The following is an edited transcript excerpt from The Michael Knowles Show<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n Zohran Mamdani is very, very upset because the federal government has reportedly removed the rainbow gay pride flag from the Stonewall National Monument.<\/span><\/p>\n Here\u2019s what Mamdani had to say:<\/span><\/p>\n I am outraged by the removal of the Rainbow Pride Flag from Stonewall National Monument. New York is the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement, and no act of erasure will ever change, or silence, that history.<\/p>\n Our city has a duty not just to honor this legacy, but to\u2026<\/p>\n \u2014 Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@NYCMayor) February 10, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Credit: NYCMayor\/X.com<\/p>\n First of all, this is a bit of vindication for me because when everyone was saying that Mamdani was going to establish Sharia law in New York \u2014 saying he\u2019s some kind of Islamist terrorist \u2014 I said, <\/span>you know, would that it were so simple. <\/span><\/i>In some ways it would be preferable if he were a serious Muslim; you can kind of talk to a Muslim.<\/span><\/p>\n I think it\u2019s worse. I think he\u2019s not just a far-leftist but a millennial leftist who plays up the Muslim thing because of identity politics. He knows it will help win over some immigrants. There\u2019s also a radical Left and Muslim alliance because they have a common enemy, which is America and the Church and the white man or whatever \u2014 you know, the usual enemies of the Left.<\/span><\/p>\n And so, I said that\u2019s true. But if push comes to shove, he\u2019s going to side with leftism over Islam. Just like when push comes to shove, Joe Biden says he\u2019s Catholic and he\u2019s liberal. But when there\u2019s a conflict between the two, he always picks liberalism. He never picks Catholicism. So his real faith is liberalism.<\/span><\/p>\n And that was my argument with Mamdani. And I think I\u2019m totally vindicated in that.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Now, Mamdani is very upset because Trump took the pride flags away from Stonewall.<\/span><\/p>\n What is Stonewall? The Stonewall Inn was a filthy, truly degenerate, disease-ridden, Mafia-run bar. It was a hive of crime, decadence, and debauchery in New York City. And then, when the cops raided the filthy, illegal Mafia-run bar \u2014 not illegal because it was hosting gay people\u00a0 \u2014 when that happened, a bunch of sexual deviants, including famously a trans-identifying guy, started chucking bricks at the cops. As a result, we now side with the gay Mafia bar attacking cops. That is the thing that we\u2019ve exalted as a national monument. But because it\u2019s a national monument, the federal government has a say over it.<\/span><\/p>\n And Trump has come out and said, look, you can fly the US flag at federal properties, you can fly certain military flags like missing-in-action, prisoner-of-war flags, but that\u2019s basically it. You know, the flag of the Army or the Navy or something where that\u2019s appropriate, but that\u2019s it. We\u2019re not doing the BLM flag. We\u2019re not doing the gay flag. We\u2019re not doing the trans flag. We\u2019re not doing the terrorist trans flag \u2014 I call that the terrorist gay flag. So the federal government said we\u2019re not doing that.<\/span><\/p>\n But it begs the question: why do we have a national monument to Stonewall in the first place? What do we have a national monument to weird sex stuff? And why is a liberal New York politician, the most prominent left-wing New York politician, why is he all of a sudden so concerned about tearing down monuments?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The left has spent ten years tearing down monuments to all of the men who built this country. Monuments to Christopher Columbus \u2014 there was a big push for that in New York \u2014 constantly defacing the Columbus monument in Columbus Circle. There were also attacks on even Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses Grant, Thomas Jefferson, and certainly on Robert E. Lee.<\/span><\/p>\n So all these guys \u2014 we\u2019ve got to tear down all these monuments \u2014 and the only monument we have to keep up, the only monument we can\u2019t tear down, is the weird sex flag on the weird sex place, which was actually a bar run by the Mafia.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Now, before Republicans get too high on our horse, I just want to point out what the libs are doing is destroying history and tearing down the traditions and fabric of our country, in some cases tangibly, which is bad.<\/span><\/p>\n But we want to tear some things down too \u2014 maybe not in as blunt a way as the libs do, maybe not in as blunt a way as the Taliban does. We\u2019re not blowing up the Buddha statues, okay? But we do want to tear things down in the way that you prune a garden, not the way you blow up a Buddha in Afghanistan, but the way you prune a garden. I do want to get rid of the Stonewall National Memorial. It\u2019s ridiculous. It\u2019s ridiculous that we have a monument to a Mafia-run gay bar best known for assaulting police officers and for spreading diseases. We should not have a monument to that. That\u2019s degrading to our country.<\/span><\/p>\n You can be nice to people who have some weird sexual behaviors. You can be nice to them. You can be somewhat tolerant of that without putting up a freaking monument to the Mafia gay bar. That\u2019s insane. Not only should we be taking the pride flag away from that, we should be removing that as a national monument.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I don\u2019t want monuments up to people like Malcolm X or Angela Davis. Even if they\u2019re figures from American history, they represent bad stuff.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I don\u2019t want monuments up to the Rosenbergs who were communist spies.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I don\u2019t want a monument to someone like Alger Hiss.<\/span><\/p>\n I don\u2019t want them. I don\u2019t want monuments to people who are bad for this country.<\/span><\/p>\n Once again, I made this point in my book <\/span>Speechless: Controlling Words, Controlling Minds<\/span><\/i> about speech. The false dichotomy when we\u2019re talking about free speech is between free speech and censorship, when really the real battle is between competing sets of standards, because all societies have standards.<\/span><\/p>\n The same thing is true here. The real debate is not: Do we tear down the statues or do we leave them standing? The real question is: Who is worthy of a statue? Who\u2019s worthy of a monument? Who\u2019s worthy of veneration as a political matter?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Continue reading this exclusive article and join the conversation, plus watch free videos on DW+<\/p>\n\n
WATCH: The Michael Knowles Show on DailyWire+.<\/a><\/strong><\/h3>\n
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