Leading Online Voice Against Mamdani Is an AI Bot

Behind automated CityDeskNYC account is a recent graduate based in Canada

Saihajpreet Singh, 24, founder of Rhetor, which operates the CityDeskNYC account on X that counters Zohran Mamdani. Photo courtesy of the subject.

We’ve been paying close attention here to the campaign of socialist Zohran Mamdani for mayor of New York since even before he won the Democratic primary.

See for example June 6, “Capitalist Capital May Elect a Socialist Mayor”; June 9, “Everything That’s Wrong With Zohran Mamdani’s Policy Platform; If elected, he could demonstrate to New Yorkers how ruinous socialist policies are”; June 19, interview with New York City mayoral candidate Whitney Tilson, who talked about the risk to the city of Zohran Mamdani (“super-dangerous…extremely radical”).

And we’ve stayed with the story after the primary. See for example, among other pieces, June 25, 2025, “Why Zohran Mamdani won, and what it means,” and July 20, 2025, “Mamdani, in New Interview, Calls Israelis Child-Killers,” and August 4, 2025, “New Data Detail Who Is Backing Zohran Mamdani for Mayor,” and August 8, 2025, “New York City Is Starving Half a Million Children, Mamdani Claims,” and August 18, 2025, “Mamdani Likens N.Y. Billionaires to ‘Heartless’ Jerusalem Jews.”

In the reaction to those posts and to other Mamdani-related material on the X social media platform, an account called CityDeskNYC could be frequently be found replying with a speed, coherence, and level of intelligence that was astonishing for an account that was labeled as “automated.” I investigated, and I discovered that the human being behind that automated account is a 24-year-old recent college graduate named Saihajpreet Singh. Singh kindly agreed to answer my questions about his project.

Who are you, where are you, and how and why did you do this?

I’m Saihaj, founder of Rhetor. I’m based in Ottawa these days, and finished my university last year. I've lived in the US and still have close ties there. When I saw 1,500 pages of legislation get reduced to 100 after public pressure last December, I spotted the core problem: critical information hidden in complexity. I built DOGEai to prove AI could make expert knowledge accessible to everyone, translating legislation into engaging content. The results: millions of impressions and engagement from top political figures, including the President. Quickly realized our biggest value proposition was enabling organizations to create compelling, on-brand messaging at scale.

CityDeskNYC is Rhetor’s second demonstration on how this tech can be used to spark debate around socialist policies.

Does it need to be disclosed as campaign spending?

Yes, if a campaign is using this technology, it would be considered advertising and needs to be disclosed as campaign spending according to FEC regulations.

How have you managed to do it and not have it be suppressed/hidden by X? Do you have some special magic or personal connection with X?

Our bots follow X’s automation guidelines https://help.x.com/en/rules-and-policies/x-automation.

Are you hoping to make a business out of this or are you doing it for political/ideological reasons or what? If political ideological what are they and why?

CityDeskNYC was built as an advocacy project to highlight impacts of socialist policies on New York. X was the ideal platform to raise awareness about these issues.

The underlying technology behind Rhetor serves a much broader purpose beyond political advocacy — it’s a communications tool that can help organizations and businesses of all types grow their reach and scale their comms infrastructure. While I do believe democratic socialism is dangerous, CityDeskNYC was started because the election is/was the biggest story in politics and an ideal opportunity to show our success is repeatable.

Does it just work on X or would it work on other platforms like Insta or TikTok, too?

Our current focus is X but we're actively building toward a multiplatform future. You can already find us expanding to TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@citydesknyc

How is it so good? I mean, probably better than 95 percent or 98 percent of humans can do?

Agent’s power comes from processing comprehensive information streams and presenting findings in accessible formats. It sources data from the internet and social media to build context around current issues, linking them to historical examples of similar policy implementations. This creates opportunities for evidence-based learning, helping people understand what has worked or failed in the past before making new decisions. CityDeskNYC has different data sources compared to DOGEai but the inner workings are very similar. You can learn more:

https://x.com/singh_saihaj/status/1888639845108535363

What is the tech behind it? Is it using some other AI program or app to generate it or is it homemade/your own proprietary thing?

I built Rhetor, which is the underlying technology that powers both CityDeskNYC and DOGEai.

It’s an open source project that you can check out here: https://github.com/saihaj/DOGE-AI

What reaction have you gotten so far?

We started with a million impressions in the first week and it continues growing each week.

We’ve gotten engagement from notable figures like Jim Walden, Brandon Straka, Dr. Naomi Wolf and many others.

Additional Notes:

- Podcast on Rhetor:

https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/1212-ottawa-guy-invents-worlds-best-worst-a-i-attack-bot/

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