Cuomo Torches Mamdani In Epic One-Minute Mic Drop During Debate

Former New York governor Andrew Cuomo delivered one of the most scathing attacks in recent memory on Wednesday during the New York City mayoral debate, as he denounced Democratic socialist candidate Zohran Mamdani in a mic drop moment.

“I understand my friend really doesn’t understand government,” Cuomo began. “The governor doesn’t build housing in New York City.”

“Not if it’s you,” Mamdani taunted Cuomo.

“No. Legally, there are jurisdictions,” Cuomo fired back, explaining to Mamdani as if he were a child. “The governor doesn’t pick up trash; he doesn’t run the fire department. That’s what the mayor does. The mayor builds housing. The state allocates funding for localities. And I allocated more funding for housing than any governor in the history of the state of New York.”

“I did things,” he pointed out, then got down to brass tacks. “You have never had a job; you’ve never accomplished anything. There’s no reason to believe you have any merit or qualification for eight and a half million lives. You don’t know how to run a government; you don’t know how to handle an emergency, and you’ve literally never proposed a bill on anything that you’re not talking about in your campaign.”

Cuomo then turned to Mamdani’s record: “You had the worst attendance record in the Assembly, and you gave yourselves the highest raise in the United States of America; you went from $110,000 to $140,000, and then you never showed up for work and you missed 80% of the votes.”

“Shame on you!” he thundered. “Shame on you!”

Seriously. This is your new ad, @andrewcuomo.

What a mic drop.

pic.twitter.com/18xjhZ2gEM

— Tali Goldsheft (@TaliGoldsheft) October 23, 2025

Mamdani, 33, a state assemblyman who grew up as the privileged son of “acclaimed Marxist scholar Mahmood Mamdani and Oscar-nominated film director Mira Nair,” as The Independent reported, attended Bowdoin College, where he co-founded the school’s chapter of the radical activist group, Students for Justice in Palestine. His entire job history outside of politics has consisted of working as a foreclosure prevention counselor and a rapper.

During the 2020 BLM protests and riots, Mamdani said that the New York Police Department should be removed from high-crime areas. He received harsh criticism after a video surfaced showing him saying that in the past, he had stopped working and relied on his parents’ money. “I worked until January, and then I took time away from my job, and one of the major reasons I could do so was because I knew that if I ran out of my savings, my family would be able to support me,” he stated.

"I knew that if I ran out of my savings my family would be able to support me" — Mamdani

Must be nice! pic.twitter.com/22CJRQwNqk

— Jon Levine (@LevineJonathan) July 15, 2025