Vice President JD Vance tried to claim credit Monday for a slew of New York wins, but a brutal comeback from New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani left onlookers gasping.
“We got your back, New York!” Vance wrote Monday in a statement published on social media, along with a graphic touting record-low crime in New York City and other figures.
New York City has experienced record-low violent crime, with the New York City Police Department announcing last month that the city logged its fewest shootings and murders in recorded history during the first nine months of 2026. Mamdani, who’s led the city as its mayor since Jan. 1, apparently took issue with Vance’s boast.
With no additional commentary, Mamdani responded to Vance’s statement with a viral video showing a man in the New York City subway pretending to stop a subway train with his bare hands. The man also places his hand on the train’s automatic doors, acting as though he opens them.
The video is often used in jest to poke fun at individuals taking credit for work they didn’t do, and Mamdani’s response to Vance including the video quickly went viral, being viewed nearly 30 million times as of Tuesday morning.
“Hello NYPD I’d like to report a murder,” quippedBenjamin P. Dixon, a journalist and podcast host.
The progressive media organization MeidasTouch made a similar jab at Vance.
“The crime rate in NYC may be at an all time low but we all just witnessed a murder on this app,” reads a post on X from the organization.
Multiple onlookers were left astounded by the “ratio” Mamdani had achieved with his response, with ratio referring to when a reply racks up far more engagement than the original post it’s responding to.
“Mamdani ratio’ing JD Vance 68x over in an hour and a half is f------ crazy,” wrote Curtis Fric, a polling aggregator who runs the popular X account “Polling USA.”
Writer Derek Guy argued that Mamdani’s response needed to be “preserved in the National Archives as part of the permanent historical record of the United States.” Asad Dandia, a New York-based historian and educator, said that because Mamdani’s post was made using his official government account, it would, in fact, be preserved in the city’s municipal archives.
“Fun fact: This tweet is going to enter the permanent municipal archives of the City of New York since it was made from the official government account and not his personal account,” Dandia wrote Monday night. “It will also probably have over 1 million ‘likes’ by the morning.”
