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Zohran Mamdani‘s campaign for New York City mayor has been simultaneously insulting and patently disturbing from the start. But it somehow found a new low recently when it came to the worst-ever attack on American soil, 9/11.
“I want to speak to the memory of my aunt, who stopped taking the subway after September 11th because she did not feel safe in her hijab,” he said to reporters while fighting back (fake) tears at the Islamic Cultural Center in The Bronx. “The dream of every Muslim is simply to be treated as any other New Yorker, and yet for too long we have been told to ask for less than that and to be satisfied with whatever little we receive,” he added. “No more!”
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Mamdani would go on to speak for ten minutes. No reporters challenged him on anything, almost as if they were in awe. And never once did he mention the 2,977 people who died in New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C. Not once. Instead, he pointed to the true victim: his aunt, who allegedly got mean looks on the subway after 9/11.
Speaking of that aunt, it turns out she was either home in Tanzania that day, or Mamdani morphed into Joe Biden and got her confused with another deceased relative. And when called out on social media, including by Vice President J.D. Vance, Mamdani “clarified” he was talking about his father’s cousin.
“I was speaking about Zehra fuhi, my father’s cousin, who passed away a few years ago,” he said Monday.
But when his campaign was asked to provide the cousin’s name, they declined.
Uh-huh.
The comments come not long after Mamdani basically gave all New Yorkers and Americans the finger after posing with Imam Siraj Wahhaj, an unindicted co-conspirator of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing that killed six and injured more than 1,000 people. After the bombing, Wahhaj has repeatedly called the FBI and CIA “the real terrorists” and believes America “is a garbage can. Filthy. Filthy and sick.”
“Today at Masjid At-Taqwa, I had the pleasure of meeting with Imam Siraj Wahhaj, one of the nation’s foremost Muslim leaders and a pillar of the Bed-Stuy community for nearly half a century,” Mamdani wrote on X.
This embrace should be especially interesting to the LGBT community in New York, because here’s what Wahhaj thinks should happen to gay couples.
“And you know, brothers and sisters, you know what the punishment is, if a man is found with another man?” he said during a sermon in 2017. “The Prophet Mohammad said the one who does it and the one to whom it is done to, kill them both.”
“Kill them both.” So if you’re a reporter covering the Mamdani campaign, maybe this is a good question to ask the candidate: “You called it a ‘pleasure’ meeting Imam Siraj Wahhaj. Called him a pillar of the community. Do you also support killing anyone who is gay?
And then there’s Mamdani’s father, who really adores suicide bombers like the ones who carried out 9/11.
“Suicide bombing needs to be understood as a feature of modern political violence rather than stigmatized as a mark of barbarism,” he wrote in his book Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror. “We need to recognize the suicide bomber, first and foremost, as a category of soldier.”
Mamdani’s father also has compared the United States to Nazi Germany: “The Allies who prosecuted individual Nazis at Nuremberg were invested in ignoring Nazism’s political roots, for these roots were also America’s,” he wrote in another one of his books, Neither Settler Nor Native: The Making and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities, which was dedicated to Zohran. “The United States is the outcome of a history of genocide, ethnic cleansing, official racism, and concentration camps.”
“And Zohran, our son, who understands that the time has come to go out and join those impatient to change the world,” he also wrote.
So does the apple fall far from the tree? Not at all, because here’s what Mamdani said just two years ago at the Democratic Socialists of America convention as its keynote speaker.
“We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it’s been laced by the IDF [Israeli Defense Forces],” he proclaimed in 2023.
If you’re on the police force there, why would you possibly work for this person who clearly hates you as much as he hates Israel?
Well, that whole changing-the-world thing is coming to New York City because this mayoral race has been over for some time. Andrew Cuomo, touted as presidential material just five years ago, is not very well liked by Democrats in New York.
Perhaps it’s because of his decision to put elderly COVID-19 patients into nursing homes that led to the senseless deaths of thousands. Or perhaps it’s the sexual harassment allegations that ended his run as governor. But he simply can’t seem to land anything on the slick Mamdani, who sells Marxism and gives away lots of free stuff with a wink and a smile.
As for Curtis Sliwa, he’s in the unenviable position of trying to find enough votes from the center and right in a city that only gave 2024 presidential winner Donald Trump 30% of the vote. And with Cuomo in the race as an independent after losing the Democratic primary, the pie gets split even further, leaving only crumbs left for the Republicans.
So what can we expect from the Mamdani administration?
Free busing paid for by higher taxes.
Mamdani says these free buses will “only” cost $800 million. To pay for it, he plans on raising the tax rate on “millionaires and billionaires” from 50% of their earnings to 52%. In other words, you should give more to the government than you get to keep.
And these “millionaires and billionaires” are smart: They have the ability to move to other states like Florida, which is seeing such a massive population increase that its electoral votes, which were 25 during the 2000 election, are poised to jump to 32 when the next Census is conducted in 2030.
From July 2023 to July 2024 alone, its population jumped by 467,347 people, making it the largest population increase in the country. Meanwhile, New York City’s population lost 326,118 from 2020 to 2024. If and when Mamdani gets in and these tax increases become reality, expect this number to accelerate the income of tax-free states such as Florida, Tennessee, Texas, and more. New York is also forecast to lose one electoral vote, along with California and Minnesota, while Florida, Texas, Utah, and Idaho will gain.
As for the utopia of free buses, here’s what the result will look like: The homeless and/or drug-addled individuals will simply use these air-conditioned and heated buses as mobile homes and camp out. Drugs could be couriered from point A to point B without issue. Parents will be too frightened to put their children on these buses. Those employed and going to work will not tolerate this new reality for long. There’s also precedent: Portland tried free busing back more than a decade ago, but the city ended the program in 2012 thanks to increased violence and vandalism.
The Democratic Party is also about to have big problems nationally, if Mamdani is the mayor of the nation’s largest city, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) becomes the face of the Democratic Party, pending her decision to run for president in 2028. Winning in deep-blue NYC is one thing, but winning key swing states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada is another.
Working-class voters and anyone remotely near the center will reject any candidate who embraces higher taxes, fewer police, open borders, and socialism. Thanks to Hakeem Jefferies, the House Minority Leader, endorsing Mandani, that decision officially teethers a Marxist to the national party. We can fully expect to see Mamdani’s face in every Republican ad for the 2026 midterms.
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The NYC press used to be feared by politicians and athletes alike. Those days are long gone, because if Mamdani is going to win as comfortably as it appears he will, that’s because the vetting process through the media was soft and scared.
Say hello to Mayor Mamdani, folks! The anti-semitic, pro-Communist 34-year-old who will make Bill de Blasio look like Ronald Reagan.
