm happy to look at Say the message to the world. You want me to want me to look at the camera? have a controversial inspiring message. Look at the camera and say it. So, let me tell you the controversial idea, which is your individual vote doesn't matter. Whoa, David, that's crazy. If that's the case, then why am I voting? Now, the answer is because your collective individual vote does matter. And that means that if people who think like you are not voting as a group, you're not going to be successful. And the problem is that it's usually the extremes, the radical right and the radical left who are voting. The people in the middle are not voting and that's why your vote matters as part of a group. Now, let me explain looking towards you, right? Which is one person's vote. It's very rare that one person's vote actually matters in an election where one vote matters. What happens, however, is a community's vote does matter, right? You have a community of people. Now, it could be a community of people like community of Jewish people. It could just be a community of people who think alike who say, "My taxes are too high." It could be a community of people who say, "I'm sick and tired of crime." Could be a community of people who say, "I'm sick and tired of quality of life issues, right?" When you combine a community of a few hundred people, that's when you see results, right? And so, as a political strategist, what I think about is when I organize and when I get people together, I want to get like-minded people. So, if you care about Jewish issues, great. So, for example, we've seen recently an election to defeat Jamaal Bowman, the Jewish community came out in huge numbers and they were organized around those issues and it was specifically two groups, AIPAC and the Orthodox Union that worked to get the message out there. When the Jewish community came out in big numbers, they were able to defeat someone who was anti-Semitic and anti-Israel, right? So, one vote doesn't matter, but one vote as part of a community matters a lot, right? So, if you're really a hermit and you're not part of any community and you don't have any beliefs that are strong, well, okay, then don't vote. But if you're part of any community, if you go to school, if you live in a community or if you're part of the Jewish community or pro-Israel community and you have an opinion, you must vote because the only way you can get things done is together as part of that community and that's how you can combat other crazy communities that say, "Well, okay, let's have no police." That's actually a shita that's out there. Let's have no prisons. That's actually a belief that's out there. Let's actually have no laws on the books to prevent people from doing criminal activities. It's actually a shita that's out there. You want to push back about that, your community has to organize and that's what makes a difference. I have to say when living in Brooklyn, one of the biggest pains of getting a parking ticket when you parked illegally was getting that infamous yellow sticker on your window that you can never ever get off. Right. It's almost like they did it on purpose. They did it on purpose. It's part of the punishment. And you know who fought it? You're not able to even peel it off and if you do peel it off, you still have remnants that's there forever. I remember those. That was like, you know, that was a little harsh. That was a little too much. Do you know why it stopped? There had to be a better way. Do you know why it stopped? I don't know why it stopped because I mean, you don't see them anymore. Because of David. Because of David? Yeah. I passed a law banning them. It was a very It was a very tough fight because the sanitation department, to your point, they wanted to punish people and my point was you're guilty until proven innocent. Like now I can't take it off. What happens in a situation where I really it wasn't my fault. My wife was pregnant. I went to the hospital or the person who was giving out the tickets was wrong or I thought it was a legitimate side, right? It's it's a miscarriage of justice. So, when I was in the City Council for 8 years, I passed over 30 pieces of legislation. Most of them were focused on common sense quality of life issue to make people's lives better because that's what my constituents wanted in Brooklyn. I love that. So, that was a law. Okay, another one of my laws. I don't know if you know this, but the the the muni meters today that have an app, that was my law as well. I forced the city to create an app so that you can actually use an app cuz who has quarters these days? Especially now, who has quarters? Exactly. So, you know, the the parking is regulated that there has to be an app available for any city meter? I created that law to allow for an app. So, the ParkNYC app that people use, that was a law that I passed. Well, on behalf of all of us fellow New Yorkers, thank thank you very much. Those are actually very much common sense laws and I love that you took that initiative of common sense things that by the way, I didn't even realize that they were strategically putting those yellow stickers to punish people. I just thought it was just because you know, government is usually very you know, they didn't know what they were doing and they just didn't come up with a better way to do it and they were too lazy to change it and that's what it was. But you're telling me that they were like strategically doing this. Absolutely. Yeah, so for example, another common sense law that I passed was public schools have security guards. Yeshivas did not and I saw a big rise in anti-Semitism a few years ago and I passed a law requiring the city to pay for security guards for yeshivas. Now, this is no church-state issue, right? It's not about what you're teaching in the school. There are all sorts of legal issues about what you can and can't teach and can and cannot fund as it relates to yeshivas and private schools, but security is not a church-state issue, right? Every child is entitled to be safe. So, because of my law, New York City is the only city in the world, even in Israel you don't have this, that requires the government to pay for security guards for yeshivas and other private schools. That's amazing. I have to tell you a quick story. Over a decade ago, someone came over to me on the street and said, "You're David's brother?" and you know, it used to be the opposite. "You're Michael's brother." And these days, it's "You're David's brother." And you know, I'm trying to reverse that. [laughter] But it's good because you guys are going to grow this way and you'll keep trying to one up each other. You're going to be a vice president and then president one day. I like that. Who's the vice president? We'll get back to that in a second. So, over a decade ago, someone came to me on the street and said, "I just want you to know in Brooklyn." And he said, "Tell your brother on behalf of all the mothers in Brooklyn, thank you." And I'm like, "What are you talking about?" And she says, "Let me tell you a story that happened to me." She said, "My son was in school and he was getting dismissed along with hundreds of other kids and a gentleman pulled over in a van and looked at him and he said, "Khaim Dovid! Khaim Dovid!" And the guy looked The kid looked up and he said, "Yeah, your mother said you should come with me." And the kid like, "Oh, he he knows my name. Let me go with him." And and the kid almost got in the car and there was a security guard on site that was funded thanks to David and who stopped it. And the reason why this person knew the name is because all the children used to have their names on their kippahs. Did you know that it stopped? Kids don't have their names on their kippahs anymore for that reason. That's when it started. It started then. It was such a big deal. All the children in Brooklyn used to have their names. It was a cool thing. You had a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle and you had you know, Moshe Dovid. When we were growing up, we had it in Hebrew though. Remember? Exactly. Then they did it in English, Yeah, exactly. And then what happened was is this kid almost got abducted and she literally was in tears and saying, "Thank your brother David." I mean, how does this make you feel by the way? That your what you did really had an impact possibly saving someone's life. We don't know what could have could have been. We shudder to think. How does that make you feel? You know, it's an interesting question and and I'll tell you what's an interesting question, right? Because the nature of doing public service, right? When you're trying to help the community is you can never enjoy your accomplishments too much because if you do, then you become what I like to call the one-hit wonder, right? Which is you're like, yeah, exactly. You're like, oh, you know, you know, Yaco, back in 1976, you know, I organized a big rally in DC where we protested you know, the embassy opening and I was the guy to that. You're like, dude, like that was 1976. Exactly, what have you done lately? It's a very big danger. It's a very big danger. And and by the way, I vacillate back and forth in that and in my older age, now that I'm in my 40s, I always tell myself because I used to have to even enjoy the win. I tell myself, look, let's let's take a day, one day, not not more than a day. Let's take one day and let's enjoy the win. And that's it. And after the one day of enjoying the win, you move on to your next one. Because otherwise, what happens is you get stuck. So, certainly, hearing about it right now and hearing the feedback, I feel great, but the risk in that, the risk in letting that get to your head is you say, well, I have a great accomplishment and I'm done. So, when I wake up and it's a new it really is a new evolution for me, right? I take my wins and then I take 24 hours. And by the way, I used to I used to not even take an hour. I'd be like, oh, that's great. Okay, what are we doing next, right? Now, I take 24 hours and I think it's important to enjoy the wins cuz there's so many challenges in life, baruch Hashem, that you have to enjoy the wins when you get them and then you move on to the next item, right? So, for me, for example, right, in my current day job, right, where I run an organization called Met Council, I've been focused on a lot of different things and one of the things that I've been focused on since I came in was increasing the amount of food that we give out to people who are in need. And why do I do that? And we've quadrupled the amount of food distributions that we've done at Met Council. And if you look throughout the New York area, you see before Yom Tov, What what does exactly does Met Council do? Can you elaborate on what Met Council does? So, I've never heard of Met Council. I see you're in the paper a lot. I read the Jewish Press and there's always something about Met Council over there, a picture and an article and I read it. But I don't I know Tomchei Shabbos, Yeah. Of course. So, what does Met Council actually do? So, Met Council is the largest tzedakah that's fighting poverty in the Jewish community in the United States. And what makes us big is we have 10 different departments doing 10 different things. I'll talk about that in a minute. But one of our largest departments is food. And so when I came in, what I realized was food is a way you can help people without barriers to entry. I'll explain to you why. We actually, a lot of people don't know this. We're the largest owner and operator of affordable housing in the Jewish community. Now, we don't advertise this because it's very complicated getting an affordable housing unit. You have to apply, you got to be on a list, you have to have a certain income. It's a very complicated process. And we do that. We have over 1,000 people living in beautiful affordable housing. People always ask me, what's affordable? What should you tell me? What's affordable for rent and utilities for a month in Manhattan? What's an affordable price do you think? In Manhattan? Manhattan. We have multiple buildings in Manhattan. Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn. Yeah, what's affordable? A couple of grand, 3,000? What's affordable, Khaim? I would say also, yeah, 3,000. So, the average rent for our units in New York City is $410. Stop it. What? Including utilities in a doorman building. I'm actually upset to hear this. That's our average. I don't This is not by the way, I'm not I'm not impressed by that. Why is it so little? Yeah. How's that possible? It's It's being funded. It's little because But why do they have to live in Manhattan then? Why can't you get them affordable housing in Brooklyn or somewhere else around it? That's a great question, Ashi. The answer is that we generally believe b'shita, right? If you're struggling, you know, the Rambam says that if you lost your job and you were a millionaire, we have to keep you at the same standard. Now, that's very frustrating. Why is that? The answer is because it's embarrassing for someone to take them when they were at this station to have them operate at this station. And also, but there's a second deeper part to that Rambam. It's not just that. You ever want to make sure the guy has a chance to be more successful again, you got to keep him at that level. Cuz otherwise, he can't network, he can't dress normally, he can't drive normally, right? And you see a lot of people even in business, right? They they have a slacha and they have no slacha, they lose their money, but they come back. And why do they come back? Because they're able to maintain those relationships at that level. If you told the guy, look, go live in a hovel somewhere, right? You know, you go go leave the city, well, he's never going to network, he's never going to get back. Similarly, when we do housing, if someone is a senior and they have no money and they live in Manhattan, you don't want to throw them and say, okay, you got to go to Queens. So, intentionally, as weird as this sounds, we have housing in Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx for people who live in those communities. And our shita is if you live in the community, you should be able to continue living in that community and be able to retire. But the point that I'm making, which is a bigger point, is the reason why I don't talk about this a lot is because it's very complicated and it's very difficult to build affordable housing. Takes a lot of time, many years and a lot of money, but we do it anyway. We have a couple projects that we're working on right now. It's also, you can't save the whole world while you're doing it. And there are a lot of barriers to entry cuz you have to make a certain amount of money, you have to be a certain age, you have to live in a certain neighborhood, right? You can't come from Chicago and come to New York. The reason one of the reasons why that we very much focus on food is because we can do that in a large scale, right? So, for example, the last year we gave out nearly 20 million pounds of food. And so when you go through the community and you see people giving out huge amounts of food before Yom Tov, we're doing that and we're helping a lot of people. Now, why am I 20 million pounds? Why am I using this as an example? Because this goes back to the previous conversation. It's very easy and I think this is a big mistake a lot of people in politics make and in government make and in life make and even quite frankly in community work where a guy a guy's an askan. Oh, I did something good once upon a time. So what? If you're a hero on this earth and God gave you more years, he gave you more years to keep doing good work, not to say, oh, back in 1976 I did good work, right? There's a famous episode, I don't know if you guys watch The Simpsons, but I do. I haven't watched all the episodes but watch it till today? Occasionally, yeah. I mean, they predict they predict the future of this Yeah, because they have thousands They do have Yeah, they have Yes, yeah. There's a famous episode in The Simpsons where um Homer is about to die and it's like the equivalent of the angel of death is like, what have you ever done that was good in your life? And he's like, well, he says, you know, once upon a time, somebody came to Springfield and asked me for directions. And I didn't really know where he was going, but I'm a good guy, so I gave him directions anyway, all right? And that was his big and that was his big accomplishment. Yeah, that was his big accomplishment. So, I think that, you know, if you're trying to do good work, you got to keep hustling. And my point over there is that we're constantly coming up with ways on how can we help the community? How can we make things better? How can we do initiatives that will be beneficial to people in the community? And so while I feel good about hearing that, I don't ever want to let it get to my head. There's a very big danger in letting that get to your head. David, can we pause for a second? Yeah, sure. Can we pause for a second? Are we going to pause to figure out why we have these mega cards here? What what's happening over here? It's just for decoration purposes. Oh, that's it? That's it. I thought you guys played cards. I thought you with we don't play with gigantic cards. We play with normal cards. Got it. Got it. But David, I have to tell you, I'm like listening to all this and I'm fascinated by you because you're like spewing information like as if this was all prepared and clearly this is coming from a place of passion for you. But it's not you know, a lot of people are passionate about things and it doesn't mean they're good at it just because they're passionate about it. I love to play baseball. Am I going to be a professional baseball player? No, right? You you obviously have to hone in your craft. You've been doing this for a long time, but the energy that you exude and you're giving a lot of worldly advice. Now, it might sound like you're just talking about politics, but a lot of the things that you said like, don't celebrate your wins for too much because that's very dangerous, right? That's such good advice in general. Teachable moment. That's a teachable moment. Move on to the next thing. Like I'm a big celebration guy. Like I want to so I'm in sales. So, for me, when I get a sale done, I feel good about it and I carry it with me for a while. And I think like that's kind of what propels me and gets me excited about the next one, you know, but you're just like moving on to the next thing. You I just told you a story about a boy that basically could have gotten into a van and who know we you know, we shudder to think what could have happened and you're like smiling, beautiful, love to hear it and you're generally moving on already. You're like, what's the next thing? And then you're accomplishing so much. Where is this coming from? Like where did where do you have this energy to just keep going and going and I imagine you have a lot more. What do you want to you want to still accomplish in your life? What happened in your growing up and early on? Something triggered this because this is not normal. This is not what everyday people are like. This is like this is an anomaly. Look, I think, you know, in the end of the day and there's also some truth to this as well, right? Everything in your life is a combination of, you know, three things, I think. Siyata d'Shmaya, nature, Siyata d'Shmaya just for people that are listening should know is help from God. Divine intervention. Nature and nurture. And what does that mean? Let me let me break it down for you, right? It means that everything in your life first comes from God, right? Because in the end of the day, we wouldn't be here, right? The odds of us being here as opposed to some third world country where we don't have running water. The odds are actually in your And that's a godly act. United States of America. The fact that you're living in America, that's already an advantage from God. That's from I always tell people, you know, despite our complaints, people have complaints about politics and government, it's a big fundamental mistake, I really believe this as a Jewish American, not to understand that we live in a medina shel chesed, which is in a country of generosity that allows Jews to succeed. If you look at our history for 3,000 years, there haven't been that many countries like the United States. I would argue it's the first country we've lived in that's given us so much ability to succeed. And we have to be grateful for that even if we want to participate in democracy, we want to complain, you have to remember the baseline. The baseline is we're very fortunate to be here by the grace of God. I believe that. That's number one. Number two is you deal with the concept called nature. Nature really is the environment that you live in and also genetics and who your parents are. It may not be fair, but the reality is if you come from a family where things are challenging, it's not always as easy, right, to be focused and to be successful. That's why, whether it's fair or not, in the shidduch world, when people look at shidduchim and say, okay, who are the parents? Who's the family? Why do they care? They care because Where do What are your values? background is and in terms of understanding that and there is some sort of understanding of that as well, right? And then finally, finally, that piece of it as well also comes down to things which are genetics, right? Your parents There's a reason why we all look like our parents. Khaim and I somewhat look alike. I actually look more like another one of my brothers, but it doesn't matter. The answer is that we think alike in certain ways. It's genetic as well. So, let's just break these three things down to answer your question in terms of I thought about this question and what I really believe. One is I firmly believe Hashem has blessed me as he's blessed all of us, by the way. If you're listening to this podcast and you live in a place where you've got electric and running water and air conditioning. Wow, can you imagine the world before we had air conditioning? It was 100° this week and we're all sitting around in air I think about that all the time. What was the world like before air conditioning? Just sitting in an air conditioned room is like, "Wow, what am I I it's amazing, right?" We're living in the best times in the world. So, first of all, appreciate that God has given you a lot. Could you get more? Of course, you can. We'll talk about that in a minute. Then, I think there comes the concept of genetics and where you were born. We have parents, baruch Hashem, our parents were very hard working, very smart, incredible people. We have an amazing story about how they met themselves that defy the odds. They instilled in us this value, which is nothing's impossible. Keep trying. Keep pushing. Keep getting things done. That was in our family, which is why everyone in my family, all four of our brothers, myself, my brother Yisroel, my brother Yossi, we're all doers because we have that instilled in our values in different ways, right? Chaim with his entrepreneurship, with his successful business, the group purchasing business that you have that saves people millions of dollars a year where people are like, "Wow, I never knew I could do that." Yeah, it's a great idea, right? You know, instead of a nursing home buying products for one nursing home and you're paying full price, well, if I can do that for a thousand nursing homes, I can probably save 30%. You're hired, by the way. Yeah. I don't know if By the way, I always tell my brother, you know, I always brag about my brother. If you're like, "What does your brother do?" I was like, "He's so good that he hires chefs to