American Thinker94%
Mamdani stumbles, bumbles trying to define ‘working class’ 77%
By Greg Richter55%
7/19/2026, 9:00:00 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 31 faulty reasoning types, including Hasty Generalization, Red Herring, and Biased Writer Voice, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 23% saturation with 177 hits. Analysis detected 1,519 faulty-reasoning hits from 768 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 68.5% and a BS Rank of 77% (5,121 of 21,887 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 76.60% of the article peer group.
It should have been a simple answer when New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani was asked by the New York Times to define who comprises the working class.
After all, the democratic socialist's claim to fame is that it's the working class he's championing.
But in an extended interview published in the Times over the weekend, Mamdani repeatedly stumbled when first asked the question by left-leaning journalist Lulu Garcia-Navarro, an interviewer generally viewed as politically closer to his worldview than to that of conservatives.
Even she repeatedly pushed back on his attempts to explain.
"Part of this discussion, of course, is the organization that you are part of, which is the [Democratic Socialists of America], and it's having a moment, right?
They are being discussed in both good ways and bad, to put it mildly.
And at the heart of it is this idea that they are fighting for the working class.
And it made me wonder: How do you define the working class?"
Garcia-Navarro asked.
"I think if you have to work to pay your bills, I think that that is one definition of being a part of the working class," Mamdani answered.
That definition didn't satisfy the interviewer, who shot back: "So someone making $250,000 a year is working class?"
Mamdani hedged: "I haven't asked myself where it starts and stops.
What I would say is those who are working to try and afford the basic dignities of life and aren't able to do so, I think that that is also working class.
Oftentimes we're asked how we divide this country.
I think there's only one majority in this country - it's the working class."
"That just doesn't ring true to me," Garcia-Navarro challenged.
"It just seems a very easy answer to what is a complicated question.
Because politically, if you're saying everyone is the working class, or anyone that gets a salary is the working class, yes, that opens up your tent.
But practically speaking, we are divided by income - and especially if you want to tax people, where you draw those lines matter."
Mamdani responded that he has "drawn it at about a million dollars a year."
"So anyone under a million dollars a year in income is working class?"
the seemingly astonished journalist asked.
Mamdani literally laughed at her response, saying that he didn't mean to make such an indication, but "in terms of fiscal policy, I think a lot of our politics has been a debate over who you leave out.
And I'm more interested in debates of how you bring more in.
But yes, I do want to raise taxes on people who make more than a million a year."
That answer wasn't satisfactory either, with Garcia-Navarro countering: "Someone who is a janitor is going to feel some kind of way about that description if you're lumping them in with someone who's a lawyer.
That feels like a distinction that might matter."
"When I was running, a question I would face was: What does it mean to be a democratic socialist?
And I only bring that up because I think sometimes there's a fixation on a definition of something," Mamdani tried again.
"And what I found is, when I would knock on New Yorkers' doors, they would just ask, Am I part of your vision?
It's not that everyone is making the same amount of money or facing the same amount of struggle, but that they just want to know, is there any way for them to actually be able to work this hard and afford a good life in the city?"
The interviewer was having none of it:
"I've noticed that when I'm trying to get specifics, you deflect to talking about what New Yorkers do and don't want.
And I have found that politicians, in my own experience when I ask questions of them ...
When I try to get them to define something and they don't want to do it, they use a very broad brush."
An exasperated Mamdani finally ended the line of questioning with: "Look, I think I've defined it to you as someone who works to afford their life.
I also think, no matter how you define it, we have an understanding that those who are struggling to afford the rent, struggling to afford their groceries, struggling to afford child care, are the people who should be at the heart of our vision for what comes next."
Garcia-Navarro, apparently believing that no more belaboring would get a better response from the mayor, moved on to another subject.
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