October 20, 2025
By Vaughn Golden and Emily Crane
Rep. Elise Stefanik blasted Gov. Kathy Hochul’s “desperate” endorsement of Zohran Mamdani after the Democratic socialist mayoral candidate’s association with an alleged terror-tied imam sparked backlash.
The Republican congresswoman took aim at Hochul in a fiery social media post on Monday as she accused Mamdani of being a “jihadist” for meeting with Siraj Wahhaj — an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
“Kathy Hochul has fully embraced the jihadist running for Mayor with her desperate endorsement,” Stefanik, who has said she’ll run against Hochul in next year’s gubernatorial election, posted on X.
“This is who @KathyHochul supports Mamdani campaigning with and praising,” she added alongside a newly surfaced clip of one of Wahhaj’s hate-filled rants trashing the United States as “filthy” and “sick.”
Asked about Mamdani’s meeting with the divisive Brooklym imam, Hochul told reporters during an unrelated event Monday: “This is not something I would do.”
But she then digressed into a mealy-mouthed response about avoiding stigmatizing “every Muslim in the country because of this” and the need to “call out hateful rhetoric.”
Stefanik’s Hochul-directed fury came after Wahhaj’s past anti-American vitriol resurfaced over the weekend in the wake of his Friday meeting with Mamdani.
“You know what this country is? It’s a garbage can,” Wahhaj said in the now viral clip, adding that “it’s filthy and sick.”
The video of Wahhaj’s comments was made in 1995 and uncovered by the Investigative Project on Terrorism.
Hochul officially threw her support behind Mamdani last month.
As recently as last week, Hochul embraced the socialist as “eminently reasonable” — and insisted the state would find a way to cover the tab for his socialist dreams without hiking taxes.
Mamdani, for his part, has come under fire in recent days ever since his rendezvous with Wahhaj came to light.
Wahhaj was reportedly considered by federal prosecutors to be an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing that left six dead given several people involved in the terror attack attended his mosque.
He was never charged and denied any connection to the attack, but later defended those behind it — calling the FBI and CIA the “real terrorists.”
Hochul, when pressed on the photo Mamdani shared of himself smiling and posing with the 75-year-old imam — and on Stefanik ripping her endorsement of the socialist Democratic nominee — pivoted to her own attack line.
She called out Stefanik for taking photos with several members of the since-disbanded chapter of the New York State Young Republicans, essentially equating posing with the neckbearded GOP officials who sent disgusting texts in a group chat to sharing pictures with an alleged co-conspirator in a fatal terror attack.
“Really? You’re the one that’s photographed with some really horrible human beings, accepting their awards, people that are antisemitic, homophobic, racist, sexist bunch of pigs if you ask me, but somehow that’s okay?” Hochul said.
“I don’t know.”
READ the NEW YORK POST article HERE
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