come up with model meals that make the food taste better with healthier foods, with cheaper products so that you are actually are getting healthier foods in the nursing homes that taste better and you're spending less money." That's a chab as well. Like, how did he come up with the chab? That was his chab, right? That was his invention that everybody can I have an idea. Everybody can decrease the cost if you're decreasing the quality, right? That's right. That's right. We have a brother Yossi, he's a very well-known marriage and family therapist. He does tremendous work. We have brother Yossi, who's tremendously successful in the e-commerce world, right? It's So, there's there's a message at home that says, "You got to do things. You got to accomplish things." And obviously, you have to be part of the Jewish community, which was critically important to So, God Parents. Yes. Genetics matters as well in the sense that they were doers. Everyone who knew my father, all of us shall know that he was a doer. He always used to say, "Don't do tomorrow what you can do right now." Think about that. Don't do tomorrow what you can do right now. So, he would be like, "Let's get something done." He had an idea, he's like, "Okay, we're getting on a plane right now. We're going to go on a flight. We're going to go on a meeting." Like, "No, no, Abba, we're like like it's 12:00 in the afternoon. We're not going to get to Florida till 6:00." No, "I have an idea. Getting on a plane. We're going to go." He was a doer. My mother was someone who had tremendous faith. She was really a tzadekes, a righteous woman, and she instilled that in us as well. Those are three important things. Now, the final thing, which is the most important thing that nobody ever wants to talk about, and this is critical. This is especially a message for a lot of the younger people out there, right? You live in super privileged lifestyles, right? You have great parents. Your father's amazing. Your mother's amazing. They have great jobs. You're part of a great community. You go to a great yeshiva. You're lucky. You're living in New York, in Brooklyn, in Lakewood, in Teaneck, in the Five Towns, in Monsey. It's amazing. And you have everything. Now, you're going to say, "Okay, so what separates the boys from the men or the girls from the women?" It's very simple. Final thing comes down to hishtadlus. You have to make an effort. An effort, it's a lot of effort. You want to be an expert. You want to be a baseball player in the Major League Baseball, you have to wake up early. You have to work out. You have to eat the right foods. You're going to sleep at a certain time. You are doing certain exercises. You're spending hundreds of hours in the bat cages. That's not the bat caves, ala ala Batman, bat cages, you know, where you're practicing your batting, right? That's what makes them experts. I always tell people, I tell this to my friends, the reason I beat my competition is very simple. Yes, I'm fortunate, baruch Hashem. Hashem has blessed me. Great family. Good genetics. Great environment. But, I will out hustle anybody. I'm waking up early. I'm going to sleep late. I'm thinking about the issues. I'm going the extra mile. I'm working 80, 90 hours a week. Now, you may say that's crazy. You may say that's crazy. You shouldn't work 80, 90 hours a week. That's okay. For a regular guy who doesn't want to be a Major League Baseball player, someone who doesn't want to be an actor, someone who doesn't want to be a professional at the best of their level, sure, there's no problem. You've never met someone in your life who is a professional baseball player, athlete, actor who works 9 to 5. It doesn't exist, right? So, people are like, "Oh, wow, you're so lucky." It's not about luck. The last part about it is hishtadlus. You need the luck. You need Hashem. You need your family. You need genetics. But, you need to hustle. And the answer is, Chaim will tell you. Well, let's be honest. When we were kids, Chaim used to go out with his friends. What was I doing? Chaim went out with his friends. We were teenagers. Chaim was like, "Hey, Dave, we're going out with my friends. We're going to go hang out right now." What was I doing, Chaim? You were giving the answers to Jeopardy before the contestants were. [laughter] No, that's very educational. That's that's you have to learn how to be good at that cuz he was reading and he was studying. That's right. I was reading the New York Times He was studying. Cover to cover. That's the answer. The answer is that I was studying. The answer is absolutely he was reading reading He did so much reading and that's probably why I don't read today cuz you did reading for both of us. [laughter] There you go. That's why we have podcasts. You don't have to read. Yes. Thank you. Finally, You you mentioned something that in that very eloquent answer, I might say, and it was inspiring. I agree with you. No one ever got good at something without putting the work in. You know, you're looking at all these successful people and you say, "Oh, they must have, you know, gotten lucky." And sure, luck played a role in it, but what people don't always see is the amount of effort and work and those early mornings and those late nights and that, right? It takes a little tremendous amount to get good at anything. I don't care what it is that you do. If you get good at it, you do it professionally, it comes a lot of effort, for sure. The effort, by the way, one final point of what you're saying that I think is so important is the hustle brings the luck. People don't understand that, right? Right. Put yourself in a position. 80 hours a week and you're going out there and you're meeting people and you're hustling and you're doing your hishtadlus and you're talking to people and you're on the phone. Then you get your big break. People are like, "Oh, you know, this is a crazy story. We have a friend of ours. He he did business with Donald Trump." And people are like, "How did he do business with Donald Trump?" And wow, well, he must have gotten lucky. He didn't get lucky. The guy makes a thousand phone calls a week, right? And in the course of making a thousand phone calls a week, literally for 52 weeks a year and taking no vacations, 52,000 phone calls, he had a lucky break. A lucky break. That's not a lucky break. He didn't win the lotto. He worked hard so that he should get a lucky break. What am I talking about here? You're talking about magic. Yeah. And you And the fact is, he used to hang out at the restaurants every single night. Doing what? Getting drunk? Hustle. That's right. Hustle. Meet people. That's right. He he had a brilliant idea, similar to Jason, Jason Litman Mendy. He had an idea when he was looking for a job in a certain area, he would go on the trains in New York City, on the F train, and he would have his resume and he would scream out loud, "I'm looking for a job in finance." [laughter] Okay. I don't know about that. No, no, no, no. No, no. You could very easily get the wrong impression about that. Absolutely not. Hear me 20 years ago. Today today that would be dangerous to do that on the train. No, no. 20 years ago you could do that. But, hear out the concept for a second. He was saying he was mentioning and he said it was really He said, "People like Michael Bloomberg take the train every day. And I'm here to get my resume out to anyone in finance." He got a job at Merrill. That's what happened. Really? Yes, absolutely. I guess there was no social media back then. There was How do you get 50 people in one place? on the train. In one place, you go on the train. Yes. Yes, he did it. That's the hustle. That's what makes So, he increased his odds. I'm calling it magic. It's Moshe. We should get him on the show, by the way. Yeah, we should get him That's phenomenal. But, it sounds like if you want to get lucky, it's just put yourself in a position where you're increasing your chances by having more people young people all the time. I just had this conversation with a woman who's wonderful and single and I I really, you know, I saw her over a Shabbos and and and she was talking to me. She's like, "You know, do you know any great guys?" I was like, "Look, I said, 'What are you doing this summer?'" She's like, "I don't know. I'm home." I was like, "Go. Go work. Go. Just go somewhere. Go. Go to LA. Go to Miami. Meet Get out there." Look, why? What's that going to happen? I'm like, "Things are going to happen." And most of them will be good. By the way, not everything will be good. Just to be clear, right? You know, sometimes you put yourself out there, things are uncomfortable. It will happen. But, mostly, on balance, if you ever ask anyone who's gone out there, mostly good things will happen to you. I think the most important thing that you can do is do something. That's it. And we live in a generation of people who don't want to do anything. And they're like, "I'm sitting at home." And and that's where, by the way, you end up with this disconnect. And by the way, that's why social media has been so destructive. And the Surgeon General recently said that it's actually more addictive than cigarettes and very bad for our mental health. Because now let's go back to that frum kid who's living in the Five Towns, right? And that kid is going to the best yeshivas with the best rebbeim, with the best teachers, with the best parents, and he's not successful. Or he's doing drugs. Or he's doing alcohol. Or he's doing nothing. Why is that? Because social media, in many ways, we discussed it before, has warped our brains. We're like, "Oh, I can do everything online." But, no, you can't do everything online, right? The answer is you're missing one important ingredient, which is the hishtadlus, which I translate as hustle, right? People say hishtadlus is effort. Hishtadlus is not effort. Effort is not up. It's a hustle, right? Now, this means hustle. Go out and hustle. Not just effort, it's your maximum effort. Exactly. It's how much effort are you putting in? for you. And by the way, Yossi, that's the most important point. It's a maximum effort for you. People are like, "Well, I'm never going to be in the NBA." Okay, no one said that you have to be Michael Jordan, right? There is a whole bunch of people who played in the NBA who made millions of dollars whose names that you don't know, but they still made millions of dollars and were in the NBA, but they're not Michael Jordan. Not everyone's going to be Michael Jordan. People are like, "Well, I can't be Michael Jordan." It's okay. You might be able to be a player in the NBA. You might be able to be a player in the minor leagues. Do your best effort, which is what we call hishtadlus, which we call a hustle. Go out there and hustle. Social media has broken that for us cuz we think, "Oh, I'm just going to tweet. I'm doing something." You're not doing anything by tweeting. Let me say this again. I'm a huge tweeter. I've been doing this I was in the meeting before anyone. They did a newspaper article about me when I was an elected official. I was the first person on Twitter, now known as X. The first elected official in New York. People were fascinated. Wow, David Greenfield's on Twitter. What's going on over here? I like to embrace technology early. But, I didn't think I was doing things instead on Twitter. Twitter was just a way of communicating everything else that I was doing. Now, people are like, "I'm going to sit at home in my basement and tweet all day." You're not doing anything, right? You got to make your hustle out there. You're using it to supplement for other things. You're just adding on. It's one thing. That's right. Let me ask something. I'm very curious about this. I know that people, you know, politicians, in order to get their position, they have to earn the vote of the constituents that have to put you into office. So, you were probably running against