by Frank Holmes, reporter
American voters used to pick the candidate they supported the most. Today, millions of Americans felt they had no choice but to vote out of self-defense.
Strangely, while citizens in some of America’s top cities tried to protect themselves from the most radical Democrats, someone once considered the most influential “Republican” on TV just endorsed a socialist candidate with ties to radical Islam.
You know the “Republican” and “conservative intellectual”: Bill Kristol, former staffer to Education Secretary William Bennett and Vice President Dan Quayle, founder of The Weekly Standard magazine, and a fixture on Fox News.
Kristol just endorsed the Democratic socialist candidate for New York City, Zohran Mamdani.
The onetime “conservative” commentator told The Forum that he had “core praise for Mamdani,” who is a “very impressive politician.” In addition to Mamdani, Kristol salso praised Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill, Democratic women who are running for governor of Virginia and New Jersey, respectively.
But he went further: He said if he were in New York City, he would have voted for Mamdani today. Kristol said he it would be “ridiculous” to vote for former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, instead blaming Mamdani’s likely election on “all these big shot finance types in New York,” because “they couldn’t get behind anyone” else.
And he belittled conservatives who warned about the candidate’s extreme views. “I do think the Right’s reaction to Mamdani has been a little hysterical,” said Kristol.
Kristol wishes New York’s fringe Left candidates weren’t “so against Israel,” but he had no problem with them destroying the Big Apple from within.
New Yorkers forced to live under socialism will “be fine,” he said. “So there’ll be some grocery store somewhere and it won’t be as good as the privately run ones, and it will go out of business in three years and it’ll be a little bit of a waste of taxpayer money, you know? Or it’ll be harmless, you know?”
What’s stranger yet is Kristol, a neoconservative hawk, has endorsed a man with alleged ties to Islamic extremists.
🚨 MAMDANI’S HOSTILE TAKEOVER
Leaked video reveals Mamdani and the DSA's real agenda:
🗣️“We hate the Democratic Party”
🗣️“We need to orient ourselves toward insurrection”They’ve captured the party, they’re seizing NYC, and now have their sights on destroying America. pic.twitter.com/F3fbeJJNSQ
— Canary Mission (@canarymission) October 28, 2025
One of his supporters let it slip that Mamdani’s support came from the infamous Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR.
“Right now, I’m a little more quiet,” said campaign backer Linda Sarsour, who helped organize the Women’s March on Washington. But she promised “that once November 4 comes around, I will tell the story.”
But she was confident enough about victory that she tipped her hand, anyway.
It’s not just “random that Zohran ascended to this place,” Sarsour said. “It is our Muslim-American communities, and I’ll also say that’s Muslim money,” including “probably over 80% of Muslim American donors in this country—high net donors, grassroots donors.”
She emphasized that “the Unity and Justice Fund PAC, which is the CAIR super PAC…was the largest institutional donor to the pro-Zohran PAC in New York.”
Backing Mamdani makes perfect sense for Sarsour—who, as The Horn has reported, demonstrated against New York police, met with Islamic terrorist bomber Rasmea Yousef Odeh, and said called a cult leader who starved children on his property her “mentor.”
But Bill Kristol’s old publication, The Weekly Standard, highlighted CAIR’s whitewashing of terrorism and always said American troops had to go to Iraq to fight jihadists over there so we didn’t have to fight them here.
Now, Bill Kristol is endorsing the socialist radical to become mayor of the city that suffered the most from the 9/11 attacks?
And, if Mamdani gets his way, New York will suffer under his plans, as well.
“Mamdani’s rise was NEVER grassroots, it was paid for by @CAIRNational”
That is the media arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in the USA.
STOP MAMDANI! https://t.co/QfDBNEr60e— Ayaan Hirsi Ali (@Ayaan) November 3, 2025
Mamdani has talked about defunding the police and, in his campaign platform, promises to create a “Department of Community Safety” to help address criminals with “mental health programs.” Mamdani says he will keep the city’s crime-ridden subways safe by sending “dedicated outreach workers in 100 subway stations” and increase the number of Transit Ambassadors.
His platform also calls for “fast, fare free buses,” and “no cost childcare.” He promises to “increase funding to hate violence prevention programs by 800%.” And he says he will raise the city-wide minimum wage to $30 an hour by the time his term ends in 2030.
All this comes from Mamdani, a man who refused to condemn the phrase, “Globalize the intifada.”
Bill Kristol says New York City has nothing to worry about if Mamdani takes office…because it has a large population.
“New York is a huge city. He’s not going to destroy it,” Kristol told his interviewer.
NYC is huge, the biggest city in America—which means Mayor Mamdani would have more ability to hurt, bankrupt, or encourage a crime spree against more citizens than any one mayor.
It’s possible his fall from grace has driven Bill Kristol mad. Kristol was so highly regarded that, at one time, he was on Fox News almost perpetually, including the 6 o’clock news roundtable.
But Kristol was a “moderate” on almost everything, except war—and the rise of President Donald Trump forced him out of his role as the GOP’s elder statesman.
Kristol tried to recruit David French to run for president against Trump, started writing for a “conservative” Never Trump publication called The Bulwark, and eventually announced he was joining the Democratic Party.
Now, the onetime “standard” of conservatism has thrown his support behind a socialist.
”Trump broke him,” reported the conservative website Twitchy—or maybe there’s another explanation. “Maybe everything from the Weekly Standard to his BS at Bulwark has all just been a big grift.”