The Media Research Center continued to have meltdowns over New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani for failing to be a right-wing Christian. Trim Graham huffed in a March 15 post:
National “Public” Radio can NOT find the story of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s wife Rama Duwaji putting “Likes” on pages celebrating the October 7 massacre in Israel. But it CAN find stories where Mamdani is the victim of cruel Republican social media posts. GOP ‘Islamophobia’ is hot news, and Muslim Democrat antisemitism is not.
After noting that right-wing Sen. Tommy Tuberville posted “reposted an image of Mamdani next to a photo of the deadly 9/11 terror attacks in New York City, along with the words “the enemy is inside the gates”, Graham huffed further:
Tuberville’s second image was Mamdani hosting the first official Ramadan iftar at City Hall. NPR, normally so hostile to the mingling of church and state, makes an exception for socialist Muslims. On Wednesday, the NPR talk show 1A devoted a whole hour to “Christian nationalism” and how “concerns grow over the crumbling of the separation between church and state in the Trump administration’s military.”
Mamdani also hosted an iftar dinner on March 8 for Hamas-backing Mahmoud Khalil, who drew a laudatory victim profile on NPR this week. Khalil’s protest group at Columbia University not only backed the October 7 slaughter like Mrs. Mamdani, they boasted online that “We are Westerners fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization.” They suggest oppressed territories of the world include Hawaii, Guam, and Puerto Rico. Most Americans would consider that an “enemy” statement.
Graham offered no evidence that Khalil is “pro-Hamas,” but his employer has frequently equated support for Palestinians in general with backing Hamas, or what Tuberville’s rants were not Islamophobic. Instead, he cited an incident “outside Mamdani’s mansion in New York” as an example of incidents of violence caused by “radical Islamists,” without mentioning that the protest in question was organized by right-wing Capitol rioter Jake Lang.
Clay Waters ranted in a March 22 post:
Friday’s PBS News Hour featured a taped interview between co-anchor Amna Nawaz and New York City’s new mayor Zohran Mamdani. Would there be hard-hitting questions about Mamdani’s previous silence on anti-Semitism? His pro-Hamas, October 7 rape-denying wife? His ominous promise to “replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism”? No chance. Instead, the interview was a conversation of cultural commiseration.
The interview took place on March 19, presumably time enough to incorporate a breaking story by the Washington Free Beacon — yet another damning indictment of anti-Jewish social media from Mamdani’s wife Rama Duwaji. The total absence of such questions was particularly striking, especially when Nawaz went out of the way to bring up Mamdani’s “family,” which presumably includes his wife.
[…]The interview threatened to get interesting for a second, when Nawaz began a question about Mamdani’s “family”…but she wasn’t talking about Mamdani’s controversial wife and her pro-Hamas acts on social media, or her illustrating a short story for a book co-edited by anti-Semitic author Susan Abulhawa, who has referred to Jews as “cockroaches.”
Instead it was soft soap with a personal touch, Nawaz inviting Mamdani to discuss the struggle faced by his own South Asian parents (Nawaz’s own family is from Pakistan).
Lots of guilt by association here, and Waters doesn’t explain why he put “family” in scare quotes. Does he think family members aren’t real if they’re connected to Mamdani? Waters also failed to mention his employer’s history of softball interviews with right-wingers such as Kayleigh McEnany.
Alex Christy devoted an April 3 post to ranting about the guy who impersonates Mamdani on “Saturday Night Live”:
CBS’s Stephen Colbert welcomed actor, comedian, and Saturday Night Live’s Zohran Mamdani impersonator Ramy Youssef to Thursday’s taping of The Late Show to discuss what it was like to play the New York City mayor on SNL. According to Youssef, the key to doing a good Mamdani impression is to smile at everything, something Colbert agreed with.
Colbert began by asking, “You played Zohran Mamdani a couple of months ago, back on SNL. What’s the trick? What’s the trick? What’s your hook, I should rather say? What’s your hook for a good Mamdani.”
[…]As for Youssef, he replied, “Well, I would just watch him smile, no matter what he was saying. You know, no matter what was going on. Like, it was just everything, it could be the most serious thing, and he would have a smile and be incredibly serious and I thought, kind of, the way in and it was very fun.”
Christy then whined that this approach differs from that of another impersonator on the show:
While Yousseff claims the key to portraying the radical Mamdani is to smile at everything, SNL’s James Austin Johnson, who plays President Trump, has claimed that his impression has gotten “super dark,” and that is a good summary of how SNL styles its characters. One is the “we tease because we love” kind of humor, and the other is the kind that is meant to serve the show’s larger agenda.
Christy didn’t explain why Johnson’s approach is wrong or why Yousef must emulate that in impersonating Mamdani.