A Senate hearing on political violence highlights radical Left ideology, a brewing power struggle within DHS shakes up ICE leadership, and NYC mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani&#8217;s lead slips amid criticism for his polarizing policies and past comments.
It’s Wednesday, October 29, 2025, and this is the news you need to know to start your day. Today’s edition of the Morning Wire podcast can be heard below, and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/mrn-251029">the video version can be seen on The Daily Wire</a>:
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<h2 style="text-align: center;">Senate Addresses Left-Wing Violence</h2>
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Topline: Daily Wire host Michael Knowles testified in front of members of the Senate on Tuesday about the growing trend of ideologically motivated violence and its threat to the First Amendment.
Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) and his Republican colleagues believe the threat of violence coming from radical leftists, including &#8220;Antifa,&#8221; is on the rise and will only continue to be an issue unless political leaders and the media are forced to face that fact.
The purpose of Tuesday’s Senate hearing was to present extensive evidence to shine a spotlight on the problem. The assassination of Charlie Kirk prompted this hearing, and it has made this issue of political violence impossible to ignore.
But even with legacy media outlets being forced to cover Kirk’s assassination, critics say they’ve worked hard to bury evidence pointing to the ideological motives of the suspect in the case. The suspect was a leftist who called Kirk’s conservative views “hateful” – and who was in a romantic relationship with a male who identifies as a female.
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As Schmitt said, there is still a strong need to ensure the efforts to bury that reality aren’t successful. Inviting a high-profile figure like The Daily Wire’s Knowles to speak was part of the strategy, as he has a large platform and firsthand experience with the kinds of threats coming from the Left.
Knowles specifically spoke to how past administrations refused to list things like the Black Lives Matter riots and massacres by transgender individuals as leftwing violence in official government records.
“Consider the Covenant School massacre in Nashville, for instance, in which a trans-identifying shooter murdered Christian children at school after leaving a manifesto outlining ideological motivations, such as gender ideology. That incident, according to authorities, lacked an ideological motive,” said Knowles. 
“The Black Lives Matter riots — overtly leftist demonstrations that left dozens of people dead and over a billion dollars’ worth of property damage — likewise fail to show up on registers of left-wing political violence,” he continued. “Even an attack by Antifa operatives that targeted me personally for my conservative political views appeared in official records and data sets as nothing more than ‘obstructing law enforcement.’”
Knowles said that the tide has somewhat begun to turn with things like the assassination of Kirk and the multiple attempts on Trump, forcing “honest” liberals to acknowledge the truth about where most of the violence is coming from.
“On September 23, no less an emblem of American liberalism than The Atlantic magazine admitted that fact in an article, based on a recent study, under the headline, ‘Left-Wing Terrorism Is On The Rise,’” said Knowles. “Less honest liberals, including members of Congress, have nevertheless persisted in denying this fact. Democrat Congressman Seth Moulton reacted to a leftist’s assassination of the most prominent proponent of civil debate on the American Right by blaming the Right.”
A YouGov poll just last month <a href="https://thehill.com/national-security/5504569-americans-political-violence-poll/">found</a> that 26% of young liberals say it is “sometimes justified” to resort to violence to achieve political goals. Only 7% of young conservatives said the same.
<h2 style="text-align: center;">An Administration Divided On Deportation</h2>
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Topline: A major leadership shakeup at ICE is exposing internal divides over the Trump administration’s mass deportation effort.
ICE leadership is being moved out of multiple offices across the country. They&#8217;re being replaced with Border Patrol leadership. The swaps have happened in Los Angeles, Phoenix, Philadelphia, Denver, El Paso, San Diego, Seattle, Portland, and New Orleans.
The Trump administration has already shifted when it comes to who is in charge of the mass deportation campaign. U.S. Customs and Border Patrol commander-at-large Greg Bovino has been put in charge of operations in places such as Los Angeles and Chicago, where Border Patrol agents are making arrests alongside ICE.
Quality versus quantity: There have been significant internal divisions within the Department of Homeland Security over how the administration should conduct its operations and mass deportation arrests.
The division centers on differing priorities: Corey Lewandowski, a senior advisor in a temporary position in the administration, wants to maximize the number of arrests and deportations. ICE Director Todd Lyons and border czar Tom Homan advocate for focusing on arresting hardened criminals.
Quality camp: Lyons and Homan’s camp is very concerned about public perception. Border Patrol and ICE are under a lot of scrutiny. They want to show the public that they&#8217;re getting hardened criminals off the streets and keeping Americans safe. It&#8217;s also about making sure ICE officers feel good about the work they&#8217;re doing and that they&#8217;re making targeted arrests.
Quantity camp: Bovino was involved in some of the more controversial raids, including Home Depot parking lots and car washes. Those raids drew big protests in places like Southern California and Chicago. Bovino has faced significant scrutiny for this. He was testifying in court on Tuesday about his alleged use of tear gas during an operation in Chicago.
ICE is also facing backlash, but it wants to minimize that and get officers back to quality work.
Who is winning? The internal announcement of the Border Patrol takeover of operations came from Lewandowski. He notified Homeland Security officials about the leadership changes at ICE. His being the source of the announcement suggests that his camp is winning the fight.
Lewandowski has, in some ways, more power than Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, sources tell The Daily Wire. His control at DHS has become a point of contention for many in the administration.
<h2 style="text-align: center;">Mamdani Slips In Final Days</h2>
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Topline: Socialist candidate for New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani, continues to hold a commanding lead, but Andrew Cuomo’s attacks and other controversies are beginning to chip away at it.
Mamdani is up by ten points. Andrew Cuomo, the former New York Democratic governor now running as an independent, was polling 20 points behind Mamdani, but Cuomo recently cut that lead in half. A Suffolk University Poll released Monday <a href="https://www.suffolk.edu/-/media/suffolk/documents/academics/research-at-suffolk/suprc/polls/other-states/2025/10_27_2025_new_york_city_press_release.pdf?la=en&amp;hash=29E66C2E3D25A148940F2E3BB98DAC3E5A7C6D6F">shows</a> Mamdani leading Cuomo 44% to 34%. Current NYC Mayor Eric Adams dropped out of the race and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/23/nyregion/adams-endorse-cuomo-nyc-mayor.html">endorsed</a> Cuomo on Thursday, giving Cuomo a boost.
Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa, the founder and CEO of the Guardian Angels, is in third place with 11% of the vote.
Opponents of Mamdani, some of whom view him as a communist, have pressured Sliwa to drop out to improve Cuomo’s chances. President Trump is among those who have leaned on Sliwa. But none of the pressure appears to have moved him. The odds are still in Mamdani’s favor, but it&#8217;s a much closer race than it once was.
In-person <a href="https://www.amny.com/politics/early-voting-turnout-nyc-mayor-first-day-2025/">early voting</a> started on Saturday, and Election Day is on November 4.
Mamdani’s controversies: Mamdani raised eyebrows when he tearfully spoke about his aunt, saying she was victimized in the wake of 9/11 because she is a Muslim and wears a hijab.
“My aunt stopped taking the subway after 9/11 because she did not feel safe in her hijab,” <a href="https://x.com/greg_price11/status/1981785770659586431">said</a> the Democratic candidate.
When Mamdani was pressed about the claim, he admitted the story wasn&#8217;t about his aunt but a different relative. He also suggested questioning his story is Islamophobic.
“I was speaking about my aunt, I was speaking about Zehra Fuhi, my father’s cousin – sadly passed away a few years ago,” <a href="https://x.com/realDailyWire/status/1982934087255097421">said</a> Mamdani later when pressed to clarify. “For the takeaway for my more than ten-minute address about Islamophobia in this race and in this city to be the question of my aunt tells you everything about Andrew Cuomo.&#8221;
Mamdani has also been accused of being antisemitic. Recently, a 2023 video resurfaced of Mamdani attacking the NYPD: “We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it’s been laced by the IDF,” <a href="https://x.com/mazemoore/status/1982974662175752646?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1982974662175752646%7Ctwgr%5Ea02eb94fab946ff40b5eebe5a6f258ab7b2b35b2%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailywire.com%2Fnews%2Fstefanik-rips-hochul-for-backing-raging-antisemite-communist-zohran-mamdani">said</a> Mamdani. “Especially in New York City, you have so many opportunities to make clear the ways in which that struggle over there is tied to capitalist interests over here.”
A segment of New York City is not happy about Mamdani likely becoming mayor. The city is liberal, but Mamdani is seen as radical and outside the mainstream. His proposals include massive tax hikes, a “freeze the rent” policy, replacing cops with social workers in some cases, government-run grocery stores, decriminalizing “sex work,” etc.
As for the frontrunner’s successes in his campaign, Mamdani is doing well with residents under age 40, and he has made genuine efforts to reach out to immigrant communities in the city. The latest numbers show that nearly 40% of all NYC residents are foreign-born. The city&#8217;s changing demographics are definitely a significant factor in this election.

