Mayor Mamdani called right-wing radio host Sid Rosenberg’s remarks bigoted and “dehumanizing” on Tuesday, after the personality called him a “Jew-hating cockroach” a day earlier.
Rosenberg is a mainstay of the Republican political scene in New York despite his track record of making racist and Islamophobic remarks. Recently, he dined with Mamdani’s police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, and he had Council Speaker Julie Menin on his radio show.
“To be called animals, insects, to be called a jihadist mayor, to be called a cockroach — this language is both painfully familiar to me as a Muslim New Yorker, but also as someone who was born in East Africa,” said Mamdani, who moved to New York from Uganda when he was 7.
The mayor slammed Rosenberg as a “man who trades in outrage” and said that he has “far more urgent work” than entertaining his attacks.
“I am not ashamed of being the first Muslim mayor in the history of our city, and there’s no amount of racism that will change the way in which I lead, or the commitment that I hold to each and every New Yorker in the city,” Mamdani said at an unrelated news conference Tuesday.
On Monday, the host attacked Mamdani for his criticism of the Trump administration’s war on Iran and its crackdown on immigration and for the mayor’s pro-Palestinian stance.
“Bottom line is he’s an America-hating, Jew-hating, radical Islam cockroach running our once beautiful city,” Rosenberg said, also calling him a “jihadist.”
After the mayor’s comments Tuesday, Rosenberg doubled down, writing in another post: “Give me a break!”
Tisch defended Mamdani on Tuesday, calling Rosenberg’s comments “wholly inappropriate and deeply harmful.”
“I do not share those views in any way, and the rhetoric that seeks to dehumanize and disparage someone’s religion cannot be tolerated,’ she said in a statement.
Rosenberg has his radio show on WABC, a conservative radio station owned by billionaire businessman John Catsimatidis. Catsimatidis did not respond to a request for comment, but the station voiced support for Rosenberg.
“We ARE Team Sid,” the station posted Monday on X as the controversy began to take off.
Other elected officials knocked the right-wing personality as Islamophobic.
“I condemn these remarks unequivocally,” Speaker Menin (D-Manhattan) said Tuesday. “We can have substantive policy debates where we don’t agree. But we cannot normalize rhetoric that dehumanizes people because of their religion.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-Manhattan) called the remarks “dangerous and dehumanizing” and a “disgusting display of bigotry and Islamophobia.”
And Gov. Hochul called the host’s words “hateful, racist, and disgusting.”
“Dehumanizing language only makes our politics uglier,” Hochul said. “It has no place in New York.”
With Cayla Bamberger
