Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo appeared to laugh briefly and agree with a radio host who said during an interview Thursday that Zohran Mamdani would be “cheering” if “another 9/11” happened on his watch, though a spokesperson for Cuomo's campaign later denied he was agreeing with the comments.
During an appearance on Sid Rosenberg’s “Sid & Friends in the Morning,” a radio show on WABC, Cuomo, who is running for mayor of New York City, lambasted Mamdani for lacking experience. Cuomo said Mamdani, 34, a state assemblyman who is the Democratic nominee and front-runner in the mayoral race, doesn’t have a track record of dealing with the type of crises that executive officers like mayors and governors face — and have faced in the past.
“That job is a scary job. You wake up as mayor, you wake up as governor, any morning there’s a prison uprising, there was just a mass shooting, there’s Legionnaires’ disease, there’s gonna be a fiscal collapse, Wall Street’s moving to doubt, any given morning there’s a crisis,” Cuomo said in the interview. “And people’s lives are at stake — God forbid another 9/11, can you imagine Mamdani in the seat?”
At that point, Rosenberg jumped in, replying with a laugh: “I could. He’d be cheering.”
In response, Cuomo said: “That’s another problem. But can you imagine that? If Mamdani was in the seat on 9/11, what would have happened in this city?”
Rich Azzopardi, a spokesman for Cuomo, told NBC News that Cuomo did not agree with Rosenberg's comments and that his response was in reference to comments by a progressive streamer, Hasan Piker. Cuomo has repeatedly criticized Mamdani for appearing with Piker, who once said America "deserved 9/11" before he called the comments inappropriate.
Piker was not specifically invoked during that part of the interview, and Mamdani said at last week’s mayoral debate that Piker’s comments were “objectionable and reprehensible.”
"He was referring to Mamdani’s close friend Hasan Piker, who said ‘America deserved 9/11,’ a statement 9/11 families called on Zohran Mamdani to denounce but he refused for months," Azzopardi said in an emailed statement, which included a link to a New York Post story.
"This is not new -- the Governor held a press conference along with 9/11 families to denounce Mamdani’s association with and refusal to denounce Piker’s hateful comments," Azzopardi continued. "The overall topic of the conversation was that Mamdani is deeply unqualified and unprepared to be Mayor of the Greatest City on earth, which every New Yorker saw last night."
Mamdani reacted to the comments in an interview on WPIX-TV.
“This is disgusting. This is Andrew Cuomo’s final moments in public life, and he’s choosing to spend them making racist attacks on the person who would be the first Muslim to lead this city,” he said.
“There are more than 1 million Muslims who live in New York City, and to have our faith be smeared and slandered by someone who at one point was considered a leader of the Democratic Party showcases the fact that that bigotry and racism is not exclusively a Republican problem,” Mamdani said.
Mamdani would be the city’s first Muslim mayor if he is elected, and discussions about his faith — as well as deep divisions between Cuomo and Mamdani and among New Yorkers over the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza — have become major issues in the mayoral race. In this interview, Cuomo repeatedly mispronounced Mamdani’s name as “Mamdami,” as he has through much of the campaign.
Cuomo has been deeply critical of Mamdani over his criticism of Israel's handling of the war. Mamdani referred to Israel's conduct as "genocide" and, during the primary, did not distance himself from the use of the term "globalize the intifada" despite pleas from Jewish groups that have said the language evokes calls to antisemitic violence. Mamdani has since said he would "discourage this language."
“Not everything is a TikTok video. You’re the savior of the Jewish people? You won’t denounce ‘globalize the intifada,’ which means kill Jews. There’s unprecedented fear in New York,” Cuomo told Mamdani during Wednesday’s debate.
"There's no doubt there's two sides on what's going on and the passions are very high. That doesn't justify antisemitic behavior in New York," he continued. "It doesn't justify having a Jewish population that feels unprotected in New York. It doesn't justify leaders who stoke the flames of hatred against Jewish people, which is what Zohran does, in my opinion."
After Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa jumped in Wednesday and accused Mamdani of supporting a "global jihad," Mamdani pushed back.
"I have never, not once, spoken in support of global jihad. That is not something that I have said, and that continues to be ascribed to me. And frankly, I think much of it has to do with the fact that I am the first Muslim candidate to be on the precipice of winning this election," he said.
This week, on an episode of the YouTube series "Flagrant," Mamdani addressed the issue when he was asked whether he thought he'd be accused of antisemitism if he wasn't Muslim.
"I do think that Andrew Cuomo, there are a number of things that he has said and done, he would not have done if I weren't a Muslim candidate," Mamdani said. "And it is all too familiar for a lot of Muslim New Yorkers [who] grew up in this city to see the speaking up for Palestinian human rights to then be labeled as if it is bigotry against the Jewish faith. And what I've appreciated is for all of the fearmongering that he's done, there are so many Jewish New Yorkers who can see through that."