MRN_251029_V1

Morning Brief: Congress Targets Left-Wing Violence, ICE Leadership Shake-Up, & Mamdani Slips

Morning Brief: Left-Wing Violence Rising, Divides On Deportation, And Mamdani Slips

Andrew Cuomo

Border Patrol

Charlie Kirk

Department of Homeland Security

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)

Media

Michael Knowles

Morning Wire

New York City

Politics

Senate

Tom Homan

Zohran Mamdani

There is some good news out of New York. It&#8217;s not a lot of good news out of New York, but it&#8217;s some good news.
There&#8217;s a brand new poll from Suffolk University showing that in New York, Andrew Cuomo — who is really the only hope of stopping Zohran Mamdani in the New York mayoral race — is catching up to Zohran Mamdani. The poll found that Mamdani no longer leads Cuomo by 20 points or 15 points, but the lead is down to ten, and Mamdani is stuck at 44%.
Typically, when somebody wins the New York mayoral race, they win well over a majority. Here you have Mamdani at 44%. You have Cuomo at 34%, and you have Curtis Sliwa at 11%. There will be a lot of talk if Mamdani ends up mayor about why Curtis Sliwa stayed in the race.
The reality is that Curtis Sliwa is not going to be the next mayor of New York. And if his vote share is larger than the margin of victory for Mamdani, that will leave some questions to be asked. 
<ol>
<li>   Why is the New York City population so insipid?</li>
<li>   Why didn’t Sliwa drop out?</li>
</ol>
As David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, says, Sliwa “is one person in New York City whose voters could have an outsized impact on the outcome.”
This is the first poll since Mayor Eric Adams dropped out of the race.
Most of his support has bled to Cuomo.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-2305-rabbis-for-mamdani-and-other-idiotic-ideas?elementPosition=7&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-974957 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-300x50.webp 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-768x128.webp 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1536x256.webp 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-2048x341.webp 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
Mamdani is running a terrible final week of this campaign. He has decided that his closing message is going to be that New York City is famous for Islamophobia and if you don&#8217;t elect him, it&#8217;s because you don&#8217;t like Muslims, which is a wild statement in a city that suffered 9/11 (where apparently the only victim of 9/11, according to Zohran Mamdani, was his own female relative, who was wearing some sort of hijab on the subway and somebody gave her a mean look).
So now his final closing pitch is, “Why won&#8217;t you give me the mayoralty? If you don&#8217;t, it&#8217;s because you&#8217;re mean to Muslims.”
That is the mark of a person who truly feels entitled to everything. If you won&#8217;t give him the mayoralty of the financial center of planet Earth, it must not be because he&#8217;s a bad candidate, an out-and-out communist, a sympathizer with jihadists, but because you are mean to Muslims.
Lest you truly believe that Mamdani is some sort of soft-hearted, wonderful person, I want to point out a <a href="https://x.com/mazemoore/status/1982974662175752646?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1982974662175752646%7Ctwgr%5Ea2e8d1de8daa0c8f2de3ff7e8ee90b7b4f37eb71%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mediaite.com%2Fmedia%2Fnews%2Fzohran-mamdani-bashes-the-cops-and-israel-in-wild-unearthed-video-when-the-boot-of-the-nypd-is-on-your-neck-its-been-laced-by-the-idf%2F">clip of him from 2023</a>. You want to know where his ideology comes from? His ideology is deeply, deeply ensconced in the Red-Green alliance between communists and radical jihadists that is characteristic of so much of the Left these days.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
September, 2023.
Zohran Mamdani: &#8220;We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it&#8217;s been laced by the IDF.&#8221; <a href="https://t.co/sr8pQyKvCq">pic.twitter.com/sr8pQyKvCq</a>
— MAZE (@mazemoore) <a href="https://twitter.com/mazemoore/status/1982974662175752646?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 28, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Credit: @mazemoore/X.com
That quote from him in September 2023 shows him explaining that basically, his hatred for capitalism springs from his dislike of the “Zionists.” 
Mamdani stated:
<blockquote>The importance for me of international solidarity is that it takes me out of the American political landscape and reminds me just how tame some of the things that I’m actually calling for in the next board. And it reminds me of the necessity of grounding ourselves in the struggles as opposed to the fights around the struggles. For anyone to care about these issues … We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it’s been laced by the IDF. We’re in a country where those connections abound. Especially in New York City, you have so many opportunities to make clear the ways in which that struggle over there is tied to capitalist interests over here.</blockquote>
So you see, it&#8217;s really the Jews in Israel who are tied to the capitalist interests in New York City. And capitalism, of course, is bad. If you missed it, he said, “When the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it’s been laced by the IDF.”
This was not 15 years ago. This was two years ago. He was a full grown-ass man when he said this sort of garbage.
But if you point this out, you’re “Islamophobic.”
He only cares about “affordability.” How is he going to deliver affordability? No one knows. But if he just says “affordability” over and over and over, then affordability will magically appear in New York City. It&#8217;s like Beetlejuice. If you say affordability three times, then magically all of the rents go down.
He has no idea how he&#8217;s going to do anything. But that doesn&#8217;t matter. The reason people support Mamdani is because he&#8217;s “fetch” and he&#8217;s “brat.”
There are a lot of idiots in New York, and those idiots in New York are fully on board with the idea that if you don&#8217;t vote for Zohran Mamdani, it must be because you are some sort of racist, or because you hate gay people, or because you are one of those “capitalist tools.”
One can only hope that the non-idiots in New York will show up to vote.
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US-POLITICS-VOTE-NEW YORK-MAYOR

