GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama added his voice to the chorus of bigots lamenting the recent election of Democrat Zohran Mamdani as New York City’s next mayor.
“We’re in a different country, Steve. This is a different time. We just saw what happened in New York, we lost New York, it will be completely Muslim in three or four years—that’s what they want,” he said Friday on former Trump aide and conspiracy theorist Steve Bannon’s podcast.
Tuberville’s statement assumes that it’s somehow a bad thing if there are a lot of Muslim people in New York. To be clear, the United States is a nation where the First Amendment—which he swore to defend in Congress—protects freedom of religion and where at least 4.5 million Muslim people live, more than 724,000 of which live in the state of New York.
This kind of rhetoric is par for the course for Tuberville, who earlier this year defended political smears against the assassinated Minnesota Democrats and celebrated federal agents roughing up Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla of California.
Zohran Mamdani speaks after winning New York City’s mayoral election on Nov. 4.
But Tuberville isn’t alone in his meltdown over Mamdani’s win.
Supermarket chain owner and billionaire John Catsimatidis, who threatened to move his stores out of New York if Mamdani won, said after the race that he’s looking to relocate to “friendly states” like Florida.
Similarly, Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy, who has faced accusations of promoting misogyny and sexual harassment, said before the election that he hated Mamdani and would move his business operations out of New York if he won.
And in an appearance on Fox Business, “Shark Tank” panelist and millionaire Kevin O’Leary lamented that Mamdani hasn’t called him back yet to discuss his planned policy on real estate.
“I and others who invest in real estate have tried to get a meeting to figure out what's rhetoric and what's policy. So far for me it's been crickets,” O’Leary whined.
And unsurprisingly, conspiracy theorist and Trump adviser Laura Loomer said that the win was a sign of “Islamic takeover of America,” while Rep. Randy Fine of Florida said that “New York City has fallen.”
Meanwhile, Fox News characterized Mamdani’s victory as “the end of the world.”
But in the real world, away from right-wing hate and fearmongering, Mamdani announced the formation of his transition team and his plan to protect New Yorkers from ICE’s abusive tactics.
How scary of him.