someone at the time. So, I'm just curious, do you remember the last elected position that you had, which was a councilman? Is that right? Okay, you were running against someone. Do you remember who that person was that you were running against? Sure. And mostly curious about what do you think you did Are you Do you know that person still? Are you in touch with that person? And I'm curious, what do you think you did, your hustle, your hustledness? What did you do different than then that you were able to beat your opponent? I just have to answer direct real quick cuz I have to mention that the day of the voting in Borough Park in Brooklyn, I was there. I was so proud. I didn't sleep for 24 hours. I went around with my red pickup truck and I had flags and I had announcements, vote for David Greenfield. Around an hour after the voting closed, one of the big politicians in New York, I'm not going to mention his name, comes over to me and he goes, "Hey Michael, your brother tried really hard. He really really gave it his effort, huh? You did good. You did You went around with your truck all day. You feel good. He did good." This is before This is before they announced it. Announced his winning. An hour later, David Greenfield, the winner, who took over the new council position. I I couldn't be more proud and I'd love to hear your answer. I appreciate that. Thank you. Right. So, once again, it comes back to those three big issues. God's help, community, genetics, the ability to do it. But, let's talk about the hustle in a second, right? When I ran, I ran against the establishment, right? The entire Jewish establishment decided, "We're supporting this guy. He's a retired guy. He's 70 years old." Why were they supporting him? Cuz that's what's funny about politics. They're supporting him cuz he was their guy, not because he was the best guy, right? I mean, we're having the same debate right now about Joe Biden. Except that Joe Biden is already has 50 years of experience and is at the top of his game. Here was a guy who was retiring just to start his political career. Like, it doesn't make sense. Like, why don't you want someone young to start their career as opposed to someone who's older? But, it doesn't matter. They didn't want a fresh thinker. They wanted somebody who's going to tow the line. They wanted someone who's going to be their guy. Very good. So, when you're looking at that, you're saying, "Okay, how am I beating them?" They have the advantage. They have the name advantage. They have the money. They have the They have the money. They have the resources. The answer is come back to you with the hustle. I said, "You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to do something that no one's ever done in this community before. I'm going to go knock on every single door and meet people." So, now you're knocking on the door and saying, "Hi, how are you? My name is David Greenfield." "You're David Greenfield? Well, I heard X, Y, Z about you." "Okay, cool. What did you hear about me? Ask me a question." "Well, you know, I heard that you know, you're somebody who is from the Sephardic community." "Yeah, it's true. I work for the Sephardic community, but I went to Torah Vodaas, went to the Borough Park Y, lived in Borough Park in Flatbush my whole life." "Oh, that's interesting." "Yeah. So, you what? Here's my cell phone number. Take my cell phone. If you ever have an issue, call me." Let me text you my number. Gave them your cell phone number. I'll tell you something crazy you should 20 years later have the same cell phone number. People text me, they call me, I answer the phones even today. Now, today I may not be able to solve that problem, so I'll refer them to somebody else, but if I can, I will help them. It changed the game. Think about that, right? Here for 25 years we're telling you vote for somebody because the community is telling you to vote for somebody. And I also told people, "Look, are you happy with the way things are?" No. So, give someone a another chance. I went through three pairs of shoes. My phone number was ringing all day long. I was getting texts all day long. I changed the game in the sense that I hustled, right? I worked a lot harder than the competition. That plus I had better ideas, fresh ideas, how to solve things. I'll give you one example, something that I did. One simple example just to show you how quality of life. When I ran for office, I said, "Look, I'm going to fix the parks in our district. We have a dozen parks, but none of them had been fixed in years." People were like, "No, you can't do that." By the time I left office, I renovated every single park in my district. That matters to people, right? This isn't Monsey where you're living in a huge backyard, right? You're living in Brooklyn. You're living on top of each other. You have no space in a community with more kids than anywhere else in New York City. To tell people I'm going to fix your parks and to actually do that and give them brand new parks, Borough Park, Flatbush, Bensonhurst. That's a huge difference for people's lives, right? So, my promise to people was give me a shot, let me do things differently, and hold me accountable, you have my number. And we did that, and that's how we won. We won because we worked harder, we gave them fresh ideas, and we gave them a way to hold me accountable. It's great to tell someone, "I'm going to do something for you." Well, how am I going to hold you accountable? You're going to hold me accountable because here's my phone number. If you're not happy, let me know, right? And that's how we held ourselves accountable and how we got things done, and that's how I won. Obviously, we had siyata d'Shmaya, but that's how I won. This is the epitome of cold calling. I was just thinking that. Right? This is like on on such a big level. He went door to door, knocked on people's doors, and said, "Let's have a conversation." That's right. It was very time-consuming. You had to tackle a lot of different doors, right? And but that's what it took. I'll tell you my favorite story, my favorite story in this process cuz you'll appreciate it. I'm sure people slammed the door in your face. I'm sure you got a lot of those. So, I'm going through Flatbush. I'm ringing a doorbell. I'm like, "Hey." So, a woman comes out and she's like, "Nobody's home. Go away." I said, "No, no, no. I'm yelling cuz she's on the third floor." Remember, like this is Brooklyn. These walk-up apartments. "No, my name is David Greenfield. I'm here." And she's like, "Just go away." I'm like, "No, I need to talk to you." So, old woman she's like, "Fine." She comes back. Crazy story. She takes a plastic bag with four quarters and she throws it at me. She thought I was a meshulach. She was collecting [laughter] She gave me a dollar. That's very nice. In a plastic in a one of those Ziploc bags. She threw a Ziploc bag down at me. And I had a Ziploc bag. I'm like, "Well, that's great. Now I have an illegal cash contribution." [laughter] So, I ring her doorbell. She's like, "I already gave you a dollar. You want more?" I said, "No, no, no, no. I know. My name is David Greenfield. I'm running for city council." "Really?" I'm like, "Yeah. Like, can I give you the dollar back?" She's like, "Fine." I come upstairs. This this whole operation, think about it. This I'm already a minute 15 now of this saga, which is really embarrassing, right? Woman throws a dollar and says, "Go get out of here." I walk up three flights of stairs. Like, "Hi, how are you? So nice to meet you. Great. Here's your dollar back. Thank you very much. My name is David Greenfield. I'm running for office." She tells me, "You know, it's interesting because you know, I heard from uh so-and-so, a community leader, that I should vote for the other guy." I said, "Oh, cool. Why are you voting for the other guy?" "I don't know. That's what I was told." "Great. Can we talk about it?" I spent 15 minutes talking to her. By the time I left, it was a half an hour. It was a big investment. By the time I left, she had converted 16 voters to me. It was her, her husband, her five kids, and all their eligible grandkids who lived in Borough Park and Flatbush. And she called everybody and said, "Let me tell you something. This guy, David Greenfield, he has ideas. He's here. He's talking to me. He wants to get things done." 16 votes from one conversation. But, it was very awkward and uncomfortable. Going back to our original conversation and to cold calling. If you want to get out there, it's going to be a little bit uncomfortable. It's going to be a little bit awkward, but it's a huge ability to try to change the game, and that's what I did, and that's where cold calling is valuable. But, yeah, you can't get faced with the people who slam your door, yell at you, "All politicians are the same. All people cold calling are the same. How did you get my number?" You got to move on. It is what it is. Go back to magic. Make 50,000 calls in a year, and then you get that one big break. That's how it works, and that's how the business done. I'm just curious, what does a councilman actually do? Like, you want to pass a law. You want to You know, you want You need funds to fix the parks. Like, what's the process? How does that work? What's your position? I'm going to give it in a more generic way so people can understand this. So, basically, the way it works in the United States as a quick refresher is a three branches of the government, right? There's the executive branch, judicial branch, and the legislative branch, right? Judicial branch is a whole 'nother story. I'm a lawyer and a law professor, but we're going to put that on the side, which is that's really basically the idea of checks and balances. If you're not happy with something, you can always sue. Let's put that on the side. It's a much slower, more complicated, more costly process. So, if you think about it really, let's focus on the executive and legislative. Every jurisdiction basically has a mayor and a council, right? Or a governor and a legislature, or the president and a congress. Those two people have two different jobs, right? Which is the job of the mayor, the governor, the president is to focus on running things and making the decisions. Now, what if you're not happy with those decisions? The legislature has to pass laws, and they're a check on that mayor or governor or the president, and so you can get things done for your small group. It's tough to influence the president or the mayor or the governor, but your one legislator, your council member, your assembly member, your state senator, they can go and make a difference for you on that level. So, they can do a few things. One is they can get funding and bring it back to the community like I did for parks and schools and yeshivas. One. Two is they can pass laws like I did to improve your quality of life. When you say pass laws, who's passing the law? The legislative body. The city How many people are part of the New York It depends on the legislature, right? So, in the city of New York, it's 51 people. In New York State Assembly, it's 150 people. The larger the city, the larger the state, the more people they're going to have to represent. So, you were one of 50 people? 