It remains an emotional subject, the hijacking and crashes by three teams of Muslim extremists of three commercial airliners killing thousands of innocents in 2001. It's a modern-day Pearl Harbor trauma that reignites awful memories every Sept. 11 of all three sites' attack — the World Trade Center, Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and the Pentagon.
A million or so Muslims are now among New York City's residents. They may or may not see or feel it that way. However, it's real and remains a raw wound for many. But what about one of them, Zohran Mamdani, the city's newly-elected Muslin mayor who won the Democrat primary in June and got 50.4 percent of the vote in the November election.
He is scheduled to take office on January 1st.
At the moment, Mamdani seems to be playing down some of his radical campaign promises — universal free childcare, city-run grocery stores, and free bus service. And we haven't heard much more recently about his previous calls to abolish the police and his support for a global intifada, an Arabic term for a popular uprising.
The 34-year-old immigrant from Uganda entered the country late last century with his family. He became a United States citizen just seven years ago and has been a member of the New York State Assembly since 2020. He represented a district in Queens, the same borough in which Donald Trump was raised.
Mamdani recently released a videotape, in Spanish and English, using a whiteboard to provide detailed instructions to illegal immigrants on how to avoid detection from ICE authorities and how to attract a crowd of sympathizers if detained. My RedState colleague Teri Christoph has the details in her post here.
In this week's audio commentary, I share some thoughts on Mamdani's controversial arrival on the political scene. And what it might mean nationally for the Democrat Party to have him as the well-known, radical mayor of the country's most populous city as his party seeks to gain control of Congress in next year's midterm elections to thwart President Donald Trump's aggressive agenda for the final two years of his administration.
You can listen to the commentary right here:
The most recent audio commentary analyzed the disturbing pattern of calls for violence that seems to emanate largely from the left side of the country's political spectrum. President Trump and his supporters are regularly labeled as fascists and Nazis.
- Posing with a baseball bat in hand, Democrats' House leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (NY-08) urged followers to "fight in the streets."
- Democrat Senate leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called on people to "forcefully rise up."
- California Gov. Gavin Newsom said, “I’m going to punch these sons of bitches in the mouth.”
One of the points I made was how the style of such name-calling and threats is more reminiscent of elementary school playground altercations than civil discourse among leaders.
This week's Sunday column discussed news coverage implications of the Washington Post's distorted account of the first drug-boat bombing back on Sept. 2, in which two unidentified sources claimed that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth had allegedly ordered the combat commander to leave no survivors.
The New York Times then produced a report with five unidentified sources countering the Post's account. And then the incident commander, Adm. Mitch Bradley, testified to Congress that Hegseth had issued no such order, and the reason the boat was attacked again was the crew apparently seeking to continue its mission.
New Dangers Emerge from Media's Selective Coverage of Drug Boat Attacks.
The bad news is that this is just another example of media running with a distorted partial account that fits a negative narrative about the administration's actions. The good news is competition kicked in and The Times corrected the account.
I also pointed this out:
Conveniently forgotten (in the drug boat controversy) are Barack Obama’s more than 530 drone attacks executed on alleged terrorist targets in foreign lands, killing hundreds of civilian non-combatants during his presidency.