​​Cuomo Closes The Gap As Mamdani Plays Victim

9/11

Ben Shapiro

Democrats

Elections

Islam

Mayor

Muslims

New York

Socialist New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani lamented on Friday that — after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States — his Muslim aunt could no longer take the subway because she wore a hijab.
Mamdani made the comment while delivering a speech on Islamophobia in front of a mosque one day before early voting begins for the heated NYC mayor&#8217;s race. The speech focused on condemning attacks against him from his opponents, Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa, that he claims are &#8220;racist&#8221; and &#8220;baseless.&#8221; During the speech on Islamophobia, Mamdani fought back tears when he talked about his aunt.
&#8220;I want to speak to the memory of my aunt, who stopped taking the subway after September 11th because she did not feel safe in her hijab,&#8221; he said.
The remark unintentionally evoked the famous Norm Macdonald quip, when the late comedian <a href="https://x.com/normmacdonald/status/809637479674281984?lang=en">said</a>, &#8220;What terrifies me is if ISIS were to detonate a nuclear device and kill 50 million Americans. Imagine the backlash against peaceful Muslims?&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
He did the meme. <a href="https://t.co/pb3KIRMI3J">https://t.co/pb3KIRMI3J</a> <a href="https://t.co/le7xEG1fNa">pic.twitter.com/le7xEG1fNa</a>
— Jeremy Redfern (@JeremyRedfernFL) <a href="https://twitter.com/JeremyRedfernFL/status/1981797310217527719?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 24, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Later during the speech, Mamdani spoke about his own experience as a Muslim and again brought up 9/11.
&#8220;Growing up in the shadow of 9/11, I have known what it means to live with an undercurrent of suspicion in this city,&#8221; he said, adding, &#8220;To be Muslim in New York is to expect indignity, but indignity does not make us distinct. There are many New Yorkers who face it. It is the tolerance of that indignity that does.&#8221;
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On Thursday, Mamdani called an exchange between Cuomo and a conservative radio host &#8220;disgusting&#8221; after they <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/23/nyregion/cuomo-mamdani-sept-11.html">discussed</a> what a terror attack on New York City would look like with Mamdani leading the city.
“God forbid another 9/11, can you imagine Mamdani in the seat?” Cuomo asked.
“Yeah, I could,” replied radio host Sid Rosenberg. “He’d be cheering.”
Cuomo chuckled and then responded, saying, “That’s another problem.&#8221;
Mamdani decried the exchange, saying that Cuomo &#8220;in his final moments in public life is engaging in rhetoric that is not only Islamophobic, not only racist, is also disgusting, and is his final closing argument with less than two weeks before Election Day.”
Mamdani, who is pushing a socialist platform, has long taken strong anti-Israel positions, such as advocating for boycotting Israeli institutions. Mamdani, who was once a rap artist, <a href="https://www.thefp.com/p/look-em-up-mamdani-praised-men-found">praised</a> men in a song who were convicted in the United States of providing material support to Hamas.
During his speech on Friday, the socialist mayoral candidate said that recent &#8220;racist&#8221; attacks on him have shown him that he was &#8220;wrong&#8221; for thinking that he could become more than his faith.
&#8220;I thought that if I behaved well enough or bit my tongue enough in the face of racist, baseless attacks, all while returning back to my central message, it would allow me to be more than just my faith,&#8221; Mamdani added. &#8220;I was wrong. No amount of redirection is ever enough.&#8221;

