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At the final mayoral debate of the general election late Wednesday, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo vowed to end the “hatemongering and division that is tearing this city apart.”

Not 12 hours later, Cuomo participated in a conversation with the conservative radio host Sid Rosenberg where the two laughed about a hypothetical Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a Muslim state Assembly member leading the race for mayor, cheering on another Sept. 11 attack.

“Any given morning there’s a crisis and people’s lives are at stake,” Cuomo told the radio host in criticizing Mamdani, 34, as inexperienced. “God forbid another 9/11. Can you imagine Mamdani in the seat?”

Rosenberg responded, laughing, “Ya, I could. He’d be cheering.”

Cuomo laughed and said, “That’s another problem.”

And at a Harlem event announcing his endorsement of the former governor on Thursday, Mayor Eric Adams urged New Yorkers to reject Mamdani by invoking Islamophobic dog-whistles: “New York can’t be Europe, folks. I don’t know what’s wrong with people. You see what’s playing out in other countries because of Islamic extremism — not Muslims, let’s not mix this up. But those Islamic extremists that are burning churches in Nigeria, that are destroying communities in Germany.”

Cuomo entered the Democratic race for mayor earlier this year as a perceived favorite, but after losing to Mamdani in the primary and continuing to trail in polls ahead of the Nov. 4 general election, he’s been ratcheting up his rhetoric against him.

Over months, Cuomo has repeatedly criticized Mamdani’s stances on Israel and Gaza. But until recently, Cuomo declined to call Mamdani antisemitic — saying in interviews and at a recent debate that he doesn’t know what’s in Mamdani’s heart. In an interview on Monday, Cuomo called Mamdani’s stance on Israel “antisemitic.”

He and some Jewish leaders have seized on Mamdani’s refusal to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada” (a term he himself has not invoked but whose use he said he would discourage), and his characterization as Israel’s actions in Gaza as a “genocide,” as leading scholars on the subject and human rights groups have concluded.

At the same time, Cuomo has also boosted his attacks on Mamdani’s Muslim bonafides, stirring the pot on longheld tensions between Hindus and Muslims, and going so far as to say last week that he doesn’t think Mamdani “is representative of the Muslim community.”

On social media, Cuomo’s campaign has been featuring dystopic, artificial intelligence-created videos of an imagined Mamdani mayoralty, the latest of which featured criminals — including a shoplifting Black man wearing a keffiyeh — voicing their support for Mamdani’s policies. The video was pulled down from X shortly after being posted. 

In another campaign video, a group of Cuomo supporters who called themselves “Muslims against Mamdani” suggested that the Democratic candidate, whose mother is Hindu, is not Muslim enough because he is of mixed heritage.

Mamdani, who rose the ranks in New York Democratic politics in part through his work trying to elevate Arabs and fellow Muslims to public office, called Cuomo’s remarks with Rosenberg “disgusting” and “racist” in an interview on PIX 11 on Thursday.

“Frankly, it’s not about me, it’s about the fact that there are more than one million Muslims who live in New York City,” Mamdani said. “And to have our faith be smeared and slandered by someone who at one point was considered a leader in the Democratic primary showcases the fact that bigotry and racism is not exclusively a Republican problem, it’s also a problem within our own party.” 

Mamdani added, “It’s time to turn the page on Andrew Cuomo and on those who endorse this kind of rhetoric from him as well.”

Cuomo’s remarks on Thursday drew swift condemnation from elected officials from Gov. Kathy Hochul to U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler, as well as Muslim leaders — including the leaders of a Bronx mosque who welcomed the former governor to their congregation last month.

“We condemn his remarks completely, it’s very hurtful to hear,” said Zahra Thiam, a spokesperson for Imam Mohammed Ndiaye of the Masjid Ansarudeen Islamic Center, which hosted Cuomo on Sep. 20. The imam later endorsed Mamdani, Thiam said.

“What Mamdani said — that it was Islamophobic — is what we all feel. Sept. 11 was such a horrific event, it impacted all of us,” said Thiam, noting the NYPD’s Muslim surveillance program and hate crimes against the community that took place as a result of the attacks on the World Trade Center. “Mamdani is a New Yorker and was also impacted, like all New Yorkers.”

The executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a leading national Muslim civic group, condemned Cuomo’s remarks as “despicable, dangerous, and disqualifying.”

“By agreeing with a racist radio host who suggested a Muslim elected official would ‘cheer’ another 9/11, Cuomo has crossed a moral line,” CAIR executive director Basim Elkarra said in a statement. “This rhetoric is not only deeply Islamophobic — it’s reckless and life-threatening to Muslim, Arab, and South Asian New Yorkers who still live with the trauma of the post-9/11 backlash.”

At a press conference later in the day Thursday, where he received Adams’ endorsement, Cuomo said he wasn’t the one who made the comment. 

“That’s the host,” he said. “Go talk to the host about that.”

Cuomo said his response about there being “another problem” referred to an issue he’s been highlighting for weeks concerning Mamdani’s recent appearance on the podcast of Hasan Piker, an influencer who during a 2019 critique of U.S. foreign policy said that “America deserved 9/11.”

“I did a press conference weeks ago and asked him to denounce that statement and he refused. He refused,” said Cuomo. “That is an insult to New Yorkers, and yes, I have a problem with that.”

Piker’s name never entered the conversation between Cuomo and Rosenberg, and Mamdani did condemn Piker’s comments as “reprehensible” last week at the first general election mayoral debate.

At the same time that Cuomo has ratcheted up his rhetoric against Mamdani, he has courted conservatives, appearing on Fox News and Rosenberg’s show several times in the past week and openly calling on Republicans to vote for him instead of Curtis Sliwa, the GOP candidate, claiming that a vote from Sliwa is a vote for Mamdani. 

In turn, several prominent conservative figures — including Rosenberg and billionaire grocery magnate John Catsimatidis, a major GOP donor — have called on Sliwa to drop out and clear the field for Cuomo.

Sliwa’s campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment about Cuomo’s remarks on Rosenberg’s show.

Just as backlash was brewing over Cuomo’s comments about Mamdani, a political action committee that’s backing Cuomo, For Our City, unveiled a new ad that attacked Mamdani for a recent photo-op with a controversial imam. 

The 30-second piece features the phrase “Jihad on NYC” written in all caps under Mamdani’s smiling face.

The phrase is ripped from a recent New York Post headline that claimed the imam, Siraj Wahhaj, had called for a “jihad” of Muslims in the city in the 2000s. 

The story notes that Wahhaj specified that he was actually calling for a gun-free march of hundreds of thousands of New York’s Muslims to rally support for Muslims in other countries.

Mamdani wrote on X later on Thursday that one of the PAC’s biggest donors, Joseph Gebbia — who contributed $1 million — has retweeted anti-immigrant messages.

Additional reporting by Samantha Maldonado.

Yoav Gonen is a senior reporter for THE CITY, where he covers NYC government, politics and the police department. [email protected]

Claudia Irizarry Aponte is a senior reporter covering labor and work for THE CITY. [email protected]

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