The hosts of “Morning Joe” unpacked Mayor Zohran Mamdani‘s growing political power in New York, calling him an emerging “kingmaker” in the Democratic Party and a “brilliant political operator.”
“The Democrats are proving themselves to be really pragmatic,” host Joe Scarborough observed Wednesday morning, following a wave of primary elections in New York in which many Mamdani-endorsed candidates emerged victorious over their opponents. In some cases, Mamdani’s chosen “fellow travelers” even managed to unseat their well-liked Democratic incumbent competition.
“In New York City, certainly, that’s the story here,” MS NOW co-host Jonathan Lemire explained. “Zohran Mamdani [is], in his early days in office, having significant coattails, being a kingmaker and picking and choosing to use his political capital to pick off some incumbents; to put in some of his more like-minded fellow travelers, more to the Left than others.”
“I personally thought when Mamdani came out and endorsed all these people, I thought, ‘Too soon,’” Scarborough admitted. “He’s going to build a lot of power as a kingmaker in New York City. [But there is] a lot of scar tissue when you’re Mayor of New York City with a lot of people, even if you win those races.”
“But he’s proven himself to be a brilliant political operator,” the former Republican Florida congressman added. “I’m sure he’ll sort through that.”
Scarborough, for his part, went on to blame certain incumbent Democrats’ recent losses in states like New York not only on the growing popularity of Leftist figures like Mamdani, but also on “blowback in the Middle East.”
“Hearing a lot of people talking about the antisemitism in New York City and last night proved the antisemitism in New York City and, ‘This is Mamdani’s fault. This is so-and-so’s fault.’ No, no, no. It’s not,” Scarborough said. “If you want to blame anybody for what happened last night, in my opinion, I think you have to blame [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu.”
“I was always instinctively pro-Israeli and anti-Palestinian growing up. You know why? Because when I was a young child, one of my first memories was the ’72 Munich Olympics,” the “Morning Joe” host recalled. “We saw time and time again terror attacks throughout the ’70s that shaped an entire generation’s views on that conflict. Well, what’s shaping the views now? Images out of Gaza. Images out of the West Bank. Images out of Lebanon.”
“You can blame all of this on Benjamin Netanyahu,” Scarborough said. “You’re starting to see that in elections not only on the Far Left, but on the Far Right.”
