The Media Research Center’s protracted war against New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani continued into the new year with a Jan. 2 post by Mark Finkelstein, who found a non-Scott Jennings right-winger to spout the MRC’s preferred narrative:
Among the Republicans that CNN This Morning has permitted into its Group Chat, T.W. Arrighi put in an exceptional performance on Friday’s episode. He authored a definitive takedown of NYC’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, and his radical agenda.
His key point was that Mamdani’s socialist ideas have been tried across the country and around the world and have, inevitably, failed. All Mamdani has done is to wrap up old, failed ideas “in shiny new packaging.” Arrighi gave several examples of the ideas Mamdani is proposing that have been tried and failed elsewhere.
[…]And speaking of new faces, Arrighi managed to make his Mamdani takedown while maintaining a pleasant demeanor and a smile on his face. Arrighi even got former Biden aide Meghan Hays to agree with him on the brass tacks: if Mamdani can’t keep the streets clean and the city safe, there will be the same sort of change that brought about the mayoralty of former cop Eric Adams.
No mention of the change that brought about Adams’ downfall? Interesting.
Craig Bannister served up a Jan. 2 CNSNews.com propaganda piece making the point that Mamdani said at his inauguration that he will “replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism,” which he maliciously interpreted as claiming that “Individualism will be replaced with conformity, and strength with dependence on others.”
Jeffrey Lord rooted for Mamdani’s failure in his Jan. 3 column:
“Democratic socialist” Zohran Mamdani has been sworn in as the Mayor of America’s biggest city. The city that is famously home to the capitalism of Wall Street and all manner of millionaires and zillionaires, not to mention hard working, everyday Americans. And yes, New York is also the home of “legacy media” like the three broadcast TV networks, PBS, The New York Times and The New York Post et al.
Now it’s put up or shut up time for American socialists. With the “legacy media” on the scene to record the results.
Mayor Mamdani, whether he likes it or not, is now going to be under the media microscope if for no other reason then that it’s right there in New York watching the Mayor everyday. If socialism is the success Mamdani and his fellow Bernie Sanders-style Democrats insist, the media both — in New York and nationally — can be counted on to spread the word.
And if Mamdani’s socialist “solutions” crash and burn? However much the legacy media may want to downplay it, the woes of socialism will out.
Tim Graham spent a Jan. 17 post raging that Mamdani was being urged to be more inclusive:
The New York Times and its City Hall reporter Jeffery C. Mays attacked new Mayor Zohran Mamdani for not putting enough “affirmative action” in his new administration. Blacks make up about 23 percent of the population of New York City, so they expect him to be quota-conscious.
The headline for this lecture:
None of Mamdani’s Deputy Mayors Are Black. It Has Become a Problem.
Some Black and Latino leaders worry they are being denied access to power under Mayor Zohran Mamdani and that they may lose the ground they had gained under former Mayor Eric Adams.
Mays lamented that “in his rollout as mayor, Mr. Mamdani has appointed five deputy mayors, none of them Black; one was Latino.”
Oh sure, Mamdani “announced Afua Atta-Mensah, who led his campaign outreach to Black voters, as the new chief equity officer and commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Equity and Racial Justice” and “reaffirmed his commitment to releasing a long overdue and mandated plan to address racial disparities in New York City.”
But as a man of color, he’s not doing enough for the capital-B black people:
Of course, Graham is a doughy white guy, so of course he would be offended that there might be too many black people (or any black people, really) in Mamdani’s administration.