51 people. Of 51 people? So, out of 8.5 million people in New York, there were 51 million people. And how much percentage of those 51 people do you need to approve a law? So, you need 26. This is a whole 'nother parsha, right? About being an expert is how do you convince 25 people to agree with you? That's a whole 'nother segment. We could spend an hour Which is what you had to do each time. Every time you wanted to pass your initiative, That's right. you had to whip the other people. A lot of it, honestly, is horse-trading. Meaning, I'll help you, you help me, right? You're passionate about our I was going to get to that. You make deals. If you vote for me, They make deals. They make shows about this stuff. Like, House of Cards. I think House of Cards people said that that was a very accurate depiction of what goes on in A little bit of an exaggeration, but it was fun. And fun is good. Fun is good. I would say, believe it or not, you know, the the probably one of the better shows on on television is the original presidential show with the White House before House of Cards, which was West Wing. That's right. The West Wing is actually a more accurate depiction of how politics works. But, Remember, that was old politics. Politics change. That's true. That's true. But, at its core, it's very similar. But, the third thing I'll say which is important is the most important job I think of a local elected official is to solve your problems because there's a huge bureaucracy. I can't get to the governor or the county manager or the mayor. I can call my local elected official and say, "Hey, look, I got a tax bill. It doesn't make any sense." You're like, "Okay, cool. Let me check into that for you." That was something that was very important to me. The other thing that I did was I was the first elected official I had evening hours. What a crazy idea, right? Government says I work 9:00 to 5:00. Well, here's the problem. I work 9:00 to 5:00. I also work 9:00 to 5:00. So, I have a problem. I got a tax bill, and I go to my job working for as an accountant for an accounting firm. I can't leave in the middle of the day to take care of my tax bill. So, I said, "Look, we're going to do something that no one's ever done before. Weekend hours and evening hours. So, you can call me at 6:00, 7:00, and I'll still solve your problems tomorrow. I can't solve it today cuz government's closed." Those are the kinds of things that matter to people, and I think those are the three things that you can do. The third of which is solve your local problems that you couldn't normally solve on your own, and that's what an elected official does. I started out as a regular council member, then I became the chairman of the Brooklyn delegation, which gave me some more influence. Then I became the chair of the land use committee, a membership member of the leadership committee, member of the budget negotiating team. So, by the time I left, I was one of the highest-ranking elected officials in New York City. And that was also work. Meaning, even among elected officials, think about how crazy this is. Now you win, you're like, "Oh, this is great. I won an election." No, you Now you got to get to work. No, even more than that. I got to compete with other elected officials to be in the leadership. Because they all want to be in leadership, too. Now I got to hustle against my other elected official. It never stops. Yeah. So, why'd you Why'd you get out of it? Why are you still not in those, you know, going up the ranks? Why aren't you our governor yet? Because you have my vote, by the way, just so you know. I Because I I I I really feel like this is all of it is genuine. Like you actually really care. Like you mentioned, you know, you helped, you know, with the parks in Brooklyn and all that. Playgrounds, not Montauk. There's no backyards. I agree with you. Like you actually made a difference in people's lives, their quality of life. I would love to have more elected officials like this. I think most of our officials, for the most part, are are very corrupt and they're very they're very self-motivated. Like they they they like the power, the influence, whatever it is. Very few of them are doing it for a real public service. They really want to help other people. And we as Jews, I think we have that naturally more than others, perhaps, is that we care about the person next to us cuz we feel connected to them. We don't just feel like we're neighbors, we feel like we're really brothers, right? So, we have that mentality already. And I think you exude that mentality. I appreciate it. I always tell people that in politics, like in life, there's an 80/20 rule, which is that 20% of the elected officials are the ones who are genuine and getting the most of the work done, and 80% are not. I'm not going to name who the 20% and who the 80% are, for obvious reasons, but there are good people out there. The answer to your question is this. The way I view my life, in terms of what it is that I'm trying to accomplish, is exactly that. How can I be most successful in making a positive difference? When I was an elected official, which I was for 8 years, and I was a senior member of the leadership, what I saw happening in New York was something very interesting, which is the city was sliding to the left politically. And I was correct, right? You had a more liberal mayor, you had people like AOC getting elected. When you're in the center, which I am, I'm a very pragmatic center of the road elected official, when the city is shifting from you, it's difficult to accomplish things. So, same thing. It was purely God, it was bashert, right? When I had the opportunity to run a large charity and turn it around and create it into a bigger charity, I tripled the size of the organization in the last 6 years. We're helping three times as many people. We're making a much bigger difference in people's lives. To me, that was something exciting because I was able to leave government and do something else where I could help people and make a difference in their lives in a very real way. And that's where I saw it as being better able to use my efforts. And I think that's also a very important lesson we talk about business and life. Never get too comfortable anywhere. If you're too comfortable, that should make you very nervous, right? If you're really trying to accomplish things, you're trying to make money, trying to be successful, trying to make a difference. You're doing the same thing for years and years and it's too easy, you should be like, "Well, what's going on?" Keep challenging yourself. You got You got to keep moving. Keep pushing. Exactly. You know, you said something earlier that reminded me another great quote that you told me, David, and I've repeated many, many times, that we want to have influence more than power. It's something that you taught me, and it's a it's such such an interesting, you know, conversation piece of like, what's the difference? And why would you want influence? Why wouldn't you want the power? I have a question for you, David, that I've been thinking about as you guys were talking. And you know, being that you've been out of the front line of politics for a number of years, you must have things that you've been thinking about, you know what? I wish perhaps that I can be in it to change X, Y, and Z. Is there something over the past few years that you've been thinking about that you want to make change in? Like what's the next thing that you'd be passionate about? If you get the chance again, what would be the first thing you'd be tackling? So, yeah, there are there are a few things that frustrate me, obviously, and then and the the downside of only focusing on a few things is you can't focus on everything, right? My current biggest pet peeve, if you really want to know what my biggest frustration is, I think that we as a Jewish community are not doing a great job of telling the story of Israel. And I think that we have a real communications crisis that's happening. And I spent a lot of time thinking about this. And I think one of the reasons is that the Israeli government, what people don't realize, it's all politics in the day. They're on this perpetual political cycle when the last few years have had multiple elections. So, when they're speaking as an Israeli government leader, they don't care about what people are thinking about in New York or Paris or London or Germany. They're worried about what people are thinking about in Bnei Brak, right? So, they're speaking to a very small audience. So, they're saying things that people in Petah Tikva might appreciate or Tel Aviv or Bnei Brak, but not DC, New York, Paris, LA, Germany. And it's a big world out there. The world has shifted. And part of the importance of doing the work that we do in Israel is we know that we're correct and we have the facts, but we're not articulating it correctly because we're speaking to a very small audience. So, if you ask me like, what would I want to do? One of the things I really would love to do, and once again, it's just a question of time and effort and all this is, focus on an effort of telling the story, right? So, take example. I'll give you an example. Take a country like Qatar. Some people call it Cutter, Qatar. Qatar is a fundamentalist Islamic country. Everyone's like, "Wow, they're such a great country and they have these beautiful airlines and beautiful high-rises." Meanwhile, they're one of the most discriminatory countries in the world. You can't become a citizen of Qatar. It's impossible. And most of the people they use, they export cheap labor really to get what they want. And if you look at them on any liberal democratic scale, they're not liberal, they're not democratic, but they're paying good money for PR. They even have their own news media outlet, Al Jazeera, which pays to get good PR for themselves cuz they are smart and you can do that. Why? And this comes to the perhaps the final point that I'll make today on politics, which is democracy is a very messy business, right? Qatar is run by essentially authoritarian rulers. There's no elections. We're in charge. So, if I'm in charge, I can think long-term. Okay, so I'm going to talk about doing PR and I'm going to talk about building business. When I have to run in an election in democracy, it's messy, right? Because I have elections and have to get reelected and I have to worry who's going to vote for me. And that's what makes the difference, right? The fact that Israel's a democracy is actually, in a weird way, hurting Israel's PR. Hamas is able to get, in some cases, better PR because they're an authoritarian run by handful of terrorists. They don't have to deal with their internal worry. Think about it. If Hamas wasn't a If Hamas was a group that was really responsible to the Palestinians, they'd be out of power by now. The only reason that Hamas exists is because they haven't had elections in 15 years. If Hamas had to worry as is, "Oh my gosh, November 5th, we're having elections, too." The war would have been over on day one because they wouldn't want their people to suffer in the way that they as a leadership brought upon their own people, the suffering, by engaging in a crazy war with Israel that they know they're going to lose. They would never do that because they'd be saying, "Oh my gosh, we're going to lose an election." They don't have to worry about it. They say, "Look, we're terrorists, we're dictators, we do whatever we want. We don't care about democracy. There are no elections. And if you suffer, too bad." Because they don't care about the people. In Israel, it's the opposite. What happens is Bibi has to think about and say, "Hold on a second. What are the public going to think? What's my next election going to look like?" And so, I think we have a massive disconnect on public relations between where Israel is and other countries. And I think primarily that's because Israel has a very messy democracy where they have so many elections. And that's a frustration. I look at that, and you know, I think some people know I gave a speech that went viral on the floor of the city council, right? I'm very passionate about the issue of Israel. I think we're not doing a good enough job explaining to the world why Israel is correct. Israel is a democracy. Israel is unique in the Middle East as a democracy. Israel believes in democratic and liberal values. And these other countries don't. I think we have that disconnect. That frustrates me. Alas, I can't do everything, but that's an issue that frustrates me. And