New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani finally uttered the words “political violence is absolutely unacceptable” after the armed attack against attendees at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on April 25. But don’t be fooled. His selective outrage exposes the same hollow hypocrisy that has helped fuel years of radicalization and bloodshed.
We’ve now seen the video of 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen, a California resident who targeted the event where U.S. President Donald Trump and the administration’s top officials were gathered. He rushed a security checkpoint armed with a shotgun, handgun and knives, exchanging fire with law enforcement.
Minutes earlier, he had emailed his family a lengthy manifesto in which he called himself the “Friendly Federal Assassin,” outlined his targets and declared: “I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.”
Secret Service agents stopped him cold. One officer took a round directly to his bulletproof vest, but is reportedly recovering and doing well.
Sure, Mamdani said the right words, for a change. But tell that to the Jews he couldn’t bring himself to defend on Oct. 8, 2023.
Just 36 hours after Hamas tortured, raped, burned alive and kidnapped 1,200 Israelis in the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, Mamdani issued his now-infamous equivocation: “I mourn the hundreds of people killed across Israel and Palestine. … Netanyahu’s declaration of war … cut electricity to Gaza … another nakba … the path toward a just and lasting peace can only begin by ending the occupation and dismantling apartheid.”
He couldn’t eke out the words “Hamas terrorism is unacceptable.” He couldn’t mourn Jewish victims (or the 58 Americans slaughtered or kidnapped) without immediately pivoting to blame the Jewish state and invoke the Palestinian nakba myth.
That’s not nuance. It’s a blood libel dressed up as what now poses as progressive foreign policy. It’s the same toxic rhetoric that has poisoned our discourse and turned too many unstable minds into attempted assassins. The body count from left-wing radicalization is piling up—and the mainstream media and Democratic politicians keep pouring gasoline on the fire. Here’s the horror show the left refuses to acknowledge:
In June 2017, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) supporter James Hodgkinson opened fire on Republican lawmakers practicing for the annual charity congressional baseball game in Alexandria, Va. He wounded House Majority Whip Steve Scalise and four others before Capitol Police took him down. Hodgkinson’s social media was a sewer of anti-Trump and anti-Republican hatred (posting online that “Trump is a traitor,” part of a “Terminate the Republican Party” Facebook group).
In July 2024, Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, fired an AR-15 at Trump, grazing his ear, killing one spectator, and wounding two others as the presidential candidate spoke at a rally in Butler, Pa.
In September 2024, Ryan Wesley Routh, who had posted online that Trump was a “dictator,” was caught with a rifle near the golf course where the president was playing. In December 2024, Ivy League-educated Luigi Mangione assassinated UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, gunning down the executive in cold blood and becoming a left-wing folk hero overnight. “Free Luigi” supporters cheered the murder as righteous payback against “corporate greed.”
This past September, Tyler Robinson assassinated conservative activist Charlie Kirk, gunning him down in a sniper attack at a Turning Point USA event at Utah Valley University in front of thousands of people—another chilling act of political violence fueled by the same toxic rhetoric.
Let’s also not forget the IEDs outside Gracie Mansion in Manhattan in March—Afghanistan-style homemade bombs detonated during protests near the new mayor’s residence.
This is Mamdani’s New York City. Political violence isn’t abstract; it’s exploding in the streets while the mayor flicks it like lint off his shoulder and his wife “Likes” social-media posts celebrating the politically violent horrors of Oct. 7.
This isn’t a series of “isolated incidents.” It’s a pattern.
The left’s relentless rhetoric—Trump is a fascist dictator, Republicans are Nazis, corporations are literal murderers, Israel is committing “genocide” and “apartheid”—has created a permission structure for violence.
Mamdani is the perfect embodiment of the problem. He’s spent years pushing the most radical anti-Israel, anti-police, anti-capitalist agenda imaginable. Now, as mayor, he suddenly discovers that “political violence is unacceptable”? His selective outrage and long history of excusing or contextualizing violence against his political enemies reveal these as hollow words.
Sorry, Mr. Mayor. You don’t get to repeatedly light the match for years on end and then feign appall when your staff’s savvy influencers are likely giving you humane words for the very first time in your life.
It’s time to tone the rhetoric down before the next “unacceptable” act of political violence claims more lives. Americans of every political stripe deserve leaders who condemn violence consistently and unequivocally—and who do something about it.
If Mamdani and his radical allies truly believe that political violence is unacceptable, they should start by looking in the mirror, rejecting their own inflammatory history and shutting down the hate machine they’ve helped build. The alternative is escalating incidents that may not always be stopped in time.
