‘ZONED OUT: Networks Go Silent on Mayor Mamdani’s Foreign Policy Flops

Jorge Bonilla
July 21st, 2026 12:37 AM

Text to Speech

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In the immediate aftermath of the New York congressional primaries, the Elitist Media evening news rushed to crown socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani as a powerful kingmaker standing astride the city like a powerful Colossus. Several subsequent ill-advised forays into foreign policy have left the mayor exposed. Quite conveniently, the evening news appear to have lost their collective interest in Mamdani.

Mamdani has made recent headlines for his expressed interest in ordering the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pursuant to a warrant from the International Criminal Court. Below is a recent exchange with Lulu García-Navarro of The New York Times:

 

 

GARCÍA-NAVARRO: Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is perhaps planning to visit New York for the U.N. General Assembly. You pledged during your campaign, and after you won, to order his arrest to comply with the International Criminal Court warrant. What will happen if he comes in September? 

MAMDANI: I believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu belongs in The Hague. He’s a war criminal who has been charged by the International Criminal Court. And what you will find is that is an opinion that is held by many purely because of what his actions have wrought over these last many years. I’ve also said that I will follow the laws that we have here in New York City because I believe that there is an importance in following the law as a leader who presides over our city and that’s something that I plan to do.

GARCÍA-NAVARRO: Meaning? I’m sorry, I don’t understand what that means. 

MAMDANI: Meaning that whatever the law allows me to do in New York City, that’s what we will do, but we won’t be writing our own laws to that end.

GARCÍA-NAVARRO: What does the law allow you to do? 

MAMDANI: That’s an active conversation with our legal department in seeing what the prospects are that we have here in our municipality. However, what we’ve seen at the national level is a desire sometimes to write your own laws, to go outside of the bounds of legality. That’s not something we have an interest in. 

GARCÍA-NAVARRO:I mean, normally when people come to a U.N. General Assembly they are granted a sort of amnesty because it is the seat of the United Nations. Is that what you’re thinking that you’ll honor or are you actively looking to see if you can, actually, arrest him?

MAMDANI: I think we are looking at all of our legal obligations and one of them is with regards to the United Nations but the other part of this is, is we’re- we’re not talking about a personal assessment of Benjamin Netanyahu. We’re talking about the International Criminal Court, and the fact that they have a warrant out for this prime minister’s arrest. And I think it’s- it’s important to talk about the weight that that has as a charge and also that as the Mayor of New York City, I’ll be following the laws of New York City.

GARCÍA-NAVARRO: Okay.  

Of course, none of this made the network evening news. On the other hand, we discovered that the American Heart Association says 3-5 cups of coffee a day may be good for you, and got our fill of nonlethal aviation mishaps. CBS covered the Lumberjack World Championships. And there were critical updates on the Explosive Diarrhea Parasite. So there was no time to cover Mamdani going into business for himself on foreign policy. 

The whole proposition is, of course, ridiculous. Federal law bars local governments from cooperating with ICC warrants. This is information easily discoverable after a 10-second web search. But Mamdani’s visceral hatred of Israel (and Netanyahu, by extension) is something to be kept away from viewers at a time when the Democrat Party is undergoing a DSA takeover.

But this wasn’t the only such foray into foreign policy. The State Department recently shut down an attempted meeting between Mamdani’s Commissioner of International Affairs and the Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations. Per City Journal:

The top official in the Zohran Mamdani administration’s Office for International Affairs made plans to meet with Iran’s ambassador and permanent representative to the United Nations.

Commissioner Ana María Archila was scheduled to meet with Amir-Saeid Iravani, Iran’s permanent representative to the United Nations, at 2 United Nations Plaza, alongside two other senior officials in the Mayor’s Office for International Affairs on July 7 at 11 a.m.—this according to screenshots of a calendar invitation reviewed by City Journal and confirmed by a source connected to the international affairs community and another familiar with Archila’s office. Another official within the State Department also confirmed awareness of the Mamdani administration’s impending engagement.

The meeting between Archila and Iravani was called off after the State Department—which was not informed ahead of time—met with the Mamdani administration to clarify acceptable conduct, according to the State Department official. City Journal learned that Commissioner Archila allegedly did not inform Mayor Mamdani of the meeting; she was reprimanded for the move and directed to cancel the meeting according to the source familiar with the office.

“This meeting did not and will not take place,” a spokesperson with the Mayor’s Office for International Affairs said in a statement. The Iranian mission did not return multiple requests for comment. 

Archila was a longtime Soros operative before she joined the Mamdani administration, and is best known for her performative confrontation of then-Senator Jeff Flake outside a Capitol elevator during the Kavanaugh confirmation.

 

 

We have two instances of Mamdani going way out over his skis, but the Elitist Media has elected to go silent. One imagines there would be no such silence were a Republican governor making equal foreign policy moves. Not only is this the usual bias by omission and double standard: It is also evident that the Elitist Media see which way the wind is blowing on the left, and want to accommodate their new socialist overlords. There is no other rational explanation for these omissions.

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