Did retired Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz publicly promise to "blow his brains out on live TV" if Zohran Mamdani wins the 2025 mayoral election in New York City? No, that's not true: Dershowitz denied that on his social media account. A search for the origins of the image showing the purported quote led to a summer 2025 story citing another person, Andrew Cuomo, who pledged to leave New York City for Florida if that is the outcome of the race.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) published on X on November 4, 2025. The entry shared what looked like a screenshot of a news article. The image read:
METRO EXCLUSIVEAlan Dershowitz says he 'will blow his brains out on live TV' if Zohran Mamdani becomes NYC mayorBy Carl Campanile and Rich CalderPublished July 19, 2025, 3:31 p.m. ET
This is what the picture of the supposed headline looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: Lead Stories screenshot of post at x.com/Grey_Athena)
Dershowitz, however, denied it. On November 5, 2025, he wrote (archived here) on X:
A fake headline is circulating saying that I promised 'to blow my brains out on live tv' if Momdani wins. I will contribute $180 (chai) to Momdani's reelection campaign if anyone can show I actually said it. I did not.
Dershowitz, who said he opposes Mamdani, added that he prefers doing so with his "brains intact".
A search for the authors' names and the publication date of the purported article led to a report (archived here) that appeared on the New York Post website exactly at 3:31 p.m. ET on July 19, 2025, just as the story in question, but under a different headline. It read:
Andrew Cuomo says he 'will move to Florida' if Zohran Mamdani becomes NYC mayor.
A Google search across the New York Post website did not produce any exact matches for the purported Dershowitz quote mentioning Mamdani:
(Source: Lead Stories screenshot of Google search results page)
A search for the keywords on Google News yielded one result, but that match only occurred because the claim reviewed in this fact check was copied and pasted in the comment section (archived here):
(Source: Lead Stories screenshot of Google News search results page)
A search for the same keywords on Yahoo News (archived here) did not show any credible reports attributing the purported quote to Dershowitz:
(Source: Lead Stories screenshot of Yahoo News search results page)
New York City voted for the next mayor on November 4, 2025, and Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic nominee and self-described democratic socialist, won (archived here) the race against former New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa.