Norm Macdonald/Zohran Mamdani

Zohran Mamdani’s Islamophobia Speech Echoes Famous Norm Macdonald Joke

Muslim

The FBI unveils a massive, mafia-tied gambling scheme involving big names in the NBA, the United States strikes another drug boat bringing “poison to our shores,” and sparks fly at the final debate for New York City mayor — but will it sway the race?
It’s Friday, October 24, 2025, and this is the news you need to know to start your day.
Morning Wire is available on video! You can watch today’s episode here:
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If you would rather listen to your news, today’s edition of the Morning Wire podcast can be heard below:
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<h2 style="text-align: center;">NBA Gambling Ring</h2>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-990669" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Basketball-Betting-Bust-300x169.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="169" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Basketball-Betting-Bust-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Basketball-Betting-Bust-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Basketball-Betting-Bust-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Basketball-Betting-Bust-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Basketball-Betting-Bust.jpg 1920w" sizes=" (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Topline: A sprawling NBA gambling scandal was announced on Thursday, resulting in dozens of arrests, including former and current NBA players, coaches, and members of the Italian mafia.
The alleged scheme involved more than 30 people arrested, including Miami Heat point guard Terry Rozier and Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups, a former player in the Hall of Fame. 
Charges from the investigation included wire fraud, money laundering, extortion, robbery, and illegal gambling. 
“The FBI led a coordinative take down across 11 states to arrest over 30 individuals today responsible for this case, which is very much ongoing,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in a press conference. “We also entered and executed a system of justice against Laca Nora to include the Bonanno Gambino Genevese and Luccese crime families.”
First indictment: The case involves two separate indictments. The first relates to an insider betting scheme. Defendants charged in this scheme allegedly received non-public information, such as when players would be sitting out for injuries or planned absences, and used that to profit from gambling bets. 
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“One example occurred on March 23, 2023, in Charlotte, Terry Rozier, an NBA player now with the Miami Heat, but at the time playing for the Hornets, allegedly let others close to him know that he planned to leave the game early with a supposed injury,” said NYC Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch. “Using that information, members of the group placed more than $200,000 in wagers on his under statistics.&#8221;
Rozier exited the game after just nine minutes. The bets paid out tens of thousands of dollars in profit.
Second indictment: The second indictment relates to mafia-backed fixed poker games, where more than $7 million was cheated. This included new technology, such as an X-ray table that could read cards face down. Current or former NBA players like Billups were used to draw people into rigged games.
“The defendants in this case orchestrated a scheme to use wireless cheating technology to run rigged poker games across the United States,” said U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella. “What the victims, the fish, didn&#8217;t know is that everybody else at the poker game, from the dealer to the players, including the face cards, were in on the scam. Once the game was underway, the defendants fleece the victims out of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per game.”
The poker games played in the New York area were backed by at least four of the five mafia families there.
<h2 style="text-align: center;">Drug Boat Strikes And Russia Sanctions</h2>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-990667" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Drug-Boat-Dusted-300x169.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="169" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Drug-Boat-Dusted-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Drug-Boat-Dusted-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Drug-Boat-Dusted-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Drug-Boat-Dusted-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Drug-Boat-Dusted.jpg 1920w" sizes=" (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Topline: The U.S. military carried out its ninth strike against what it said was a drug boat from a known terrorist entity heading toward the United States. Meanwhile, President Trump has imposed new sanctions on Russia for the first time since he returned to the Oval Office.
War Secretary Pete Hegseth announced on Wednesday that the military carried out its eighth and ninth strikes against drug boats. These strikes took place in the Pacific Ocean, a first. Up until now, the strikes have been targeted in the Caribbean, which is a known smuggling corridor for narcotraffickers in Venezuela and Colombia.
Latin American resistance: The Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, called to potentially “get rid” of Trump over his campaign of pressure. Trump has accused Petro of playing a role in the drug trade and has pulled U.S. funding to Colombia.
On Thursday, Trump responded to the Colombian president’s threats, saying that the Latin American leader is a “thug and bad guy” who should “watch it.”
For now, the strikes will continue, Hegseth says.
Sanctions on Russia: The Treasury Department has now announced new sanctions on Russia for the first time in Trump’s second term. The sanctions target Russian oil giants Rosneft and Lukoil, as well as dozens of their subsidiaries.
The sanctions came alongside additional penalties from the European Union, as well as more from the U.K., announced last week. President Trump’s new pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin was a welcome move in Washington and in Europe.
“You have to compel Russia to engage in the peace process,” <a href="https://x.com/SpeakerJohnson/status/1981329802754769164">said</a> House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA). “They&#8217;ve shown they cannot be trusted. There&#8217;s a big appetite in Congress to have sanctions like this, and I think it&#8217;s a very important step.”
More important than the sanctions themselves is the message they convey. In its announcement of the sanctions package, the Treasury also <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trumps-sanctioning-russian-energy-heres-what-to-know" target="_blank" rel="noopener">threatened</a> secondary sanctions against any entity that does business with Rosneft and Lukoil.
Trump on San Francisco: Trump has reversed course on sending National Guard troops to San Francisco. He said in a Truth Social <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115424560133045127">post</a> on Thursday that “friends of mine who live in the area called last night to ask me not to go forward with the surge in that the Mayor, Daniel Lurie, was making substantial progress.” He said he spoke to Lurie, a moderate Democrat who took office in January, and decided to give him a chance to turn the city around – which means Trump could change his mind in the future if he doesn’t like what he sees in San Francisco.
<h2 style="text-align: center;">Mamdani Cracks In Second NYC Debate</h2>
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-990665" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Mamdani-Melts-Onstage-300x169.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="169" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Mamdani-Melts-Onstage-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Mamdani-Melts-Onstage-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Mamdani-Melts-Onstage-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Mamdani-Melts-Onstage-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/Mamdani-Melts-Onstage.jpg 1920w" sizes=" (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Topline: The frontrunner in New York’s mayoral race, Zohran Mamdani, faced a barrage of criticism in the final televised debate on Wednesday, raising questions about whether his performance managed to shake his lead or reinforce doubts about his readiness for the job.
The atmosphere of the race was definitely charged—not just because of the policies on the table, but also because of the direct, unrelenting pressure former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo put on Mamdani.
Polls show that while Mamdani is far and away the favorite to win, some also show he would be in a dead heat with Cuomo if Republican Curtis Sliwa were to drop out of the race.
Many media outlets and analysts said Mamdani looked uncomfortable and hesitant. He also appeared severely rushed. Some of his responses felt like watching a video at double speed.
However, some left-leaning outlets, such as Politico, said Mamdani won. The New York Times said Cuomo hurt him, but probably not enough. But the viral clips from the debate have received brutal responses, painting Mamdani as an unprepared left-wing extremist.
The debate: One of the most damaging moments circulating on social media came when Cuomo directly confronted Mamdani on his inexperience. 
“You have never had a job. You&#8217;ve never accomplished anything. There&#8217;s no reason to believe you have any merit or qualification for eight and a half million lives. You don&#8217;t know how to run a government, you don&#8217;t know how to handle an emergency, and you&#8217;ve literally never proposed a bill on anything that you&#8217;re not talking about,” Cuomo <a href="https://x.com/EYakoby/status/1981146015714726293">ripped</a> into Mamdani.
“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,” he continued.
Cuomo also pinned Mamdani down on the rent freeze policy, labeling it as political blather.
“Zohran is a great actor. He missed his calling. Freeze rent sounds great, yeah, it affects about 25% of the number of housing units in the city of New York. It&#8217;s not a new idea. Bill de Blasio did it. It turned out to be a debacle,” Cuomo <a href="https://x.com/nypost/status/1981152739963945271">said</a>.
Often, Mamdani didn’t help himself. For example, when he suggested that when 911 receives a call, dispatchers should decide whether it’s appropriate to send police, or maybe send mental healthcare providers instead.
“Yet what we have in our city is asking those same police officers who are being asked to respond to shootings, respond to murders, to also respond to these calls. I trust the dispatchers who would be receiving these calls to make the determination as to whether there was any indication of violence. If there is no indication of a threat of violence, then we would set the mental health experts and providers to respond to those same incidents,” <a href="https://x.com/EYakoby/status/1981149365818585538">said</a> Mamdani.
How bad was it?: Polling data is still being analyzed, so it’s really too early to tell. But it’s interesting to note that there are reports that Chinese-owned TikTok appears to be pulling out all the stops for Mamdani now, maybe trying to head off any leaks of support.
The New York Post reported that TikTok’s algorithm has been boosting pro-Mamdani content while suppressing pro-Cuomo clips.

MRN_251024_V1

Morning Brief: FBI Uncovers An NBA-Tied Gambling Ring & Trump Takes Out Another Drug Boat

