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New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) and former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) are going after mayoral front-runner and Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani over his bench-pressing efforts at a “Men’s Day” event in Brooklyn.
The video shows Mamdani doing two bench presses with a spotter assisting him Saturday. Right-wing accounts dinged him over the lack of reps and the assistance, and Mamdani’s rivals in the general election also knocked him over his effort.
Adams, who chose not to run in the Democratic primary and is instead pursuing an independent campaign for reelection, posted a video of himself bench pressing next to the video of Mamdani, showing the embattled incumbent completing more reps.
“64 vs. 33. A lifetime of hard work vs. a silver spoon. The results speak for themselves. The weight of the job is too heavy for ‘Mamscrawny,’” Adams wrote on social media, referring to Mamdani. “The only thing he can lift is your taxes.”
Cuomo, also running an independent campaign after losing the Democratic primary to Mamdani in a shock upset, also took the opportunity to criticize Mamdani, saying it’s “easy to talk” but “hard to carry the burden.”
“This guy can't bench his own body weight, let alone carry the weight of leading the most important city in the world,” he wrote on the social platform X.
Mamdani, a democratic socialist, has pledged during the campaign to enact a wide expansion of social services if elected as mayor, including free buses and a freeze on rent increases in rent-stabilized apartments. His call to raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for it has faced criticism from his more moderate rivals.
Polls show Mamdani in position to win the general election in the heavily Democratic-leaning city; surveys indicate he has less than majority support, but opposition to him has been fractured among the other candidates — Adams, Cuomo, Republican Curtis Sliwa and independent Jim Walden.