Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y., in an interview with Newsmax on Thursday criticized New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani after police officers were pelted with snowballs in Manhattan, saying the mayor failed to fully condemn attacks on law enforcement.
Earlier this week, officers reported being struck with packed snow containing chunks of ice while patrolling Washington Square Park on Monday, which followed a major snowfall and drew a large crowd.
"It's completely unacceptable that the mayor is not condemning this full-throated," Tenney said in an interview on Newsmax's "National Report."
"It's never acceptable to attack police officers, whether you're with a deadly weapon or what could be a deadly, deadly weapon, a chunk of ice."
The incident has put Mamdani at odds with police leaders after he characterized the episode as a snowball fight that went too far, while the NYPD and police unions described it as an assault and said officers were injured.
Tenney criticized Mamdani's response and contrasted it with New York Gov. Kathy Hochul's condemnation of the incident, saying, "our weak and feckless governor, Gov. Hochul, actually condemned this right away."
Tenney also addressed a separate issue as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was deposed Thursday in Chappaqua, New York, under the House Oversight Committee's investigation tied to Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, with former President Bill Clinton scheduled to appear Friday under the same probe.
"I hope that we can take the lead on this and actually get some good answers out of the Clintons," Tenney said. "We know they're guilty of many things, but somehow they always get away with it."
She added, "I'll be curious to see how much they invoke their Fifth Amendment right to silence."
Tenney then addressed U.S. policy toward Iran as American and Iranian representatives held another round of indirect nuclear negotiations in Geneva, talks that have unfolded amid heightened U.S. military deployments in the region and warnings from President Donald Trump that Tehran must not obtain a nuclear weapon.
"We absolutely do not allow the Iranians to have any kind of nuclear weapons or ballistic missiles," Tenney said. "It is critical these people are are not capable of having that kind of force and that kind of weaponry."
"They are the largest sponsors of terror in the in the entire region," she said. "President Trump needs to enforce that red line."
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Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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