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EXCLUSIVE: Republican Curtis Sliwa, who is running for mayor of New York City, blasted socialist opponent Zohran Mamdani for what he says is hypocrisy when it comes to the armed security Mamdani has enjoyed in recent weeks.
“It is very interesting that as he returns from Uganda today he’s being picked up by the NYPD armed police officers who provide him security 24 hours a day,” Sliwa told Fox News Digital Wednesday. “So, in typical political fashion, that’s why I don’t trust any politicians. ‘Do as I say, but not as I do.’ He’s protected by the armed NYPD, but he wants social workers for everyone else.”
Mamdani has been heavily criticized for his previous calls to defund the police during the 2020 George Floyd riots, saying that “nature is healing” in response to a police officer crying in his car and labeling the NYPD as “racist.”
Mamdani has also suggested sending mental health workers to crime calls while he is being protected by the New York Police Department as he runs for mayor. The New York Post reported that while Mamdani was at his family compound in Uganda to celebrate his wedding, the property was protected by heavily armed security.
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Zohran Mamdan and Curtis Sliwa (Getty Images)
“I could have had a police detail. I said, ‘No, we need them to protect people in the streets,’” Sliwa told Fox News Digital. “I was offered it again as a major party candidate, the Republican candidate, and unlike Zohran Mamdani, who couldn’t wait to take armed security police officers from the NYPD, again I said I’m in the subways, I’m on the streets. Let the police go out there and protect the people.
“And isn’t it ironic, while arriving from Uganda, while he was there, he was protected by armed commandos bearing AK-47-loaded weapons with masks on. So, again, the sanctimonious hypocrite, ‘Do as I say, but not as I do.’ If social workers would have responded to that madman entering the facilities of that Park Avenue building, they would have been cut down in a hail of bullets. And he probably would have said, ‘Well, maybe we need a few alterations. We need to sort of reconvert.’ This is absolute insanity.”
Sliwa also criticized Mamdani for his previous pledge to disband the New York Police Department’s Strategic Response Group (SRG), which was a unit that responded to the midtown shooting earlier this week that resulted in four deaths before the shooter turned a gun on himself.
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Democratic socialist candidate Zohran Mamdani, who won the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City, speaks at an endorsement event from the union DC 37 July 15, 2025, in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
“That was based on the fact that they also are assigned to whenever the pro-Palestinian demonstrations go out, and they’re singing, ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,’ and they are promoting jihad,” Sliwa said, pointing to Mamdani’s many anti-Israel positions that have become a key issue both on the campaign trail and for elected Democrats nationwide.
“Zohran Mamdani will let them take over the city. Let’s face it, they’ll probably be part of his administration,” Sliwa said. “Curtis Sliwa will stop them in their tracks. They can legally demonstrate, but they have to have a permit. They have to remain in a designated area, and they cannot violate the rights of other citizens who may disagree with them. We don’t want them to be attacked, but we certainly don’t want other people to be attacked either.”
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Zohran Mamdani, a candidate for New York City mayor, speaks during a news conference while campaigning outside a subway station in New York City April 1, 2025. (Reuters/Brendan McDermid)
Fox News Digital reached out to the Mamdani campaign for comment.
Mamdani answered questions about his past comments in opposition to the police during a news conference Wednesday, where he attempted to distance himself from his calls to defund the police.
“Looking at the crisis of retention that we have in the city today, to try and pin it upon tweets from five years ago, as opposed to the conditions of this moment, is to ignore what officers themselves are saying,” Mamdani said as he praised the NYPD officer who was killed in the recent midtown shooting.
The 33-year-old socialist said multiple times that his past tweets were “clearly out of step” with the current landscape and claimed they were made out of “frustration” over the death of George Floyd.
Mamdani also defended his NYPD security detail, saying, “My life is sadly not the one that it was. There are far more threats, and with that comes precautions that I wish I didn’t have to take. Though they are also precautions that I am immensely grateful for, especially in the example of the NYPD detail that I have here in New York City.”
Fox News Digital’s Peter Pinedo contributed to this report
