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On Tuesday night, after President Trump took to social media to say he would ensure that Mr. Netanyahu would not be arrested in violation of the law, Mamdani publicly acknowledged in a social media video that he did not have the authority to arrest the prime minister, whom he nevertheless hurled unfounded accusations against.
Mamdani is a mayor who excels at political theater.
He spends more time making slick social media videos and advancing his ideological agenda than on the basic, unglamorous work of running city government, relying on Albany for everything from funding his signature free childcare initiative to balancing his first city budget by reducing pension funding payments to negotiating a contract with the NYPD's largest union.
The UNGA brings hundreds of world leaders and dignitaries to New York City every year — from Nobel Peace Prize laureates to those accused of heinous crimes against humanity.
Moreover, that begs the question: What's with the fixation on Netanyahu?
Why would the mayor not, for example, investigate arresting Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whom U.S. intelligence concluded approved the operation that killed Washington Post journalist and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi?
Or Chinese President Xi Jinping, whose government's ongoing human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities the U.S. has formally determined to be a genocide?
Or Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, whose security detail beat protesters on U.S. soil in 2017?
Or Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, whose 2023 offensive emptied Nagorno-Karabakh of virtually its entire Armenian population?
If he were to detain Netanyahu, the mayor would be choosing to enforce a warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC) — a body the U.S. does not recognize — while also ignoring the personal immunity heads of state are granted while attending the UNGA.
The United States is not a party to the Rome Statute.
The UN Headquarters Agreement is a ratified treaty and therefore federal law, under which Washington committed to let delegates reach the UN district.
Foreign affairs belong to the federal government alone.
Whether a visiting leader enjoys immunity is decided by the State Department, not by the Law Department of the City of New York.
Federal law makes it a crime to detain a foreign official, meaning Mamdani is floating an order that would expose individual NYPD officers to prosecution for obeying it.
Gov. Kathy Hochul, D-N.Y., has said he has no such authority.
So has the U.S. ambassador to the UN.
Perhaps Mamdani's fellow Democrat, Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, said it best when he bluntly called the mayor "a clown" for targeting Netanyahu, suggesting that he "sit down" and focus on solving the city's many problems instead.
The mayor's to-do list is long and growing by the day: flooding subways, a growing budget deficit, record-high rents, businesses leaving the city, and more.
Yet, he has focused on selective moral grandstanding — a cynical political distraction that is wasting New Yorkers' time and the city's dwindling resources.
UNGA week is already among the largest security operations the NYPD mounts all year.
Thousands of officers are redeployed, Midtown is frozen, and the city pays a lofty overtime bill. Furthermore, Mamdani opts to deflect attention from the challenges at hand to score cheap political points with his base.
Instead of opining on world leaders, it would behoove Mayor Mamdani to start tackling the issues he actually has the power to remedy with common-sense policies. It is well past time for the mayor to stop the grandstanding, remember what he was elected to do, and start delivering for all the people of New York City instead of serving up progressive catnip to his base.
John Burnett is the host of the First Edition Show on Newsmax2 (N2), the first vice chairman of the New York State Republican Party, and managing director of 1 Empire Group. Read more John Burnett Insdier articles — Click Here Now.
