Danny Goldberg ScheerPost
As Zohran Mamdani begins his ninth month in office, he continues to function on several levels at once. On the international stage, he recently met with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Netherlands Prime Minister Rob Jetten and traded attacks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. That same week, the mayor had another surreal encounter with Donald Trump. Locally, the mayor imposed a massive sanction against Door Dash for underpaying New York delivery drivers and announced that 70,000 tickets to the Metropolitan opera would be made available at no cost to New Yorkers who otherwise couldn’t afford it.
Trump’s relationship with a mayor who is his ideological opposite is catnip to the media. The president’s recent visit to the mayor at Gracie Mansion was promptly satirized on Saturday Night Live and was a major topic of Mamdani’s subsequent appearance on the Jimmy Kimmel Show.
Since the Mamdani’s unexpectedly friendly meeting with Trump at the White House last November, there has been speculation about the president’s motives. One factor has clearly been the mayor’s careful framing of their common love for New York City and his observation that some of his voters had also voted for the president the previous year. Mamdani and Trump have both speculated about the possibility of building 12,000 units of housing above Sunnyside Yards in Queens.
There has been seemingly endless speculation about why Trump has chosen to be more friendly to Mamdani than he is to most public figures who publicly disagree with him. Netanyahu was in New York at the same time that Trump visited the mayor but the president did not make time for a meeting with the Israeli prime minister.
Part of Trump’s public warmth to Mamdani might be a lifelong respect for the office of New York mayor. Trump also exudes an uncharacteristic respect for the mayor’s political skills, the so-called “game recognizes game” factor. Whatever the reasons, the addition of “Trump whisperer” to the list of Mamdani’s strengths has only added to his aura.
The mayor’s discipline and attention to detail has minimized recriminations from lefty influencers who are usually quick to attack any sign of accommodationism on the part of political leaders. Although Mamdani is famous for almost always having a smile on his face, he refrained from any smiles at the brief press conference he had with Trump in front of Gracie Mansion. During the same week that Trump had banned reporters from CNN, MSNOW and Politico from the White House, Mamdani called on representatives from all three with Trump standing next to him. On the other hand, when Jimmy Kimmel asked Mamdani if he would send a selfie of the two of them to Trump, the mayor flashed his trademark smile, and declined, “I love you but I love housing more.”
The latest drama between Mamdani and Netanyahu was enhanced, and in some ways caused by the upcoming Israeli election in which the prime minister had made demonizing the mayor of New York an integral part of his campaign. ( Netanyahu’s re-election campaign has made posters that depict Mamdani along side leaders of Hezbollah and Iran).
The mayor has called for Netanyahu to be arrested because an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant alleging war crimes and crimes against humanity. Although dozens of countries recognize the ICC, including most of Europe, neither the United States nor Israel do not concur, so there was never a chance that the prime minister would be arrested when he came to New York to speak to the U.N. General Assembly.
Shortly before Netanyahu began a speech at the U.N. that would include a lengthy denunciation of Mamdani, the mayor posted a video at Gracie Mansion planting an olive tree with Palestinian families from Gaza with the caption. “May peace be our future.”
In his U.N. speech, Netanyahu insisted, “Israel didn’t commit genocide, Israel prevented genocide, and that’s exactly, that’s exactly what Mr. Mamdani’s Hamas buddies would have done to us had we not stopped them — they would have killed every last one of us,” … The lies you and other antisemites spread about the Jews and the Jewish state have real consequences…Mr. Mamdani, since you were elected mayor of this city, many Jews no longer feel safe in New York. They talk to me, they tell me ‘this isn’t the city we remember, it changed so quickly,'”
Netanyahu’s allies have enthusiastically repeated his talking points. Ofir Akunis, the Israeli consul general in New York, recently compared Mamdani’s support for the boycott Israel movement to Nazi Germany. Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, called Netanyahu’s remarks “Churchillian” and his “greatest speech.” Klein added, “Importantly, he also called out Mamdani as a dangerous antisemite who has endangered Jews in New York City,”
Just to give a reality check, Mamdani has condemned Hamas as “a terrorist organization,” has denounced antisemitic hate crimes committed in New York and has retained Jessica Tisch, a long time supporter of Israel as the Commissioner of the New York Police Department. As someone whose last name is Goldberg I’m sensitive to antisemitism. No one in my family, nor none of my Jewish friends or colleagues who live in the city, believe that Mamdani is “bad for the Jews.” Quite the opposite. To the extent that there has been an increase in antisemitic incidents, Mamdani has not caused it. Netanyahu has.
The crazy claims expressed by Netanyahu and his enablers elicited significant pushback from several New York Jewish leaders. Brad Lander, the Democratic nominee for New York’s 10th congressional district said, “Netanyahu and Akunis are cynically weaponizing accusations of antisemitism for their own narrow, selfish political purposes. They are making Israelis, American Jews, Palestinians, and the whole world less safe.” (Lander has also been the recipient of a Nazi Germany comparison when Bruce Blakeman, the Republican candidate for New York governor, said that Lander “would be a camp guard in the concentration camp if he could.”)
Manhattan Borough president Hoylman Sigal who is also Jewish, called the comparisons “outrageous,” and said that he is more worried about a rise in far-right parties, including Germany’s AfD.“We should be very careful, no matter what our background is, to draw such extreme comparisons,” he said.
“It’s scurrilous to suggest that the mayor voices support for Hamas,” Sigal said in an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Sigal called Netanyahu’s speech a “political ploy” and a “deflection by someone who has a lot of domestic turmoil, political and otherwise…. Clearly, Netanyahu is fighting for his political life,” Sigal said.
City Council Speaker Julie Menin, (a Jewish Democrat who has opposed Mamdani on some legislation related to protests outside houses of worship ) said in a press conference on Sept. 26 that Netanyahu’s remarks were “not helpful at all.”
Notwithstanding the short term number of eyeballs that the Mamdani/Netanyahu conflict was able to generate, the mayor’s most significant post Labor Day accomplishment was a $131.5 million enforcement action against DoorDash for systematic violations of New York City’s Delivery Worker Laws. The settlement will deliver more than $115 million to delivery workers and more than $16 million in civil penalties and costs. It provides compensation to more than 260,000 workers who were underpaid by DoorDash, and it’s the largest worker settlement in New York City history and the largest settlement involving food delivery workers in the U.S.
The mayor explained, “This is what it looks like when City government stands with working people: We find the violations, we enforce the law and we make sure workers get what they’re owed. No corporation is above the law, and this administration will keep fighting until every worker gets the pay and protections they deserve.”
Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice Julie Su, who served as Secretary of Labor in the Biden administration, added “DoorDash workers will also have the power to protect their rights going forward through the new compliance monitoring program.,” The city is partnering with Workers Justice Project and the Workers’ Algorithm Observatory to develop software that will allow workers to share their DoorDash trip and earnings data directly with the agency. This should give the city an independent way to identify underpayment and other violations rather than waiting for workers to discover problems after the fact.
And then there is support for culture. Earlier in the year, he made thousands of tickets to Broadway shows available to hHigh sSchool students who could never afford them. Last week, Mamdani announced that thousands of New Yorkers will be able to go to the opera for free, while validating the importance of classical music to younger generations.
“The mayor stands for everything that is the opposite of elite,” said Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager. “Having the mayor, who is one of the most popular individuals on the planet right now, actively engaged with the Met can only be beneficial.”