Mamdani’s Last Stand

The second big New York mayoral debate happened on Wednesday night.

The front-runner, Zoran Mamdani, the pro-Islamist, pro-jihadist Marxist front-runner who won the Democratic nomination, appeared against Andrew Cuomo, the former governor of New York, who had to resign from office after getting a bunch of old people killed with his bad COVID policy — and also grabbing women. He ran out of old people and was ousted from office, which is why Kathy Hochul is now the governor of New York.

Cuomo lost the Democratic nomination to Mamdani and has been trailing him in the polls as an independent ever since, largely because there’s a third candidate in the race, Republican Curtis Sliwa. He’s a radio host from New York, and a long-time New York mainstay who founded the Guardian Angels. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, the Guardian Angels would walk around with red berets on the NYC subway, making the city safer for New Yorkers by intimidating would-be criminals. 

The polls right now have Mamdani ahead, and it is unclear that even if Sliwa drops out, the consolidated support between Cuomo and Sliwa would be enough to overcome Mamdani.

What is amazing is Mamdani’s base of support. According to a brand new poll out from the Patriot Polling survey, Mamdani has 62% of the foreign-born vote in New York City. Cuomo is at 24%; Sliwa is at 12%.

For those who seem to believe that it makes no difference when you import a bunch of people to the United States who have different views of the United States than mainline, mainstream, average American views — it makes a very, very big difference.

Among American-born New Yorkers, Cuomo leads at 40% while Mamdani has only 32%. Sliwa has 25%. The poll shows Mamdani at the top of the pack, with 43% of the overall vote, Cuomo with 34% of that vote, and Sliwa with 19%.

If that’s accurate, it would mean that Sliwa dropping out would mean that Mamdani would likely lose.

It appears that TikTok has been putting its thumb on the scale in favor of Mamdani. The amount of online manipulation that is now part of our daily culture is truly astonishing. We saw it during BLM. We saw it during COVID. We’ve seen it most recently during the Israel-Hamas War, in which extraordinary amounts of propaganda were put out by foreign actors on TikTok and on X, deliberately designed to split the American body politic over that particular issue.

And now TikTok has been heavily promoting Zohran Mamdani.

According to the New York Post:

TikTok is allegedly putting its thumb on the scale to help far-left New York state Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani win the New York City mayoralty, a new report claims.The Chinese-owned app’s algorithm is “distorting the playing field in New York City’s mayoral race” by “amplifying” pro-Mamdani content while “suppressing” videos backing his opponent, Andrew Cuomo …

It is not a shock that the Chinese-based app would prefer a Marxist Islamist as the mayor of New York. 

In last night’s debate, when questioned in any serious fashion about his views, Mamdani had nothing. He’s got that phony, smarmy, pasted-on smile that sends a chill up the spine of everyone who can identify basic authenticity, but seems to charm the pants off a bunch of wild leftists who see Mamdani smiling and somehow think it’s genuine.

Cuomo and Sliwa went on the attack. It got hot. The reality is that on the debate stage, Sliwa was the best. There’s no question that Curtis is the best person on the debate stage.

The problem, of course, is that Curtis is a Republican. He’s never going to break 25% of the vote, not for love or money.

This has been a major issue, at least for the last several weeks. It’s been clear that the only way to beat Mamdani would be for there to be a consolidation of the vote.

Curtis was asked about dropping out and basically melted down, saying, “I have armed security guards now protecting my life. And Nancy’s like I’ve been bribed by the billionaires to drop out of here. If anything happens to me or anything happens to my wife because of this frenzy that I hear constantly coming from some of your colleagues here at WABC, it’s on you guys. … my life is on the line here … The frenzy that is coming out of people’s mouths …”

That is not an excuse for why he’s staying in the race. Many of us have armed security at all times. That is the nature of the beast right now. It is just an unfortunate point in American politics.

That is an unfortunate result of so many political actors these days who use unhinged rhetoric about their opponents and include in that unhinged rhetoric, insane conspiracism that leads unhinged people to believe that prominent political commentators and politicians are controlling their lives and making their lives worse in such a way that they can only be removed by force.

Curtis needs to drop out to give Cuomo a shot. Cuomo has run a particularly terrible race. He has basically been a somnambulist throughout this race. He has not run an energetic campaign. He seems to believe the mayoralty should simply fall in his lap.

But Mamdani didn’t get out of this debate scot-free; Cuomo launched a blistering attack, pointing out that Mamdani is a leech on the ass of society, that he has never held a job, and has been a completely useless person his entire life, which is absolutely true. He is a trust fund baby who tried to make a career as a bad rapper before getting elected to the Assembly, where he ditched pretty much every major vote. He is 33 years old and has yet to hold a real job, and he’s running for mayor of the financial capital of Planet Earth.

Cuomo blasted:

You have never had a job. You’ve never accomplished anything. There’s no reason to believe you have any merit or qualification for 8.5 million lives. You don’t know how to run a government, you don’t know how to handle an emergency, and you’ve literally never proposed the bill on anything that you’re not talking about in your campaign. You had the worst attendance record in the assembly, and you gave yourselves the highest raise in the United States of America. You went from 110,000 to $140,000, and then you never showed up for work and you missed 80% of the votes. Shame on you!

Andrew Cuomo just eviscerated Zohran Mamdani for being a snake oil salesman.

“You’ve never had a job. You’ve never accomplished anything. You never proposed a bill in NY senate to fix anything. You had the worst attendance. You never even showed up. SHAME ON YOU.” pic.twitter.com/N184Nrme43

— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) October 22, 2025

Credit: @EYakoby/X.com

I cannot deal with Mamdani’s smile. I can’t. It’s so creepy and weird. The fakeness, the inauthenticity of this phony, phony human being is sinister.

He just says “affordability” and the “future” a lot. And what does he mean by affordability? He means that he is going to promise a bunch of things he can’t actually fulfill, because he doesn’t have the capacity to raise state taxes. He wants city-owned grocery stores and a $30 minimum wage.

This is crazy. He is a weirdo creep, a Marxist who seems to believe that he can run a junior high presidential campaign in which you promise no homework and free candy every day, and people will vote for it.

Mamdani is the scavenger coalition — all in one human. I talk in my book “Lions and Scavengers” about the Scavenger Coalition, which would be the leeches, vultures, and barbarians. He’s trying to appeal to all three. He really is more on the barbarian line, meaning he is somebody who is not originally from the United States, who does not believe in the basic ideals of the United States, but is using the free speech and freedom of thought and free politics in the United States to make his way to destroy the civilization from the inside.

And he is making promises he has no intention of keeping.

As I said before, this is a junior high school presidential campaign where he promises free cookies and milk, endless candy, and no homework.

And if New Yorkers buy this, they’re going to get to take the ride after they buy the ticket.

Curtis should drop out of the race. I’ve said it over and over. He does not have a path to victory. I’m of a divided mind about this because I still have the H.L. Mencken phraseology in my mind, which is that democracy is the theory that people get what they vote for, good and hard.

But as someone who would like to see New York not become even more of a s***hole than it has become recently, I’m obviously rooting very hard for the defeat of this Marxist Islamist.