Vice President J.D. Vance reportedly delivered sharp criticism this weekend of Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for New York City mayor, accusing him of downplaying the trauma of the Sept. 11 attacks and focusing instead on his family’s experience with alleged prejudice.
“According to Zohran, the real victim of 9/11 was his auntie who got some (allegedly) bad looks,” Vance wrote Saturday on X, reacting to a video of Mamdani’s comments posted by another user.
Mamdani, speaking at an event on Islamophobia, had referenced his late aunt, who he said stopped riding the New York City subway after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks because she feared for her safety while wearing a hijab.
His remarks, offered as an illustration of discrimination faced by Muslims in the period after the attacks, quickly drew national attention — and pushback from those who say the comments diminish the suffering of the nearly 3,000 people killed on that day and countless more affected.
The controversy comes amid a broader political battle in New York’s mayoral race, where questions about public safety, social cohesion and national security loom large. Mamdani’s remarks followed a heated exchange involving independent candidate and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Speaking last week on WABC’s “Sid & Friends in the Morning,” Cuomo reacted to radio host Sid Rosenberg’s suggestion that Mamdani would be “cheering” if a similar attack happened today.
“God forbid, another 9/11. Can you imagine Mamdani in the seat?” Cuomo asked.
“I could, he’d be cheering,” Rosenberg responded.
“Ha ha. That’s another problem,” Cuomo replied.
Mamdani denounced the comments as “disgusting” on X, insisting that such rhetoric unfairly casts Muslims as sympathetic to terrorism. His campaign has sought to portray the attacks from Cuomo and others as examples of bigotry that obscure genuine instances of post-9/11 discrimination.
Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat backing Mamdani, rushed to defend the 33-year-old state lawmaker, writing on X that “fear-mongering, hate speech and Islamophobia are beneath New York.”
Debate over the legacy of Sept. 11 — and who has the authority to define it — remains potent in a city that still bears its scars.
For Vance and others in the Republican Party, Mamdani’s comments serve as a reminder of what they see as a troubling trend: leaders who, in their view, spend more time condemning America’s response to terrorism than confronting terrorism itself.
[READ MORE: Democrats Continue To Lose Minds Over White House Ballroom]
