New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist, was heckled by a man during a press conference set up to discuss his new housing initiative, who accused him of hating America and ripped into his wife over recent controversial social media posts that indicate she has animosity toward her home country.
“She hates America, and she was born here! It’s all over social media, you can’t hide it!” the man said in a video clip of the heckling that has since gone viral on social media platform X. “ [Zohran Mamdani] He is a Trojan horse. He hates America.” The man was referencing Mamdani’s wife celebrating terrorists in a series of posts during her teen and young adult years.
In September 2017, Rama Duwaji, Mamdani’s wife, posted a photograph on her Tumblr account of Leila Khaled, a longtime activist with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Khaled participated in two plane hijackings in 1969 and 1970. The caption for the post read, “If it does good for my cause, I’ll be happy to accept death.”
According to a report from Fox News, Khaled is the first woman to ever hijack a plane and is highly revered among radical Islamic terrorists for the part she played in the heinous crimes. Many of the pro-terrorist posts by Duwaji, now 28-years-old, were made in her early 20s. Duwaji grew up in New Jersey before her family uprooted and moved to Dubai.
When Duwaji was 17, she shared a tweet on International Women’s Day that heaped praise on terrorist Shadia Abu Ghazaleh. An image included in the post shows Ghazaleh, who took part in the bombing of an Israeli bus and led several other terrorist attacks, posing with a rifle. Ghazaleh died in 1968 when a bomb she was building for another attack accidentally detonated in her home.
She was planning to bomb a building in Tel Aviv. Another post showed a postage stamp from Bangladesh featuring the slogan, “We salute the valiant freedom fighters of Palestine.” Another post from July 2015 slammed the U.S. military presence abroad.
“*taps mic* American soldiers fighting in imperialist wars are not brave nor are they fighting for anyone’s freedom,” the post went on to say. “They are mercilessly slaughtering 3rd world civilians and fighting to maintain American hegemony. That is all, thank you! *drops mic*” Later in the year, Duwaji shared a post from another Tumblr user.
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“You can’t blame muslims for terrorism because they didn’t construct, fund nor train Al-Qaeda,” the user stated. “White People did that too.” Yet another post dated 2015 featured a dig at social media platform Snapchat for including Tel Aviv in its live story feature. “But in all reality, @Snapchat has disappointed me. F*** #TelAviv. Shouldn’t exist in the first place. They’re occupiers. You celebrate them,” a post shared by Duwaji said.
“And finally. Hey @Snapchat, as you give Israelis an outlet to celebrate their atrocities, youre supporting a genocidal state. Bye. #TelAviv.” Duwaji, who was born in Houston, married Mamdani in 2025. She drew ire from the American people after it became known that she liked several posts following the horrific October 7 terrorist attacks against Israel that were critical of the Jewish nation.
Featured Image: screenshot from embedded video