Colombia

Donald Trump

Drug Cartels

kash patel

Russia

San Francisco

United States

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&#8217;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 <a href="https://patriotpolling.com/our-polls/f/new-york-city-mayoral-election">survey</a>, 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.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-2302-mamdani-s-last-stand?elementPosition=4&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-974957 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-300x50.webp 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-768x128.webp 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1536x256.webp 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-2048x341.webp 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
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&#8217;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 <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/10/22/business/tiktok-boosting-pro-mamdani-content-suppressing-pro-cuomo-clips-ahead-of-nyc-mayoral-election-report/">New York Post</a>:
<blockquote>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 …</blockquote>
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&#8217;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&#8217;s no question that Curtis is the best person on the debate stage.
The problem, of course, is that Curtis is a Republican. He&#8217;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&#8217;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&#8217;s like I&#8217;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&#8217;s on you guys. &#8230; my life is on the line here &#8230; The frenzy that is coming out of people&#8217;s mouths &#8230;”
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&#8217;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&#8217;s running for mayor of the financial capital of Planet Earth.
Cuomo blasted:
<blockquote>You have never had a job. You&#8217;ve never accomplished anything. There&#8217;s no reason to believe you have any merit or qualification for 8.5 million lives. You don&#8217;t know how to run a government, you don&#8217;t know how to handle an emergency, and you&#8217;ve literally never proposed the bill on anything that you&#8217;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!</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
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.” <a href="https://t.co/N184Nrme43">pic.twitter.com/N184Nrme43</a>
— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) <a href="https://twitter.com/EYakoby/status/1981146015714726293?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 22, 2025</a></blockquote>
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Credit: @EYakoby/X.com
I cannot deal with Mamdani’s smile. I can&#8217;t. It&#8217;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&#8217;t actually fulfill, because he doesn&#8217;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&#8217;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&#8217;re going to get to take the ride after they buy the ticket.
Curtis should drop out of the race. I&#8217;ve said it over and over. He does not have a path to victory. I&#8217;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&#8217;m obviously rooting very hard for the defeat of this Marxist Islamist.

US-POLITICS-VOTE-NEW YORK-DEBATE

Mamdani’s Last Stand

Eric Adams

Kathy Hochul

New York City Mayor Eric Adams, after a bitter public split with former Governor Andrew Cuomo, announced Thursday that he will <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/23/nyregion/adams-endorse-cuomo-nyc-mayor.html">endorse</a> Cuomo in the upcoming mayoral election. This move marks a full reconciliation between Adams and Cuomo, who just weeks ago were trading harsh insults as Adams dropped out of the race.
Adams made clear his endorsement is a strategic effort to block Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic socialist nominee. Sitting courtside at the Knicks season opener alongside Cuomo, Adams pledged to campaign in neighborhoods where Cuomo is strong, aiming to mobilize &#8220;black and brown communities&#8221; disproportionately hurt by gentrification and economic pressures.
“I think it is imperative to really wake up the black and brown communities,” Adams said, emphasizing the rising rents and displacement they face. His endorsement underscores the moderate establishment’s alarm over Mamdani’s hard-left platform, which includes defunding police units and expansive social reforms that Adams views as radical.
Adams and Cuomo share overlapping bases — notably black voters and ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities — and a pro-police, pro-business stance that contrasts sharply with Mamdani’s.
Cuomo has already benefited from Adams’ exit, climbing 10 points in the polls, but Mamdani still holds a substantial lead citywide. The new AARP/Gotham poll <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-aarp-new-york-poll-mamdani-maintains-double-digit-lead-in-nyc-mayoral-race-undecided-50-voters-could-decide-outcome-302589276.html?utm">shows</a> Mamdani with 43.2% support to Cuomo’s 28.9% and Republican Curtis Sliwa’s 19.4%. However, the race tightens considerably among older voters — the most reliable voting bloc — many of whom remain undecided.
A striking feature of this race is the divide between native and foreign-born New Yorkers. Mamdani enjoys overwhelming support among foreign-born voters, holding 62% in recent <a href="https://ijr.com/foreign-born-voters-likely-to-hand-socialist-zohran-mamdani-key-to-new-york-city-poll-shows/">Patriot Polling</a> surveys, compared to Cuomo’s 24%. Among native-born New Yorkers, Cuomo leads with 40%, while Mamdani trails at 31%.
This split highlights the growing political clout of immigrant communities in New York City and their alignment with Mamdani’s democratic socialist message. Meanwhile, Cuomo’s strength among native-born voters and older demographics signals a city divided by age, origin, and ideology.
With early voting starting imminently and nearly half of voters 50 and older still undecided, the race remains open for Cuomo to charge into the lead.

Cleveland Cavaliers v New York Knicks

Eric Adams Endorses Cuomo To Stop Socialist Mamdani

Adams Endorses Cuomo To Stop Mamdani, While Foreign-Born Voters Back Mamdani By Huge Margins

Former New York governor Andrew Cuomo delivered one of the most scathing attacks in recent memory on Wednesday during the New York City mayoral debate, as he denounced Democratic socialist candidate Zohran Mamdani in a mic drop moment.
“I understand my friend really doesn’t understand government,” Cuomo began. “The governor doesn’t build housing in New York City.”
“Not if it’s you,” Mamdani taunted Cuomo.
“No. Legally, there are jurisdictions,” Cuomo fired back, explaining to Mamdani as if he were a child. “The governor doesn’t pick up trash; he doesn’t run the fire department. That’s what the mayor does. The mayor builds housing. The state allocates funding for localities. And I allocated more funding for housing than any governor in the history of the state of New York.”
“I did things,” he pointed out, then got down to brass tacks. “You have never had a job; you’ve never accomplished anything. There’s no reason to believe you have any merit or qualification for eight and a half 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 a bill on anything that you’re not talking about in your campaign.”
Cuomo then turned to Mamdani’s record: “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!” he thundered. “Shame on you!”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Seriously. This is your new ad, <a href="https://twitter.com/andrewcuomo?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@andrewcuomo</a>.
What a mic drop.
 <a href="https://t.co/18xjhZ2gEM">pic.twitter.com/18xjhZ2gEM</a>
&mdash; Tali Goldsheft (@TaliGoldsheft) <a href="https://twitter.com/TaliGoldsheft/status/1981175225187537089?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 23, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Mamdani, 33, a state assemblyman who grew up as the privileged son of “acclaimed Marxist scholar Mahmood Mamdani and Oscar-nominated film director Mira Nair,” as The Independent <a href="https://indypendent.org/2020/06/home-foreclosure-specialist-aims-to-take-the-fight-for-housing-racial-justice-from-astoria-to-albany/">reported</a>, attended Bowdoin College, where he <a href="https://nyassembly.gov/mem/Zohran-K-Mamdani">co-founded</a> the school’s chapter of the radical activist group, Students for Justice in Palestine. His entire job history outside of politics has consisted of working as a foreclosure prevention counselor and a rapper.
During the 2020 BLM protests and riots, Mamdani said that the New York Police Department should be removed from high-crime areas. He received harsh criticism after a video surfaced showing him saying that in the past, he had stopped working and relied on his parents’ money. “I worked until January, and then I took time away from my job, and one of the major reasons I could do so was because I knew that if I ran out of my savings, my family would be able to support me,” he stated.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
&quot;I knew that if I ran out of my savings my family would be able to support me&quot; — Mamdani 
Must be nice! <a href="https://t.co/22CJRQwNqk">pic.twitter.com/22CJRQwNqk</a>
&mdash; Jon Levine (@LevineJonathan) <a href="https://twitter.com/LevineJonathan/status/1945133193654342115?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 15, 2025</a></blockquote>
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New York Mayoral Candidates Hold Final Debate Before Election

