Former President Joe Biden is a rapist, claimed Democratic Party congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier of New York City.
And it left Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy stunned.
NBC News’ Ryan Nobles asked Murphy directly if the Democrats “big tent” included the socialist nominee who called Biden a rapist, the senator quickly deflected.
Murphy appeared on “Meet the Press” to discuss the fallout from Tuesday’s New York primaries, where three Mamdani-backed Democratic Socialists of America candidates swept their House races. One of them, Darializa Avila Chevalier, defeated longtime incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat — chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus — in New York’s 13th District.
“She won’t stand by Joe Biden,” the ad declared. “She even called him a rapist. She won’t stand by veterans or the American flag. She stands with dividing us by race. Meet the real Darializa, the one she tried to delete.”
“So to be clear, Senator, that was an attack ad from a fellow Democrat,” Nobles said. “You’ve talked about this bigger tent. If you’re saying the Democratic Party needs a bigger tent, does that include someone who called a former Democratic President of the United States a rapist?”
Murphy’s answer quickly deflected.
“Yeah, well, I mean, I’m not super familiar with that race,” Murphy said. “All I’m saying is that this party has to have a real contest of ideas. And I just don’t think that our defense of incrementalism has worked. So I don’t mind a contest of ideas, and I just don’t know that we have had it to the extent that voters have been satisfied.”
Take a look –
Sen. @ChrisMurphyCT gets confronted on @MeetThePress with DSA-backed candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier’s deleted tweets — including calling a former president Joe Biden a rapist.
His response?
‘I’m not super familiar with that race.’ pic.twitter.com/WN9XVGbB79— DSA Watch (@DSA_Watch) June 28, 2026
Avila Chevalier, in posts later deleted from social media, shared wild claims and conspiracy theories for years.
She called Biden both a “rapist” and a “war criminal” during the 2020 election. She also wrote “f— Kamala Harris” in 2021 after Harris gave a speech discouraging illegal immigration to the United States. She called the United States a “f—ing disgrace,” posted about hating the American flag, and said interracial relationships were because of “fetishizing ugly colonizer women.”
Other deleted posts called for abolishing police, abolishing all prisons, and outlawing all borders, with Avila Chevalier spelling it out clearly what she meant by “abolish the police.”
“No. It means ending policing full stop. Period. No more police at all ever,” she wrote and posted on social media.
New York City’s socialist mayor Zohran Mamdani stood behind her regardless.
“In Congress, she’ll take on corporate greed, bad landlords, and D.C.’s broken political system,” Mamdani told CNN.
Avila Chevalier, 32, was recruited to run by radical Justice Democrats, the same group that helped launch Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s 2018 upset, and her campaign has been endorsed and funded by the Democratic Socialists of America.
She is expected to easily win in November in the heavily Democratic district.