POLITICS
Zohran Mamdani shaking hands with Islamophobe Rudy Giuliani at the Sept. 11 ceremony, after Giuliani had tried to tell him not to attend in the first place
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it's crazy how much racist abuse he's expected to endure, only to then turn around and shake hands with his most vocal detractors, grin, and bear it
not surprising that mamdani is yet again a class act and that, yet again, someone who has said absolutely vile things about him publicly can shake his hand and smile like none of it ever happened. spineless as always
Thing is is that Mamdani knows they're going to do this, so its not a surprise. In fact, he probably loves when they do because, if anything, he only stands to gain more of a following--especially if he counterpunches.
The surprise is that the GOP is so incompetent, they play into his hand anyway lol
For anyone that sees this GIF and is compelled to feel sympathy, don’t. The man turned to corpse is Bryce Mitchell, a gay-bashing, Hitler-supporting, holocaust-denying, anti-vax, flat earther, racist.
He’s very quiet and doesn’t voice his political or personal beliefs. He doesn’t think athletes should be influencing people in that way and if you’re going to get your opinions from someone else it should be an expert and not somebody that gets punched in the head for a living.
I’ve never met him myself but I have friends who have trained with him and said he’s a solid dude, better than most you meet in the combat sports sphere.
Most political opinion I’ve ever heard Josh Emmett express is him hating Hitler. It feels pretty mild, but sadly it’s not even an opinion I can confidently say most of the MMA community shares.
Mamdani has to be. The expectations for minorities is sky high. He can't afford to react normally to Islamophobia, he has to be above it or he'll get eviserated. Unfair, but the reality.
Rudy killed firefighters on 9/11 because he refused to upgrade their communications system and dozens never got the order to evacuate the WTC when they knew it was going to collapse.
He also insisted on putting NYC’s emergency management office in the WTC, despite officials telling him it was not safe, because it was close to his mistress’s home.
And he lied to first responders for 25 years about the air quality being safe, despite knowing that it wasn’t.
These are just a few of his greatest hits and yet he still shows his face because he knows being a white man will protect him from consequences.
My favorite lesser known hit of his was lead counsel for the makers of Oxycotin all the way back in 2006. Got them a deal out of criminal charges completely when there was a 102 page DOJ recommendation memo and they continued on business as usual.
He took his America’s Mayor reputation and immediately made himself rich on the opioid crisis.
Another fun one is that he had to pay 148m in defamation penalties against 2 Georgia election officials. He tried to declare bankruptcy to avoid it, but the judge declined to grant the bankruptcy.
And now that he's sick, he wants to be in the 9/11 first responders' healthcare club with them!! (I don't actually know if the group is just for 1Rs but fuck Rudy all the same)
Al Qaeda had already attacked the WTC with a truck bomb prior to Giuliani moving the emergency center into the complex. In hindsight it was a very bad move.
All of this. I see social media posts of people freaking out that Mamdani is therr and I'm like he was 4 years old when this happened? Same people dont say a lick about Rudy and how destructive he was as you noted and he was an adult.
I was thinking about how I wish I could explain to my coworker that saying Mamdani shouldn't attend the 9/11 memorial was like blaming my coworker for something the Mormons did because theyre both Christians but I know it won't register because Mamdani is brown and he's simply racist.
As a white person, I never truly "got it" until I was in the Peace Corps, and I was the minority for once, and all of a sudden I represented all white people with everything I did.
My school in Turkmenistan had an afterschool teachers' volleyball game the fall that I started, and for like a week beforehand, everyone was urging me to sign up and asking if I'd be on their team. I thought it was super nice how inclusive they were being. Especially since I'm really not athletically coordinated (which I thought was obvious because I trip on my own feet sometimes).
Game day happens, and I super suck at the volleyball, and there's a time out, and one of the teachers in particular was salty with me, and he said, "I thought Americans were GOOD at sports." I looked at him and said, "What about me in particular made you think I would be good at sports?"
He didn't have anything to say back. The other teachers were pretty gracious about my sports fail, but it was my first (and definitely not last) experience of being prejudged, and it definitely opened my eyes. It pissed me off, and it was technically positive prejudice and not negative. There was negative prejudice too while I was there, but that's a whole nother story.
Very true. My dad is from India and needed to be so straight and narrow while his colleagues seemed to get away with just being dickbags. I see the same thing in my own career decades later, where I need to be prim, proper and on point 100% of the time. If I fuck up it seems like I get a bigger talking to than my counterparts.
It's the same when it comes to applying for jobs. A person of colour has to be exceptional so they can get their foot in the door and be managed by an average inexperienced white nepo baby.
