The WABC host walked back his cockroach slur — but the city is still reckoning with what the incident revealed
The Apology That Came With Conditions
By Wednesday morning, March 4, 2026, Sid Rosenberg was back on the air at WABC 77, and he was apologizing — sort of. “I apologize this morning for the name-calling,” the conservative radio host said, addressing the controversy that had spent the previous 48 hours generating headlines across the country. “Not nice to call somebody a bug, I get it.” But the apology came with a notable exemption: Rosenberg did not address his description of Mayor Zohran Mamdani as a “jihadist.” He insisted that his “cockroach” remark “had nothing to do with anyone’s religion or faith” — a claim that was widely rejected, given that the original post had specifically invoked “Radical Islam” and described Mamdani as an “America hating, Jew hating, Radical Islam cockroach.” Rosenberg had posted the message on Monday, asking President Donald Trump to stop supporting the mayor, whom he also called a “terrorist sympathizer.” The post was later deleted. The controversy ignited a wave of condemnation from political leaders across the spectrum, from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to Governor Kathy Hochul to WABC’s own CEO John Catsimatidis, who stated that personal attacks were not acceptable on his station.
Mamdani Responds With Measured Caution
When a reporter asked the mayor at a childcare event in South Richmond Hill whether he accepted the apology, Mamdani’s response was deliberate. “Time will tell how sincere of an apology it is,” he said. He used the moment not to attack Rosenberg personally but to speak about what the incident had revealed about the experience of Muslim New Yorkers more broadly. “This is not about me,” the mayor said. “This is about the more than one million Muslims who call New York City home and who have long had to deal with racist and dehumanizing rhetoric and the absence of any kind of pushback.” The mayor expressed gratitude for the outpouring of support from New Yorkers and city leaders, noting that the broad condemnation of Rosenberg’s language was evidence that the city’s culture was capable of rejecting dehumanization when it was named clearly.
CAIR Calls for Accountability
The New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations used the incident to push for structural accountability, calling on WABC to remove Rosenberg from the air entirely. CAIR-NY Executive Director Afaf Nasher pointed to what she described as a pattern: “Mr. Rosenberg has a long history of such comments, from comparing Black women to apes to now comparing New York’s first Muslim mayor to a cockroach.” The station did not announce any disciplinary action beyond the CEO’s public statement. Rosenberg remained on air.
A Dinner, a History, and Unanswered Questions
The incident surfaced a separate detail that raised questions about the administration’s own relationships. Rosenberg had recently claimed to have had dinner with Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch — after he and Andrew Cuomo had made comments on air in October 2025 suggesting Mamdani would be indifferent to a terrorist attack on the city. Mamdani declined to address the dinner directly. That silence — combined with the ongoing continuation of a bicycle crackdown that the mayor promised to end and that Tisch has maintained — adds complexity to a story that on the surface looks like a simple tale of bigotry and accountability. The Anti-Defamation League defines Islamophobia as prejudice, fear, or hatred toward Muslims and has documented its rise in public discourse in the years since September 11, 2001. Mamdani’s response to Rosenberg’s remarks drew praise from civil rights organizations for naming the specific harm of dehumanizing language while keeping the focus on the community affected rather than the individual attacker.