Cuomo Torches Mamdani In Epic One-Minute Mic Drop During Debate

There&#8217;s been a lot of talk lately about the radicalism problem on the Right. It is, indeed, a problem that exists.
But is it nearly as mainstream as it is on the Left? Has it been imbibed? Has it been ingested? Has it been sucked into the great maw of the party and turned into the mainstream position on the Right?
The answer, of course, is no.
But on the Left, the answer is very much yes.
The Democratic Party has decided to let the radicals run the show. This has become extraordinarily clear over the course of, not just of the past couple of election cycles, but the past few months, now that Zohran Mamdani has been vetted by the entire Democratic Party as the future of the party.
All of the so-called moderates in the Democratic Party refuse to dissociate in any way from Mamdani, who is, in fact, a terror sympathizer; who is, in fact, a Marxist radical; who is, in fact, a complete, useless ne&#8217;er do well of a human being who has somehow managed to manipulate himself into a position to become the mayor of the financial center of planet Earth in New York City.
Mamdani is a Marxist with jihadist leanings. That&#8217;s the reality. And in the modern Democratic Party, that is a feature, not a bug.
There are a lot of people in the media who&#8217;ve been struggling to figure out how Mamdani was able to win a primary despite having these radical positions. I&#8217;ve been saying since he won the Democratic Party primary that his winning is not a bug; it is a feature quite popular among Democratic primary voters, because the Democratic electorate has basically split between moderates who are increasingly bleeding over into the Republican Party or into the independents, and the hardcore Democrats, who are increasingly moving ever further to the left.
We are now two generations removed from the specter of communism via the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union fell 35 years ago, and that means that there are a lot of people who don&#8217;t remember the Soviet Union or the risks of communism. When they think of socialism, they actually are thinking of mixed states, capitalist states that have a significant welfare portion in places in Europe.
But the solutions that they are proposing are full-scale nationalization projects, Marxist projects directly from the Soviet, Cuban, Venezuelan handbook. And they don&#8217;t even know they&#8217;re doing that — or they don&#8217;t care.
What that means is that the candidate who signals the furthest to the Left in many of these areas in the primaries is actually quite likely to win. That’s how someone with Mamdani’s positions on the Middle East and terrorism and jihadism — only 24 years removed from 9/11 — can be elected mayor of New York.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-2298-mamdani-aoc-and-bernie-oh-my?elementPosition=4&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-974957 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-300x50.webp 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-768x128.webp 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1536x256.webp 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-2048x341.webp 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
 New York City is likely to elect as mayor somebody who has sympathies for Al-Qaeda. I don&#8217;t mean he&#8217;s sympathetic to the actual terror attacks of 9/11, although he&#8217;s quite sympathetic to the terror group Hamas. I mean he believes that the Osama bin Laden-articulated grievances of 2001 against the West are mostly correct.
There are people who&#8217;ve been trained for generations in this country to believe that Western civilization is responsible for everything bad that happens on planet Earth, that third-world countries are third-world because of exploitation by the first world. They believe that terror centers are terror centers, not because of a deeply steeped radical Islamic ideology, but instead because somehow the West has been cruel to people.
That’s the kind of garbage Mamdani is preaching, and it is finding a ready audience among Democratic primary voters.
Very few Democrats have had the stones to simply say, “No, this is a bridge too far. The answer here is no.”
What&#8217;s amazing about that is that the risk factor in making such a statement is relatively low. Imagine that you are a mainstream Democrat, an elected official from Kansas, and somebody asks you about Mamdani. Does it cost you anything to say, “No, that guy&#8217;s too extreme. I would not vote for him. I&#8217;d vote for Andrew Cuomo.” Would that cost you anything?
Let&#8217;s say that you&#8217;re a purple state Democrat. Or let&#8217;s say that you&#8217;re a blue state Democrat. You&#8217;re just not a New York City, far-Left Greenwich Village Democrat. Does it cost you anything to say, “No, that dude is too much for me. I understand the primary voters chose him, but the reality is that is not representative of America.”
<div id="attachment_987879" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-987879" class="size-large wp-image-987879" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/GettyImages-2241087777-864x576.jpg" alt="Andrew Cuomo, New York City mayoral candidate, from left, Curtis Sliwa, New York City mayoral candidate, and Zohran Mamdani, New York City mayoral candidate, during a mayoral debate in New York, US, on Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025. Millions of dollars are pouring into the mayoral election with less than four weeks to go until New Yorkers go to the polls. Photographer: Angelina Katsanis/AP Photo/Bloomberg via Getty Images" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/GettyImages-2241087777-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/GettyImages-2241087777-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/GettyImages-2241087777-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/GettyImages-2241087777.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Angelina Katsanis/AP Photo/Bloomberg via Getty Images</div>
Instead, the Democratic Party has decided they must draft off of the Mamdani energy. And that&#8217;s why you&#8217;re seeing nationally a reflection of Mamdani politics via the Bernie Sanders wing of the party.
Mamdani is a child of the Bernie Sanders revolution because Bernie obviously is not just a socialist when it comes to domestic policy. He is also a Howard Zinn, anti-American extremist when it comes to American foreign policy. Mamdani is just following in the footsteps of Bernie Sanders. But he&#8217;s adding a more diverse backstory.
People think Mamdani’s radicalism about the Middle East is somehow an inhibitor to his political success.
Wrong.
In New York City, with its Democratic primary base, his radicalism is an aphrodisiac. The Democratic Party base wants this signaling. They want the extremism. They want the Howard Zinn-ification of American foreign policy.
Israel pulls out of Gaza, and Hamas immediately starts consolidating control by literally pulling people out of their houses, lining them up, putting them on their knees, and shooting them in the head. There are videos of this happening.
And Mamdani has nothing to say about this. Not only does he have nothing to say about this, he&#8217;s asked whether Hamas should disarm now and he won&#8217;t even answer a question as to whether Hamas ought to be disarmed.
New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik was asked by a New York Times reporter, “I&#8217;m a reporter for the Times. I&#8217;m writing about Elise Stefanik’s comments in response to Mamdani’s Fox News interview, Mamdani’s campaign has said that her comments calling him a jihadist were Islamophobic. Please let me know if you want to respond.” 
Stefanik <a href="https://x.com/EliseStefanik/status/1978943584867860643">responded</a> publicly on X:
<blockquote>I call Zohran Mamdani a jihadist because he is. Zohran Mamdani is a raging antisemite. Mamdani is the definition of a jihadist as he supports Hamas terrorists which he did as recently as yesterday when he refused to call for Hamas terrorists to put down their arms &#8211; the same Hamas terrorist group that slaughtered civilians including New Yorkers on October 7, 2023. 
He is Kathy Hochul’s endorsed jihadist Communist who she has empowered to destroy New York City. It’s why the New York State Democrat Party Chair refuses to support him. It’s why multiple Democrat Members of Congress refuse to support him. It’s why Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries have still not endorsed him. Because Zohran is a jihadist who will destroy New York.</blockquote>
Why aren&#8217;t Democrats dissociating from him?
None of them will say it because they are trying to draft off the jet fuel that is radicalism and nut-jobbery inside the Democratic Party.
Bill Ackman <a href="https://x.com/BillAckman/status/1979000490563432948">stated</a> on X of Mamdani:
<blockquote>It is now abundantly clear he is completely full of it. The whole thing is an act. Just look at the identical practiced smile with which he ends each answer. After watching him recreate his fake smile, your skin will start to crawl. Mamdani exudes inauthenticity and smugness. He denies or disavows any of his previous public statements that he knows will now cost him votes. The only takeaway is that he is an extremely articulate inauthentic actor. You can’t trust one word out of his mouth. And that’s before you get to his policies which make no economic sense.</blockquote>
This is the nature of the modern Democratic Party.
And they are moving in this direction at light speed.

