New York Post: Zohran Mamdani’s smiley meeting with terror-linked imam is just his latest full embrace of radical Islam

Excerpt from the New York post article:

For military veterans like Mark Lucas, 43, who answered the call to defend this country after 9/11, Mamdani’s ascent is a kick in the guts.

“There’s a lot of emotions,” says the father of three. “This is tearing open wounds for veterans all across America.

“I’m a small-town Iowa guy. For a while I didn’t believe [Mamdani could win], I thought there’s no way this is going to happen,” he said. “Then after the debate last week I saw his numbers go up and I saw all these black-pilled people online giving up on New York . . . I can’t stand people who give up. We can’t write off the city that is the most visible icon of the United States of America.”

Lucas, who grew up in Wilton, Iowa, was 19 on Sept. 11, 2001. He had just embarked on a career in tech and was about to win election to his local council when he walked into his office that morning where a TV was showing the Twin Towers on fire.

”I knew my life had changed,” he says of that moment.

Like so many patriotic Midwestern boys whose families have a long history of military service, Lucas felt a calling to join what George W. Bush called the “War On Terror,” and was deployed to Afghanistan in 2003.

“I wanted to avenge what happened . . . to kill the monsters responsible for that horrific terror attack,” he said.

He didn’t even like New York City, but after 9/11, “We were all New Yorkers.”

Now he wants to use his voice as the founder of Veteran Action to raise the alarm and urge other veterans to speak out against the Islamist threat Mamdani poses.

The grassroots advocacy group for veterans was influential in the confirmation of his friend, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth.

“My combat experience opened my eyes to how incompatible Islam is with American values,” Lucas says. “I think for a lot of people, when they realize the story behind Mamdani meeting with that radical cleric, that will open up a lot of eyes . . . It may be the wake-up call that New York needs.”

In contrast to Lucas, the privileged Mamdani, who migrated to New York from Uganda at age 7 in 1998, and only became a US citizen at age 27, sees 9/11 in self-engrossed terms, as in how it affected his life.