Zohran Mamdani tells Donald Trump that New York is ready to fight after his threats
New York – Zohran Mamdani he wasted no time as elected mayor of New York before making it clear that he sees part of his new role as confronting the president of USAwho had threatened not only to defund the city if he won, but also to arrest and deport him.
Mamdani, a Democrat, addressed the Republican president directly and at length from the stage at his victory party in Brooklyn on Tuesday night.
“Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching, I have four words for you: Turn up the volume,” he said, before declaring: “If anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it’s the city of his birth.”
Mamdani, who was born in Uganda and became a naturalized American citizen after graduating from college, presented himself as the embodiment of resistance.
“New York will continue to be a city of immigrants, a city built by immigrants, driven by immigrants and, starting tonight, led by an immigrant,” he said. “So hear me, President Donald Trump, when I say this: To get to any of us, they’re going to have to go through all of us.”
Donald Trump, who has spent months insulting Mamdani and warning that the city would be ruined if he won, appeared to be watching.
“..AND SO IT BEGINS!”, he posted on social media while Mamdani spoke.
Mamdani, a democratic socialist who campaigned on a series of far-left progressive policies and a cheerful optimism that contrasts sharply with Donald Trump’s darker, hardline tactics, is expected to continue facing the president’s persistent political attacks, along with a federal government that may try to thwart his agenda.
New York has remained relatively unscathed by Donald Trump’s administration as it has targeted cities like Los Angeles and Washington, sending in the National Guard. Current Mayor Eric Adams enjoyed an unusual alliance with the Republican president, whose administration dropped a federal corruption case against the mayor so he could better help with the president’s immigration agenda.
Donald Trump has threatened to cut federal funding to the city and stage a full takeover, threats that became a cornerstone of Mamdani’s rivals’ campaigns against him.
“He will be ‘Mayor Donald Trump’ if Mamdani wins,” former Gov. Andrew Cuomo said during their last debate, warning that Mamdani was too inexperienced and too big a target to negotiate effectively with the president.
As Mamdani rose from obscure state legislator to Democratic star, Donald Trump and others in his party gleefully seized on his most controversial policy proposals and past statements, trying to present Mamdani as the face of a new Democratic Party that is out of step with ordinary Americans.
“The Democratic Party has surrendered to the radical socialist Zohran Mamdani and the far-left mob now running the show,” National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Mike Marinella said in a statement Tuesday night. “They have proudly embraced defunding the police, abolishing ICE, taxing hard-working Americans to death, and replacing common sense with chaos. Every House Democrat is foolishly complicit in the collapse of their party, and voters will make them pay in 2026.”
Nearly a decade ago, Donald Trump was the bold but untested candidate who scored a remarkable political victory of his own after building a populist coalition, harnessing social media, commanding the media spotlight and promising a wave of change.
Those same qualities that propelled the Republican to the White House in 2016 have helped Mamdani rise to become the next mayor of Donald Trump’s hometown and the nation’s largest city.
But rather than seeing Mamdani as a Democratic analogue for his own path to power, Donald Trump has presented him as a prime opponent and a reason he may seek to punish or dominate the city.
They both seem ready for it.
While most presidents don’t spend time tangling with local elected officials, Donald Trump isn’t most presidents, and New York City has a special meaning for him.
The Queens-born former reality TV star made her name in Manhattan, where she became a TV star from her gilded penthouse and then launched her improbable presidential campaign after descending its gilded staircase.
Donald Trump has maintained a particular focus on the city, trying to block its congestion pricing program, trying to cancel construction of new tunnels under the Hudson River and insisting during his comeback presidential campaign last year on holding a massive rally at Madison Square Garden despite his unpopularity in the city.
As the city prepared to elect its next mayor, Donald Trump became unusually involved. He falsely labeled Mamdani a communist and threatened to withdraw federal funds from the city, or even take control of it, if Mamdani was elected.
And in the fall, intermediaries in Donald Trump’s administration approached Adams to try to persuade him to abandon his re-election campaign in an attempt to block Mamdani’s path to victory.
On the eve of the election, Donald Trump said he would likely cut the city’s federal funding if Mamdani won, writing on social media that “he is highly unlikely to contribute any federal funds other than the minimum required.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Tuesday declined to clarify what funds Donald Trump might seek to withhold.
But he had already tried to punish the city this year as part of a broader pattern of asserting power against Democratic elected officials who have criticized him, including suspending funding for some infrastructure projects during the government shutdown and attempting to cut grants meant to address migrant costs.
The threats also resonated with some voters.
Amy Snyder, an arts consultant who voted for Cuomo, said she feared Mamdani “couldn’t take on Donald Trump.”
Ariel Kohane, a registered Republican who voted for Cuomo but has voted for Donald Trump several times, said he expected the president to do everything in his power to stop Mamdani from achieving his agenda, and he hoped it would work.
“Donald Trump will probably have to send in the National Guard and ICE agents as well,” Kohane said.
Wacef Chowdhury, a Mamdani campaign volunteer, said he fully anticipated that Donald Trump would try to punish the city in retaliation for the democratic socialist’s victory.
“We know he’s going to try, but we’re ready,” said Chowdhury, who works in finance. “We fight against the establishment, and we are going to do the same with the president.”
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