Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., said Wednesday he does not consider New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani a Democrat, arguing the Democratic socialist â and others like him â are attempting to “hijack” the party and pull it away from its traditional values.
“He’s not a Democrat, he’s socialist, and we know that the whole socialist movement is attempting to hijack the Democratic Party and many of their values are not our values,” Gottheimer said on “America’s Newsroom.”
“We know that he’s against police and came out strong against law enforcement and [has] come out strongly against prisons in the United States, and they want to eliminate the United States Senate,” he continued.
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“They have lots of views which are not in line with Democratic values. They’re very anti-American, anti-Democratic, anti-capitalist, so asking me to understand a lot of their thinking, I can’t.”
The New Jersey Democrat’s remarks came as he criticized Mamdani’s defense of his pledge to honor an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he were to visit New York City this year.
Despite making it a tent of his campaign, Mamdani later fell back on the push to arrest Netanyahu, admitting he lacks the authority to do so.
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Mamdani instead called on the federal government to execute the ICC’s arrest warrant if the Israeli leader pays a visit to the Big Apple.
“The mayor is clearly obsessed with this issue. He should probably be a little more obsessed with making sure that his city is running well and that he’s picking up the trash and fixing the potholes,” Gottheimer said.
“What shocks me about all of this is the double standard. We’ve got Iranian leadership that have been in New York. Obviously, Iran [is] a top enemy of the United States of America, the regime there [is] killing Americans, including soldiers… I don’t understand. He doesn’t go after them,” he added.
The New York City mayor’s office directed Fox News Digital to responses Mamdani made during an unrelated press conference Wednesday, in which he defended his push for Netanyahu’s arrest.
“I made very clear, as I have before, that my interest in executing that warrant is not specific to Benjamin Netanyahu, but to anyone who they put a warrant towards for war crimes and crimes against humanity,” he answered in part.
“And part of that is a reflection of a universal politics, and it is from a universal politics that I can look [at] October 7th and describe it for what it is, which is a horrific war crime. I can also look at Benjamin Netanyahu and see the way that he has orchestrated this genocide and also deem him to similarly be a war criminal, and I think, especially at a time when there are those in Washington who are discussing measures to take apart the International Criminal Court, what so many are looking for is a sense that the