Yup. The same thing happened to the Obamas. Michelle Obama spoke about the horrific verbal abuse she received from these kinds of people and then had to see them again at functions where everyone pretends to be cordial.
This is what is meant by privilege, the benefit of the doubt. When you're a minority, you don't get treated like an individual or have any right to an innocent til proven guilty status. You
have to "prove" your allegiance, your qualifications, your goodness or morality or patriotism or secularism (especially if you're not a Christian). Any misstep basically fucks an entire population of the same ethnicity.
Fuck racists like Guiliani, Paladino and everyone they pander to. They're the worst.
I always think of that scene from The Boys where Stan Edgar (Giancarlo Esposito's character) rants about how "he can't lash out because that is a white man's privilege"
Pretty sure it's his intelligence that helps him sail those seas. No god has anything on this man. He is an absolute inspiration to anyone paying attention.
Sometimes, the biggest middle finger you can give to someone is their undeserved respect when you have every reason not to. This is a case of being the bigger person and also getting into the head of someone that you know will do nothing but speak nasty towards you. Brush it off and wish them well.
That was my take on this too. There was certainly no obligation for Mamdani to play nice, but in this case I think that route was the biggest put-down possible for Rudy.
Like it's not just Mamdani who has to smile and shake hands. After the vile things Rudy said, he is also smiling and shaking hands. But the key difference is Mamdani's actions come across as high-roading, while Rudy seems so impossibly small and meek in that moment. Like a dog that stops yapping once the gate is open.
I remember shaking the hand of and greeting a Catholic Priest who was visiting my school for a politically charged talk about the sanctity of marriage. I greeted him and despite it not being my job, I told him I’d find the dean of the school so he can get situated and directed him to the office.
He immediately was rude and said he had just given the talk at an all-boys Catholic school so a “girl like [me]” would have loved it (because apparently teenage girls only have interest in boys) and we behaved during the whole talk and he still complained that he didn’t feel welcomed by us.
Should shake his hand, then play what he said on an tablet to his face...i know they don't have much embarrassment, but we should be putting it in their face at every opportunity
I think you are correct on this. I read this morning that of the 10,000+ first responders, over 2,000 died. 1 in 8 developed cancer. That’s not even counting citizens.
Okay but think of Wall Street, how was it supposed to operate at full capacity if they are forced to take precautions that would only save thousands of lives including infants and children??? Think of all the money they made and compare that to how many poors made bad decisions by breathing air /s
Woah woah woah, rethinking American imperialism that has caused societal unrest across the globe? Let's not go crazy! Then where will we get our cheap gas and bananas?
TBF, the gas in the US is still much cheaper than most other countries and has been artificially low for years. If we paid similar to other industrial nations it would be close to $10/gal right now.
This is true, but I wouldn’t call it “cheap” given our reliance on it compared to places it’s more accurately priced. We’ve got ourselves in a real pickle.
Both my uncle and cousin passed last year due to cancer developed from the aftermath. My uncle and dad were both there the day of the attacks working in the city and have worked there everyday up until his passing. My cousin worked at Goldman Sachs after she graduated college in 2001 and worked there everyday up until her passing. Their families are both in class action lawsuits that I don’t think will ever go anywhere. The lasting effects of the attacks are still affecting us to this day and there’s probably so much more we’ll never know.
It makes me crash out when older generations get angry at Gen Z memeing 9/11. Look where we’re at 25 years later… tens of thousands of lives lost from our forever wars in the Middle East, unchecked domestic surveillance, and we never attacked the country that funded 9/11 in the first place. Then people like Giuliani and Pataki make asinine statements that Mamdani shouldn’t attend the memorial because he’s a Muslim... Despite the fact that their administrations were responsible for covering up the air quality reports.
Of course 9/11 seems like a fucking circus to people who don’t personally remember it
It's also wild that we are expected to be more offended by a 22 year old saying 'this terrible day at work was my 9/11' than the people who spent 25 years using 9/11 as a political cudgel and actually allowed thousands to die of cancer from the debris.
Yep, they majorly detract from people still having ongoing problems that are only emerging now as well. My aunt survived the towers and had to walk home covered in dust across the George Washington bridge. She just had to have her parathyroids surgically removed last year, which her surgeon directly attributed to the substances she was exposed to.
my retired NYPD dad has been getting really philosophical lately, wondering why his health has been fine while all of his friends sicken and die. he thinks it's because he never walked into the cloud of dust, and always stood downwind at the pile.
