Politics

Zohran Mamdani hit with fake tweets as critics try to drum up controversy

Related video: Who is Zohran Mamdani? Dems say NYC mayoral candidate is too progressive

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With socialist Democrat Zohran Mamdani set to contest November’s mayoral election in New York City after beating Andrew Cuomo in his party’s primary (Cuomo is, however, reported to be staying on the ballot, but as an independent), Republicans have now begun diving into the political candidate’s social media accounts in a bid to point to controversial past statements – except this has since led to Mamdani being linked to a number of false and damaging tweets which he definitely didn’t post.

The America super PAC (public accounts committee), founded by Elon Musk in the run-up to last year’s presidential election to support US president Donald Trump, shared several past tweets from Mamdani on Wednesday, with a collection of screenshots containing comments from the politician about ‘defunding the police’ and ‘building a socialist New York’.

“America, meet New York City’s Democrat Nominee for Mayor,” the PAC wrote.

Indy100 has been able to verify all five tweets screenshotted and contained in America’s Twitter/X post.

However, other tweets are circulating on Twitter/X which are not legitimate for a number of reasons – such as one which claimed Mamdani tweeted “y’all smell something burnin’” on 9/11, despite him being just nine that year, and Twitter only being founded in 2006:

Another fake tweet shared among conservatives claims Mamdani tweeted “lmao the shuttle just exploded eat s*** America” back in January 1986, when the Challenger shuttle exploded shortly after takeoff and killed all seven people onboard:

And at the same time, Mamdani supporters and Democrats have responded by sharing their own fake tweets to ridicule the line of attack from their political opponents, with one depicting the politician saying in 65,000,000 BC that he was “glad the asteroid hit” the dinosaurs because “they deserved it”:

Another joked that Mamdani had tweeted that one of his “favourite sandwiches” was a “hot dog”:

And one social democrat shared a fake tweet from Mamdani dated 28 June, 1914 – and sent from Sarajevo in Austria-Hungary – in which it’s implied the 33-year-old assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand and therefore triggered the First World War:

We can’t quite believe we have to emphasise this, but don’t believe everything you read online, and in the case of Twitter/X, there’s a handy search tool which allows you to search tweets from a particular account to find out if they actually posted what they are alleged to have tweeted.

indy100 has approached Mamdani for comment.

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