By Katherine Tinsley
7:37am PDT, Jul 1, 2025
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Megyn Kelly accused Zohran Mamdani of being "out there cosplaying like a third-world person, because he lived in Uganda for the first seven years and then moved here. He's 33. This video of him eating with his fingers is circulating while he's talking about how he understands the third world."
"That's not how somebody who's an American eats, but it's him cosplaying third world person and understanding third world even though his mother is a multi-millionaire film director and his father is a chair professor at Columbia," Kelly stated.
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The TV host also commented on how Zohran Mamdani, who grew up in Uganda before immigrating to the U.S. at the age of 7, was raised by celebrated filmmaker Mira Nair and academic Mahmood Mamdani.
"[Mamdani] talked her out of doing it in favor of directing something that was more akin with their values, and that made $20 million," Kelly said, in reference to Nair turning down directing a Harry Potter film. "This is the guy who's going to be our economic steward in America's greatest city? Once you forgo the billion-dollar film for the $20 million film, because it'll make me feel good about myself."
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Before winning 44% of votes during the Democratic Primary, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez endorsed Zohran Mamdani, which the journalist was less than pleased with.
"She's a liar. She's another cosplayer," Megyn Kelly said. "Anyone can do what she's doing. You look at your circumstances and talk about them in the most dire terms possible, to make yourself sound tougher than you are, to make it sound like you overcame more than you did, and, in her case, to make it sound like you have street cred when you try to fight the oligarchy. Honestly."
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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose district is in both Queens and the Bronx, often mentions where she grew up, however, Megyn Kelly pointed out that the politician moved to the suburbs when she was five.
"What she wants to do is to inflate the five years of Bronx living when she was a toddler, into her actual origin story," Kelly said.
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While criticizing Zohran Mamdani and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Megyn Kelly discussed her own struggles after her father died. "I could sit here and say I was raised by a single mom who was a nurse, who put me through college with their own blood, sweat, and tears. It's true. All of that is true, except there's some context," Kelly said. "For the first 15 years of my life, I had an intact family."
"My dad was alive and well, and was a college professor … And we were double-income family, and my mom was within nine credits of getting her PhD, and was eventually a nursing manager, and then my dad died suddenly, and my mom did have to put me through college with my dad's insurance money," Kelly continued. "So yeah, we had some knocks, but you see what I'm saying, leaving out the other part would lead you to think I had a much tougher childhood than I really did."
