White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt ripped into socialist New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani on Monday, and Mediaite editor Colby Hall just couldn't figure out why she would attack this new radical face of the Democratic Party. He even failed to identify him as a mayoral candidate, saying he "isn't even in Congress yet." This was the headline:
Karoline Levitt Accuses Zohran Mamdani of ‘Peddling Anti-Semitism’ While Pitching Trump Spending Bill
Hall sounded very defensive of that "charming socialist" in New York:
Leavitt, eyes locked on the prompter and smile tight as a drum, veered from policy bullet points into a screed aimed squarely at New York State Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani, calling him “a Democrat Socialist—really a communist—who proudly calls to defund the police … peddles anti-semitism, praises pro-Hamas groups, wants Israel abolished, [and] believes white Americans should not exist.”
If that sounds like a Fox News chyron cooked up by AI with a grudge, that’s because it practically is.
It's amazing that Hall cannot see the opportunity here for the Trump White House to pin Mamdani's radicalism on the Democratic Party in general, or even specifically on the New York Democrats, which include Senate Minority Leader Schumer and House Minority Leader Jeffries.
Hall wants to pretend you can't pin anti-semitism on Mamdani, and then he underlines why that makes sense:
Mamdani has been a vocal critic of Israeli policy in Gaza and an advocate for defunding the NYPD. But Leavitt’s comment is more political spin than accepted factual narrative. Critics take issue with Mamdani ostensibly minimizing the attacks on Israeli civilians on October 7th, and his liberal use of the terms “genocide” and “apartheid” to describe Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s treatment of Palestinians.
Then it's laughable when he claims the Republicans are bumbling here on the PR front: "In weaponizing Mamdani’s name, Leavitt is arguably handing him a bigger national platform than he’s ever had." What? He did Meet the Press on Sunday, and was interviewed by MSNBC's Jen Psaki and CNN's Erin Burnett before that.
This is the same man who tried to tell us a few weeks ago that Trump-hating reporter Terry Moran is "not a liberal in the slightest."
We also address Mamdani spin through the Sunday shows, and how one CNN anchor tried to claim Mamdani may have said he wanted to tax "richer, whiter neighborhoods," but he didn't mean to sound racial. He could have just left the word "whiter" out of it, but he included it for a reason.
Enjoy the podcast below, or wherever you listen to podcasts:
