Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama's former chief of staff and a man not known for sentimentality, sat down on the Unholy Podcast this week and described a private conversation with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani about Israel. Emanuel's account: "You chant 'a river to the sea,' and that means there will never be a Jewish homeland for Jews who have faced the Holocaust. And I said, 'I want you to hear this: over my dead body.'"
Emanuel wasn't done. On July 27, he went after the Democratic Socialists of America — Mamdani's political home — by name. "You can be focused on winning tough races, flipping red seats blue," Emanuel wrote. "Or you can be focused on abolishing prisons and … the Senate and Supreme Court? You can't do both. I'm for winning this November and ending Trump's corruption — and I'm also for putting an end to all the distractions from the DSA."
Mamdani's communications director Anna Bahr responded on social media. Her rebuttal, in full: "can confirm this … did not happen."
Then there's Mark Penn, Bill Clinton's former top adviser, who went after Mamdani's pied-à-terre tax proposal. The tax was pitched as targeting ultra-wealthy owners of properties worth $5 million or more. But when the city released the actual list, it included roughly 960,000 property owners — nearly every residential tax lot in New York City. Penn's analysis: "Once you are on the list you have to prove you should not be taxed by showing you are a resident." He called it the "lie of socialism" — "it starts with the idea that only 'they' are going to get it — a small group of 30,000 homeowners — and before you know it you are on the list."
So Obama's guy thinks Mamdani is an antisemitic radical. Clinton's guy thinks he's running a bait-and-switch tax scheme on a million New Yorkers. These aren't Fox News contributors. These are the architects of the last two successful Democratic presidencies.
And they're not the only ones circling. Actress Patricia Heaton threw her support behind a petition, created by families of 9/11 victims, to ban Mamdani from the 25th anniversary commemoration of the attacks this September. Heaton wrote "Keep it going, New Yorkers" on X, referencing the petition, which has now gathered over 40,000 signatures. The petition cites the mayor's "public positions, associations, and responses to rhetoric that many perceive as hostile" to the values of the ceremony — "respect for the victims, recognition of the gravity of the attacks, and a clear rejection of the ideologies that contributed to such violence."
Mamdani said he'd attend anyway. "I will proudly honor the families, the survivors and the first responders forever impacted by that horrific terror attack by standing alongside them at this year's 9/11 commemoration."
Then there's the grocery store lawsuit. The Multicultural Business Coalition — representing 50 chambers of commerce for Asian, African, Caribbean, Hispanic, Middle Eastern, and Jewish-owned businesses — voted to sue New York City over Mamdani's $70 million plan to open five taxpayer-funded municipal supermarkets, one per borough by 2029, selling core staples at a 30 percent discount. MBC Chairman Frank Garcia said the mayor "doesn't seem to want to sit down with us" and warned the city "won't be able to bully these lawyers we are going to bring in." The coalition is building a $1 million legal and lobbying war chest.
Mamdani's defense: "We are not looking to compete with bodegas or grocery stores when it comes to their ability to survive." Five government-run stores undercutting private businesses by 30 percent, funded with $70 million in taxpayer money, and the first location parked near five existing bodegas in East Harlem — but it's not competition.
The La Marqueta site in East Harlem, incidentally, has already received $25 million in taxpayer funds.
This is what a political implosion looks like from the inside. His own party's heavyweights are publicly calling him radical and dishonest. Families of terrorism victims are petitioning to keep him away from a memorial. The immigrant business owners his ideology claims to champion are hiring lawyers to fight him. And his best response to each crisis is a sentence that contradicts the evidence.
A $70 million grocery plan that isn't competition. A tax on 30,000 that hits 960,000. A conversation that "did not happen" — except on the record, on a podcast, from the former White House chief of staff.
At some point, the gap between what a politician says and what everyone around him sees stops being spin and starts being the whole story.
