New York mayoral wannabe Andrew Cuomo's official X account (@andrewcuomo) decided to spice up the second debate by tweeting, and then swiftly deleting, this AI-generated fever dream of "criminals for Zohran Mamdani."
Within 20 minutes this gem went viral before vanishing like a bad Tinder date. The two-minute masterpiece kicks off with an AI generated Mamdani skipping around NYC streets and chowing rice with his hands, then begins a parade of spokespeople who are all stereotypes: a Black guy in a keffiyeh swiping merch, a domestic abuser wearing a wife-beater, a sex trafficker, a drug pusher, and a woman who looks a bit like Hillary Clinton who turns out to be a drunk driver. They are all for Mamdani, because Mamdani promises to let them out not to lock them up. Timed perfectly with the final debate showdown where Cuomo, Mamdani and Republican Curtis Sliwa have their final say in hopes of attracting voters.
Now, I'm not a big fan of AI, it looks creepy and weird to me, and it seems to be the shortcut for the lazy, though I see that just like any tool it can be useful.
The message here is just that Mamdani will empty the prisons and defund the police, which I'm sure could have been hammered home in other ways. US Political ads have always been very cut throat and often downright weird, but this one takes the cake! It's so bizarre and leans so hard into the stereotypes that it's hilarious.
Why did he delete it so fast? Well, we can't have images of a Temu Idris Elba shoplifting, a 70's style pimp actually showing the woman wares in his white van, and an indian eating rice with his hands - even though Mamdani has released photos of himself doing just that, see "How Zohran Mamdani Built a Campaign around food."
Now depending on who you ask, Mamdani could be the worst thing happen to the city since the mayor turned off the storage facility in Ghostbusters, or he will create an artist utopia where the bus&subway are free and the rent is no longer too damn high. Either way he has dominated the media, and gotten incredibly popular with foreign born voters specifically.
These voters are too young and were not there when Curtis Sliwa's red-beret volunteer vigilantes patrolled the subway system. Back when NYC was dubbed "Fear City" and cops begged tourists to stay indoors after dark, these mostly young kids of color from the blocks everyone else fled, patrolled subways and streets, scrapping with anyone they pegged as trouble like subway superheroes. Crime had doubled in a decade, the force was gutted by budget cuts, yet somehow we've all forgotten what desperate really looked like at that time. After the harrowing sight of a woman burning to death on the subway went viral earlier this year, and countless attacks of people being pushed onto the tracks into oncoming trains, you would think that Sliwa would be the media darling who could promise to bring back sanity in New Yorker's daily commute. But alas.
Coumo, with the experience of being the democratic governor of New York, unfortunately has the sexual misconduct scandal and "flatten the curve" on his resume which many haven't forgotten, is fighting an uphill battle against Mamdani. But will resorting to viral AI videos on X make a dent in how the voters decide? It's an interesting tactic, and I have to wonder if deleting was part of the strategy, because we all know when you you don't want it seen the Streisand effect kicks in and now everyone will see this ad.
