NY Times Scrambles to Justify Shady Hit Piece on Mamdani’s College App

If he becomes NYC's mayor, this would be his first real job

Birdcage liner, The New York Times, is in full-on crisis mode, trying to mop up the mess from a story about NYC communist mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s 2009 Columbia application, where he checked “Asian” and “Black or African American” for race. The piece sparked a firestorm, and now the Times is backpedaling like Michael Jackson on speed doing a reverse moonwalk.

Patrick Healy, the Times’ assistant managing editor for Standards and Trust (ironic title, right?), took to X to douse the flames after “reader feedback” called out the story’s sketchy vibes. 

“Our reporters obtained information about Mr. Mamdani’s Columbia college application and went to the Mamdani campaign with it. When we hear anything of news value, we try to confirm it through direct sources, [unless it's something negative about Trump]. Mr. Mamdani confirmed this information in an interview with The Times,” Healy posted, acting like this was just routine journalism.

Here’s the deal: Mamdani, was born in Uganda, and felt boxed in by the application’s racial categories, so he wrote in his country of origin. Fair enough. But the Times got their hands on his application after a cyberattack on Columbia leaked sensitive information. Healy swears they didn’t “solely rely” on the hacked data, claiming they verified it with Mamdani himself. Sure, Patty, that makes it all squeaky clean.

Healy’s defense: “We believe Mr. Mamdani’s thinking and decision-making, laid out in his words, was newsworthy and in line with our mission to help readers better know and understand top candidates for major offices.” 

Translation: “We thought this would make him look bad, so we ran with it.”The backlash was swift. Keith Olbermann, never one to hold back, obliterated the Times on X: “Your absolute abrogation of the NYT standards would in a better era there have led the full range of you in management to resign. Utter failure. Then again, if you don't realize NYT is perceived as actively campaigning against Mamdani, you're all lost anyway.” 

The irony is, the Times didn't need to try making this communist, Jew-hating Hamas supporter look bad; he is capable of doing that on his own.

Then there’s the Times’ own columnist, Jamelle Bouie, who went rogue on Bluesky, torching his colleagues. Responding to a post slamming his colleague reporter Benjamin Ryan, Bouie wrote, “Everything I have seen about him screams a guy with little to no actual brain activity.” Savage ad hominem if ever there was one.  

But after his spicy takes, Bouie backtracked, deleting his posts and meekly stating, “I deleted several posts about a Times story because they violated Times social media standards.” Gotta love that self-own.

The Times didn’t respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment, and Bouie’s keeping mum too. Meanwhile, the whole mess smells like a desperate attempt to smear Mamdani while pretending it’s “journalism.” Classic Times—digging for dirt, then acting shocked when it blows up in their face.

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