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But his remarks didn’t go unchallenged. Congressman Jason Crow (D-CO), a member of the far-left House Progressive Caucus, tried to downplay Mamdani’s extremism by blaming conservatives. “They always try to create a villain is my point,” Crow said. “They always try to create some boogeyman or bogeywoman.”
Maher quickly shut that down. “No, these are quotes. I’m not creating anything, I’m quoting [Mamdani],” he fired back.
Also on the panel, columnist James Kirchick backed Maher’s assessment and added his own unfiltered critique. “Everything that the crazy far-right alleged about Obama – wasn’t born in America, Islamist, socialist, antisemite, hates America, it’s all true about this guy [Mamdani],” Kirchick said.
Kirchick took it even further, accusing Mamdani of endorsing antisemitic slogans that openly call for violence. “He defends the expression ‘globalize the intifada,’ which explicitly means – and I don’t wanna hear anyone deny this – it means kill Jews whenever and wherever you can find them,” Kirchick said, citing the candidate’s troubling alignment with radical causes. He also noted that prominent Democrats aren’t touching Mamdani’s campaign with a ten-foot pole.
That distance from mainstream Democrats makes sense when you look at Mamdani’s past.
In December 2020, he enthusiastically reposted a Communist Party tweet celebrating the rise of a 21-year-old communist mayor in India. “Comrade Arya Rajendran, age 21 new Mayor of Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. She will be the youngest mayor of a major city in the world. Here she leads a detachment of Red Volunteers,” read the post. Mamdani added: “Them: what kind of mayor does NYC need right now?”—a not-so-subtle nod to his own vision for America’s largest city.
He’s also been one of the most vocal “defund the police” advocates in New York politics, even as he scrambles to soften that rhetoric during his current campaign.
“In the last budget, the City Council tried to make the NYPD reduce its overtime budget by half. They simply refused. There is no negotiating with an institution this wicked & corrupt,” Mamdani declared in a 2020 post.
“Defund it. Dismantle it. End the cycle of violence,” he continued. And it didn’t stop there. Mamdani went on to label the justice system a “public health hazard,” writing, “Our police: threatening the physical safety of politicians who oppose their agenda. Our prosecutors: turning their own offices into super-spreader events because of all their COVID truthers. The entire carceral system is an unreformable public health hazard. Defund & dismantle.”
While Maher and Kirchick pulled no punches in exposing Mamdani’s radicalism, the mainstream media and Democratic Party leadership remain largely silent—even as this fringe figure inches closer to the mayor’s office.
Maher’s confrontation offers a rare glimpse into what happens when the left’s more extreme ideas are dragged into the daylight. Whether New Yorkers will heed the warning is another matter entirely.