if people want to work on it, contact me after the show and I'm happy to help. But David, you just educated me and I imagine a lot of people that are listening to this. Like really, the downside to a democracy. And to because naturally, people have to be concerned about how do I get reelected? And they want to please everybody. And what ends up happening is they please nobody. And their real agendas are not in everybody's best interest. It's really about the internal politics that they have to be busy with. And they can't they can't think long-term because I don't know if I'm going to be around in 15 years. Meanwhile, Qatar, the the the dictator there, he knows we're going to be ruling here for the next 50 years. So, let's build something now strategically. They can do it the right way and build for the long run. That's the downside, but there are upsides. Remember, the most important upside and why I still think it's the best system that we have, as flawed as it is, is that it represents the will of the people, right? Most of the people who are living in Qatar are not Qatari citizens and they have no rights and they can't vote and they're just being exploited, right? They have a competitive edge, but the reality is and and there are ways to solve this, right? The problem with the Israeli system is that they have a system that doesn't guarantee you that your executives can serve the entire term. So, your government can fall at any time because they're based on the European legislative model. In the United States, we have elections for 4 years. And so, therefore, a president always has a 4-year term, even if they're unpopular. What you see right now, the biggest debate that we're having in the United States, right? And this is a question that may or may not get resolved over the next few days, but the biggest debate we're having in the United States right now is should Joe Biden continue as the Democratic nominee or not? That's the biggest debate. So, on the one hand, you have people who say, "Hold on a second. He was elected. He was the Democratic nominee. People knew that he had issues, they voted for him anyway." Then you have people on the other hand saying, "Well, we didn't really know. And also, to be fair, he's probably going to lose, maybe we should swap him out." Now, if you were in a European system, it's very easy to do. In the European system, you have a vote of no you knock out the leader, and then you replace them with a new leader. That happens all the time in Europe. The United States doesn't exist like that. Except now we have a short window where, in theory, it's possible that before the Democratic convention, that's going to start in approximately 30 days, before the convention, you could, in theory, swap somebody out. In theory, because it's never actually been done before, right? So, that's where democracy is very messy. Cuz people are saying, "Well, hold on a second. Joe Biden, maybe he's not the strongest candidate, maybe we should replace him with somebody else." Then you have people saying, "Well, we voted for him already. And he's the candidate. And he is already popular." This is where you get into some of these very complicated issues of democracy where, instead of governing for the last 3 weeks, all we're talking about today is should Joe run, should he not run, right? Obviously, that was one of the big issues. The only reason that conversation got interrupted because, unfortunately, there was an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump's life, and therefore, that got somewhat derailed the conversation, but it's still happening. That's the point. You think it's going to happen? You think they're going to replace him and I'll tell you why because in the end of the day certain things are predictable and certain things are not. This is something where the only way they can do it is if Joe Biden agrees and I don't know if Joe Biden is going to agree. It It takes a lot to ask someone to step down from the pinnacle of power. He's the most powerful person in the world. Let me repeat that to you again. I want you to imagine you're going to Elon Musk say Elon, you know what? Do me a favor. You know what? Why don't you give away all your money and someone else should do what you do? Really? All my money and someone else should Yeah, all your money. A former president doesn't have a lot of power. He has some influence but not a lot of power. Right, we're talking about power. There is no more powerful person in the world than the president of the United States of America. Asking that person to do voluntarily step away from the ability to do that for another 4 years is a tremendous ask. I don't know if he's going to agree to that. And therefore I think it's an unresolved question. It could get resolved over the next few days by the time this podcast gets published but it is a very messy and complicated question that we don't know the answer to. And the reason is the only person who's going to decide that is Joe Biden. People will make the argument to him but there is no mechanism to force Joe Biden out of this current election cycle. Like you have in Europe where you can just say, "Okay, vote of no confidence and the guy is gone." Now hypothetically if he does step down, which I agree with you, is a huge ask, he's almost got nothing to lose. Like what If he loses already, he loses. But to just give it up, he's for sure losing. So it's a really difficult ask. That's why it's so tough. So imagine that he does step down. You know, he gets enough pressure and he wants to do the right thing. He wants to retain his legacy. He wants to stay in the good standing. He just won't be remembered as the guy who didn't step down and messed it up for the Democratic Party. He has that risk that he wants to retain his legacy. But let's say he does step down. What happens at the actual convention of the DNC convention? Is like a a runoff? Like like American Idol now? Like let's let's let's vote for our best Actually, this is the problem. It's really not so clear and people don't have the answer to this question. When someone tells you, "I want Joe Biden to step down." You have to ask them the following question otherwise you're being dishonest with you, which is, "Okay, who should replace him?" And nine times out of 10 they don't have an answer, right? Because naturally what you would think is it should be Vice President Kamala Harris. And there are good reasons for that. One, she is the Vice President, so right in theory she was the number two. The second reason is that as a matter of law she's the only one who can take over the hundred plus million dollars Right, the money. account that he's running as well. But there is no good answer and some people are saying, "No, we don't like Kamala Harris. We don't think she's strong enough." So now it's like hold on a second. So maybe you don't really believe in democracy, right? Because if you believe in democracy, shouldn't you let the Vice President take over? I don't know. So what you're saying essentially is that you don't trust the people who voted in the primaries and you want to put in the person that you think is best to win. Now you see why this gets to be very messy. And so it's not clear. If he steps down, it could be that it could go to Kamala Harris and it would be I think if he does nominated her. If he said, "I want Kamala Harris to be the nominee." she would be the nominee because he would have that kind of influence. Or it could be he would say, "You know what? We're going to have an open primary." And that's going to be chaos because now you have all the delegates It's going to be fun. All the delegates, yeah. But I'm not sure that's better for the Democratic Party, right? Because it's a chaotic system and the election effectively, people say the election is in November, the election actually starts in September, right? You have early voting in a lot of states. Ballots are going out early. So election starts in September and ends in November, right? I don't know that that's beneficial to the Democratic Party and I think that's why it's such a complicated topic. Not to mention that the Republicans, which you saw in this past convention over the last few days Which was awesome, by the way. have consolidated the support of the Republican Party. So look what's happening in a very strange time in politics. The Republicans who were very divisive until a few weeks ago. Crazy story, right? You know, people like Nikki Haley didn't like the president and others, they all came together. Tucker Carlson, big critic of Donald Trump and they all came together and said, "No, we have to unite around our candidate because we have to win." Meanwhile, the Democrats are fighting all day. Not good for the Democrats. Good for the Republicans. Now to be fair, something extraordinary happened which brought the Republicans together, which is we had a very unfortunate assassination attempt. And I say unfortunate of course cuz it's bad for democracy, right? Like you know, the the the principle of a democracy is we have a dispute, we settle it at the ballot box, right? I can yell and scream at the end of the day we have election day. I can't settle in a democracy on a killing till. That's insane and then it would lead to chaos, right? So it was bad for America but because the president survived, which was amazing obviously and certainly to me was a true nice, right? You know, an act of God that he survived that shooting, right? He just turned at the last minute and the bullet whizzed by him. That unified the Republican Party in a way that Democrats are not but that's also adding to the panic of the Democrats who are like, "Oh my gosh, what's going to happen right now?" And that's where I think we're in a very uncertain time, which also, I'll leave you with this final point I always say, politics is the only sport for adults, right? Golf is fun and pickleball is fun and football is fun but politics is amazing. Look how exciting it is, right? It's always changing and something different and the stakes are real. It's very nice to get a medal but it's much more important as to who's actually going to run the government in the world and you're sitting in your town. And that's why to me politics is a very exciting business. For the record, this is the best podcast we've done so far. You, my friend, we need more time with. I mean, David, I knew you a little bit and I've seen you here, I've seen you there but you're awesome. You're really awesome. You're amazing. Like first of all, you speak very well. You deliver amazingly. Like you're a storyteller. You know, you know, a lot of politicians don't speak well and it's like hard to listen to them. Nancy Pelosi stutters through all of her Some of them she can't put a coherent sentence together. Yet she she rose to such fame and and look at her position. Trump's speech at the convention was a little bit too long and I think that he lost some of the momentum going in there and that's because he can't help himself. He likes to talk and he likes to go on. You know what's interesting about Donald Trump is that, you know, he's his best in short spurts, right? Which is Think about what was the best moment and obviously it happened due to a crazy situation but the best moment of Donald Trump's career was a 3-second moment. It was when he stopped and he turned to the Secret Service and said, "I have to say something." And he put up his arm and he said, "Fight, fight, fight." Donald Trump is best in short spurts. Exactly, that's right. But when he does things in a elongated way, he tends to ramble and that's what you saw at the convention. I think he lost a little bit of the momentum. But that being said, he's still very talented and he's very smart and he obviously knows how to play the political game better than most people do. And I think what he has, and this comes to the point in terms