David Kaufman: Zohran Mamdani giggles during 9/11 memorial

NEW YORK — The 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks on New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Virginia by al-Qaida operatives could not have arrived at a more loaded moment for America. Along with falling on the first night of the Jewish New Year, Rosh HaShana, the sombre, quarter-century milestone took place Friday as the role of Islam — and particularly Islamic extremism — occupy an increasingly oversized space in U.S. politics.

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Call it the “Mamdani effect” — and not the one which has helped usher in a slew of Democratic socialist candidates across both New York City and the entire nation following the election of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani last November. But rather the impact of the city’s first Muslim mayor, who’s made elevating his faith a personal passion, if not a priority — matched in its fervour only by his equally vocal disdain for Zionism, Israel and Israel’s embattled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

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Make no mistake, the issue with Mamdani is not his faith, but rather his fanaticism. As Abe Greenwald wrote on Wednesday in Commentary Magazine, Mamdani is not guilty of extremism simply by association — it’s that so many of his associates happen to be extremists. And this includes many, like streamer-provocateur Hassan Piker, who’ve openly cheered the 2001 attacks by al-Qaida, along with men such as Ramzi Kassem — who for nearly a decade defended the Saudi al-Qaeda operative Ahmed Al-Darbi, only for Kassem to be made Chief Counsel by Mamdani mere hours after the mayor was inaugurated in January.

No wonder over 100,000 family members of September 11 victims signed a petition this summer demanding Mamdani be kept away from the memorial events in Lower Manhattan. The mayor, unsurprisingly, refused to listen — turning what should have been a moment of reverence and solemnity into a personal and political agenda-op for a mayor who never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity to say or do or believe in the right thing.

Mamdani was hardly alone at the memorial on Friday, but he was among the largest egos on the dais. That’s because America’s most grandiose political ego, President Donald Trump, stuck close to Washington today, headlining the commemoration at the Pentagon, where he unsurprisingly tied the legacy of 9/11 with his unresolved — and increasingly costly — stalemate in Iran.

Instead, Vice-President JD Vance represented the administration in Lower Manhattan, which was actually even more fraught and problematic. Protocol has always insisted that no September 11 speech ever skew political. But Vance — already jockeying for his rightful place on the 2028 presidential ballot — has made politicizing Muslims and the Middle East one of his latest obsessions.

There is, of course, Vance’s increasingly vocal disdain for Israel. Then there’s the VP’s headlining address at the first-ever midterm Republican National Convention in Dallas over the weekend. There, yet again, Vance took stabs at Egyptian-American Senate candidate Adbul el-Sayed of Michigan, who’s repeatedly campaigned with Piker and has made the Israel-Gaza conflict an anchor of his campaign.

Along with hitting back at el-Sayed’s insinuations earlier this month that Vance’s (caucasian) family would have rejected the Vice President’s Indian-American wife for her race, Vance described el-Sayed as embodying a Democratic party that “can find sympathy for the terrorists who perpetrated 9/11.” Vance’s focus on el-Sayed has been so strident that Reuters declared that “Republicans are making Muslims a campaign issue in the 2026 U.S. midterms” earlier this week. Such sentiments could easily have marred the 9/11 memorial events, as Vance and Mamdani officially interact for the first time. Luckily, Vance showed up and remained silent.

Meanwhile, New York’s Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul, who endorsed Mamdani for mayor, is also coming under increasing scrutiny as she battles for her political survival against her insurgent Republican rival Bruce Blakeman. Late last month, Hochul was photographed attending Friday prayers at a Manhattan Islamic center clad in a traditional hijab. The move sparked heavy criticism from conservatives including Blakeman and Trump, some accusing Hochul of “bending the knee to Islam.”

Hochul is now just a few points ahead of Blakeman, according to recent polls, reflecting the widespread frustration with the governor over her appeasement to Mamdani’s radical economic agenda. Blakeman, who is Jewish, is also making the most of Jewish frustration with New York City’s still rising antisemitism epidemic, which many have attributed to Mamdani.

As he has done for years, Blakeman appeared at the World Trade Center events, placing him alongside Hochul and Mamdani as thousands commemorated the most deadly attack by Islamists in U.S. history. The optics were as uncomfortable as they were consequential for all three, who hold the fate of New York’s security and economy in their adversarial hands.

Then there’s former New York mayor Rudolf Giuliani, who arrived to the memorial in a wheel chair. He said little, but everyone there already knew what he was thinking. Giuliani, who was infamously crowned “America’s Mayor” in the wake of the terror attacks, joined those victims’ families in demanding that Mamdani stay home. So has former New York Governor George Pataki, who like Giuliani was in office a quarter-century ago.

Mamdani, as ever, knows how to play this melee to his advantage, and has released some 170,000 documents indicating politicians from all parties purposely misled the public about the severity of the air quality following the Twin Towers’ collapse. More people have died from airborne illnesses since the terror attacks than from the attacks themselves, said Mamdani earlier this week.

It’s a masterstroke in political calculation and obfuscation, positioning Mamdani as the arbiter of New York’s moral consciences rather than its moral decay. Ultimately, yet again, the mayor — who was just a kid on September 11 — had the last laugh at Ground Zero today, literally. Even before the crowds began to thin, social media was outraged and abuzz with images of the mayor chuckling alongside Queens Congresswoman (and fellow Democratic Socialist) Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez while the names of the terror victims were read out.

Tacky and tone-deaf, Mamdani once again hogged all of the headlines for all of the wrong reasons. Is it any wonder so many wanted him to stay home?

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