NYPD chief jokes about calls to fire her, as Mamdani looks on at NY Archdiocese event

(Oct. 18, 2026 / JNS)

New York City Police Department commissioner Jessica Tisch, who is Jewish, stole the show at the annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, which the Archdiocese of New York hosts, on Thursday night.

“At high-powered dinner, lots of love for Tisch, less for mayor,” a New York Times headline read.

The New York Post reported that the Jewish commissioner “showed off her sense of humor” at the dinner, “leaving New York’s great and good in stitches with a series of well-timed cracks about far-left demands that Mayor Zohran Mamdani remove her as NYC’s top cop.”

“There’s a lot of talk these days that the mayor’s friends don’t like me,” Tisch joked at the event, held at the Waldorf Astoria New York. “That’s simply not true. President Trump and I get along great.”

In his tenure as New York City mayor since January, Zohran Mamdani, a frequent critic of the Jewish state, has met at least twice with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House and has hosted Trump at least once at Gracie Mansion in New York City.

Tisch’s jokes appeared to refer to calls from the Democratic Socialists of America for Mamdani to fire her.

“Things got a little hot for me this week,” she said. “Just in case, anybody hiring?”

She added that Mamdani had told her that he would keep the police because, “Jessie, I ran on taxing the rich. You’re going to need a job.”

At the dinner, Tisch received the Happy Warrior Award, which honors the legacy of Alfred E. Smith, the four-term New York governor and, in 1928, the first Catholic to win a major-party U.S. presidential nomination. The nickname “Happy Warrior” was given to Smith by Franklin D. Roosevelt.