There’s a peculiar habit among progressive politicians when it comes to law enforcement. They march in rallies demanding police departments be gutted. They post fiery screeds on social media calling officers racist and corrupt. They build entire political careers on the premise that policing itself is the problem. But when their own personal safety enters the picture — funny how this works — those same officers they vilified suddenly become essential personnel.

It gets even more interesting when a politician doesn’t just quietly lean on the police he once tried to destroy, but appears to fabricate the extent of their cooperation. That’s the situation unfolding right now in New York City, where the mayor’s office made a very specific claim about the NYPD — and the department is flatly saying it isn’t true.

From Fox News:

The New York Police Department (NYPD) will not provide a security detail to Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s wife during her upcoming vacation to two terror hotspots in the Middle East, despite the mayor’s office claiming otherwise.

“The NYPD does not send officers to countries with level 4 travel advisories for discretionary reasons such as personal travel,” a spokesperson for the law enforcement agency told Fox News.

So here’s the timeline. Mamdani’s wife, Rama Duwaji, is planning a September trip to Syria and Lebanon to visit family. Both countries carry the State Department’s highest warning — Level 4, “Do Not Travel” — due to active terrorism threats. When the trip became public, the mayor’s spokeswoman Dora Pekec issued a strikingly detailed statement: “Upon the strong recommendation of the NYPD, the first lady’s security detail will be joining her when she travels to visit family in Syria and Lebanon.”

Read that carefully. That’s not a vague mix-up. That’s a specific, attributed claim about the NYPD’s own recommendation. Yet the department denied it outright, and Mamdani scrambled to tell local station PIX11 it was all just a staff “miscommunication.”

Nobody “miscommunicates” the phrase “upon the strong recommendation of the NYPD.” Somebody in that office either invented the detail wholesale or deliberately misrepresented the department’s position to make the arrangement sound legitimate. There’s a shorter word for that. It’s not miscommunication.

The man who wanted to dismantle the NYPD now wants them as travel agents

What makes this episode genuinely absurd is the source of the request. This is the same Zohran Mamdani who posted in 2020: “There is no negotiating with an institution this wicked & corrupt. Defund it. Dismantle it. End the cycle of violence.” He was talking about the NYPD.

He kept going. “We don’t need an investigation to know that the NYPD is racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety,” he wrote, slapping a #DefundTheNYPD hashtag on for good measure. Then at the Democratic Socialists of America’s 2023 national convention, he delivered this gem: “We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it’s been laced by the IDF.”

Wicked. Corrupt. Racist. A threat to public safety. But also — please escort my wife to a war zone? When the mayoral campaign rolled around, Mamdani reversed course entirely, insisting he never actually wanted to defund the police. Convenient pivot.

Even the rank and file have had enough

Officers don’t tend to forget who spent years attacking their livelihood. NYPD Detectives’ Endowment Association President Scott Munro came out swinging: “Our detectives are needed here in New York City protecting residents and fighting crime.” He added that the DEA would never tolerate members being shipped to a dangerous foreign country for personal travel rather than legitimate law enforcement work.

The street-level verdict arrived last week. Mamdani showed up to a pro-police event on Staten Island and was booed off stage in under a minute. No ambiguity there. The officers remember every word.

A personal vacation on the public dime

Set the lie aside for a moment. Even if the NYPD had agreed, the underlying arrangement would have been outrageous. This wasn’t a diplomatic mission or an intelligence operation. It was a personal family visit to two of the most dangerous countries on earth — and New York City taxpayers would have bankrolled the security escort. That kind of entitlement doesn’t surprise anyone who’s been watching how progressive elites operate, but it should still offend every person whose tax dollars fund the NYPD.

New Yorkers deserve a mayor who tells the truth and respects the officers keeping their city safe. In one tidy episode, Mamdani has shown he’s capable of neither. And if he’ll lie about something this easily verified, every New Yorker ought to be asking a harder question: what else is he misrepresenting?

Key Takeaways

• Mamdani’s office falsely claimed the NYPD would escort his wife to the Middle East.
• The mayor built his career trashing police, then expected their personal protection.
• Taxpayer-funded security for personal trips to terror hotspots is indefensible government waste.
• Leaders who lie about easily checked facts cannot be trusted on weightier matters.

Sources: Fox News, The Washington Times