{"id":346813,"date":"2025-11-01T00:59:21","date_gmt":"2025-11-01T00:59:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/346813\/"},"modified":"2025-11-01T00:59:21","modified_gmt":"2025-11-01T00:59:21","slug":"if-mamdani-cant-converse-with-the-post-how-can-he-run-nyc-or-manage-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/346813\/","title":{"rendered":"If Mamdani can’t converse with The Post, how can he run NYC or manage Trump?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Zohran Mamdani<\/a> routinely plays the tough guy \u2014 threatening to be President Donald Trump\u2019s \u201cworst nightmare,\u201d snarling at ICE big Tom Homan<\/a> like a leashed labradoodle \u2014 yet for all his bluster he somehow doesn\u2019t have the stones to sit down with The Post.<\/p>\n

We invited all the mayoral candidates to sit down with the Editorial Board this year to share their vision for New York City and answer some questions; nearly all accepted, but Mamdani\u2019s campaign blanked us.<\/p>\n

We called them; we emailed. After the primary, one flack suggested it might happen . . . but his team never reached out with a clear offer, not even with conditions such as insisting the full transcript be open to the public.<\/p>\n

Post-primary, his campaign has occasionally gotten back to Post reporters with answers to specific questions, and even shared his schedule in advance; the candidate sometimes takes a Post question in one of those \u201cscrums\u201d \u2014 but the contact\u2019s still been pretty minimal.<\/p>\n

Maybe he didn\u2019t want to face uncomfortable questions about his hollow economic program or his bizarre plans to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Or about his association with questionable characters such as Hasan Piker<\/a> or Siraj Wahhaj<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\t\t\tMore From\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPost Editorial Board<\/p>\n

Perhaps he just didn\u2019t see how a sitdown with the Post Editorial Board could possibly help him \u2014 even though facing us down plainly would at least show some mettle; it might also alert him to some holes in his own thinking and\/or knowledge, and so help avoid future problems as mayor he\u2019d never otherwise foresee.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t simply about a relationship with The Post\u2019s staff: Much more important, it\u2019s about our readers, many of whom are among the roughly 50% of New Yorkers voting for some other candidate.<\/p>\n

Talking to us, hearing our questions, is the best available way to connect with them. <\/p>\n

Does Mamdani mean it when he says he wants to be mayor for all New Yorkers? <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

If so, he should be able to converse with informed critics \u2014 a group of Republicans, Democrats and independents who collectively have decades of experience with city, state, national and world government and politics.<\/p>\n

It might not be pleasant \u2014 Andrew Cuomo<\/a> certainly didn\u2019t enjoy our sitdown \u2014 but sometimes these dialogues can be a nice-enough surprise, no matter how much we all disagree: Our visits with Zellnor Myrie<\/a> and Jessica Ramos<\/a> went perfectly fine; even Brad Lander<\/a> survived with not a single bruise.<\/p>\n

Even if you consider us \u201cthe enemy,\u201d the concept of \u201cknow thy enemy\u201d should be pretty universal.<\/p>\n

With the Daily News circling death\u2019s door and The New York Times increasingly focused on everything but the city, The Post may be the last major media institution doing any serious coverage of what goes on in this town. <\/p>\n

Surely it\u2019s worth gaining a face-to-face feel for how and why we think and work?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an oddity of the modern left, and today\u2019s Democratic elites generally, that they\u2019re somehow certain they already know exactly what their critics and opponents \u201cactually\u201d think; a bunch of folks who normally are down on \u201cothering\u201d somehow feel kosher in calling half the country \u201cdeplorable\u201d or declaring that the peons desperately \u201ccling to guns or religion.\u201d <\/p>\n

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Cling to your bubble hard enough, and it\u2019s sure to blow up on you.<\/p>\n

This self-satisfied prejudice certainly explains the Democrats\u2019 national woes, even if the left can (for now) win in a few cities and even states \u2014 most of them, however, losing population.<\/p>\n

Even New York City, with its 6-to-1 edge in Democrat registration, contains multitudes. And even among Mamdani\u2019s own party he faces plenty of opposition.<\/p>\n

If he wins, he\u2019ll need to navigate and negotiate competing interests and opinions, to acquire buy-in from disparate constituencies to move his agenda ahead.<\/p>\n

And he\u2019s all too likely to face serious crises when the city will need any friend we can get.<\/p>\n

If Mamdani is too shy for a low-stakes talk with The Post, how is he to confront the White House, or a city union whose privileges he needs to reduce?<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll shed no tears at being spurned, but Zohran Mamdani should face reality: If he thinks he can shut down dissenting voices by slamming his hands over his ears, he won\u2019t get much done in this cacophonous town.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zohran Mamdani routinely plays the tough guy \u2014 threatening to be President Donald Trump\u2019s \u201cworst nightmare,\u201d snarling at…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":346814,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,11744,4691,18652,405,403,27240,5226,5225,5228,5227,5341,1269,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,5301],"class_list":{"0":"post-346813","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-barack-obama","10":"tag-editorial","11":"tag-hillary-clinton","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-city","14":"tag-new-york-post","15":"tag-newyork","16":"tag-newyorkcity","17":"tag-ny","18":"tag-nyc","19":"tag-nyc-mayoral-election-2025","20":"tag-opinion","21":"tag-united-states","22":"tag-united-states-of-america","23":"tag-unitedstates","24":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","25":"tag-us","26":"tag-usa","27":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115471737292239701","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/346814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}