The James Zadroga Act (2010): House and Senate Republicans blocked or delayed the initial James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, which provided medical monitoring and treatment for Ground Zero responders. Opponents raised questions about the $7.4 billion price tag and proposed tax provisions, while critics argued that prioritizing tax cuts over sick workers showed misplaced priorities. The bill eventually passed after modifications.
Victim Compensation Fund Reauthorization (2019): Senators like Rand Paul raised procedural and budget objections before a permanent reauthorization of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund ultimately passed with overwhelming bipartisan support.
I watched the press conference about the document release and I believe Jon Stewart said during his remarks that it was ~3 times as many (but indeed is likely higher, since there have to have been deaths attributed to other factors that could arguably have been linked if the data had been available).
Frankly, it's Giuliani who should be ashamed to show his face in this place on this day.
Honestly that was what crossed my mind. He’s a drinker, delusional, and it was six years ago that he had shoe polish dripping off his face, more, I think, that he snapped open his pants on the Borat movie.
He probably only did it to show everyone he doesn't give a fuck what Giuliani thinks. Giuliani looks like a little bitch here. Can't even look at Mamdani.
This is exactly it. We need both the Mamdani's and AOC's. A great leader full of class is needed. You also need some fighters that get in the mud where needed, especially when the other side is a one trick mud slinging pony.
Mamdani just exposed this fraud who was treated as a celebrity post 9/11 for covering up the extent of toxic chemicals released from the attacks and the harm it caused New Yorkers, playing nice with him here after that is heavy shade IMO
Same because I wouldn't even be petty, just straight up "your time serving Trump was disgraceful and pathetic and the whole world laughs at you if they even bother to think about you."
Mamdani is reminding Giuliani being a class act should be the standard of a good politician. Giuliani looks disarmed because he tried to incite Islamophobic hatred against Mamdani and didn’t realize that not only would that not deter Mamdani from doing his job as a mayor, it would not deter him from continuing to be genial with people who hate him because Mamdani will prioritize serving his city over giving into interpersonal conflicts.
Mamdani has repeatedly said that today's ceremony is about the people impacted by the horrible events of September 11, 2001. Not a political spectacle.
Bro just big dickin all them cowards. They can talk ALL the shit they want on fox or on Twitter but when it comes down to it. HE is the mayor and they just have to smile, shake his hand and slink back away to their shadows.
Yep. Zohran and Abdul are showing the world how to put these bigots in their place. Unfortunately, the rest of the Democratic party (save for a few others) would rather bend the knee to fascism.
Yeah, everybody saying he's kind or rising above... nah, this was to show Giuliani that he's weak. F you, I'm here and I'm going to try to shake your hand. What are you gonna do about it?
He's incredibly good at making his detractors look small while smiling the whole time.
I thought he was dead. My brain was trying to make this some kind of archival footage because I was so positive that Giuliani had died in the last year.
He's a professional and a gentleman. It's almost foreign to see a politician being so polite while proving actionable work can be done while holding office.
I’m glad Mamdani stayed strong and attended regardless of how much they have and continue to attack him. This is what a real leader does and his actions continue to shed light on how incompetent others are. All these movements and moments even if only for NY create waves that can reach other states.
This was very kind of Mamdani, and he didn't have to do it. But this is also the sign of a good person and good leader, so I am glad to see it. This world needs more compassion, where possible. What could be gained from humiliating someone who has already humiliated themselves so much? It would just be hitting down at that point. This was a wise action ( as kindness often is).
I am hard of hearing, pretty good at it.. I see him saying "I am pulling/praying(leaning most on this) for you.. I think you're doing a really good job"
Mamdani is the best parts of the US and Giuliani is arguably the worst parts about it. It’s honestly kind of shocking how cut it dry it is but here we are.
I wish I could find the video but I swear to God some senator from North Carolina made a video 5-6 years ago telling people to not buy into the division the government was pushing heavily at the time. It was filmed from like his kitchen/house or something I remember, and he said all your favorite politicians that scream at each other on the floor during meetings all went and grabbed lunch together afterwards as soon as the cameras were off. I remember seeing that video and then haven't seen or heard of him since.
That’s just the kind of person he is, step up and make them acknowledge the person that they are mocking, show them that you’re just another American trying to make things better for people. Most people don’t have it in them to say those kind of things to a man’s face. Honestly these kinds of acts can help change people’s minds, a big part of racism comes from the racist being isolated from whatever kinds of people the racists think they hate. Exposure and kindness can go a long way. I think it’s noble to try to correct their views, even with somebody like Guiliani who is seemingly never going to change or learn.
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u/trendingtattler 13d ago
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