of what you're discussing and I appreciate the compliment, I think what it comes down to is authenticity, right? I think the biggest problem today in politics, and I think not just in politics but in life and this is what it comes down to your rav and it comes out to your wife and it comes down to shidduchim and whatever it is, I think the biggest problem is people are not authentic. People are not telling you what they think, right? And so I firmly believe if you believe in something, share that and then I'm happy to debate the issue with you. It's okay, we don't have to agree. In fact, I pride myself on the fact that there are people who disagree with me. That's how the truth comes out. That's the only way the truth comes out. What makes you more excited? When you get up and you hear a rabbi or you hear a speaker speak about something and you're like they're giving you the party line and you're like, "Yeah, I don't know." Right? Like you know, you get up and you have a rav in a shul and he says, "Reb Boaz I want to talk to you today about a very important issue. We can't talk during davening." Everyone's like rolling their eyes. Like, "Come on." Like you know, everyone talks during shul. We're all in our 30s, 40s, 50s. Why do you ask people not to talk? But he has to say it because there's a rule that says if you're a rav, you have to tell people not to talk in shul. That doesn't inspire people, right? Instead tell people, "You know what? Pick a mitzvah. Do something a little bit better this week. Look out for your neighbor, right?" But even you have this in every environment, right? I think people appreciate authenticity. I think actually that's why Trump does well. It's not that everyone agrees with his issues. Obviously people don't. He has very controversial issues. I don't agree with all his issues but he is authentic and I think that's a value. The problem with being too authentic sometimes is that you tend to ramble and just go on and on and on and no one can control him because he really believes he's the smartest guy in the world cuz he has been very successful and he has a lot of hatzlacha and a lot of siyata d'Shmaya. Talk about mazel, right? This guy has had tremendous luck on his side, right? From business to scandals to legal issues to most recently cheating death by 1/4 of an inch, which is amazing hatzlacha and tremendous mazel. But I think I think he tends to ramble on and he doesn't have anyone in his corner he trusts to tell him, "Okay, stop talking, Donald, now." By the way, and I think that's that's also why he's not as strong as he could be. And in a weird way that's where the Democrats have an opportunity. They can come in and say, "Okay, we're going to have a little bit more The problem is Democrats don't have that because now you've got Joe Biden who similarly is rambling and isn't so strong and that's where people are like, "Hold on a second. What if we swapped out Joe Biden for a superstar Democrat?" Well, the problem is a superstar Democrat is not on your vice presidential list, right? She's good but she's not a superstar. And so I think that's the frustration and that's where it's not so clear. So we're going to go into a back room and pick who the next president should be. A lot of people are uncomfortable by that idea. It's very unconventional, no no pun intended. Um by the way, I think it was like 1960s or something like that. In 1960s there was this situation where they did pick a new nominee at the convention. Is that right? It wasn't as a result of someone being forced to step down, which is what you're doing right now. So what happened there? Circumstances were very different. We're running out of time so I don't want to filibuster on this point. to tell you just my Donald Trump moment that for me like when I was like I bought into all right, this guy is quick. He's fast on his feet and he's just wired differently than everybody else. One of the first debates that he did uh Megyn Kelly, she was one of the moderators. So she asked him this question which everybody was waiting for her to ask is, you know, Donald Trump, you've called women uh slobs, fat pigs, disgusting things. You know, it keeps going on. Like that's not very presidential. Like how do you expect the American people to vote for someone who speaks this way about women? And like within a second he looks at her and says, "Only Rosie O'Donnell." [laughter] "Only Rosie O'Donnell." He turned around that question and he made it it was it was comedic, it was funny. But I think I'll tell you what's interesting though actually. He lost a lot of people also, right? I think the personal attacks that Trump engages in loses a lot of people who are in the middle who say, "Look, you know, like it shouldn't really be our representation, right?" In the end of the day, right? If the rav of your shul showed up in shorts and a baseball cap and was smoking a joint, you probably wouldn't want him to be the person leading and influencing your children, right? And I think that that is one of to the point that I'm making is I I the the the downside to Trump and I think the reason why Trump hasn't been as successful actually as he could be, right? I mean, Trump should actually be far and away winning with all the polls right now, and he's beating, but not in a huge margin, but he's beating, is because he can't control himself, right? You need to have But isn't that what makes him relatable though? Don't you think that he got to this point because of this without this? He may not have gotten this far. I hear you, but there are people who do that and still have lines, right? There are lines you shouldn't cross, and I do think the personal attacks, I really personally believe this, I think it loses a lot of people in the middle who are like, "I'm not really comfortable with someone engaging in those kinds of personal attacks." I'm just giving you I'm giving you the downside. I hear. I'm giving you the downside. But I think the upside with him during this outweighs his I agree. So, I'm saying, imagine though, here's my point. Imagine if it was all Trump, and there were limits to Donald Trump, right? And like I said, think about the convention speech. Imagine if he would have gotten off that stage after 30 minutes instead of an hour and 30 minutes. He didn't really add anything in the last hour. That was all about, "I'm Donald Trump, I'll tell you about the way I think." I mean, no one's perfect. No one's ever going to be perfect in every single way. I'm just saying, we're talking but as analysts, we look at someone we say, "How do they make them better?" Like, we talk about talk about basketball like, "How could that guy be a better basketball player, right? How could he be a better politician? How could he be a better actor, right?" The answer is, he would be a better politician if he had limits, and if he trusted people who said, "Get off the stage." Donald Trump had a whole speech prepared on a teleprompter. He ignored half the teleprompter, right? And by the way, you want to hear something ironic which is really funny, and this is actually interesting, which is Donald Trump is actually best off of a teleprompter, and Joe Biden is best on a teleprompter, right? They have different skill sets, right? When Joe's on a teleprompter, he's actually very good. When Donald Trump's on a teleprompter, he's not good cuz he prides himself on being authentic, and therefore he and and this is something fascinating if you pay attention to his speeches is, Donald Trump gives commentary on his own speeches. So, he'll be like, "Yeah, we're going to make America great again." Then he starts talking about, "We're going to make America so great that America Yeah, it's going to be really great." You're like, "Dude, like don't give commentary on your own speeches." Like, you're giving a speech, and he's giving you the the appearance on his own speech while he's being laughing at his own joke. exactly. Exactly. And I think that sort of like takes him off of his his uh lane. But look, it's definitely the most fascinating election I think in our American lifetimes, and I think that generally politics has become very divisive. I think part of that is because both parties are really being run by generally the more extreme elements of the party. I think that's why you see such clear differences. It used to be there wasn't a huge difference always between the Republican and Democratic nominee, right? They had some smaller differences. Now you're seeing massive differences in terms There's no similarities almost. One thing that's similar Build a wall, allow immigration. Like huge differences in opinions, right? I'm saying, there are a lot of big differences, and I think that's what makes this such an interesting um election cycle. And also so impactful, and also so unpredictable because like getting back to our previous point, social media means you're now getting things in very small bites, and that's influencing people. And like I said, the final point is, keep your eye out for other state actors like Russia, Iran, and China that are trying to manipulate this election. I know people don't like to believe in conspiracy theories, but it's not a conspiracy theory. There have been studies that have been done Having has been well documented I think everybody's already on board. was actually knowledge, right? You know, we actually had a situation recently. It's amazing story. Very much underreported. The Director of National Intelligence for the United States came out a couple weeks ago and said, "I'm issuing an emergency alert. Iran as a country is trying to influence social media, and is actually trying to get Palestinian sympathizers to protest and to undermine American democracy." Now, people on the left in the Palestinian community are saying, "That's outrageous." And they She said, "No, no, hold on a second. I'm not saying that they're not legitimately in favor of Palestinians. I'm saying they they're using those people to try to undermine the American democracy and to take down the system." Think about how crazy that is. The Director of National Intelligence, which was a role that was created after 9/11 to ensure that America would be safe because before 9/11, there were so many competing agencies that no one had all the information. So, this is an information sharing. She's now saying that in the middle of an election, Iran is trying to undermine an American democracy. That's crazy, right? And that's open and happening. We know that China's doing that through TikTok. We know that Russia's doing that through their information wars as well. We're in a very weird place, and so that comes back to the point of privilege, which is once again, I keep saying the final point, but I think this really will be my final point, and then I'll just take last questions, which is this. Think about how fortunate we are to live in a country that the whole world wants to manipulate, right? Wow, there must be something good going on in America, right? It's a good point. No one ever wakes up and says, "Man, we really need to manipulate the elections of Iceland." Really? "Man, if only we could control Iceland the world." No one cares about Iceland. I mean, it's a lovely place to It's all here, man. I've been there, I've been there. It's nice. Suggest to visit. It's really lovely, but America's the place to be. We're so fortunate. We live in America. We can vote. We're citizens. We're part of the democracy. And this is my final pitch, going back to the original point. One vote doesn't matter, but the collective vote does matter. The single thing that you take away from this podcast should be, you must vote in every election. It takes 5 minutes. It's the most important thing you can do. Politicians know if you vote. They track who votes. They track which communities are voting. And then they try to Let's be honest. Yes, they pander to those