A former adviser to top Democrat candidates, including Hillary Clinton and Colorado Governor Jared Polis, has slammed New York City’s far-left mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani over his radical rhetoric.
Dan Turrentine said he was “almost speechless” after hearing anti-police comments made by Mamdani during a 2020 interview.
Mamdani has been strongly criticized by the Left and Right since winning the Democrat primary.
After winning the primary, the Democratic candidate is now likely to be the next mayor of the deep blue city.
Among other things, he has refused to disavow the phrase “globalize the intifada,” which is a de facto call for violence.
In July 2020, Mamdani appeared on the “Immigrantly” podcast espousing rhetoric to defund the police, and the interview recently went viral on social media.
He referred to the history of the New York Police Department (NYPD), saying:
“You can see that we have invested in a system that functions in many ways to punish poor black and brown people.”
He gave examples of the NYPD overstepping their bounds, such as removing a homeless person from a train or responding to someone “surviving, you know, going through domestic violence.”
Turrentine blasted Mamdani on “The Morning Meeting Podcast” when co-hosts Mark Halperin and Sean Spicer brought up the viral podcast.
“I’m almost speechless,” Turrentine said.
“Like, that is so enraging.
“It’s crazy. I hope it hurts him.
“Like, when I hear that, and I try to have an open mind, hope that whoever our next mayor is makes this city a great place.
“I live [here]. We have children here,” he added.
“New York City police officers put themselves in such harm’s way.
“This city is full of crazy people on subways. I, our children go on it.
“The number of times that there are homeless people who are, like, out of their mind who come up to kids, who scream at them right near – to say the police are the [problem], I hope our party condemns him.”
Turrentine said he thinks the city has made progress with crime until recently, and can’t afford to go backward.
Obviously, Mamdani is a bad candidate for New York City and will cause great harm if he is elected.
However, Mamdani has disavowed those earlier comments, which were made in the wake of the George Floyd death and the riots that followed.
“I will not defund the police,” he said during a mayoral debate in June.
“I will work with the police because I believe the police have a critical role to play in creating public safety.”
Many candidates who called for defunding the police in 2020 are disavowing it now, so it’s not surprising that he has changed his tune.
That doesn’t mean anyone should vote for him, but it would be good to focus on the real reasons for not doing so rather than grasping onto something that doesn’t represent his current views, or at least his current stated views.
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