New York City Mayoral Debate

Radicalism Isn’t Fringe Anymore In The Democratic Party

Democratic Socialism

Elise Stefanik

Islamic Jihad

Leftists

Marxism

Opinion

U.S. Politics

I didn’t pay much attention to mayoral politics when I lived in New York City. It was the De Blasio years, and as much as I respect Nicole Malliotakis, I don’t think anyone was naive enough to believe she was going to stand between Hizzoner and a second term.
Plus, I lived deep in Crown Heights, so far into Brooklyn that it might as well have been a different city. I lived courtesy of the bodega below my apartment and the 4 train, two things that weren’t likely to change, no matter who was in charge.
To the extent that I cared about the 2017 mayoral race, I cared about the things that affected me. I wanted to hear the candidates talk about how they’d stop gang members from killing each other on my block, or put cops on the subways to stop the all-too-frequent domestic assaults I witnessed while commuting. I certainly didn’t want to hear them hurl insults at each other and sound off on geopolitics.
All of which is to say, had I been a New York City resident last night, I would have put my head through a wall.
The <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/mamdani-and-cuomo-square-off-on-gaza-free-housing-and-more-in-nyc-mayoral-debate">debate</a> — between socialist Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani and former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo — was bound to be a spectacle. New York City politics always are, to some degree. This current campaign has made Mamdani a national figure, something Cuomo has already been for quite some time.
Even still — and even for this lapsed New Yorker — last evening’s proceedings had frustratingly little to do with the city.
After a few perfunctory questions (What will the headlines be after your first year in office? What qualifies you to lead the city?), the debate quickly shifted to what really matters for municipal politics: What would the candidates say on their first official phone call with Donald Trump?
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To be fair, this one was a little relevant. At least since Jerry Ford told Abe Beame to drop dead, there’s always been an expectation that the occupants of Gracie Mansion and the White House would deal with each other. And the Queens boy who currently occupies the Oval Office has inserted himself into the mayoral race, threatening to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-warns-mamdani-no-federal-cash-for-a-communist-mayor?author=Hank+Berrien&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=undefined&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Trump+Warns+Mamdani%3A+No+Federal+Cash+For+A+%E2%80%98Communist%E2%80%99+Mayor">withhold federal funding</a> from the city if it elects Mamdani.
The candidates’ answers were unremarkable. Mamdani said he’d yell about ICE, and Cuomo said he’d yell about COVID. Had the national politics portion of the evening ended there, it would have been fine.
But it didn’t. Instead, the candidates were then asked about the war in Gaza. Cuomo accused Mamdani of refusing to denounce Hamas and employing antisemitic dog whistles like “from the river to the sea” and “globalize the intifada.” Mamdani offered his thoughts on the situation, sounding more like an ambassador than an assemblyman.
“For [the ceasefire] to be just, we also have to ensure that it addresses the conditions that preceded this,” Mamdani said. “Conditions like occupation, like the siege, and apartheid.”
Who is this “we”? What role does the mayor of New York City have in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
At the end of the debate, the candidates were asked about which parades they would attend if elected mayor. Mamdani, wearing the same smug smile he sported all evening, said that he would have more important things to think about than parades. If he thinks he should focus more on Gaza than on New York City parades, he may not be the right man for the job.
A legendary New Yorker had a decidedly different take: “I think a mayor has a responsibility whenever possible to march in parades.”
That New Yorker was Curtis Sliwa, the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/he-aint-going-nowhere-why-curtis-sliwa-thinks-hell-be-the-next-mayor-of-new-york-city">founder of the Guardian Angels</a> and the Republican candidate for mayor.
There’s a reason I haven’t mentioned Sliwa until now. Though he was standing smack in the middle of the candidates during the entire debate, he was an afterthought from the very beginning. At one point, the broadcast even cut to a side-by-side of Cuomo and Mamdani, literally eliminating Sliwa from the picture.
Considering all the questions were about everything under the sun except New York City itself, Sliwa seemed a little bit like a lunatic during the debate. While Cuomo and Mamdani attacked each other as a nepo baby and a pervert, respectively, Sliwa hopped in to attack them for weakening the NYPD. While they talked about standing up to Trump, he talked about all the time he’s spent standing up for real New Yorkers on the subway and city buses. While they talked about Gaza, he rattled off the names of outer-borough neighborhoods with the maniacal fervor of a man desperate to remind people that this was supposed to be about New York City, for God’s sake.
Despite how crazy Sliwa may have seemed, he wasn’t crazy at all. It took the moderators <a href="https://x.com/BillHemmer/status/1978970021884756210" target="_blank" rel="noopener">43 minutes</a> to ask about something that actually affects New Yorkers — the NYPD — before they quickly returned to discussing Trump.
When the candidates did talk about city issues, it didn’t matter. Mamdani dodged questions about how he’d pay for free buses and free groceries and all the other free things he’s promised, relying on typical socialist smoke and mirrors to distract from the fact that New York Governor Kathy Hochul has made it clear she won’t raise taxes to pay for his policies.
Cuomo and Mamdani’s failings were on full display, but not in a way that mattered. Sure, Cuomo’s a sexual predator who killed a bunch of grandparents, and Mamdani’s a trust fund jihadist who lacks the experience to govern a condo board. But does any of that have any bearing on how they would run the city? You wouldn’t know from watching the debate.
That’s because the debate wasn’t for New Yorkers. It was for Washington, and for journalists. It was more for me than for whoever now lives in my old apartment in Brooklyn.
It was also for the candidates themselves. For Mamdani, it was an audition for the Democratic powers that be. For Cuomo, it was a chance to remind those same powers that he’s not down for the count just yet.
In other words, what should have been a political contest about local issues became one defined by national, even global ones. Instead of courting their would-be constituents, the candidates stoked their ambitions and inflated their egos. If you drive through Montpelier, you can probably hear James Madison rolling in his grave.
With the exception of those pinning their hope on Mamdani’s socialist revolution, New Yorkers probably aren’t fazed by this. But the rest of us should be. Unless and until they win seats in Congress, Zohran Mamdani and Andrew Cuomo should focus on their city and leave the country to those elected to run it. That’s better for New Yorkers and Americans alike. And it may even give them time to fix the subway.

