New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani's office has disputed former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel's account of a private meeting between the two men.
On the podcast Unholy, Emanuel described a roughly 90-minute meeting in which he said he challenged Mamdani over the phrase "from the river to the sea," Which many Jewish groups view as a call for the elimination of Israel.
"I said, 'Look, you are your father's son. I'm my father's son,'" Emanuel recalled. "You chant 'from the river to the sea,' and that means there will never be a Jewish homeland for Jews who had faced the Holocaust." He also stated that he told Mamdani, "I want you to hear this: Over my dead body."
Anna Bahr, Mamdani's communications director, contested Emanuel's account. "Can confirm this did not happen," Bahr said.
The nature of the dispute was not immediately clear - whether Bahr was denying a specific statement or Emanuel's broader characterization of the exchange.