President Donald Trump’s Homeland Security Advisory Council — a group that includes Rudy Giuliani, cop-turned-actor Bo Dietl and the founder of Bikers for Trump — held its first meeting on Wednesday to discuss the top threats facing the nation.
The conversation quickly turned to New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani.
After hearing Giuliani deliver a speech against asylum-seeking immigrants, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem chimed in.
“I want to ask you: Do you want to run for mayor of New York again?” she asked, drawing cheers and applause from around the conference room.
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“Bo and I have been talking about putting together some kind of strategy. It’s doable if it’s one candidate. It’s a suicide mission if you’re three,” Giuliani said.
The longtime GOP politician called the Republican in the race, Curtis Sliwa, “our candidate.” He labeled Eric Adams, the current mayor running for reelection as an independent and whose criminal indictment was dropped by the Justice Department to free him up to support Trump’s anti-immigration policies, “kind of our candidate.” And he reserved the worst insult for former governor Andrew Cuomo, who lost to Mamdani in the Democratic primary but could still mount an independent campaign.
“I’ve known him since he was 15 years old. His mother would describe him as, ‘Well, Chris is the smarter boy,’” Giuliani joked, referring to the former governor’s journalist brother.
But all that was a prelude to a parley over Mamdani, the 33-year-old democratic socialist who’s running on a platform that champions the working class with rent caps for rent-stabilized units, police accountability and what he calls “Trump-proofing NYC.”
“This is not an exaggerated problem,” Giuliani told the 22-person council. “Somehow we got the combination of an Islamic extremist and a communist.”
Mamdani is Muslim, but Giuliani’s remark is an attempt to label as a threat a Democratic politician who has repeatedly said he does not question Israel’s right to exist as a nation but has called Israel’s retaliatory attacks on Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023, a “genocide.”
The Homeland Security Advisory Council is not typically so heavy on politics. It was created in 2003 in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks and, as stated in the Federal Register, is meant to provide “nonpartisan and organizationally independent strategic advice to the Secretary of Homeland Security on critical matters related to Homeland Security.” Its current charter, issued in March, says that it will spend about $800,000 a year and dish out advice on “terrorist attacks, major disasters, or other emergencies” from “national leaders” in academia, business, and experienced first responders.
The meeting’s rancor aimed at Mamdani continued when Noem called on David Chesnoff, a prominent Las Vegas attorney who previously defended Corey Lewandowski — yet another Trump adviser on the council — from accusations of making unwanted sexual advances on a Republican donor at a 2021 event.
“I want to do this because I’m tired of the normalization of anti-American philosophy, for example, in New York ... it’s amazing you can have the Hezbollah flag being marched within shouting distance of where the towers fell,” he said, referencing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
“We have somebody running for mayor ... that applauds the very same philosophy and people that did that,” Chesnoff continued. “We need to send a bigger message to the American public of the danger that poses.”
That comment appeared to catch Noem’s attention. Noem, whose department oversees the increasingly militarized deportation raids frequently led by masked people who hide their names and badges, said she’s looking for creative ways to expand her power.
“The Department of Homeland Security has authorities that have never been utilized before ... and I’m going to need some good minds on how to use those authorities,” she said.
Her comment comes just one day after Trump, speaking from a new mass immigration incarceration camp quickly built in the South Florida swamp, threatened to jail Mamdani if he attempts to stop Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the city and disparaged him as a “communist.”
Following a rally where he received the endorsement of some of the city’s top unions, Mamdani responded to Trump’s comments and those from officials on the council Wednesday branding him a security threat, calling the comments a distraction “from what I fight for.”
“And ultimately, what I fear,” he said, “is that if this is what Donald Trump and his administration feel comfortable about saying about the Democratic nominee for the mayor of New York City, imagine what they feel comfortable saying and doing about immigrants whose names they don’t even know.”
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Jose Pagliery is a reporter for NOTUS. Katie Honan of The City contributed to this report.
This story was produced as part of a partnership between NOTUS and The City.
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