New York Mayoral Candidate Zohran Mamdani Becomes Trump Target
By Tom Kagy | 01 Jul, 2025

Mamdani's socialist leanings and expressed willingness to hold off ICE agents as mayor has made him too tempting a target for Trump and the MAGA crowd to resist.

The surprise winner in last week's New York City democratic primary for the mayoral race lost no time going on record against Trump's crusade against the migrant population by pledging to be a mayor who “will use their power to reject Donald Trump’s fascism, to stop masked ICE agents from deporting our neighbors.” 

Mamdani’s campaign also published a plan to “Trump-proof” New York City.  He pledged to create a fund to provide legal defense services for immigrants and to keep ICE from operating in Rikers Island and other city-owned facilities. 

For his part Trump lost no time leveling personal attacks on Mandani, beginning the day after election day when he called him “a 100% Communist Lunatic” with low intelligence and a “grating” speaking voice. A few days later Trump told Fox News' Maria Bartiromo that he would withhold federal funding from New York City unless “whoever’s mayor of New York... behave[s] themselves."

This is a substantial threat given that New York City's 2026 operating budget includes $7.4 billion in federal funds, comprising 6.4% of the city's total budget, in the form of grants from the US Departments of Health and Human Services, Education, and Housing and Urban Development for public housing, hospitals and the Metropolitan Transit Authority.

On Tuesday when a reporter asked about Mamdani's pledge to remove ICE agents from the city, Trump replied, “We’ll have to arrest him”.

With Trump setting the tone, other MAGA politicians' have piled on with threats to sic the Justice Department on Mamdani's 2018 naturalization process with an eye to having him deported if any misrepresentations are uncovered.

“No, I am not," Mandani replied when NBC's Kristen Walker asked if he was indeed a communist as alleged by Trump.  "And I have already had to start to get used to the fact that the president will talk about how I look, how I sound, where I'm from, who I am, ultimately, because he wants to distract from what I'm fighting for.” 

Mamdani renewed his call to increase taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers by 2%.  Quoting Martin Luther King, he added, “‘Call it democracy or call it democratic socialism. There has to be a better distribution of wealth for all of God's children in this country.’” 

Mamdani, 33, was born and raised in Uganda in a Shia Muslim family that had immigrated from India.  As a first term assemblyman representing parts of Queens, he wasn't given much chance of winning the election against the widely favored former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.  The final vote tally gave Mandarin 56% of the vote, 12 points more than Cuomo.