The Media Research Center’s Mamdani meltdowns continued with an April 17 post by Curtis Houck grousing that an interview of Mamdani wasn’t right-wing enough:
Thursday’s CBS Mornings scored a huge get with an interview of socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the perfect chance for a national sit-down and for the Bari Wess-led network to level hard-hitting questions about his plans to raise taxes on everyone (even possibly property taxes), far-left hiring decisions, his wife’s pro-October 7 social media history, soaring costs for city-owned grocery stories, his support for pro-Hamas grad student Mahmoud Khalil, and more.
But, alas, co-host Gayle King and featured co-host Vladimir Duthiers disappointed with questions that they tried to pass off as pressing, but were an absolute cakewalk.
[…]This led into a brisk man-on-the-street that featured letter grades from seven New Yorkers, five of whom gave him some version of an A, one C+ and one C because “he hasn’t done anything too bad” or “too good yet.”
This led into King asking “how do you think you’re doing in your first 100 days” and then “why haven’t you” achieved in full his top three campaign promises of free buses, free childcare, and rent freezes.
Watch as Mamdani filibustered in both cases, insisting everything’s running smoothly:
[…]Noticeably, Vlad Duthiers again pressed Mamdani from the left, this time about diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs. But by acknowledging criticism of his DEI platform from Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, Duthiers gave Mamdani the opening to wiggle out by condemning the Trump Justice Department:
[…]This joke of an interview ended where it began, specifically King asking a softball: “Are you still enjoying this job?” Of course, Mamdani said he was.
Alex Christy served up his own grousing over non-negative Mamdani coverage in an April 26 post:
MS NOW’s Chris Hayes welcomed New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to a special town hall edition of All In on Friday to celebrate his first 100 days in office. According to Hayes, all of the worries about Mamdani have been shown to be hysterical, but it helped that he simply declined to mention some of Mamdani’s more radical moments.
Hayes began his introduction by gushing, “This was the front page of The New York Post the day Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor of New York City. ‘The Red Apple,’ they’re good at that. The culmination of one of the most improbable political stories of the Trump age, a grassroots, progressive campaign like no one had ever seen before, with more opposition from Republicans, from a Democratic political dynasty, from the president, from the media that we’d ever seen.”
It helped that the Democratic dynasty was running an alleged sexual harasser who previously put elderly COVID patients in nursing homes, but Hayes rolled right along, “And he won with a laser focus on a core message of making it more affordable for the people who live here. It’s been a little over 100 days. The city has not fallen into communism just yet, but he does have a job to do.”
After Hayes previewed the evening’s format and introduced Mamdani, he began with a softball, “You know, you were an assembly member, just like the last time, maybe the last time I saw you, actually, and just a few months ago. It’s a very different job than this job. What’s the biggest thing you’ve learned? The biggest realization you’ve had actually being in that position?”
Mamdani never had to answer for his insane death tax proposal, while Hayes’s earlier comment about not falling into communism “yet” is of little comfort considering that so many of his other tax schemes are still in the proposal stage. One of the biggest concerns about Mamdani was his record on anti-Semitism. Since being elected, Mamdani has condemned both sides after an anti-Semitic mob gathered in front of a synagogue that he alleged violated international law by having B’Nefesh promote immigration to Israel, which is both not true and not how the First Amendment works. He also dined with terrorist supporter Mahmoud Khalil. Neither Hayes nor anyone else cared to ask about that.
Christy offered no evidence that Khalil is a “terrorist supporter” — the MRC has declared war on any student who is insufficiently pro-Israel.
Intern Siena Do threw a fit in a May 27 post:
New York City, once regarded as the greatest, is now most famous for being the most expensive city in North America. The citizens who stay, rather than flee to more affordable areas, face crushing taxes and struggle to make ends meet. And what is Democratic Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s solution to this crisis? Throw more money at it and hope it gets better, as evidenced by his Tuesday night interview on CNN’s The Source with Kaitlan Collins, where he received little critical pushback to his costly housing plan.
According to Mayor Mamdani, New York City’s foremost problem is “the lack of affordable housing,” and he foresees prices going up by the end of the year. Collins welcomed Mamdani on air to tout his new Block by Block plan:
[…]Collins then threw Mamdani a soft-ball question referencing his proposed pied-a-terre tax, though she only asked if he had heard back from Citadel CEO Ken Griffin, whose apartment building Mamdani stood in front of while gleefully announcing this new tax.
Instead of defending the tax, Mamdani said that he was “looking to ensure that [he meets] with anyone who is a part of this city’s not only economy, but also [its] future.” The only problem with his statement is that, with Mamdani’s aggressive anti-corporation policies and high prices in general causing businesses of all sizes to flee the city, soon there may not be many business leaders left for him to meet with.
Collins also gave Mamdani an opportunity to snipe at Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s recent CNBC comment that doubling his taxes is “not going to help that teacher in Queens.” Mamdani repeated the common lie that the wealthiest do not “pay their fair share,” ignoring the inconvenient fact that the top one percent pay a disproportionate share (about 46 percent) of the city’s personal income tax.
If Mamdani were to liquidate all of Bezos’s assets, which Bezos himself does not have immediate access to, the money would not be enough to keep New York City running for even two years. The costs are simply too high, and now Mamdani wants to increase them with his inane Block by Block plan.
Do went on to whine that “Mamdani faced no challenges from Collins, who often just queued him up to issue his talking points” — but didn’t explain how her employer queues up right-wingers to peddle their talking points.