News/Commentary

Clinton and Obama allies deliver a stunning rebuke of Mamdani

July 30, 2026 | | Print Article

Two top Democrat figures with ties to the Obamas and the Clintons aimed fire at radical New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani this week.

The first one was former Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. Appearing on the “Unholy Podcast,” he recalled a brief conversation he recently had with Mamdani about the mayor’s radical views pertaining to Israel.

“I said, ‘Look, you are your father’s son, I’m my father’s son. You chant ‘a river to the sea,’ and that means there will never be a Jewish homeland for Jews who have faced the Holocaust,'” he recalled. “And I said, ‘I want you to hear this: over my dead body.'”

Listen:

Mamdani’s team has since cast doubt on Emanuel’s story.

“[C]an confirm this …. did not happen,” the mayor’s communications director tweeted Wednesday afternoon.

ADVERTISEMENT

It wasn’t clear whether she meant that the conversation/meeting never occurred or she meant that Emanuel’s characterization of the conversation was incorrect.

Emanuel’s remarks on the “Unholy Podcast” came a day after he posted a tweet bashing the so-called Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

“You can be focused on winning tough races, flipping red seats blue. Or you can be focused on abolishing prisons and… the Senate and Supreme Court? You can’t do both,” he wrote.

“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,” he added.

ADVERTISEMENT

Look:

This week, former Clinton adviser Mark Penn also went after Mamdani, targeting him specifically for his proposed property tax (or pied-à-terre tax) on second homes.

Earlier in the week, Mamdani released a list of 960,000 New York City property owners who might owe the tax, which was supposed to only target owners of properties worth $5 million or more.

But according to Penn, the there are only about a million residential tax lots in the city, meaning almost every property owner in NYC wound up on Mamdani’s hit list. The reality is that the NYC Department of Finance’s $5 million number was very, very misleading — and potentially wrong.

ADVERTISEMENT

“Now, here is the interesting part — once you are on the list you have to prove you should not be taxed by showing you are a resident,” Penn wrote in a tweet. “Or by challenging the valuation. Good luck fighting the city bureaucrats on both of these counts. The individual litigation will be massive.”

Penn continued by arguing that the tax will hit many ordinary property owners, scare off non-resident buyers, impose large unexpected bills even on purpose with mortgages and little equity, and amount to “taxation without representation” since non-residents can’t vote.

Penn concluded his lengthy post by calling it a classic socialist bait-and-switch: it was sold as hitting only a small group of the ultra-rich, but the list ballooned to nearly a million.

“[W]elcome to 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,” he wrote.

ADVERTISEMENT

Despite all this, Mamdani continues to defend the tax.

“Mayor Zohran Mamdani defended the rollout of a new tax on highly valued second homes in New York City, saying only property owners who receive a letter from city officials will be impacted by the levy,” Bloomberg reported.

Vivek Saxena
Latest posts by Vivek Saxena (see all)

Comment

We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, profanity, vulgarity, doxing, or discourteous behavior. If a comment is spam, instead of replying to it please click the ∨ icon below and to the right of that comment. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain fruitful conversation.

Latest Articles