NEW YORK, NY — At the direction of Mayor Zoran Mamdani, authorities detained a janitor who removed red graffiti from New York's 9/11 Memorial and have charged him with a hate crime.
After victim names at the North Tower Reflecting Pool were defaced by red graffiti on October 26, a lone janitor identified as Matt Wesley cleaned it off. But what appeared to be a simple act of restoration was in fact a hate crime under New York law.
Authorities recovered a solvent-based paint stripper at the scene, which authorities believe was used to commit the heinous act.
"What is this? Hate juice? Book him, Tony!" an officer allegedly said at the scene.
Mamdani's office issued the following statement:
Removing speech, especially speech from someone with Latinx heritage, is a hate crime. Our commitment to free speech for people of color is absolute, especially when it's graffiti over the names of 9/11 victims.
To further complicate matters, the original graffiti was a call to "just stop killing kids", which suggests the janitor loves killing kids — a claim Wesley has denied.
At publishing time, Mayor Zoran Mamdani had also ordered the arrests of journalists who reported negatively on the graffiti.
Tucker Carlson is just asking questions about World War 2. Why was it even fought? Was Hitler really such a bad guy? And why did Churchill never denounce the trans agenda?
