Dem Strategist Tells Harris Faulkner Socialist, Pro-Hamas Wing Could Cause ‘Death Of’ His Party

Democratic strategist Julian Epstein said Monday that left-wing socialists like Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani of New York City and Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York could cause the Democratic Party’s “death.”

Mamdani won the Democratic nomination for mayor of the Big Apple in the June 24 primary, beating out former Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York and other candidates. Epstein told Harris Faulkner that the Democratic party was carrying out “a suicide march” because leadership would not stand against antisemitism.

“I remember a day when Democrats insisted that the Republican Party server ties with David Duke because of his association with the [Ku Klux] Klan,” Epstein said. Well, now the Democrats, large parts of the Democratic Party on the left, are associated with a terrorist Nazi movement masquerading as a liberation movement and it’s largely because the leadership doesn’t have the spine to stand up and say this is wrong. They just don’t have the moral clarity.”

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During a June interview with “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker, Mamdani refused to condemn the use of the phrase “globalize the intifada” on multiple occasions. Mamdani also said during the campaign that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would be arrested if he came to New York City and defended the boycott, divest and sanction (BDS) movement.

Mamdani is pushing an array of left-wing policies, including establishing government-run grocery stores while also calling for increasing taxes on predominantly white and wealthy neighborhoods of New York to fund free child care and free use of transit busses.

“You know, the word Nazi which we’ve heard a lot of, Harris, means the national socialist party. The National Socialist Workers Party of Germany in the 1930s,” Epstein told Faulkner. “The socialist movement has had a long history of antisemitism and either these useful idiots who are demanding and who are parroting the language, the rhetoric of Hamas, either don’t understand the issue or they are, in many cases, funded by foreign sources and it is taking the party to a very dangerous place where I think it is, you know, it could mean the death of the party.”

“Wow,” Faulkner responded.

Pro-Hamas demonstrations occurred at several colleges following the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas that killed over 1,200 people in Israel. Anti-Israel protesters also occupied buildings, chanted a slogan that had connotations of wiping out Israel and blocked Jewish students from parts of campus.