It was Tim Graham’s turn to have a Mamdani meltdown at the Media Research Center in a Nov. 24 post:
One of the most maddening things about the “fact-based” elitist media is how they cannot stand it when their favorite politicians are presented as extremists, but it’s a “fact” that the right-wingers are extreme.
When Donald Trump called New York mayoral candidate a “communist” — based on his talk of “seizing the means of production” and discussing “the abolition of private property” — that was presented as a scandalous “Pants On Fire” lie by the press and their “fact checkers.” But calling Trump a “fascist”? That’s fair game.
On Sunday’s Meet the Press, “moderator” Kristen Welker lunged for the extremes. She nudged Mamdani to repeat his smear that President Trump is a fascist. This wasn’t a question designed to challenge the guest, or even elicit an answer. It was a request to repeat a smear for everyone to hear. Trump is like Hitler, eager to fill the gas chambers. It’s a weird take when your guest hosted Hamas backers at his victory party.
[…]Welker wanted to elicit Mamdani’s sincere answer that Trump is an existential threat to democracy. It doesn’t matter that he’s been elected president twice and we still have a democracy. Then they insist they are “fact-based” — and not fear-based.
The fact that Trump has been elected twice doesn’t make him any less of a threat — after all, Barack Obama was elected twice, and Graham certainly considered him a threat. Still, Graham whined about this on his podcast the next day:
NBC Meet the Press host Kristen Welker devoted a chunk of her interview with socialist Zohran Mamdani on Sunday to begging him to repeat his view that Donald Trump is a “fascist” and a “despot” and a “threat to democracy.” This game of Repeat Yourself isn’t about eliciting answers. It’s about ginning up the most negative soundbites.
Alex Christy spent a Nov. 25 post being mad that it was pointed out how Trump had to say nice things about Mamdani following a White House visit:
ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! and NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers were the only late night comedy shows to tape original episodes on Monday, and both used the occasion to prove that Friday’s meeting between President Donald Trump and New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani proved that the latter isn’t the scary monster that conservatives have portrayed him as. At the same time, the duo argued the meeting also proves that Trump normally works with people who could be considered “AI-generated human vomits” or “charmless goons.”
Kimmel was up first, and he saw hypocrisy in how some conservatives reacted to the meeting, “After weeks of painting Mamdani as the fourth horseman of the Trumpocalypse, they didn’t know what to do with themselves. This is how upside-down this crop of MAGAteers is. They are mad at Trump, some of them furious with him because he was friendly with the new mayor of New York. Last week, he had a big, celebratory dinner for the Saudi prince whose goons dismembered a columnist for The Washington Post. No problem! This: too much.”
Claiming that Trump was smitten by Mamdani, Kimmel contrasted Mamdani with the people in Trump’s everyday orbit, “Mamdani shows up. He’s this young, handsome, charismatic guy who came out of nowhere and won big in the most important city in the world. Trump’s hometown, no less. He walks in. He smiles. He shakes Trump’s hand. Trump looks over in the corner. He sees JD Vance all sweaty and eager. He sees Stephen Miller sucking on his pinkies. He looks around at all these weird, unattractive, AI-generated human vomits in his office. And he’s like, ‘Why can’t I have this Mamdani around?’”
[…]Like Kimmel, Meyers also hyped the idea that the meeting could normalize the radical Mamdani, “Seriously, though, like, what the [bleep] is happening? Either Zohran charmed Trump into embracing democratic socialism and undercutting every scare tactic the right has weaponized against him for the past six months, or the molly Trump took right before the meeting kicked in.”
After another Trump impression where he sounded more like a psychedelic-using hippy, Meyers claimed, “I’ve never seen Trump this smitten before. This is a reminder he doesn’t work with a single cool person. He is surrounded by so many charmless goons that the first time he got to hang out with someone who had a little charisma, he swooned like he was on a date with the varsity quarterback.”
[…]The politeness of the Trump-Mamdani meeting aside, the latter is still a radical, and no amount of name-calling from the late night comedy shows can obscure that fact.
The same day, Curtis Houck cheered that a Mamdani critic got a voice:
In another sign of the kinds of interviews and news stories we should expect and demand from a CBS-run Bari Weiss, Wednesday’s CBS Mornings aired a heavily-promoted first interview with New York City Fire Department (FDNY) Commissioner Robert Tucker, who’s stepping down next month in direct response to the city’s election of anti-Israel and avowed socialist Zohran Mamdani.
Specifically, Tucker told co-host Tony Dokoupi he was leaving because he felt he couldn’t serve under Mamdani because he’s both Jewish and a proud first responder.
It should be noted that Dokoupil did not give Mamdani an opportunity to respond to Tucker, beyond having “blurted out that he too has received no response from Mamdani and his team.” Apparently that right-wing bias is what we should “expect and demand” from Weiss — remember that Weiss pulled a “60 Minutes” segment because the Trump administration was not given a full opportunity to respond.
Jorge Bonilla whined about another Mamdani official in a Nov. 30 post:
As we’ve often exposed here at MRC Latino, the last decade of Univision’s news coverage has been driven by reflexive opposition to Donald Trump and by Latino identity politics. A recent news report engages in both while casting a soft spotlight on one New York Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani’s transition chairs.
Watch as anchor Elian Zidan frames a puff piece of United Way of New York CEO and Mamdani transition co-chair Grace Bonilla (no relation):
[…]So what purpose does this report serve, then? It is to bolster a cloak of “Latino by association” identity on Mamdani with which to make his policies more attractive to viewers. Hence the focus on Bonilla as an ethnic “first” and her role within the campaign. The constant focus on identity and race fill time and foreclose the opportunity to scrutinize more important things such as identity and track record.
All these things are concealed behind identity politics fluff. Par the course for Univision.
As if Bonilla and the rest of the MRC don’t engage in identity politics, where anyone right-wing is automatically better than those who aren’t.