Right-wing radio personality Sid Rosenberg apologized for calling Mayor Mamdani a “cockroach,” after the host’s hateful remarks sparked a massive backlash, including from Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch.
Tisch both called Rosenberg out publicly and texted him directly about the post, he said.
“I apologize this morning for the name calling. And I could have made my tweet without doing all that, and I was very sincere, and still am in my apologies, not just to the mayor, but to anybody else I offended,” Rosenberg said on-air. He then launched into a rant about how Democrats get away with calling people names “a lot worse than an insect.”
In the now-deleted post from Monday, Rosenberg called Mamdani a “America hating, Jew hating, Radical Islam cockroach” and a “jihadist.”
Rosenberg said on his show that it’s “not nice to call somebody a bug” and claimed that the post had “nothing to do with anybody’s religion or faith or anything.” He didn’t address calling Mamdani a “jihadist.”
“Time will tell how sincere of an apology it is,” Mamdani told ABC in an interview on Wednesday.
“I do want to take a moment, however, to say thank you to all of the New Yorkers, elected officials, leaders and many in their own regards who spoke up,” he said. “Because frankly, this is not about me. This is about the more than one million Muslims who call New York City home and who have long had to deal with racist and dehumanizing rhetoric.”
On his show Wednesday morning, Rosenberg admitted Tisch, who he considers a “very good friend,” texted him about the post and they had a “great conversation, as did former NYPD Chief of Department John Chell.
“We believe open conversation is important to talk radio in our country,” John Catsimatidis, owner of WABC, said Wednesday. “But personal attacks on individuals is not acceptable on WABC. We are glad Sid Rosenberg, our good friend, agrees and understands WABC’s policies.”
Tisch called Rosenberg’s initial post “wholly inappropriate and deeply harmful,” in a statement late Tuesday.
“I do not share those views in any way, and any rhetoric that seeks to dehumanize and disparage someone’s religion cannot be tolerated,” she said.
Tisch and the mayor have opposing views on many public safety issues, which has been the source of tension during the first days of the Mamdani administration. The commissioner dined with Rosenberg, who had also called Mamdani a “terrorist,” in January.
Mamdani slammed the radio host’s “bigotry” on Tuesday, calling his post “dehumanizing.”
“To be called animals, insects, to be called a jihadist mayor, to be called a cockroach — this language is both painfully familiar to me as a Muslim New Yorker, but also as someone who was born in East Africa,” the mayor said at an unrelated press conference.
