A former adviser to Democrat candidates including Hillary Clinton and Colorado Governor Jared Polis said he was "almost speechless" after hearing anti-police comments made by New York's Democrat mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani during a 2020 interview.
Mamdani, who is Black and Muslim, has been strongly criticized by the left and right since winning the Democrat primary.
Among other things, he has refused to disavow the phrase "globalize the intifada," which is a de facto call for violence.
In July 2020, Mamdani appeared on the "Immigrantly" podcast espousing rhetoric to defund the police, and the interview recently went viral on social media.
He referred to the history of the New York Police Department (NYPD), saying, "You can see that we have invested in a system that functions in many ways to punish poor Black and Brown people."
He gave examples of the NYPD overstepping their bounds, such as removing a homeless person from a train or responding to someone "surviving, you know, going through domestic violence."
Former Democrat adviser Dan Turrentine blasted Mamdani on "The Morning Meeting Podcast" when co-hosts Mark Halperin and Sean Spicer brought up the viral podcast.
"I'm almost speechless. Like, that is so enraging," Turrentine said. "It's crazy. I hope it hurts him. Like, when I hear that, and I try to have an open mind, hope that whoever our next mayor is makes this city a great place. I live [here]. We have children here. New York City police officers put themselves in such harm's way. This city is full of crazy people on subways. I, our children go on it. The number of times that there are homeless people who are, like, out of their mind who come up to kids, who scream at them right near - to say the police are the [problem], I hope our party condemns him."
Turrentine said he thinks the city has made progress with crime until recently and can't afford to go backward.
Obviously, Mamdani is a bad candidate for New York City and will cause great harm if he is elected.
However, Mamdani has disavowed those earlier comments, which were made in the wake of the George Floyd death and all the protests that followed.
"I will not defund the police. I will work with the police because I believe the police have a critical role to play in creating public safety," he said during a mayoral debate in June.
Many candidates who called for defunding the police in 2020 disavow it now, so it's not surprising that he has changed his tune.
That doesn't mean anyone should vote for him, but it would be good to focus on the real reasons for not doing so rather than grasping onto something that doesn't represent his current views--or at least his current stated views.
