Mayor Klutz — what’s behind Mamdani’s long string of fumbles, failures and fiascos
Take a step back and recognize that City Hall’s embarrassing disconnect on the supposed NYPD detail to protect first lady Rama Duwaji on a personal trip to Syria and Lebanon was just the latest utterly needless flub from Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his team.
From stunning incompetence to toxic policies, this is the result of hiring a 30-something nepo baby to run New York City as his first real job.
For an alleged master of messaging who spends hours each day filming TikTok-style videos for his Maoist “Office of Mass Engagement,” Mamdani’s actual communications have been a disaster.
Mistakenly announcing that city cops would guard the mayor’s wife as she visited family on her personal trip to high-risk Mideast nations was an amateur flub, when actual Mayor Bill de Blasio had to pay back the city for bringing his NYPD detail along on his presidential campaign travel.
Particularly after Mamdani had raged that Duwaji is a private person, not at all part of his official team.
This followed hard on the heels of his disastrous pied-à-terre tax rollout, which outraged not only thousands of New Yorkers who got threatening “prove you’re innocent (and we won’t make it easy)” letters but tens of thousands more who made it onto the bizarre “enemies list” his team posted.
This, even after the blowback for his victory-lap “We’re taxing the rich!” doxxing video outside the home of Citadel CEO Ken Griffin.
He just can’t seem to learn that his smug posturing for a distinct minority of New Yorkers can appall everyone else.
Not after his July 4 I-hate-America speech bombed, nor after his “I can’t arrest Bibi, but Gaza is still a genocide” video plainly inspired antisemitic violence across the city.
Not that “arresting Netanyahu” is the only campaign promise he’s had to eat: He won’t close the Elizabeth Street Garden after all; free buses are off the table; the NYPD’s Strategic Response is still doing its job; “universal day care” will only be a pilot program for the foreseeable future and the pied-à-terre is only a ghost of the tax-the-rich hikes he promised.
And the first city-owned grocery stores at best will only open at, at outrageous expense, so close to his re-election run that they won’t have time to fail.
Ordering the NYPD to ease up on e-bike riders is proving another deadly diktat whose consequences were utterly foreseeable.
Yes, he is getting his rent freeze — on some apartments, at huge expense to the rest of the housing market and with a high risk it will bring the end of rent control completely.
On top all this are embarrassments like being snubbed at a soldier’s funeral and getting booed off the stage in Staten Island. Does his team just imagine he’ll be welcomed everywhere the way he is at his canned events?
The mayor has reportedly turned thin-skinned and shouty behind closed doors, and it’s easy to see why: He’s in over his head, with a staff dominated by fellow tunnel-visioned lefties.
Too bad it’s the rest of us who pay the worst price for Mayor Klutz’s misrule.
