Confronted with his own party’s platform on prisons, Gotham’s Islamunist mayor served up a word salad and a deflection about “disagreements on policy positions.”
An Overton Window-shifting set of wins in New York City led President Donald Trump to call out the threat of communists last week and even found Democrats squirming about the direction of their party. Seeking to flesh out what that looks like, ABC’s Jonathan Karl proved unsuccessful in his attempt to get a clear answer from New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) on where he stands regarding abolishing prisons.
During an interview for ABC’s “This Week,” Karl asked, “There’s been a lot of attention — one of the candidates you supported, one who knocked off an incumbent Democrat, is Darializa Avila Chevalier. She said some very controversial things, including calling for the abolition of prisons, couldn’t say whether or not somebody who had committed murder should be in prison, called for open borders, against all deportations including those of violent criminals. Are those positions that the Democratic Party could win on nationally?”
“I think what the Democratic Party can win on nationally is a focus on working people, and I think that what I saw from Darializa when I would walk the streets of her district was a focus on what she describes as the politics of life. She would talk about how we have to invest in babies, not bombs,” replied Mamdani. “She’s now going to represent what is one of the poorest districts in the United States of America. And what people in that district are exhausted by is a politics that has justified the spending of tens of billions of dollars in killing civilians overseas while working people are struggling just to do the basics.”
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani responds after New York congressional nominee Darializa Avila Chevalier’s primary victory, as ABC News’ Jonathan Karl presses him on her past statements. https://t.co/8At4XDnuLi pic.twitter.com/GSlcrvTKPE
— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) June 28, 2026
Seeking clarification, the co-anchor pressed, “But how does that — how does abolishing prisons or having open borders fit into that?”
“I mean, do you see how that’s — those are ideas that a lot of your Democrats that are warning about what happened here say are toxic; most of America won’t go along with it. They are bad ideas. They are dangerous ideas,” furthered Karl as Mamdani deflected again, boiling the matter down to “disagreements on policy positions.”
Yet another attempt to get an answer found the journalist asking, “So we can disagree on something as basic as whether or not there should be prisons?”
“There are prisons,” began the mayor’s reply as though acknowledging their existence was akin to supporting the prison system. “And what we’re also showing in this city is that safety is not something that’s up for debate. It’s something that we’re actually delivering on.”
Hizzoner’s non-answer regarding the abolishment of prisons came after making waves earlier in the year when, in one of many public demonstrations of his Muslim faith, Mamdani opted to break a fast during Ramadan at Rikers Island with Department of Correction staff and inmates he described as “New Yorkers in custody.”
‘F*cking ridiculous’: Mayor Zohran Mamdani breaks fast with Muslim inmates at Rikers Island https://t.co/lejxeD3Vl2
— BPR (@BIZPACReview) March 22, 2026
What’s more, as previously reported, the Republican National Committee shared a clip of Mamdani prior to his election when he responded to the notion that prisons were “obsolete” by saying, “Frankly, what purpose do they serve?”
Meanwhile, Mamdani’s own Democratic Socialists of America declares on its political platform, “For all of the working class to achieve collective liberation we must constrain, diminish, and abolish the carceral forces of the state — from prisons and police themselves, to their manifestations in all forms throughout society.”
It goes on to specifically state the demand of, “Freedom for all incarcerated people.”
Before Karl moved on to friendlier territory, reacting to President Donald Trump’s recent remarks slamming “godless communists” as the “most serious threat” to the country, Mamdani went on to claim that the city had the lowest recorded number of murders and shootings in its history.
Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn't researching current events and their impacts, you'll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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