New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani was asked Wednesday during a press conference about his thoughts on whether the "Woke 1" era was "crazy," following Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., going viral for her recent comments.
"I have a local city councilman that has this saying, 'Woke 1 was crazy,'" Ocasio-Cortez said on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday, adding, "And I think that what’s important is that we have to assess what a candidate is saying now."
In response, Mamdani emphasized that people can "change" and "develop" their beliefs while adding that he does not support things like defunding the police.
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"Look, I think that each person has a responsibility to tell New Yorkers, to tell Americans when they're running for office what they believe," Mamdani said. "And sometimes, what you believe can change. It can develop. It can grow. And I know that there are some for whom they still believe in that."
"I've made very clear that I do not believe in defunding the police, that I will not be defunding the police, and that to me, delivering critical public safety also looks like working with our police department alongside many other partners," he said.
"And we've seen over the first seven months of this administration what that can look like when we're talking about the fewest murders on record in New York City, the fewest shooting incidents on record in New York City," Mamdani continued.
During a Friday radio appearance, the New York City mayor put distance between his administration and the DSA's abolition platform, defending police, prisons and jails.
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While praising the efforts of the NYPD, he emphasized that public safety should not come at the expense of justice.
"I would say, especially when it comes to public safety, I've been very clear that we have our police force, we have prisons, we have jails [and] the purpose of these is also to ensure that we are delivering safety and justice hand in hand. And what that means is that New Yorkers need not choose between the two," Mamdani said.
Fox News Digital reached out to the mayor's office for comment but did not immediately hear back.
Though Mamdani told the press on Wednesday that he does not believe in defunding the police, and distanced himself from his past comments, he had previously come under fire for several past tweets that explicitly called to defund or dismantle the New York Police Department.
"We don't need an investigation to know that the NYPD is racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety. What we need is to #DefundTheNYPD. But your deal with [New York City mayor] uses budget tricks to keep as many cops as possible on the beat. NO to fake cuts - defund the police," he posted on June 28, 2020.
In December of the same year, he also called for it to be "dismantled."
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"All this misery. All for money. In the last budget, the City Council tried to make the NYPD reduce its overtime budget by half. They simply refused. There is no negotiating with an institution this wicked & corrupt. Defund it. Dismantle it. End the cycle of violence," he wrote.
In a comment to Fox News Digital, New York State Republican Party Communications Director David Laska said Mamdani was attempting to ignore the "radical extremism" of the past.
"Americans will never forget and never forgive the radical extremism of the 'woke' era, in which countless people had their livelihoods ripped away for espousing conservative values, including the overwhelmingly popular positions that men have no place in women’s spaces and that our border should be secure," Laska said.
He added, "How ironic, and how utterly shameless, that the same people who perpetrated that evil are now the ones asking us to not hold their past statements against them. Americans are too smart to fall for it. We see radical DSA candidates lying about their views once they start running for office because they know that Americans would reject them."
Laska continued, "Zohran Mamdani is a defund-the-police, Hamas-supporting radical socialist. We know that because he’s told us — and the only way to fight back is to vote Republican up and down the ballot in November."
