Zohran Mamdani is apparently ready to apologize to New York Police Department officers for calling them racist. It is his latest insincere attempt to smooth over his outlandish left-wing rhetoric.
Mamdani on Thursday said that he intends to apologize for calling the NYPD “racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety” in 2020. Mamdani claims that those comments were made “at the height of frustration” after George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis, and he also claimed that his views have changed.
MAMDANI GOES ON LISTENING TOUR TO SHORE UP LAW ENFORCEMENT SUPPORT AFTER 2020 COMMENTS
There are a number of problems with this, the first being that those two positions are contradictory. Did Mamdani say those things in a moment of passion and not mean them, or did his views on police and policing change, suggesting that he did mean them? Arguing both makes it seem like Mamdani is just throwing justifications at the wall and hoping that any of them register with voters and with the police officers he smeared.
Moreover, taking both of those arguments individually still poses several problems. Why would a handful of Minneapolis police officers being involved in a man’s death lead to Mamdani attacking the NYPD in the heat of the moment? NYPD did not kill George Floyd, and Floyd’s death had nothing to do with police being “anti-queer” either. Most damningly, Floyd died on May 25, and Mamdani’s ‘NYPD is a threat to public safety’ social media post came on June 28. Why did Mamdani reach the “height of frustration” more than one month after Floyd’s death?
HOCHUL DODGES ON ENDORSING MAMDANI IN NYC MAYORAL RACE: ‘UP TO THE VOTERS’
Meanwhile, if this is Mamdani simply changing his views, why is that change coming now? What has changed between 2020, when Mamdani was 28 years old and not some naïve college student, and 2025? How do you go from calling NYPD a racist threat to public safety and demanding it be defunded to apologizing for and distancing yourself from those comments you very proudly stood by? The only notable thing that has changed for Mamdani since then is that he is on the verge of becoming mayor, which explains why he didn’t apologize for those comments any time between 2020 and now.
The problem with Mamdani’s apology is that it is meaningless. What he said in 2020 is what he, a far-left progressive, actually believes. What he is saying now is anything that he can say to avoid alienating voters and to smooth over his relationship with the NYPD before his almost-inevitable victory later this year. As Mamdani’s polling popularity has increased, his authenticity has decreased, because he doesn’t want to be seen as the antisemitic, anti-police communist that he is when voters head to the polls in November.