Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani on Wednesday afternoon delivered a televised public apology for tweets he made five years ago calling the NYPD “racist, anti-queer and a major threat to public safety.”
Mamdani, who promised last month in an interview that he would apologize, has said he has been apologizing in person to officers he’s met privately. The interview marked the first time he had apologized for his comments in a public setting.
Pressed Wednesday by host Martha MacCallum to issue a “broad public apology,” Mamdani did not hesitate, later explaining that his earlier criticism had been motivated by the police killing in Minnesota of George Floyd in 2020, when “it felt like safety and justice had never been further apart.” The murder sparked nationwide protests.
“Absolutely, I would apologize to police officers, right here,” he said, adding, “I apologize because of the fact that I’m looking to work with those officers, and I know that these officers, these men and women, who serve in the NYPD — they put their lives on the line every single day,” Mamdani told MacCallum. He noted in the interview that current NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch is under consideration to be his police commissioner.
But, he said, “I haven’t made any personnel commitments.”
Mamdani, a democratic socialist who stunned the political establishment by winning the Democratic primary in June, appeared on the Fox News Channel and “The Story with Martha MacCallum” for the first time.
Several times he looked directly into the camera to address President Donald Trump, striking a relatively conciliatory tone compared to past criticism towards Trump, even willing to talk about the issues with Trump and his family when New York co-hosts the World Cup with New Jersey next year.
“I would welcome them to come to New York City and also to talk about how we can actually lower the cost of living, because that has to be the focus.”
But he struck a pugilist tone toward his opponent, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whom he calls a tool of the wealthy.
Mamdani said that some voters in the city have mentioned voting for Trump due to affordability — grocery prices, rent, childcare — a focus of the mayoral campaign.
“When I’ve spoken to Trump voters right here in New York City — Hillside Avenue in Queens, Fordham Road in the Bronx — they’ve told me it was cost of living that caused them to vote for Donald Trump,” Mamdani said.
Mamdani, Cuomo and the Republican nominee, Curtis Sliwa, are set to debate Thursday — the first of two debates of the general election season.
In the Fox interview, to skepticism by MacCallum, Mamdani defended his plans to expand social services by raising taxes on the richest New Yorkers and big corporations, make public buses free, maintain the NYPD’s current headcount, which Cuomo said he would boost by thousands of police officers, and create an NYPD-supplementing Department of Community Safety that he said would reduce crime and help mentally troubled people early.
“To deliver that justice you have to also deliver that safety,” he said. “And that means representing the men and women of the NYPD. It means representing the Black and brown New Yorkers who’ve been victims of police brutality. It means representing the Muslim New Yorkers in my district who were surveilled on the basis of their faith.”
Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.