Washington Examiner columnist Joe Concha said New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani “sympathizes” with “the wrong side” in the aftermath of an attempted bombing in the city.
Mamdani, New York City’s first Muslim mayor, celebrated Ramadan with Mahmoud Khalil, an anti-Israel protester who was detained by federal immigration officers last year, on Sunday. The mayor’s dinner with Khalil was held a day after police stopped an attempted bombing near the mayor’s residence, Gracie Mansion, arresting two suspects in the attempt.
Concha said Thursday that Mamdani “does not care about the optics” of inviting Khalil over the NYPD officers.
“This sent a signal to everybody in New York and around the country and the world, quite frankly, that this mayor sympathizes with, obviously, the wrong side here,” Concha said on Fox News’s Fox & Friends First. “If the mayor was going to have dinner with anyone, it should’ve been any and all members of the New York City police department who literally saved lives, especially Chief Aaron Edwards, who we just heard from in that sound bite.”
Edwards has gone viral for his role in Saturday’s arrests, as a photo of him jumping over a fence to detain one of the bombing attempt suspects was shared by the NYPD’s X account.
Edwards told CBS News the only thing he was thinking as he jumped the barrier was “catch the bad guy.”
Concha applauded Edwards for running toward “possible death” to protect New Yorkers. He emphasized that the first remarks Mamdani made after the bombing attempt were on “Islamophobia” before addressing how the suspects were “ISIS sympathizers.”
“If you are a New Yorker right now, you don’t feel very safe, Todd, Carley, as far as who’s running the city and where his sympathies lie. That is certainly for certain,” Concha said.
YOU CAN’T CONDEMN TERRORISM AND THEN HOST A TERRORISM SUPPORTER FOR DINNER
The two suspects in the bombing attempt, Emir Balat, 18, and Ibrahim Kayumi, 19, have been charged with providing material support to ISIS and using a weapon of mass destruction.
NYPD officer Sgt. Luis Navarro is also being praised for helping prevent the bombing, as he ran toward the lit explosive device. Mamdani thanked Edwards and Navarro for their service on Monday.
Both officers were asked on Wednesday if they would do what they did outside Gracie Mansion again, and both said, “Yes, without reservation.”
