We keep hearing that Americans should stop focusing so much on the Middle East and focus a lot more on what’s going on here at home.
I agree with this 100%, because many terrorists are here.
And — they have the tacit and not-so-tacit support of the mayor of New York City and his wife.
Over the weekend, an anti-Islamist protest took place outside Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s home. It was titled “Stop the Islamic Takeover of New York City” and run by a white supremacist named Jake Lang. Roughly 20 people showed up.
20 people were apparently too many for 18-year-old Emir Balat, who threw an ignited device toward the protest area. He was shouting at the time — wait, wait, wait for it — you’re never going to guess — “Allahu Akbar!”
I know, I know, a shocking surprise.
Balat then apparently ran toward 19-year-old Ibrahim Kayumi, and he grabbed a second device. He lit that, and then began running. Eventually, he dropped it. Both men were arrested.
The criminal complaint stated:
After the New York City Police Department (“NYPD”) arrested them at the scene, BALAT and KAYUMI both made statements referring to ISIS. For example, as KAYUMI was being placed inside an NYPD vehicle to be transported, an individual from the surrounding crowd yelled to KAYUMI and asked, in substance and in part, why he had done this. KAYUMI responded, in part and as captured on NYPD body-worn camera footage, “ISIS.” BALAT and KAYUMI also referred to ISIS in recorded post-arrest statements they made after receiving and waiving their Miranda rights.
These were not smoke bombs. They were IEDs. According to the New York Post, the IEDs were homemade. They were packed with nuts, bolts, and screws, and also a household concoction nicknamed by international terrorist groups the “Mother of Satan.”
Law enforcement sources told the Post the IEDs were so volatile they wouldn’t even have needed a fuse to go off.
To no one’s surprise, Balat traveled to Istanbul, Turkey, for more than three months last year, and Kayumi traveled to Istanbul in 2024. It turns out there are a lot of people in Turkey who are really, really, Islamist.
The pair admitted to law enforcement that they had watched ISIS videos and were inspired by ISIS.
This should be the biggest story in the country: yet another attempted terror attack by a radical Islamist shouting “Allahu Akbar.”
I say “another’ because in the past ten years or so, there have been a wide variety of such attacks. The Austin nightclub shooting just last week, where the terrorist wore a sweatshirt reading “Property of Allah”; the New Orleans terror ramming of January 1, 2025, killing 14, where the suspect had an ISIS flag in his truck; the New York City truck attack on October 31, 2017, in which a terrorist ran down eight people; the Saint Cloud Mall stabbing in September 2016, in which ten people were stabbed by a terrorist shouting “Allahu Akbar”; the Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting of 2016 — which was to that point the deadliest mass shooting in American history with 49 killed and the guy was shouting “Allahu Akbar”; the University of California, Merced stabbing of 2015.
And of course, this wasn’t even the only suspected terror bombing in the West over the weekend. In Norway, the U.S. embassy was bombed early Sunday morning local time.
But that’s not the biggest story here.
The biggest story was the reaction from the mayor in New York. The mayor’s office released a statement condemning — the Anti-Islamist protesters!
Not a word about the attempted bombers, as of Sunday night. Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s press secretary said, “The crusade against Islamification gathering held outside Gracie Mansion today by Jake Lang, a vile white supremacist, was despicable and Islamophobic. Thankfully, the mayor and the First Lady are both safe, though the events are a stark reminder of the threats they both face regularly.”
The mayor put out another statement: “Yesterday, white supremacist Jake Lang organized a protest outside Gracie Mansion rooted in bigotry and racism. Such hate has no place in New York City. It is an affront to our city’s values and the unity that defines who we are. What followed was even more disturbing. Violence at a protest is never acceptable. The attempt to use an explosive device and hurt others is not only criminal, it is reprehensible and the antithesis of who we are.”
Did you notice something in those statements? Jake Lang was condemned in the fullest possible terms. So were the protesters. But, you may have noticed, you would have no idea from those statements who the people were that threw the IED. What did they actually believe? Were they wrong?
Not a word of condemnation. Not one single word. In fact, if you read the mayor’s statement without context, you would come away thinking that Lang and his group threw the IED, which is disgusting and crazy and vile, because it turns out that if ISIS devotees throw a bomb at the “Stop the Islamic Takeover rally,” the people who ought to be called out are the ISIS devotees. They are the ones who threw a bomb.
So you have one group that’s saying stuff you don’t like, and you have another couple of guys who are lone wolves associated with ISIS who literally built IEDs to throw at a crowd.
And Zohran Mamdani’s response is, “Man, that rally was superbad. And the violence that happened afterward, I mean, that was bad.”
What the hell is he talking about?
We know. We know what’s happening here. This is not a shock.
Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of New York, is a lifelong supporter of terrorists, going all the way back to his days as a failed rapper. And, as it turns out, so was the first lady of New York. She repeatedly liked social media posts celebrating October 7 as it unfolded. She even liked one post calling New York Times reporting on the rape of Israeli women by Hamas “a mass rape hoax.”
What was Mamdani’s response to the reports that his wife had liked a bunch of posts sympathetic to terrorists?
You know, my wife is the love of my life, and she’s also a private person who has held no formal position on my campaign or in my city hall. I, however, was elected to represent all 8.5 million people in the city, and I believe that it’s my responsibility, because of that role, to answer any questions about my thoughts and my policies and my decisions.
I have a question for him. Why did your statement about ISIS affiliates throwing bombs at a rally not mention ISIS, radical Islam, terrorism, or anything else about that?
Are we supposed to believe that the husband of the woman who was sympathetic to October 7 disagrees with any of her sentiments? And if so, precisely why?
The problem here isn’t just a fringe issue. It is now a mainstream issue for the Democratic Party, which has decided that pooh-poohing radical Islam is de rigueur in order to condemn both America and Israel.
And Mamdani is the face of their movement.
