Debra Messing Is Having a Meltdown About Zohran Mamdani

With most New York City mayoral-race polls pointing to a victory for Zohran Mamdani tonight, Andrew Cuomo’s biggest fans are refusing to give up the fight. One of the most recognizable faces advocating for Cuomo in the final moments before the polls close is Debra Messing, who has spent the past 24 hours posting Islamophobic content and misinformation about Mamdani on her Instagram Story.

Messing participated in early voting last week, writing in a post that she opted for Cuomo because “we need someone with experience.” “Our city is too massive, complex, and consequential to have someone 33 years old who has never held a job, and missed 80% of his votes as Councilman,” Messing wrote on Instagram. “Perhaps with more experience. But not now.”

Her reposts on Election Day, however, showed a much more extreme perspective. At the time of writing, Messing, who is Jewish and a staunch advocate for Israel, has shared a barrage of graphics and videos warning Jewish people not to vote for Mamdani owing to his pro-Palestine beliefs. When she wasn’t fearmongering in that direction, she was being blatantly Islamophobic. One graphic she reposted read, “A vote for Sliwa is a vote for Mamdani is a vote for New-York-Stan.” Another featured a ballot on which the options were “A Democrat” and “An Actual Communist Jihadist … A literal Karl Marx-quoting, America-hating jihadist.” (This image was also posted to X on Monday by none other than Senator Ted Cruz.) It’s worth noting Mamdani is not a communist but a democratic socialist.

On Monday, Messing shared a post from an account called @joanofjudea, which claimed that while Judaism and Christianity encourage honesty, Muslims are “commanded to lie if it means spreading Islam.” “He’s revealing their goal: Mass conversion,” the post read. “These two opposing civilizations cannot coexist.”

Other posts that appeared on Messing’s Story came from conservative outlets such as CPAC, Breitbart, and Newsmax. She also shared multiple posts about President Donald Trump endorsing Cuomo, as well as screenshots of Trump’s Truth Social posts about the election, including one in which he wrote, “Any Jewish person that votes for Zohran Mamdani, a proven and self professed JEW HATER, is a stupid person!!!” Mamdani has condemned antisemitism many times throughout his campaign.

Messing’s screeds are not entirely surprising, considering she posted similarly offensive content on Instagram in June during the primaries. In one comment she wrote then, she accused Mamdani of celebrating 9/11 and called him a “mayor who sides with terrorists.”

At what point does someone step in and delete Instagram from her phone? The human brain was not meant to repost that many Reels, let alone ones using Islamophobic tropes to fearmonger among her fellow New Yorkers. I would say Messing should take a vacation to reset, but it seems she’s already on one: Three days ago, she posted from a hotel in Tel Aviv.

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