The Media Research Center continued its dirty war against Zohran Mamdani in a Nov. 4 post by Curtis Houck:
Barring a massive upset on Tuesday, communist Zohran Madmani was headed to a victory in the New York City mayoral race and was greeted with fawning coverage in the elitist, liberal media on their flagship Tuesday morning news shows, declaring him as someone “snowballing” his “way towards history” with a “focus on affordability” and “robust” and “savvy social media-driven campaign.”
ABC’s Good Morning America was giddy at the prospect of being run by a communist with worldview that hates Israel, police, and wealth not captured by the government.
Chief investigative correspondent Aaron Katersky beamed from a Long Island City polling station that Mamdani’s “breakout campaign, once seen as a long shot, may be snowballing its way towards history” with the Big Apple “on the cusp of choosing a 34-year-old, self-described democratic socialist with little political experience as its 111th mayor.”
Katersky sounded like one of those star-crossed liberal journalists with weak knees talking about Barack Obama, circa 2007 and 2008: “While his opponents see nothing but faults, Zohran Mamdani’s focus on affordability and a savvy social media-driven campaign striking a chord with the voters looking for a change.”
If that wasn’t a throwback to the decade of Obamagasams, maybe this will: “Mamdani tried to show a common touch, more like New Yorkers than their politicians…visiting a club…watching the Knicks from the nosebleeds, a contrast to his chief rival Andrew Cuomo, who sat with the current mayor courtside.”
Katersky spoke of Mamdani in the affirmative, but painted criticisms of Mamdani was only things others are claiming: “Cuomo lagging in the polls, accusing Mamdani of trying to turn the home of capitalism socialist.”
Houck sounds a tad bitter. Speaking of which, Tim Graham sounded even more so in a Nov. 7 column:
Zohran Mamdani surged to an easy victory as the “democratic socialist” mayor of New York City, complete with media enthusiasm that carried echoes of silly Obama love songs. The badly named “mainstream media” earnestly promoted the most extreme candidate.
Andrew Cuomo must have felt so betrayed. In 2020, he was the media’s pandemic prince. His press conferences on Covid were carried live nationwide. That November, the Emmy awards people decided to give him a special prize for his “masterful use of television” during the pandemic. Now he’s been cast aside like month-old milk.
After Mamdani won, New York Times media reporter Michael Grynbaum warned about the opposition of reprehensible right-wing media outlets. The New York Post puckishly called New York “The Red Apple,” with the subhead “On your Marx, get set, Zo! Socialist Mamdani wins race for mayor.”
Grynbaum summarized: “As is often the case in these matters, the screaming front page of The New York Post, the city’s mischievous tabloid that like Fox News is controlled by Rupert Murdoch, summed up the conservative id.”
It’s the “conservative id,” is it? Would Grynbaum be able to locate a “leftist id” at his own newspaper? For example, on the front page of The Times on January 10, 2021, they compared Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. These slanderous citations are repetitively spewed in the leftist press.
Grynbaum added this warning: “Some of the harsher right-wing attacks on Mr. Mamdani have been marked by Islamophobia. Steve Bannon, the right-wing podcaster and provocateur, has called Mr. Mamdani a ‘neo-Marxist jihadist.’”
Graham didn’t indicate, however, that the Times’ view of right-wing media was in any way inaccurate. He went on to whine that “The leftist media that dismiss the ‘conservative id’ aren’t coming to grips with Mamdani’s actual public record.” He also didn’t explain why the Times gets denounced while the Post’s nastiness was dismissed as puckish.
Clay Waters expressed more bitterness in a Nov. 8 post:
Wednesday’s front-page story by Emma Fitzsimmons documented Zohran Mamdani’s big win in the New York City mayoral race, and both it and the paper’s live online election night coverage hammered home the pathetic liberal trope that criticism of Mamdani’s virulent anti-Israel actions amounted to “Islamophobia” – as if radical Islam was a harmless concept and not a direct terrorist threat, as displayed so horribly in New York City 24 years ago.
NewsBusters previously documented Round One of the paper’s politicized “Islamophobia” accusations, designed to shame Mamdani’s opponents former Governor Andrew Cuomo and long-time NYC activist Curtis Sliwa into dropping the attack line. Things got worse as Election Day arrived.
As we pointed out the last time he did this, Waters is the chief Islamophobe here. He complained further that Mamdani dared to call out the hate of VicePresident J.D. Vance:
The Times strained to put Mamdani’s Democratic and Republican opponents on the defensive in order to distract from Mamdani’s own callous rhetoric about the 9-11 attacks.
Mehdi Hasan, a Muslim journalist, said that it was wrong for Mr. Vance to mock Mr. Mamdani for talking “publicly and emotionally about their experience of racism,” especially when Mr. Vance’s wife is the daughter of Indian immigrants.
Reporter Jeffery Mays wrote under the headline deck on Monday: “Mamdani Says Rivals Are Pushing Hate as Mayor’s Race Enters Last Stretch — Zohran Mamdani’s opponents, Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa, denied accusations that they are stoking Islamophobia with their rhetoric and actions.”
Waters has made it clear that he’s another of the Republican opponents Mamdani has to battle.