Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears on popular pro-Trump podcast, reiterating claim that Iran has made two attempts to assassinate the US president.

By World Israel News Staff

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dished out sharp criticism of the leading candidate in this year’s New York City mayoral election, calling Zohran Madmani’s campaign “stupid” while embracing the term “bromance” to describe his relationship with President Donald Trump.

On Monday, Netanyahu appeared on “The Full Send Podcast,” hosted by a pair of pro-Trump podcasters from a channel known as the NELK Boys.

During the show, filmed on July 8, Netanyahu told hosts Kyle Forgeard and Aaron Steinberg that New York State Assemblyman Zohran Madmani’s agenda would, if he wins election, likely doom him to a single term as mayor.

“A lot of people have been taken in by this nonsense,” Netanyahu said, responding “yeah” when Steinberg called Madmani “an antisemitic guy.”

“You want to defund the police? You want to have people go into stores and rob them and be free? You think that really creates a good society? You want to crush all enterprise? You want to tax people to death? You know, that’s a one-term effort. But, you know, sometimes you have to get mugged by reality to understand how stupid that is,” Netanyahu continued.

Madmani, who represents the progressive wing of the Democratic Party in New York, has refused to repudiate the phrase “globalize the intifada” and has accused Israel of committing “genocide” in the Gaza Strip, drawing sharp criticism even from some within his own party.

Netanyahu also played up his relationship with Trump, accepting Forgeard’s suggestion that the two have a “bromance.”

“You might [call it that],” said Netanyahu. “We’ve known each other several decades and…I really like him.”

The Israeli premier distinguished his relationship with Trump from that with former president Joe Biden, saying their relationship was “not the same.”

“I’ve known Biden for…40 years. Almost as long. It was a different relationship, It was a friendship, but also it evolved into, how shall I say this, severe disagreements,” he said.

By contrast, Netanyahu said that he has enjoyed “powerful agreements” with Trump, rebuffing media reports of tension between the two leaders.

The prime minister appeared to hint at secret Iranian involvement in the two shooting incidents targeting Trump last year, despite no official link between the Islamic Republic and either assassination attempt.

“Iran tried to assassinate President Trump not once, but twice. They openly admit [it],” he said.

The comments appeared to reference two shootings targeting Trump during the 2024 election campaign, including the assassination attempt by Thomas Matthew Crooks in July that wounded the president during a rally in Pennsylvania and a September shooting by Ryan Wesley Routh in Florida.

While US authorities have tied Iran to two separate plots to kill Trump – one involving Pakistani national Asif Merchant last summer and the other involving Farhad Shakeri – neither Crooks nor Routh has been accused of working on behalf of Iran.

Routh did write in his 2023 self-published book that Iran should assassinate Trump.

The post Netanyahu talks ‘bromance’ with Trump, ridicules Madmani’s ‘stupid’ NYC bid appeared first on World Israel News.

Former NY Governor Andrew Cuomo launches independent bid in the NYC mayoral general election, challenging front-runner Zohran Madmani after losing to him by double-digits in the Democratic primary.

The post WATCH: Cuomo shakes up NYC mayoral race with major announcement appeared first on World Israel News.

The Democratic mayoral candidate for New York City has repeatedly espoused anti-Israel rhetoric.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The anti-Israel Democratic candidate for New York City mayor told an audience five years ago that the Palestinian cause was the reason he entered politics, Haaretz reported Thursday.

The left-wing daily publicized a recording of a meeting candidateZohran Mamdani held over Zoom in 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, when he was running to become a state assemblyman.

The reason he became “politically active in the first place,” the Muslim politician told his listeners, was because he “came up through” what he called “the Palestinian solidarity movement.”

Born in Uganda to Indian parents, Mamdani lived for three years in South Africa, “where apartheid had just ended and there was a feeling that although it had ended in South Africa ,it was still going on in Palestine, and it was incumbent on everyone who had fought it here to fight it there,” he said.

“I grew up without any false conceptions about the narrative as opposed to the reality,” he said, espousing the Palestinian anti-Israel rhetoric.

“When you look at some of the demands of the Palestinians, they are so basic and made out to be so convoluted,” he added, without mentioning the decades of Palestinian terrorism and rejection of numerous offers on Israel’s part to try to solve the conflict.

After only four years as assemblyman, Mamdani beat out a crowded field last month in the Democratic primaries to become the front-runner to head the city with the largest Jewish population outside of Israel.

Notwithstanding his claims of not being antisemitic, he has refused to condemn calls for violence against Jews, such as “Globalize the intifada”; termed Israel’s war of self-defense against the Hamas terror organization in Gaza a “genocide”; and threatened to have Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrested and charged with war crimes if he comes to New York, in line with the controversial warrant issued by the International Criminal Court last November.

His victory has alarmed many Jewish New Yorkers.

“Among the battle cries of those who seek to murder Jews is to ‘globalize the intifada,’ and as a purveyor of that attitude, as someone who rationalizes and minimizes and denies the dangers that accrue to the Jewish people and the importance of the State of Israel, it’s deeply concerning” that Mamdani won, William Daroff, CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, told JNS in an interview.

Mamdani became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2018, a decade after moving to the U.S. with his family at age seven.

Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi last week calling for the Justice Department to initiate denaturalization proceedings against the politician, whom President Donald Trump called “a communist.” Mamdani’s political platform includes adding heavy taxes to wealthy New Yorkers to enable free transportation and university for the city’s residents, among other perks.

Trump also threatened to have Mamdani arrested if he becomes mayor and follows through on a pledge to prevent Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from deporting illegal immigrants from the city.

The post Mamdani: ‘Plight’ of Palestinians brought me into politics appeared first on World Israel News.