Cooke: Let’s Face It — Mamdani Is Full of It

After New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani told a story about a supposed aunt being afraid to ride the subway in the aftermath of 9/11, National Review senior editor Charles C. W. Cooke, on today’s edition of The Editors, said he doesn't think the complaint is genuine.

“I don't mean by that that there weren't some people in New York who felt scared or uncomfortable after 9/11 -- I'm sure there were,” Cooke said. “Certainly people outside of New York and inside of New York shouted at or said rude things to people who had turbans or looked Middle Eastern. It's not great. But I don't think that this complaint from Mamdani is tied to that.”

Cooke called Mamdani “a garden variety progressive politician.” This, according to Cooke, means that “you have to talk quite a lot about oppression. You have to convey a conception of the United States as a racist place in which the white Christian majority makes life hell for everybody else.

“You have to talk as if you and your family are put upon, as if your voters are put upon, as if every day in every way America fails to live up to its ideals, which it doesn't. . . . Certainly historically,” Cooke continued, “it has very often failed to live up to its ideals and in ways that are serious, in ways that have mostly been abolished, too.

“But I don't think this is about his aunt -- who doesn't actually exist in the way he described it. I don't think this is about Muslims. I think this is how the Mamdanis of the world talk.”

The Editors podcast is recorded on Tuesdays and Fridays every week and is available wherever you listen to podcasts.