New York City Mayoral Candidates Face Off In Debate

The NYC Mayoral Debate Wasn’t About New York City, And That’s A Problem

Gaza

Israel

Last night, the three New York City mayoral candidates took the stage for a wide-ranging, heated debate, ushering in the final days of a contentious campaign.
Zohran Mamdani, the socialist frontrunner and state assemblyman, squared off against former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, running as an independent, and Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa, founder of the Guardian Angels. Mamdani and Cuomo’s heated exchanges were the focal point of the evening, with Sliwa often fighting to get a word in edgewise.
The next mayor of NYC will oversee a $115 billion budget and manage a workforce of 300,000 people. The moderators scrutinized each candidate’s resume, with no candidate leaving the second question of the debate unscathed.
Cuomo spent a large part of the night defending himself from allegations of sexual harassment brought against him and his mishandling of the COVID pandemic, topics raised frequently by Mamdani and the moderators.
“You have the management experience, but you resigned from office amid sexual harassment and COVID-related scandals,” Telemundo’s Rosarina Bretón asked. “Why should voters trust you have the character to be mayor?”
Cuomo defended himself by noting all sexual harassment cases had been settled or dismissed, and later called the COVID-related accusations “politically motivated.” Cuomo then jumped into his executive experience, noting that the budget he managed as New York Governor is twice the size of the New York City budget. He listed several of his accomplishments as Governor, including minimum-wage laws, paid family leave, and construction projects such as LaGuardia Airport.
Cuomo used the remainder of his time to issue what appeared to be a direct blow to Mamdani, declaring the role of mayor as “no job for on-the-job training.”
When Cuomo announced his candidacy with a 17-minute campaign ad, many viewed his election to the office as a foregone conclusion. But on June 24, Mamdani shocked New York with a decisive primary victory, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/socialist-hero-zohran-mamdani-owes-his-victory-to-rich-new-yorkers-not-the-working-class" target="_blank" rel="noopener">upsetting Cuomo 56% to 44%</a> in the final ranked choice vote tally.
Sliwa, a longtime fixture in New York City, pitched himself as the only candidate who really understands New Yorkers, having spent the most time in the city’s outer boroughs and riding public transit. Sliwa insisted he wasn’t running for “a title or paycheck,” and pledged he would staff his administration with the “best and brightest” who have dedicated their lives trying to improve the city of New York.
Moderators addressed Mamdani’s lack of experience, asking the assemblyman if he was “ready to lead the nation’s largest and greatest city in the world?”
“I have the experience of being a New Yorker.” Mamdani began, “I’ve paid rent in the city, waited for a bus in the city, and bought groceries in the city.”
Mamdani also added “watching a politically broken system, securing $500,000 in debt relief for taxi drivers, and delivering five no-fare buses” to his management skills.
Mamdani’s answer led to a heated exchange between him and Cuomo.
“He literally has never had a job,” fired Cuomo, “He interned for his mother. Any day you could have a hurricane, God forbid a 9/11, a health pandemic. If you don’t know what you’re doing, people could die.”
Mamdani spent the rest of the night rebuffing two attacks: his extreme views on Israel and Hamas, and his untenable socialist policy proposals. Moderators pressed Mamdani on his refusal to condemn the slogan “globalize the intifada,” which many view as a call to arms, and on lyrics from his 2017 rap career praising the “Holy Land Five” — <a href="https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/federal-judge-hands-downs-sentences-holy-land-foundation-case" target="_blank" rel="noopener">men who were convicted of funneling dollars to Hamas in 2008.</a>
Thanking the moderators for the opportunity to explain his past rhetoric, Mamdani told potential voters that after conversations with Jewish New Yorkers, he now “discourages this language.”
That wasn’t enough for Cuomo, who repeatedly accused Mamdani of refusing to condemn Hamas.
Controversial statements have haunted Mamdani throughout the campaign. In 2020, he publicly supported defunding the police and government housing over private property ownership. Today, he champions a platform that includes increasing the $17 minimum wage to $30, free child care, free buses and subways, government-run grocery stores, and rent freezes for rent-stabilized tenants.
Mamdani’s policies would cost the city $10 billion. This week on Fox News, Mamdani said he would raise taxes on the 1% by 2% to pay for his plans. However, Governor Kathy Hochul pledged to reject his tax hike proposals, an obstacle Mamdani attempted to dodge during the debate.
When asked, Mamdani declined to use the debate stage to endorse Hochul. So did Cuomo and Sliwa.
Since the debate, Mamdani has maintained his double-digit lead in the polls.

Mamdani And Cuomo Square Off On Gaza, Free Housing, And More In NYC Mayoral Debate

Debate

Election

Hamas

Templates (9)

LIVE UPDATES: Mamdani, Cuomo, And Sliwa Fight It Out In NYC Mayoral Debate

Jay Jones

Virginia

New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced that he is dropping out of the race to serve another term.
In a lengthy video posted to X on Sunday afternoon, Adams thanked his mother, touted his diverse appointments, discussed the corruption case against him that was dropped earlier this year, and stated that he was officially ending his campaign to remain Mayor of New York City.
“It&#8217;s not always easy to see the impact of good policy in just three years. &#8230; I know some remain unsure of me after the unfortunate events surrounding my federal case. I was wrongfully charged because I fought for this city, and if I had to do it again, I would fight for New York again,” Adams said in the video. “And yet, despite all we&#8217;ve achieved, I cannot continue my re-election campaign. The constant media speculation about my future and the campaign finance board&#8217;s decision to withhold millions of dollars have undermined my ability to raise the funds needed for a serious campaign. I hope that over time, New Yorkers will see this city thrived under our leadership, the policies we put in place should be continued and expanded. I hope you will see that despite the headlines and innuendo, I always put you before me.”
Notably, Adams didn&#8217;t endorse any of his rivals during his video address.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Only in America. Only in New York. 
Thank you for making my story a reality. <a href="https://t.co/efHuyBnITJ">pic.twitter.com/efHuyBnITJ</a>
— Eric Adams (@ericadamsfornyc) <a href="https://twitter.com/ericadamsfornyc/status/1972348511892262962?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 28, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Adams was running as an independent candidate against socialist Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who is also running as an independent after losing the Democratic primary to Mamdani, and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa.
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Adams had been consistently placing last in polling among the four main candidates, with Mamdani in the lead and Cuomo a somewhat distant second. Currently, the <a href="https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/mayor/general/2025/new-york/mamdani-vs-cuomo-vs-adams-vs-sliwa-vs-walden">RealClearPolitics</a> polling average has Mamdani at 44.4%, with Cuomo at 25.4%, and Sliwa at 13.8%.
The New York City mayoral election is November 4.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul And NYC Mayor Eric Adams Make Announcement On Gun Violence

Eric Adams Bows Out Of NYC Mayor Race, Makes No Endorsement

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