Briahna Joy Gray Breaks With Zohran Mamdani Over 'Conservative' Police Framing

Bad Faith host Briahna Joy Gray broke with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Monday's episode, calling his statement that public safety means "working with our police department" a "lie" and "active conservative framing," even as she praised him as one of the left's most gifted communicators.

The criticism follows weeks of retreat from 2020-era rhetoric by prominent democratic socialists in office. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told ABC News anchor Jonathan Karl on Sunday, August 9, that "Woke 1 was crazy," and Mamdani has said publicly that he does "not believe in defunding the police," pointing to record-low murders and shootings during the first seven months of his administration.

Gray's guest, Princeton professor Eddie Glaude Jr., agreed that Mamdani should be judged by his police budget rather than his rhetoric but urged giving the mayor "the benefit of the doubt."

What Briahna Joy Gray Said About Zohran Mamdani

Gray played the clip of Mamdani's remarks: "I've made very clear that I do not believe in defunding the police, that I will not be defunding the police. And that to me, delivering critical public safety also looks like working with our police department alongside many other partners."

But she rejected his reasoning. For Mamdani to argue that he cares about public safety and therefore will not defund the police, Gray said, "is doing active conservative work. That's active conservative framing. He's making a connection between public safety and policing which does not exist and which is a lie."

Gray argued the left should own the public safety issue the way Republicans have owned immigration. "The police, large police budgets have no correlation to public safety," she said. "We care about public safety, therefore we were gonna do the things that are proven to bring public safety."

She singled out Mamdani precisely because she believes he could make that argument. Gray said Mamdani "is extremely intelligent, very good at his job, has demonstrated an ability to do this reframe and pivot as we've discussed, and is choosing not to."

Eddie Glaude Jr. Urges Judging Mamdani by the NYPD Budget

Glaude, who said "of course" he supports lowering police budgets, redirected the test to spending rather than rhetoric.

"And at that point, he's open to criticism, right?" Glaude said. "We would have to say, okay, well, let's look at that rhetorical move to see if it's just simply rhetoric. And then let's look at what he's doing budgetarily."

Gray conceded the budget picture is mixed. "So he doesn't raise the police budget, but he didn't lower it either," she said.

Glaude was more generous: "Mamdani is a political athlete. That's clear. He's governing the largest city in the country, one of the largest cities in the world," he said, adding that he has "no idea what he's confronting when it comes to the mechanisms of governing the city of New York."

Gray said the criticism has isolated her on the left: "I'm now the bad guy because I even say this kind of thing out loud. I'm the party pooper."

What NYC Crime Data and the NYPD Budget Show

The record backs Mamdani's crime claim but complicates the causal story on both sides.

Mamdani's budgets have kept NYPD funding essentially flat. His first preliminary budget in February canceled former Mayor Eric Adams' plan to hire 5,000 additional officers and held the department near $6.4 billion, Gothamist reported. The adopted $126 billion city budget in June also dropped a planned 580-officer increase and kept uniformed headcount at 35,000, Gothamist reported.

Crime fell before and after the transition. New York recorded 305 murders in 2025, down from 382 in 2024, according to a January update. The first half of 2026 brought 122 murders and 322 shootings, both record lows, the NYPD said — down from 229 murders and 737 shootings in the same period of 2021. Mamdani's "fewest murders on record" claim holds up, but the decline began under his predecessor and continued without any rise in police spending.

What Research Says About Police and Public Safety

Gray's claim that policing has no link to safety is disputed by research: a 2022 study by Aaron Chalfin and colleagues in American Economic Review: Insights found each additional officer in a large city prevents about 0.1 homicides a year, with effects roughly twice as large for Black victims, though the same forces also made more low-level arrests, disproportionately affecting Black residents. Neither the study nor New York's trend settles whether Mamdani's flat budget or other factors drove the decline.

What Happens Next

Gray extended the critique to Mamdani's alliances, faulting him and Ocasio-Cortez for backing House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, whom she called "the king of Zionist advocacy within the house." Mamdani said on August 24 that he continues to support Jeffries' bid to lead the House if Democrats win a majority.

Gray called the moment "a tipping point for the left." Glaude's prescription was narrower: "hold him to his own commitments, his stated commitments." Whether Mamdani's next budget moves the NYPD line in either direction will be the first test.