New Yorkers woke up to fresh concerns about the direction of their city government when old social media posts from Hassaan Chaudhary, a member of mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s transition team, came to light. Chaudhary, who worked as Muslim outreach director during the campaign, used “Jew” as a slur in one 2012 message: “oh forgot that Jew hoga tera baap.”
In another post from the same year, he praised Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by sharing a statement calling Israel “cancer which will be eliminated very soon,” and added his own comment: “This banda is fearless.” Chaudhary went further, branding Israel a “barbaric nation” that kills “indigents and innocent Palestinians,” and a “bloody country” in separate outbursts.
Even as recently as December 2024, Chaudhary reshared a jab at Pennsylvania’s Jewish governor Josh Shapiro: “If Luigi [Mangione] had shot a Gazan toddler instead, Josh Shapiro would have given him a medal.” Back in 2012, he dismissed discussions on gay rights as “purely claptrap” that “doesn’t make sense,” insisting a “boundary line should be drawn somewhere.”
Chaudhary offered regrets in a statement: “I apologize for my tweets, as they do not reflect my current views, or represent who I am today.” Mamdani’s spokesperson distanced the mayor-elect from the remarks: “These comments from over a decade ago are reprehensible and in no way reflect the views of the Mayor-elect or this transition.” No word came on whether Chaudhary would lose his role.
Republican voices wasted no time calling out what they see as a pattern. Assemblyman Jake Blumencranz declared: “This isn’t some innocent staffing mistake. This is who Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani is and what his transition team/incoming administration stands for.”
He warned that surrounding himself with someone who echoes “language about Jews reminiscent of the 1930s” signals extremism at the core of the new administration.