Kathy Hochul
Role at the time: Governor of New York, in an interview with WNYC
Statement summary
Governor Kathy Hochul said in a WNYC interview that Mayor Zohran Mamdani has never said he supports Hamas and has called it a terrorist organization, and that Netanyahu hurt his own credibility by saying otherwise.
“I have enormous disagreements with Prime Minister Netanyahu, and this is added to the list The mayor has never said he supports Hamas. He has called them a terrorist organization, exactly at odds with what Netanyahu just said. So he has hurt his own credibility”
Report by Jon Campbell of WNYC and Gothamist, distributed through the New York Public News Network, on Governor Kathy Hochul's WNYC interview about Netanyahu's video accusing Mamdani.
Archived copy (opens in a new tab)Why we used this label
The case asks whether Mamdani's campaign against Netanyahu's UN visit is fomenting hate or is accountability for alleged war crimes, and Netanyahu's accusation that Mamdani supports Hamas and incites riots is part of that dispute. Hochul disputed the accusation, saying the mayor has never said he supports Hamas and has called it a terrorist organization. She addressed that description rather than the arrest campaign itself, so we labeled it Challenged the characterization.