Actress Debra Messing faces backlash after calling Zohran Mamdani a 'jihadist'

Debra Messing, the American actress best known for her role as Grace Adler on the popular sitcom Will & Grace, is facing intense backlash after sharing offensive posts about New York City’s new mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani.

The Democratic Socialist candidate, 34, won the election after receiving 50.4 per cent of the vote. His win is historic, as Mamdani is Muslim, born in Uganda, and moved to the US as a young boy. He became a US citizen after graduating from college and he will become the youngest mayor of the largest city in the US in more than a century.

Not that this impresses Messing, who has shared several memes and videos on her Instagram story about the election, including videos calling Mamdani "Osama bin Mamdani" and encouraging New Yorkers to "vote no to terrorism."

Messing, who is Jewish and a staunch advocate for Israel, reshared posts attacking Mamdani's support for Palestine and has publicly identified his volunteers.

While critical of Donald Trump, having previously called him “liar-in-chief”, Messing also reshared a Truth Social post from Donald Trump calling Mamdani a "JEW HATER".

Mamdani has said that he would not tolerate antisemitism and in a June interview, stated: "I support Israel's right to exist as a state with equal rights. I'm not comfortable supporting any state that has a hierarchy of citizenship on the basis of religion or anything else."

Messing also reposted a meme that suggested Mamdani is "An Actual Communist , Jihadist… A literal Karl Marx-quoting, America-hating jihadist."

On social media, critics have called out the “deeply Islamophobic” nature of some of Messings posts and referred to her posts as a “social media crash-out”, with one X user observing that Messing "has posted 91 Instagram stories in the past 24 hours. Not an exaggeration. I think Zohran has actually broken her brain."

Check out some of the reactions below:

Zohran Mamdani becomes Mayor of New York City on 1 January 2026.