The Media Are in Denial About Zohran Mamdani

By Jeffrey Blehar

Tuesday, July 01, 2025

 

Since I spent most of last week writing about those historic developments, I don’t want to repeat myself; I will only note here that New Yorkers just selected a guy whose last name can be anagrammed to spell “I, Madman” as their next mayor. Yes, I know the election doesn’t technically take place until November, but incumbent Nightlife Mayor Eric Adams will not save you, New Yorkers. In the meantime, I feel the need to bluntly point out that the financial capital of the world is about to elect a communist who calls himself a socialist and has no real understanding of either ideology.

 

It is both sad and amusing to see how media commentators are failing to reckon with the reality of this simple fact. (More accurately, perhaps: They are necessarily accommodating themselves to an inexorable future.) The Wall Street Journal was out this weekend with a peppy, upbeat personal profile of Mamdani’s rise to power, which could not help but remind me of Simpsons anchorman Kent Brockman turning on a dime midway through the Springfield Evening News to welcome his new insect overlords. In upscale liberal quarters, the New Yorker is attempting to sell us on “The Case for Zohranomics.” (For those curious, it amounts to little better than “imagine a world where money isn’t real.”)

 

I can assure you that no such excuses will be made for Zohran Mamdani here at National Review. Regardless of brand affiliation (“Democrat,” “Democratic Socialist,” etc.), the man is an avowed communist in his own words. At this point, only his lack of any real-life work experience offers cause for hope: Imagine how doomed New York might be if he actually successfully executes on any of his goals.

 

Do I exaggerate? Am I engaging in shabby Red-baiting by calling Zohran Mamdani an outright communist? (Keep in mind, NR would never consider itself above Red-baiting — we are proud to have been founded in large part for that specific purpose.) No, not really. Mamdani has happily confessed in the past that he and his cause need to soft-pedal their real aims, because people don’t yet believe in “BDS and the end goal of seizing the means of production.” (BDS is shorthand for the “boycott, divestment, and sanctions” movement, the other true animating passion of Mamdani’s life.)

 

Who am I to deny the man’s own testimony? My only question is why I am seeing these clips after the primary election, as opposed to before it. Andrew Cuomo was a terrible candidate for mayor of New York for any number of overdetermined reasons, but his greatest (because final) sin truly was hubris: He ran such a lazy and self-entitled campaign, assuming victory was his for the taking without any effort, that his team never bothered to research or circulate clips like these back when it had a chance to matter.

 

Thankfully, these are “old” positions of Mamdani’s, the follies of youth — he said them all the way back in 2022, in the archaic past of the Biden administration. I’m sure he doesn’t believe any of that anymore. I’m sure he will govern sensibly.

 

Jamaal Bowman Returns with Strange News from Another Star

 

Do you remember the dewy, youthful, more innocent days of 2023 and 2024, dear reader? Remember when the world was young and all the world knew Jamaal Bowman’s name? I sure do, and I refuse to lie to you about how much I miss the guy: The lunkheaded “Squad” member from Westchester County, N.Y. — a fire-alarm-yanking, UFO-conspiracy-theorizing, casually antisemitic hotep — provided me with so much comedy fodder during his tenure in Congress that I consider him an honorary co-founder of the Carnival of Fools alongside Nancy Mace: Comic follies like theirs reliably boil my bile. When I finally had to bid Bowman farewell — after he got utterly crushed in his August 2024 primary by normie Westchester County Democrat George Latimer — I made sure to give him a properly flaming Viking funeral as a send-off.

 

But since nobody has the decency to retire from public life anymore, Bowman’s spirit now haunts us in its political afterlife, like the shade of a warrior denied entry into Valhalla that roams the earth restlessly, materializing only for the occasional cable news hit. And when he appeared on CNN’s Newsnight roundtable last week, he naturally had mortality on his mind:

 

You can’t be calm about this! I’m a black man in America! The reason why heart disease — listen to what I’m saying — the reason why heart disease, and cancer, and obesity, and diabetes are bigger in the black community is because of the stress we carry from having to deal with being called the N-word directly or indirectly every day.

 

Now I’ll admit that Newsnight is actually amusing enough as far as cable news panel discussions go. (Twitter users will instantly recognize it from clips as the place where lone Republican Scott Jennings sits patiently and tries not to take the bait while angry woke people shriek at him.) But dear God, man, if people are calling Jamaal Bowman the N-word there — directly or indirectly — every day then it’s time for a serious internal investigation. (Frankly, that’s just crass.) How pathetic it is for Jamaal Bowman to blame African-American health problems (explained almost exclusively by dietary and genetic factors) on racism — but then again what did you expect from a man who isn’t quite sure whether the CIA secretly figured out time travel?

 

Thom Tillis Taps Out

 

Senator Thom Tillis announced over the weekend that he would not be running for reelection in North Carolina in 2026. The move felt inevitable; never a particularly well-loved politician, Tillis won his previous races through a combination of sheer luck, North Carolina’s persistently Republican tilt — especially in the post-Covid era — and his own dogged craft. (Tillis may not be a natural glad-hander, but he is a professional.) The race was already set to be the most fiercely contested Senate election in the country. Now Tillis finds himself on the wrong side of Donald Trump and his One Big Beautiful Bill — albeit for the strangest of purported reasons for a Republican of the older school, its Medicaid cuts.

 

So Tillis has bowed to the inevitable and hung up his gloves. As things currently stand — and given the likely 2026 electoral environment — this race now slightly shifts from “Toss-up” to “Lean D.” The reason the shift is merely slight is that, given the damage Tillis has already sustained among North Carolina’s largely Trumpist Republican base, his chances in an off-year election were already at roughly coin-flip levels. Perhaps it is for the best that the GOP gets a new look in North Carolina.

 

But before I go, let’s have fun imagining the quickest way this race could go from “Lean D” straight to “Safe Democrat”: Former lieutenant governor and 2024 Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson is tanned, rested, ready, and has only notionally expressed the desire to own his fellow black Americans as slaves. (In his further defense, he said this while posting under the pseudonym “minisoldr” on a pornographic website named “Black Africa,” where he discoursed on his transgender fantasies at unfortunate length and, yes, I regret to inform you that all of this really happened.)

 

Mark Robinson, of course, has long been one of Donald Trump’s favorite politicians — Robinson owes his political career to catching the public eye with his embrace of Trumpism — and is looking for work. Lara Trump’s name is now also being floated for the nomination — I assume as a joke — but if North Carolina Republicans want to experience what it feels like to motivate every Democrat in the state while demotivating half of their own voters, then go ahead — that type of electoral carnage is what gets me up in the morning. As things currently stand, the NC GOP is in a world of trouble if and when Roy Cooper throws his hat in the ring for the Democrats.

 

Regrets? I’m sure Thom Tillis has a few. But I give him credit for going out — in public at least — with a certain amount of resigned bonhomie; his primary concern now is to ensure that he is followed by a Republican and not Cooper. To that end, I second his farewell announcement on Twitter/X: “Thanks for the retirement wishes, Mr. President, looking forward to working with you for a successful 2026. Word to the wise, let’s avoid minisoldr.”