❓WHAT HAPPENED: Zohran Mamdani, the Democrats’ socialist candidate for New York City mayor, has admitted he does not have an “aunt” who stopped riding the subway after 9/11, as he previously claimed. He now claims he was referring to a distant cousin of his father, who is now dead.
👤WHO WAS INVOLVED: Zohran Mamdani, the Mamdani family, relatives of 9/11 victims, and Vice President J.D. Vance.
📍WHEN & WHERE: New York City, October 2025.
💬KEY QUOTE: “I find what [Mamdani] had to say completely insulting to all of the people that suffered a horrible loss that day.” – Terry Strada, widow of a 9/11 victim.
🎯IMPACT: The episode has sparked backlash from 9/11 families and raised further concerns about Mamdani’s honesty and integrity.
Zohran Mamdani, the Ugandan Muslim immigrant selected as the Democrats’ candidate for New York City Mayor, has admitted to fabricating a story about his “aunt” being too scared to ride the subway in her Islamic hijab after the 9/11 attacks. After Internet sleuths discovered that his only living aunt, Masuma Mamdani, lived in Tanzania in 2001 and does not wear a hijab, Mamdani claimed he was actually referring to a distant cousin of his father who is now dead.
During a press conference, Mamdani claimed, “I was speaking about Zehra fuhi, my father’s cousin, who passed away a few years ago.” The term “fuhi” translates to paternal aunt in Urdu and Hindi. Notably, Mamdani’s father, Mahmood Mamdani, despises America, alleging it is “the genesis of… settler-colonialism,” and “the inspiration” for the Nazis and the anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws, while also showing Adolf Hitler that “genocide was doable.”
Zohran Mamdani’s father: America is the root of all evil and was the inspiration for the nazis. Hitler learned genocide from Abraham Lincoln.
I’m sure Zohran loves America though. Nice job NYC. pic.twitter.com/iwDzioc9Kk
— MAZE (@mazemoore) October 26, 2025
Mamdani was already under fire for his tearful story about his “aunt” feeling uncomfortable on the subway after 9/11, given her alleged discomfort’s insignificance next to the mass death of the radical Islamic terror attack’s victims. Terry Strada, whose husband died in the North Tower, criticized the socialist politician’s remarks as “insulting and insensitive,” saying, “To compare an aunt being uncomfortable on the subway to all of these families that were murdered was just very insensitive and shows his true colors.”
Previously, Vice President J.D. Vance had observed that, “According to Zohran, the real victim of 9/11 was his auntie who got some (allegedly) bad looks.”
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