Right-wing broadcaster Pete Santilli interrupted his live coverage of a New York City news conference on 9/11 health records with a racist rant against the city's first Muslim mayor.
Santilli was streaming Democratic Mayor Zohran Mamdani's Tuesday morning event at City Hall on The Pete Santilli Show when he talked over the mayor's remarks.
Mamdani used the event to announce that the city will publish more than 170,000 pages of previously unreleased records on air quality after the Sept. 11 attacks, ABC7 reported. The records sat in 68 boxes in a city office, and many were discovered only last year, the station said.
Documents already reviewed show officials, including former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani, understood the dangers of the burning toxins at Ground Zero even as they assured the public the air was safe, the station reported.
Mamdani thanked survivors, first responders, and the advocates who pushed for the records, including comedian Jon Stewart and 9/11 Health Watch executive director Ben Chevat, according to a transcript of his remarks.
On Friday, the mayor said the city will mark 25 years since the attacks, and the suffering has never ended.
"He was being groomed at a terror training camp at the time, wasn't he?" Santilli said, cutting in over the mayor.
Mamdani kept going, describing the thousands of ironworkers, firefighters, and office workers who fell ill after working on the pile, the transcript shows.
"All killed by a bunch of freaking fellow Muslims. Okay? Ladies and gentlemen, this guy is disgusting," Santilli told his audience.
"If New Yorkers allow him to go anywhere near that 9/11 Memorial and plant his flag of conquer, that would be disgusting to me. … I've just turned down the volume, because I'm sick and tired of hearing a freaking smelly Muslim declare victory over New York," the host continued.
"This Muslim invasion of all these countries around the world — these people are all a bunch of communist minions, a bunch of jihadists, that bring their incompatible Sharia law to a constitutional republic," Santilli said.
He dismissed the mayor's thanks to survivors and officials as a "thank-you industrial complex," calling them "just a bunch of bureaucrats thanking."
"But Mamdani ultimately plans to plant his victory flag at 9/11 after being elected by a bunch of idiots in communist New York. Allowing a smelly Muslim that killed thousands of their fellow New Yorkers is disgusting to me," Santilli said.
Santilli was broadcasting from another standoff a decade ago, when federal prosecutors charged him with conspiring in the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, Courthouse News reported.
U.S. District Judge Michael Mosman refused to release him before trial, saying Santilli "might stay put and shoot it out," the outlet reported.
Prosecutors dropped the charge in 2016, telling the court that the interests of justice did not support pursuing it, according to an OPB report. Santilli said he had covered the occupation as a journalist.
Santilli is a longtime supporter of President Donald Trump. In 2023, after Trump was indicted in New York, Santilli called on the military and police to execute former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Right Wing Watch reported.
"I want to set up a scenario where the military and the police have no choice but to execute Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton — through proper process," Santilli said on his show, according to the group.
Giuliani, who later served as Trump's personal lawyer, said on Newsmax on Sunday that Mamdani's plan to attend Friday's ceremony "offends me."
Giuliani also made claims critics have called baseless, including suggesting Mamdani does not believe the Sept. 11 attacks were acts of terrorism, ABC7 reported in a separate story.
A petition urging the mayor to stay away has drawn nearly 100,000 signatures, and former Gov. George Pataki has also said Mamdani should not attend, the report said. Mamdani is expected to become the first Muslim mayor to attend the city's official 9/11 remembrance, which nearly all his predecessors attended.
At Tuesday's news conference, reporter Chris Sommerfeldt asked Mamdani whether Giuliani should stay away from Friday's service after the former mayor "lied" about 9/11 health impacts.
"I think that the focus of memorial services should be on the New Yorkers who were killed that day, their families, the survivors, the first responders," Mamdani said. "I don't think it should be on politicians."