This is also the first episode of this podcast. I have no idea if these two have massive popularity that brings them a built in audience, that's probably the case. That said, I don't think I would be the launching episode of a new podcast if I was campaigning, that's for sure.

The conspiracy worms in my brain could say something like: The Democrats likely paid this guy to push their opening episode in favor of this one specifically to grill Mamdani on this topic. They didn't inform him that this was going to be asked specifically to scold and correct him.

But that's not the the likely scenario.