Mamdani Steps Up Strident “Working Class” Campaign While Sounding Like Pompous Phony

“There have been some who have questioned whether that we aspire toward is possible,” he says.

Zohran Mamdani speaking at a May 11, 2021 rally to boycott, divest and sanction Israel.`

The socialist Democratic nominee for mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, is heading into the Thursday October 16 debate with independent Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa after a series of interviews and public appearances that offer new insights into his weaknesses.

Mamdani, 33, has recently done a New Yorker radio interview with that magazine’s editor David Remnick, a Fox News interview with Martha MacCallum, and an appearance at a Washington Heights campaign rally. The New Yorker and the New York Times Magazine also both published long profile-interview pieces. The Editors spent hours listening to and reading about Mamdani and here analyzes the essential highlights of all five recent Mamdani appearances—from his eating goat with his hands (seriously) to his singling out for attack by name Bill Ackman and Ronald Lauder as “billionaires who think their money can buy our democracy.”

Mamdani on the New Yorker Radio Hour with David Remnick, October 10, 2025: Mamdani sounds like a pompous stuffed shirt in this interview. He uses failed Texas Democratic politician Beto O’Rourke’s method of speaking, usually avoiding contractions as a way of sounding more profound. “That is fine,” he said at one point. Instead of sounding profound, Mamdani just sounds stilted—like the opposite of a regular, down-to-earth person. Here are some quotes that give you a sense of it: “that all will choose to use them, not just those who cannot afford that which is being provided by the private sector.” And, “To be able to grow up without having to question whether that which I need would be that which I had is something that every child should have.” Ordinary New Yorkers like a sandwich. Zohran Mamdani likes the “that which.”

Here is Mamdani trying to address the claim that he’s living in an unrealistic fantasy world. “That to dream of the city we deserve is as if to engage in a politics that has no place.”

Mamdani profiled in the New Yorker magazine, “Ready or Not,” by Eric Lach, October 9, 2025 (print issue dated October 20). This is the piece with the goat:

“Chicken or goat?” Mamdani asked, flipping the contents of plastic takeout containers onto plates and handing one to me. …He ate with his hands—something that has become a fixation among right-wingers—and offered me a fork and knife.

This piece also has an email from the candidate’s father, Mahmood Mamdani, who is a professor at Columbia:

In an e-mail, Mahmood recalled discussions with his colleagues in Cape Town about “whether particular strategies for combatting apartheid—such as the global boycott of apartheid South Africa—were relevant for the struggle to decolonize or dezionize Israel.” He added, “Zohran was a listener. . . . I doubt that he remained unaffected by the exchange on these issues.”

Fox News interview with Martha MacCallum, October 15: The headline out of this was Mamdani refusing to say that Hamas should disarm or give up control of Gaza. “I don’t really have opinions about the future of Hamas and Israel beyond the question of justice and safety, and the fact that anything has to abide by international law. And that applies to Hamas, that applies to the Israeli military, applies to anyone you could ask me about,” he said, drawing a rhetorical parallel between the terrorist group and Israel’s army.

Here, too, Mamdani talked about “the needs of working class Americans, working class New Yorkers,” accusing Cuomo of wanting to “sell outworking class New Yorkers to your billionaire donors.” And here, too Mamdani wound up getting himself tongue-tied in a cloud of pronouns: “this is something that so often doesn’t actually have that what has been spoken about.”

“Inside the Improbable, Audacious and (So Far) Unstoppable Rise of Zohran Mamdani,” by Astead Herndon in the New York Times Magazine, online October 14, 2025. The noteworthy thing about this piece is how the New York Times seems to be cheerleading for him. The Times tries to make it sound like Mamdani is moderating: “He supports Palestinian rights; he’s not anti-Zionist.” That’s misleading, given that Mamdani is a longtime supporter of the movement to boycott, divest, and sanction Israel; given that he has said he’d arrest Prime Minister Neyanyahu, given that he’s refused to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, and given that he’s falsely accused Israel of both genocide and apartheid. The Times mentions Mamdani associate “Sally Susman, a longtime corporate executive and member of the finance committees for the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden” without describing Susman as an executive of the Pfizer pharmaceutical company whose CEO just days ago had a friendly event in the White House with President Trump. Patrick Gaspard is identified as “a former Obama administration aide and director of the Democratic National Committee” rather than as an anti-Israel former George Soros operative. The Times declares of Mamdani that “his victory is all but assured,” which is outrageous and irresponsible considering that there are two televised debates scheduled that have not yet happened. It’s destructive to democracy to declare a candidate the presumptive winner before votes have been cast.

The Washington Heights “Our Time Has Come” campaign rally, October 14: Among the speakers at this rally was former Federal Trade Commissioner Lina Khan, who denounced “robber barons” and “corrupt oligarchs” and declared, “the days of Democratic leaders choosing to ally with titans of industry over working people are over.” This while the Times magazine is reassuring everyone with news that Mamdani is getting cozy with Pfizer executive Susman and former UBS banker and Obama Martha’s Vineyard golfing buddy Robert Wolf (a shabbat dinner speaker at Chabad of Martha’s Vineyard). Which is it?

Likewise, Rep. Nydia Velazquez promised a Mamdani administration “where government serves the people, not the powerful.” Unless the powerful is George Soros?

At this rally, the crowd broke into a chant of “free, free Palestine” at the behest of WNBA New York Liberty point guard Natasha Cloud, who declared “We are ready for…a government that serves the working class people.”

Mamdani himself denounced “billionaires like Bill Ackman and Ronald Lauder.”

“They say that we pose an existential threat,” Mamdani said. “They are right. We are an existential threat to billionaires who think their money can buy our democracy.”

Here, too, Mamdani sounded like a pompous professor. “We are not afraid of our own ideas,” he said. “There have been some who have questioned whether that we aspire toward is possible.”

And, ‘the politics we practice need not be one of either fear or mediocrity.”

And, “for we will use our power to transform the principled into the possible.”

Anyway, New York City may have found the one politician who can make Donald Trump look humble. Trump was asked about Mamdani this week during an appearance with the president of Argentina. “It’s a fluke if he gets in,” Trump said. “He’s a communist. He hates police. He hates Jewish people.” Whatever Trump’s flaws, at least he speaks in plain English, which is more than can be said for Zohran Mamdani.

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