Time and again, Democrats with radical records try to hide their extremism behind a carefully crafted image of moderation. Kamala Harris did it, Joe Biden did it, Barack Obama did it. Now Zohran Mamdani is following the same playbook, hoping voters will forget how radical he really is and focus more on the polished persona he presents for the cameras.
Mamdani offers a striking example of the left running from its own extremism. He’s a 33-year-old self-proclaimed Democratic socialist from Queens with no executive experience, yet he captured the Democratic nomination for mayor of New York City. On paper, he embodies the sort of figure leftist activists idolize: a champion for defunding the police, soaking the rich, and injecting Bernie Sanders-style socialism into one of the world’s most influential cities.
Not very long ago, he was calling the NYPD “racist,” "evil," “anti-queer,” and a “major threat to public safety” and promising to reduce the jail population.
The abuses described here, perpetrated by the NYPD vice squad at taxpayer expense, are acts of evil.
— Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@ZohranKMamdani) December 7, 2020
Vice's funding must be zeroed out & the squad abolished in the next budget.
The City Council will resist. When they do, don't let them look away: (1/10)https://t.co/hPgDhVJ8w6
We don't need an investigation to know that the NYPD is racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety.
— Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@ZohranKMamdani) June 29, 2020
What we need is to #DefundTheNYPD.
But your deal with @NYCMayor uses budget tricks to keep as many cops as possible on the beat.
NO to fake cuts - defund the police. https://t.co/2RCXU8heg2
Mamdani despised the NYPD and wanted to defund it and strip it of its authority. These weren’t offhand remarks from a naïve youngster; they were the deliberate convictions of a radicalized adult. Yet now, standing before New Yorkers and asking for the keys to City Hall, he claims that version of Zohran Mamdani doesn’t exist anymore.
“Many of my opponents, chiefly Andrew Cuomo, would prefer to debate a mythical version of myself than the person that I actually am,” Mamdani told Marcia Kramer during an interview on The Point. “And they prefer to do that because they know that our ideas are actually popular and what we are putting forward is a response to New Yorkers’ needs that goes beyond the failed ideas and policies that they’ve heard from these old politicians.”
Kramer pressed him on the issue and asked, “So what you’re really saying, what you’re really saying is that those tweets of 2020, you’ve evolved from that, you’ve changed from that, you’ve changed your views?”
Mamdani responded plainly, “Yes. That those are out of step with the campaign that we are running, and it’s been clear throughout it.”
Kramer probed further, “But are they out of step with how you feel?”
“Yes. Yes,” Mamdani replied.
“So you, you’ve totally changed your mind?” Kramer asked.
“Yes,” he confirmed.
“Okay,” Kramer concluded.
🚨NEW: Zohran Mamdani claims he is *COMPLETELY TRANSFORMED MAN* from the radical he was in 2020🚨
— Jason Cohen 🇺🇸 (@JasonJournoDC) September 7, 2025
Do you believe him❓@DailyCaller pic.twitter.com/JkEncv6ljp
He’s obviously not pretending to be a moderate, but he is trying to distance himself from positions he’s recently taken that he obviously recognizes are liabilities for his campaign. Leftists are never honest about who they really are.
Just as Nancy Pelosi infamously told us we had to “pass Obamacare to find out what’s in it,” Democrats today tell voters to elect them and trust that they aren’t who they really are. Zohran Mamdani’s attempts to distance himself from his own radical record are just the latest example.
The policies he championed — defunding the police, weakening law enforcement, and imposing socialist programs on New York City — haven’t disappeared. He may try to repackage those ideas and himself as something more palatable, but the record is there for anyone willing to look. And the truth is unavoidable: Leftists hope we forget their extremism long enough to vote for them, only to discover too late what they were really planning all along.
