A nine-year-old radio interview in which New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks in what critics call a fabricated Ugandan accent has resurfaced online, fueling fresh questions about the mayor's authenticity.
The clip, originally recorded in October 2016 on South Africa's Kaya 959 radio station, shows Mamdani promoting the Disney film Queen of Katwe, directed by his mother, Mira Nair, while speaking in a cadence and accent markedly different from the voice New Yorkers hear at City Hall press conferences. Conservative commentators seized on the footage Wednesday, posting it across the social media platform X with pointed accusations that the mayor was performing an identity for the cameras.
Mamdani, a dual U.S. and Ugandan citizen born in Uganda and raised in South Africa before moving to New York City at age seven, served as music supervisor and third assistant director on Queen of Katwe and appeared in a brief on-screen cameo. In the 2016 interview, he leaned into his East African roots while discussing Ugandan culture.
Fox News Digital reported that Mamdani told the South African radio host:
"The difference for me is I'm from Uganda, but I also grew up in New York. In New York, you go out, some guys are very hesitant to dance."
He continued, contrasting nightlife in Manhattan with nightlife in Kampala: "In Kampala, you will just not find that. People are all dancing. Everybody's dancing, men, women and it's fantastic that way."
The accent he used during that exchange bears little resemblance to the flat New York speech patterns he has used throughout his political career, and that gap is exactly what his critics highlighted.
Former Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt was among the first to post the clip. The Washington Examiner reported on Pratt's broadside, in which he accused the mayor of "running another fake accent and appropriating African culture" and called him a "theater kid commie." Pratt added: "Communists are all frauds. EVERY single one."
Benny Johnson, host of The Benny Show, framed the clip as part of a wider Democratic pattern. He posted on X:
"UNEARTHED: Zohran Mamdani does an obviously fake Ugandan accent while promoting a Disney movie based in Africa. How many Democrats have been caught using fake accents at this point? They're all frauds."
The Daily Wire kept it shorter: "Nobody does a fake accent better than a Democrat politician." Conservative Brief, a right-wing news site, echoed the theme, writing: "What is with the Democrats and their fake accents?!" The framing across multiple accounts was consistent, the accent was evidence of a broader credibility problem.
Mamdani's relationship with public audiences has been rocky well beyond social media. Earlier this year, the mayor was booed off stage at an NYPD event on Staten Island after less than a minute at the podium, a moment that underscored the gap between his progressive politics and the city's law-enforcement community.
Conservative social media commentator Tara Bull drew a comparison to another Democratic figure whose accent has drawn scrutiny, posting: "Anyone else notice Mamdani's accent change? He must've studied at Obama University."
One of the sharper jabs came from Sammy Antar, the former Crazy Eddie CFO and convicted fraudster, who turned Mamdani's progressive record on identity politics back on the mayor himself. Antar posted on X:
"Has Zohran Mamdani ever explained when adopting another culture's accent is 'cultural appropriation' and when it is 'authenticity'? He had plenty to say about everyone else's privilege at Bowdoin."
The reference to Bowdoin, the elite Maine liberal arts college, pointed to Mamdani's own history of lecturing others about cultural sensitivity and privilege. Antar's post framed the clip not just as an embarrassment but as a contradiction: a progressive mayor who built part of his political identity on policing other people's cultural behavior now caught, in his critics' telling, doing the very thing he once condemned.
That tension between Mamdani's public rhetoric and his personal conduct has surfaced repeatedly. His pied-à-terre tax proposal exposed his own celebrity supporters to public scrutiny, raising uncomfortable questions about whether the mayor's populist posture matched his social circle.
Kevin Smith, host of Loud Majority Live, took aim at the Disney connection directly: "When did Disney start to suck? When they hired the directors son who had a fake Ugandan accent. He didn't mind 'big corporations' when they were signing his checks." The post highlighted another friction point, Mamdani's willingness to work with a multinational entertainment giant while positioning himself politically as a critic of corporate power.
The Fox News video segment on the backlash noted that the clip had also resurfaced once before, roughly a year earlier, though the earlier round of attention did not generate the same volume of criticism. The difference now is obvious: in 2016, Mamdani was a film crew member promoting his mother's movie. Today he runs the largest city in the country.
The Washington Examiner added one biographical detail that sharpens the picture. Before entering politics, Mamdani pursued a rap career under the stage names "Young Cardamom" and "Mr. Cardamom", yet another persona in a public life that critics now argue has been defined by performance and reinvention rather than consistency.
Mamdani's credibility gap extends beyond accents and stage names. He dropped costly campaign pledges in a last-minute budget deal with the City Council, quietly abandoning promises that helped get him elected.
Fox News Digital reached out to the mayor's office for comment on the resurfaced clip. No response was reported.
Whether Mamdani's accent in the 2016 interview was a natural code-switch, common among people who grew up across multiple countries, or a calculated performance is a question only he can answer. His office's silence does not help settle it. But the political damage does not hinge on linguistics. It hinges on a pattern.
Mamdani built a political brand on progressive authenticity, on speaking truth to power, on calling out privilege. He backed socialist primary winners and positioned himself as the genuine article in a party full of poll-tested moderates. The 2016 clip, whatever its explanation, hands his critics a ready-made counter-narrative: that the man lecturing New York about authenticity has spent years trying on different versions of himself.
Conservative commentators have not accused Mamdani of breaking any law or violating any rule. They have done something more politically corrosive, they have accused him of being exactly the kind of fraud he claims to oppose.
When a politician's loudest selling point is sincerity, a nine-year-old tape can do more damage than a subpoena.