communities. People notice. A Jewish community vote, we know that. Is the black community vote, we know that. Is the gay community vote, we know that. If you're part of this community, you must vote not, you're hurting the community. Your vote doesn't matter. Just like your $1 that you give to DACA, and that DACA doesn't matter either. It doesn't. Your $1 is not saving someone's life or helping out Salah, or is really going to pay the bills for someone who needs the bills, but that's not how it works. It's your $1 and his $1 and his $1 together we have millions of dollars, and that's how we make a difference. But everyone said, "I'm not going to give a dollar." The system would fall down. Right. Together Together we are stronger. The whole voting Exactly. The whole voting is based on the idea that I vote and you vote and you vote, and together we have power, and that's the most critical message. I'm just curious. Selfishly I want to ask this question, David, because maybe one day I could put this to good use. Who's the highest level ranked politician that you have a relationship with? That you know, that you can call up on your cell phone and get a favor out of like the the most important person like from the president and below. Sure. So, it in New York, it's basically all the top level elected officials, the mayor, the governor, the two US senators, like those are folks that I can get on the phone like right now if I wanted to get on the phone with. Right. As far as in DC, there are senior level members of Congress, and I have relationships in the White House, but I'm being honest, I can't get the president on the phone. I can get the mayor on the phone. I can get the governor on the phone. Do you know somebody who I can get has the president on speed dial? I'm saying I can get one of the the governors Sorry, one of the president's top aides on the phone, but I can't get That's good enough. That's basically getting himself. Okay, that's good enough. That's the short answer. The short answer is, in New York, basically every elected official. Amazing. Uh we appreciate that. We had a lot of fun with you. Before we finish off, we'd like to do two things at the end of our podcast. Number one is the lightning round, and the second thing after we do the lightning round is we'd like to ask you to pick someone who you think would be a great co-host like you were so great. And And you're going to have to call him now. We're going to ask you to make that call in front of us. That's [laughter] okay. So, Ushy, why don't we take away Yeah. Let's go through the five questions. random cards here just to ask you some questions. And uh the purpose of this is Answer Random Random cards. Okay. Yeah, random random You got to answer very quickly. Otherwise, you get to pass on one thing. You get to say none of your business You get to say none of your business on one answer that you don't want to you don't want to answer. Otherwise, it's got to be right off the top of your Fast. Question one. If you sold your business today, if you weren't working anymore, what would you be doing for fun? What would you be doing right now? I think I would be running a bed and breakfast. I love the idea of a customer service business where you focus on excellent quality, and people leave and they're very happy and they had a great experience. Okay. If you could have a lunch with one person in the world, alive or dead, who would that person be? I would love to have lunch with Vladimir Putin. I think that after the President of the United States, he's one of the most powerful people in the world. He's very unpredictable. It's not really clear what his agenda is. He's obviously alter the universe by invading uh Ukraine. I'd love to really understand what he's thinking. Mhm. Okay, great. Uh what was the most money you ever won or lost at a casino? Um around a hundred bucks. [laughter] So, you're not a gambler. Not a gambler. Around a hundred bucks. All right. Atlantic City playing blackjack. And that's my limit by the way. When I make a hundred bucks, I leave. When I make a hundred dollars or lose a hundred dollars, I leave. I'm a hundred dollar plus or minus guy. Wow. My max I ever lost in a casino, a hundred dollars, was in about 30 seconds. Um what is your number one vice? Number one vice? Yeah, like smoking, drinking. Social media. I spend way too much time on Twitter. I'm a little bit uh of addicted to the constant flow of news. I love news. I love information you're getting in real time. And so, I have to find times, and I consciously try to tweet a lot less lately because you can get really sucked into it. So, it's just like just like they say for teenagers it's addictive, it's also addictive for adults. All right, cool. What is your proudest moment in your life? It's a tough question. I think the proudest moment of uh my life is uh when uh my first son, Abram, was born. I was sitting there uh in the hospital, and I felt like, you know, this is really what life is all about, right? I think it's very easy to get lost in, you know, the accomplishments and uh the power and the fame and money, but in the end of the day, you know, that what life is all about is really family and religion and community. And when your son is born, your first kid is born, that means like you've accomplished that. Like, you've actually gone and done baruch hashem. I can agree with that. Ain hara, that was something that was very meaningful to me, and I still remember that moment, right? Being in the hospital, holding my son, I thought that was a very powerful moment that hasn't been replicated. That was a great lightning round. We appreciate that. I love that no questions were none of our business, so it uh They weren't such tough questions, you know. No, no. You got a lot His life is still on the Next time we'll pull out some more difficult cards. Okay, great. Who is that person that you think would be a great co-host for us? You know, I think he's a really fascinating person, and uh a really very smart, very successful uh very influential in the community. Uh there's a prolific real estate developer. His name is Gary Barnett. Ooh. And Gary is A famous person? very successful. Takes a lot of risks, uh but calculated risks. Very smart. I have a lot of respect for him. I think he could add a lot, especially from a business perspective, risk-taking perspective. He understands politics as well. Uh really dedicated to his family and the community. Uh if we get Gary on the show, I think that would Can you try to get him on the phone right now? home? Sure. [laughter] After the show. Yeah. And David, thank you so much for being here. We really appreciate it. It was fun getting to know more of you, but it was even more fun sitting on the sidelines and watching someone like Ushi getting to know you. And getting world class I was blown away. I really wish we could do another 5 hours. I feel like I learned so much from this. We'll be back I'm at the show and we're looking forward to it. I will say this is a great podcast. Love what you guys are doing and I just love that it is so free flowing. I think a lot of times people are just sort of stuck with one issue. I think anyone will have looked at the past hour we jumped through 20 different issues, right? You know how to make your life better, how to make the community better, how to make your wall better, how to be successful. I think it's great. I think you guys have a great style. I think this is really awesome and I'm happy to be one of your first guest and I hope that once you guys get a million subscribers, you invite me back in honor of the 1 millionth subscriber and then I will be here at the show. Absolutely. Thank you very much, David. Thank you, David. Have a great weekend. What an amazing episode that was, Ushi. I know you're looking at me and you have what to say, so I'll let you go first. I got to tell you this was wild. And what I took away from this is I am friends with the wrong Greenfield. [laughter] I have to tell you I almost feel short-changed. I I'm Michael, you and I were good friends. We know each other for a while now and I'm hanging out with you and there is actually another version out there that maybe slightly better. I mean, I don't want to get too too offensive here, but you know, he's impressive. He has such a tremendous amount of knowledge about politics and how it all works behind the scenes. But more than that, he was so eloquent in his the way he delivered and the way he like there was a lot of life lessons to be learned from how he was positioning things that is not just exclusive to politics, but it's things that real nuggets, real things that we could learn from in general about life. I'll give you one perfect example. You know, we always say that everyone is in sales. You're always selling someone, you're always selling to to something, right? To everyone has someone they need to talk to and communicate with. And we learned that about him knocking on doors to do a sale, to be a politician is one of the most important parts of connecting with your community and he showed us how important it is to learn how to communicate and knock on doors and really really get to know people. And we now understand more about why it's important even when you're living in New York to vote and why each and every vote is important. So many teachable moments. To me that was two of my highlights. Yeah, it was definitely a highlight for me as well. I really appreciated the fact that we brought up something where it was a major accomplishment for him. And he smiled, he smirked and he said, "Okay, that's great. And let's move on." And I stopped him and I said, "Wait a second. What do you mean let's move on? Like this is a big deal. Why are you not appreciating this a little bit more?" And his response, which was very genuine, and it was don't celebrate your wins too long. Like it's great. Something was, you know, that was a an accomplishment, but what's next? We need to keep going, keep growing, keep striving for more and more. And that is for me my biggest takeaway. My biggest takeaway from this is somebody like this who has a lot to celebrate and he's done a lot more than the average person has and yet he's still not content with that. He wants to do more and he wants to keep growing. I think the genius of it was that he said, "Give yourself And it's funny, he was vulnerable. He said that he used to give himself 1 minute to celebrate. Now he gives himself 24 hours to celebrate. himself to celebrate a little bit. I mean, I think highly successful people actually live a lifestyle like that. We're successful, we're appreciative, we're thanking God for those moments and we're moving on to the next thing. We're not complacent. Right, right. Look, I think we're all guilty of it to an extent, you know, we we appreciate our accolades, we appreciate our accomplishments and sometimes a little bit too much and sometimes we, you know, we we take a little bit too far, but not him. I mean, he was it was it was imminent and just the way he was, you know, presenting himself and I took that really as a a lesson and I think that is how you can reach greater heights is by really just appreciating what you've done, but not harping on it. Don't put too much stock in it. Keep going. Keep moving. And you did a great job with the lightning round and I want to tell you the feedback that you guys are giving us, all of our listeners, is so imperative to our growth because we heard feedback. We heard feedback from people saying the lightning round was great, but it was too long. Make it shorter, sweeter, to the point. We did that. We heard feedback of people saying tell us what the teachable moments are at the end of the show. We're doing that. So guys, like, subscribe, follow, get involved, give us your comments. Thank you for joining us on such an amazing episode. Looking forward to what's ahead.