Donald Trump threatened to arrest New York City Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani Tuesday.
Speaking with reporters during a press conference at “Alligator Alcatraz” regarding the newly passed “big, beautiful bill,” the president said that he would cuff Mamdani if the New York politico followed through on defying ICE.
“Well then we’ll have to arrest him,” Trump said. “Look, we don’t need a communist in this country. But if we have one, I’m going to be watching over him very carefully on behalf of the nation. We send him money, we send him all the things he needs to run a government.”
He then accused the Ugandan-born immigrant of being in the nation “illegally.”
“A lot of people are saying he’s here illegally. We’re going to look at everything,” Trump noted.
The 33-year-old democratic socialist has been repeatedly accused by conservatives of being a communist, a badge that he has roundly rejected. Politifact, an independent fact-checking organization, said that the Queens lawmaker’s platform for free buses, subsidized day care, protected rent control, and city-owned grocery stores was not akin to communism, a system in which the government seizes and retains complete and total control over private property and industry. Instead, Politifact decried the cheap smear as a “red scare tactic that has existed in U.S. politics for decades.”
Mamdani clinched last week’s election with 56 percent of the vote once all the ranked-choice votes were tabulated and released Tuesday. He eclipsed former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo by double digits, beating out the establishment Democrat by 12 points.
But the threat of arrest is not the only backlash that Mamdani’s candidacy has received from the White House. Instead, in an incredible moralistic reversal for a conservative party that claims to advocate for states’ rights, Trump has further intervened in New York’s local elections by promising to cut off federal funding for the Big Apple if the citywide favorite wins Gracie Mansion in November.
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