New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has a line about his wife. He’s used it three times now. It goes like this: “My wife is the love of my life, and she’s also a private person who has held no formal position on my campaign or in my City Hall.”
He first used it after reports that his wife, Rama Duwaji, had liked Instagram posts that described the Hamas-led Oct. 7 invasion as “breaking the walls of apartheid” and “resisting apartheid since 1948.” He returned to the same separation argument days later when asked about her illustration for a Susan Abulhawa project. And after the latest report about old social media accounts, Newsweek noted that Mamdani had previously stressed that Duwaji was a “private person.”
Three revelations. Two weeks. The same sentence hanging over all of them. And as of Thursday, the old X account, where much of the latest material was posted, appeared to have been deactivated.
Week One: The Likes
Reporting in early March said Duwaji liked Instagram posts shared on the day of the Oct. 7 attack that described the invasion as “breaking the walls of apartheid” and “resisting apartheid since 1948.” Other liked posts supported protests against Israel the following day. Mamdani, then facing questions about the posts, said his support for Palestinian liberation should never be confused for “a celebration of the loss of civilian life” and condemned rhetoric at a rally that sought to make light of those deaths.
On the same day, Mamdani was telling Politico that line, his then-girlfriend was liking posts that critics read as doing exactly what he said he opposed. City Hall’s response: She’s a private person.
One of the Oct. 7 posts at the center of the first round of scrutiny. Credit: Screenshot via Instagram
Week Two: The Hoax and the Illustration
Days later, further reporting said Duwaji had also liked an Instagram post that referred to The New York Times’ investigation into sexual violence during Oct. 7 as a “mass rape hoax.” Around the same time, scrutiny also landed on an illustration she contributed to an essay in a collection that included work by Susan Abulhawa, a Palestinian-American author whose past language about Jews and Israelis Mamdani called “patently unacceptable” and “reprehensible.” His office said Duwaji had been commissioned by a third party as a freelance illustrator, had never met the author, and had no role in the administration. On the broader question of his wife’s public baggage, the answer was functionally the same.
Duwaji’s profile is central to the story, even when City Hall insists she is not part of it. Credit: NYC Mayor’s Office
Week Three: The Old Accounts
On Tuesday, the Free Beacon published its most damaging report. The outlet said it linked Duwaji to old X and Tumblr accounts by cross-referencing usernames, tagged photos, birthday references, a pet cat’s name, and location details. Newsweek later said it could not independently verify that the accounts belonged to her. That caveat matters. So does what the report alleged was on them.
Among the posts the Free Beacon attributed to those accounts were a 2013 tweet using the n-word, a 2015 retweet praising Shadia Abu Ghazaleh, a 2015 post saying Tel Aviv “shouldn’t exist in the first place,” a 2017 Tumblr post featuring Leila Khaled with the caption “If it does good for my cause, I’ll be happy to accept death,” and a repost blaming “white people” for creating al Qaeda. Khaled participated in airplane hijackings in 1969 and 1970.
The old-account report landed because it moved beyond likes and into attributed posts. Screenshot: Jon Levine/X
By Thursday, the X account — @_RamaDee — appeared to have been deactivated. Newsweek said social media activity on X suggested other users were still able to respond to old posts as recently as Thursday, and it said it was unclear who deleted the account.
The Defense That Didn’t Evolve
Mamdani defending his wife isn’t the issue. That’s what spouses do. The issue is that the defense didn’t evolve even as the story did.
Week one was Instagram likes — something that could at least be waved away as passive engagement. Week two was a “mass rape hoax” like plus an illustration connection to an author, Mamdani himself, called reprehensible. Week three was a resurfaced old-account story that the Free Beacon laid out in detail, and Newsweek treated more cautiously, but not dismissively. Each round got worse. And through all of it, the same line kept doing the work.
That line works exactly once. Used over and over, it stops being a defense and starts being a strategy — one built on the assumption that if the mayor keeps saying she doesn’t work here, the story will eventually go away. The account’s disappearance suggests the story is not going away on its own.
Journalist Ryan Grim argued that the Free Beacon was now going after Mamdani’s wife for posts she made at 15. Policy analyst Josh Appel fired back: “Fixed it for you: Rama Duwaji has been going after Jews since she was 15.” That exchange captures the two poles. But it misses the middle — a mayor who publicly condemned the Oct. 7 rally while his partner was privately liking posts tied to it, and who has answered three escalating flareups with essentially the same copy-pasted line.
At some point, “she’s a private person” stops answering the question and becomes the question itself. We passed that point a while ago.