Sid Rosenberg called him a cockroach. Zohran Mamdani didn't flinch.

New York City's first Muslim mayor stood before reporters on Tuesday and responded to the WABC radio host's social media attack with a statement that spread well beyond City Hall. 'I am not ashamed of who I am. I am not ashamed of my faith. I am not ashamed of being the first Muslim mayor in the history of our city,' Mamdani said. 'And there is no amount of racism that will change the way in which I lead.'

Rosenberg, host of Sid and Friends in the Morning on 77 WABC, posted to X on Monday urging President Donald Trump to stop praising the mayor. He called Mamdani an 'America hating, Jew hating, Radical Islam cockroach' and a 'Jihadist America hating mayor,'according to CBS News.

Rosenberg's anger was said to have been triggered by Mamdani's criticism of US military strikes on Iran and his positions on immigration.

Zohran Mamdani immediately launched into a lecture on Islamophobia after getting asked with what looks like a planted question about bugs:“This language is both painfully familiar to me as a Muslim… There’s also a reminder that the silence that often greets this kind of…pic.twitter.com/eR6nWWnsEp

Mamdani, born in Kampala, Uganda, took office on 1 January after winning the mayoral election the previous month. He is the city's youngest mayor since 1892 and the first to take the oath on the Quran.

'To be called animals, insects, to be called a jihadist mayor, to be called a cockroach, this language is both painfully familiar to me as a Muslim New Yorker, but also as someone who was born in East Africa,' he said at Tuesday's press conference.

He cautioned against treating it as routine politics. 'The silence that often greets this kind of bigotry, this kind of Islamophobia, is what allows it to fester,' Mamdani said.

The backlash was broad. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the language 'a disgusting display of bigotry and Islamophobia.' Governor Kathy Hochul labelled it 'hateful, racist, and disgusting.' City Council Speaker Julie Menin said the remarks were 'beyond the pale.' The Council on American-Islamic Relations described them as 'vile' and called for Rosenberg's programme to be cancelled.

Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who reportedly dined with Rosenberg recently, called the comments 'wholly inappropriate and deeply harmful,'NBC New York reported.

Source: International Business Times UK