On July 27, 2026, Randy Fine — the Republican congressman from Florida's 6th District — went on Newsmax's National Report and said this about the mayor of New York City:

"A Muslim terrorist runs the city of New York… Zohran Mamdani repeats their propaganda, and that makes him a terrorist."

He wasn't done. Fine also said the mayor has "blood on his hands" — claiming it was "not a coincidence" that after Mamdani criticized Israel's prime minister, "someone yelling 'Allahu Akbar' went and stabbed two people."

The two Newsmax hosts nodded along.

What actually happened in that stabbing

Fine used a real crime to make his accusation, so it's worth looking at what police actually said about it.

On Thursday, July 23, 2026, a man stabbed two strangers on Manhattan's Upper West Side — a 57-year-old Asian man and a 50-year-old Jewish man who had just stepped outside a synagogue. Both survived. Police arrested 51-year-old Raul Morales and began investigating whether the attacks were hate crimes.

Here is what NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said about the suspect: "While the perpetrator has no known mental health history with the NYPD, the initial investigation suggests that mental health may have been a factor."

That's the incident Randy Fine pinned on the mayor of New York.

No investigator has connected Mamdani to that attack. Fine offered no evidence for the link. He simply asserted that a mayor's criticism of a foreign head of government caused a stabbing — and then used that assertion to call the mayor a terrorist.

Antisemitic violence is real and it is serious. Two people were attacked outside a synagogue. That deserves a real response. What it doesn't deserve is a member of Congress using it as a prop to smear a political opponent he already hated.

This is not a one-off. It's who Fine is.

If you've read Randy Fine's report card, none of this will surprise you. Attacking Muslims isn't an occasional slip for him. It's a habit he's proud of.

• He has said out loud: "If you're not an Islamophobe, you're a fool." He has called for mass expulsion of Muslims from the United States — including deporting legal immigrants and citizens.
• After Turkish-American activist Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi was shot and killed at a protest in the West Bank, Fine posted: "Throw rocks, get shot. One less #MuslimTerrorist. #FireAway."
• In February 2026 he posted that "the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one." The backlash was bipartisan, with calls for censure and resignation.
• In December 2025 he suggested Palestinians should "be destroyed."
• And it isn't only Muslims. In April 2026 he declared on a podcast that "We don't want Armenians to be able to serve in Congress" — going after his primary opponent's heritage — then doubled down: "Armenians should not serve in Congress. Neither should Somalis. Or Guatemalans."

That's a pattern of deciding which Americans count based on their religion and their ancestry. The Newsmax hit this week wasn't a departure from it. It was the same thing, one more time, on cable.

What Fine isn't doing

Here's the part that matters most for the people who actually elected him.

Fine represents Florida's 6th District — which, under the redrawn 2026 map, includes parts of Marion and Lake counties and The Villages. Those are communities with a lot of retirees, a lot of families on fixed incomes, and a lot of people getting squeezed by grocery bills, insurance premiums, and health costs.

None of that is what Randy Fine spends his time on. His energy goes into fights about who belongs in this country — and into TV appearances where he calls a big-city mayor a terrorist.

His district doesn't get a hearing on their electric bill out of that. They get a viral clip.

The bottom line

A sitting member of the United States Congress called the elected mayor of America's largest city a "Muslim terrorist" on national television, and blamed him for a stabbing that police were investigating as the act of a man who may have been in mental health crisis.

There's a word for judging someone a terrorist because of their religion. It isn't "tough on antisemitism." It's bigotry — and Randy Fine has spent years making clear that he knows exactly what he's doing.

Source

This post is based on reporting from Mediaite, with details of the July 23 attack from ABC News 4. Photo via Mediaite/Newsmax.