Mamdani Attacks ‘The Powerful’ in Independence Day Speech From Behind George Washington’s Desk: ‘How Small…How Weak’

NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani slammed “the powerful” in an Independence Day speech Friday, sitting behind George Washington’s desk as he dismissed those of “influence and wealth” as “small” and “weak.”

In the 13-minute speech, Mamdani waxed poetic about the story of immigrants arriving in America — noting how his own wealthy family arrived from their native Uganda in a plane, not a boat — before taking aim at those he claimed were stoking division:

And yet the irony is that the story of America has so often been written by those who were told by others with power and influence and wealth that they were anything but exceptional. For generation after generation, we have been told that when the world has sent its people to our shores, it has not sent its best. …

The truth, my friends, is that America is exceptional because here, nothing is fixed into place. The frontier may be closed, we may have walked on the moon, but the work of fulfilling the values first enshrined in the Declaration of Independence — that work endures, my friends, and it belongs to us all. It belongs too to our newest Americans, those standing here with me today, all of whom were recently naturalized. Nearly a decade ago, I too felt what you feel — the joy of no longer being just a New Yorker, but an American too. You each hold a special power. The power to determine what America means.

The powerful have always known their answer. America, in their view, is an arena of supremacy, where only a select few are allowed freedom, where not all are created equal. America, if you ask them, becomes less the more people it welcomes. America, they will tell you, belongs only to those with the right accent or the right shade of skin. The rest of us, they insist, should be grateful for merely being allowed to visit.

How small they are, how weak, how unoriginal. At every moment in our past, those who led through exclusion and isolation have tried to win power and enrich themselves by turning us against one another. Division is the oldest trick in politics, and the cheapest. But time and again — including 250 years ago — those forces of division have been vanquished by the forces of progress.

The speech came a day after Republicans roasted Mamdani for urging New Yorkers to save energy by setting their thermostats to 78 degrees, a longstanding NYC policy.

Watch above via YouTube.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!