6 hours ago
2
"I didn't think it was going to be on CNN."
Watch as #NYC Mayoral Candidate Zohran Mamdani watches his past performance as a rapper and responds to critics who say he's not ready to run New York. He speaks one-on-one with @ErinBurnett. pic.twitter.com/zVV4tL8iKr
— Erin Burnett OutFront (@OutFrontCNN) June 27, 2025
That was not music to his ears.
Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani’s 2019 rap video reached a national audience Thursday night — during an incredibly awkward moment on a live CNN interview that left the New York City mayoral hopeful visibly uncomfortable.
Mamdani appeared on “Erin Burnett OutFront” and the eponymous host used the C-grade hip-hop video as an introduction to the 33-year-old lefty pol who performed under the name “Mr. Cardamom.”
The Queens assemblyman grimaced and flinched as the video began to play — attempting to laugh off the reminder of his blush-inducing attempt at a music career.
“Once you do it, it’s out there,” Burnett said to Mamdani.
“It’s there. Didn’t think it was going to be on CNN,” Mamdani said through a wincing smile.
Burnett then pressed Mamdani, offering him a chance to respond to critics who suggest he is “not ready now” to be mayor of the Big Apple.
“I would say a campaign offers a glimpse into what an administration would look like, and we built a campaign the likes of which the city has not seen in a long time,” Mamdani replied, eliding over Mr. Cardamom’s performance entirely.
Mamdani’s vanilla rhetoric Thursday was a far cry from the spicy bars he would drop under his sobriquet — including some songs which gave outright endorsement of groups who supported the terror group Hamas.
In the 2017 track “Holy Land Five,” the presumptive Democratic mayoral candidate praised five men — known as the “Holy Land Five” — from the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development who were convicted in 2008 of donating more than $12 million to Hamas.
“My love to the Holy Land Five. You better look ‘em up,” Mamdani as Mr. Cardamom sang in a song called “Salam.”
Those five men — Shukri Abu Baker, Mohammad El-Mezain, Ghassan Elashi, Mufid Abdulqader and Abdulrahman Odeh — were convicted by the US Justice Department on 108 counts including supporting terrorism, tax fraud and money laundering.
Mamdani and his paltry rapping chops got an ego-check from a real New York rapper — 50 Cent — who offered the Socialist $258,000 to drop out of the race and leave New York for good.
English (US)