It started so innocently, as these things do, with New York City's young socialist mayor demanding nonsensical NYPD coverage for his activist wife's ego-trip to Syria and Lebanon later this month. By the time the week was over, Zohran Mamdani's rent control scheme was a shambles, his signature pied-à-terre tax was on judicial hold, and Florida was mocking him as its "Economic Developer of the Year" on a Times Square digital billboard.
Oh, wait — it's only Wednesday.
The New York Post reported Monday that NYC first lady Rama Duwaji "expects to bring along cops assigned to the first couple’s taxpayer-funded NYPD detail" on her Middle East jaunt, but the NYPD pushed back immediately. “The NYPD does not send officers to countries with level four travel advisories for discretionary reasons not linked to investigative work,” an NYPD spokesperson said early Tuesday.
And would they even be allowed to bring their guns? As far as I know, NYPD jurisdiction doesn't extend as far as Damascus. Hell, a lot of the time it doesn't even reach Staten Island.
Mamdani blamed his staff for the mess-up because the buck never stops with El Jefe. “There was a miscommunication. She has not yet taken that trip and when she takes that trip it will be without any NYPD detail,” Mamdani told local PIX11. A source told the Post that Mamdani's office "never checked with the commissioner."
Then there's this: Manhattan rents reach all-time high of $6,655/month amid Mamdani’s rent freeze.
More from the New York Post:
That’s a brutal 10% jump from a year ago, and real estate pros are pointing straight at Mayor Mamdani’s incoming rent freeze on stabilized units as one of the culprits, along with a looming pied-a-terre tax that brokers say is only going to squeeze the market harder. The pain is compounded by a record-low number of vacant apartments across the city, leaving desperate renters with almost nowhere to turn.
Former Mayor Ed Koch used to like to ask city residents, "How'm I doin'?" but that was before Mamdani was even born.
You probably already saw the news that a local judge this week temporarily put the kibosh on Mamdani's pied-à-terre tax, "a surcharge targeting high-value residential properties owned by non-primary residents that was set to take effect this month." Supreme Court Judge Wayne Ozzi made his decision in no small part because of Mamdani's botched rollout that snared nearly one million properties and placed the burden of proof on property owners. Untold thousands of them are longtime city residents.
The Wall Street Journal even reported today that "Mamdani’s Honeymoon With New York Is Over," citing "fraying relations with local politicians" among other rookie blunders.
His administration looks increasingly like a Rube Goldberg device with sand in the gears and glue on the swinging doohickey that's shaped like a boot.
All told, it's a big, steaming pile of you-know-what at Gracie Mansion. And if we were to play the Johnny Carson routine where I try to tell you how bad it is, and then you shouted, "HOW BAD IS IT?" my punchline would be "Mamdani held a private meeting with a group of rabbis, who are urging the mayor to tone down what they call his 'anti-Israel messaging.'"
Only that isn't a punchline so much as it is the lede to this ABC-7 New York news report from earlier today.
Hizzallah felt the need to break bread with rabbis just to turn relations back down to an angry simmer. But it's a sure thing they held the meeting in private because you know how his biggest supporters feel about those people. Even so, the rabbis were hand-picked by the mayor's office.
One last item, although I rather doubt anything will come from it aside from a little well-deserved grandstanding: GOP senators push to ban NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani from 9/11 ceremony.
And Another Thing: I know I write a lot about Mamdani, but we have a communist nepo-baby terrorist sympathizer running one of America's great cities — and the site of the world's worst Islamic terror attack. It must be documented.
There's a petition with 84,000 signatures already demanding that Mamdani stay away from the 25th anniversary ceremony. And as Fox Business put it, "GOP Senators Tim Sheehy and John Kennedy join the push, calling the NYC mayoral candidate an embarrassment." The real shocker might be that Jill Biden's former press secretary, Michael LaRosa, supports the ban, too. LaRosa said that Mamdani's controversial rhetoric makes him a "lightning rod" for the families of the 2,753 people killed in New York by Muslim terrorists.
Sadly, I can't put it any better than Batya Ungar-Sargon did on X early Wednesday morning: "Who could have predicted that stupid ideas cooked up by rich squatting nepo babies would backfire and hurt struggling working class New Yorkers?"
I mean, who could have predicted it aside from all of us who started stockpiling I-Told-You-Sos even before he won his party's mayoral nomination last summer? Because there are a lot of us.
Besides, we still have Thursday and Friday to go.
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