‘Real victim was his aunt’: US VP JD Vance mocks NYC mayor candidate Zohran Mamdani over 9/11 Hijab remarks

US Vice President JD Vance on Saturday criticized New York City mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani following an emotional speech in which Mamdani reflected on his Muslim identity and his family’s experiences after the September 11 attacks.

JD Vance shared a clip of Mamdani’s speech on X, mocking the candidate’s remarks: “According to Zohran, the real victim of 9/11 was his auntie who got some (allegedly) bad looks.”
Mamdani, the Democratic Socialist candidate and a 34-year-old Queens Assemblyman, shared that his aunt stopped taking the subway after 9/11 because she did not feel safe in her hijab.

Speaking outside a Bronx mosque ahead of the city’s mayoral election, Mamdani addressed the discrimination faced by Muslim New Yorkers.

"I want to speak to the memory of my aunt, who stopped taking the subway after September 11 because she did not feel safe in her hijab," he said. He also recounted advice from his uncle to keep his faith private when entering politics.

"These are lessons that so many Muslim New Yorkers have been taught. And over these last few days, these lessons have become the closing messages of Andrew Cuomo, Curtis Sliwa and Eric Adams," Mamdani added, criticizing what he described as Islamophobic attacks by his political rivals.