Zohran Mamdani knocks Donald Trump criticism, denies accusation he's a communist
Democratic candidate for New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani denied President Donald Trump's accusations that he supports communism, saying the president wants to "distract from what I'm fighting for" in a new interview.
Mamdani, a 33-year-old state Assembly member, won the Democratic primary over former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who was long considered the frontrunner and establishment candidate. Current New York City Mayor Eric Adams is running as an independent on the November ballot.
When asked to respond to Trump's repeated assertions that he is a communist, Mamdani told "Meet the Press" on June 29 that he isn't, explaining that "I've 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."
"He wants to distract from what I'm fighting for," Mamdani said. "I'm fighting for the the very working people he ran a campaign to empower that he has since then betrayed."
Several leading Republicans have also called for Mamdani, who immigrated to the United States as a child, to be deported.
Earlier in the day, Trump called Mamdani a communist and a "radical left lunatic" on Maria Bartiromo's "Sunday Morning Futures" on Fox News.
"He's a communist. I think it is very bad for New York. I don't know that he's going to get in. It is inconceivable that he is," Trump said.
Mamdani is not a communist. He is a democratic socialist. A communist believes in collective ownership of all property and the end of capitalism. A democratic socialist doesn't believe in ending capitalism, but aims to reform it through democracy
Mamdani also said that he is committed to keeping New York a sanctuary city.
"Ultimately, we've seen that this is a policy that has kept New Yorkers safe for decades. It's a policy that had previously been defended by Democrats and Republicans alike, until the fear mongering of this current mayor," he said.
Adams called for changes to sanctuary city laws that advocates say protect migrants in New York. He has also pushed for more cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a move that requires a vote from the city council.
The changes came shortly after the Department of Justice dropped federal corruption charges against Adams. Democrats accuse him of cozying up to Trump to avoid the legal challenges.
Trump said Mamdani would be "very unsuccessful" if he tries to keep New York a sanctuary city.
"If he does get in, I'm going to be president and he's going to have to do the right thing or they're not getting any money. He's got to do the right thing," Trump said.
Trump said he would not publicly back a candidate in the race, which along with Mamdani, Cuomo and Adams includes a third independent candidate and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa.
"Whoever is the mayor of New York is going to have to behave themselves or the federal government is coming down very tough on them financially," Trump said.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Politico
29 minutes ago
- Politico
Thom Tillis denounces GOP megabill's Medicaid cuts in fiery speech
Hours after announcing his retirement, Republican Sen. Thom Tillis went to the Senate floor and slammed the GOP's plans for drastic Medicaid cuts — warning Republicans they are about to 'make a mistake on health care and betray a promise' if their sprawing domestic policy bill passes. 'It is inescapable this bill will betray the promise Donald Trump made,' Tillis said. 'I'm telling the president that you have been misinformed. You supporting the Senate mark will hurt people who are eligible and qualified for Medicaid.' Tillis, who opposed the bill on a procedural vote Saturday night and then announced Sunday he would not seek reelection, said he could not vote for the Senate's bill because provisions that he said would kick some 663,000 residents of his state off their health care plans. He called on the Senate GOP to jettison its 'artificial' July 4 deadline and rewrite the bill. 'I respect President Trump, I support the majority of his agenda, but I don't bow to anybody when the people of North Carolina are at risk, and this puts them at risk,' Tillis told reporters after he left the floor. The two-term senator who has been known for working across the aisle said he had done his own research on how changes to so-called state directed payments and a new cap on medical providers taxes would affect his state — contacting state legislative leaders, the state's Democratic governor, Josh Stein and hospital groups. Tillis said he also talked to CMS Director Mehmet Oz and presented his findings that showed the best-case scenario was a $26 billion cut in federal support. 'After three different attempts for them to discredit our estimates, the day before yesterday they admitted that we were right,' Tillis said on the floor. 'They can't find a hole in my estimate.' In his remarks to reporters, he said Trump is 'getting a lot of advice from people who have never governed and all they've done is written white papers,' adding that he has 'people from an ivory tower driving him into a box canyon.' Tillis, who was elected to the Senate in 2014, compared Trump's 'big, beautiful bill' to the Affordable Care Act: 'The effect of this bill is to break a promise. And you know, the last time I saw a promise broken around health care, with respect to my friends on the other side of the aisle is when somebody said, 'If you like your health care, you can keep it.'' The Senate is now working through up to 20 hours of debate, before a marathon voting series of amendments scheduled to start Monday morning. Tillis said he might return to the floor to speak against the bill. Trump lambasted Tillis Saturday night after he voted against opening debate on the megabill, and Tillis said he'd already told Trump at that point he was likely to retire. 'Pretty much what I said on the floor is what I said to the president last night and I stand by it,' Tillis told reporters after the speech, adding later that he told the President he 'probably needed to start looking for a replacement.' 'I told him I want to help him,' Tillis added. 'I hope that we get a good candidate that I can help and we can have a successful 2026.'
Politico
35 minutes ago
- Politico
No overnight vote-a-rama
Senate Republicans are on the cusp of formally adopting a controversial accounting tactic to zero out much of the cost of their massive domestic policy bill. The matter came to a head on the Senate floor Sunday afternoon, when Democrats sought to prevent the use of the current policy baseline, as the tactic is known. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer objected to the maneuver and accused Republicans of setting a new precedent with the 'budgetary gimmick.' The Senate is set to vote on Schumer's objection later Sunday or Monday, but Republicans believe their members will back up Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Senate Budget Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). That's in part because they were able to sidestep a situation where senators would be asked to overrule Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough on the baseline question. Instead, Republicans are asserting that Graham has the ability to establish which baseline is used under the 1974 law governing the budget process, rather than having MacDonough issue a formal ruling. 'There is nothing to debate and we consider this matter settled,' Graham spokesperson Taylor Reidy said. The revised baseline allows Republicans to essentially write off the $3.8 trillion cost of extending tax cuts passed in 2017 that are set to expire at the end of the year. The effect on the megabill's bottom line is profound as a pair of new Congressional Budget Office reports show. One, released late Saturday night using the current policy baseline, showed the legislation would reduce the deficit by $508 billion. The other, released Sunday morning using the traditional method accounting for expiring provisions, showed the megabill would increase the deficit by $3.25 trillion. 'Things have never, never worked this way where one party so egregiously ignores precedent, process and the parliamentarian, and does that all in order to wipe away trillions of dollars in costs,' Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said during a speech on the Senate floor Sunday. The maneuver came as little surprise. The GOP plan has been quietly in the works for months, and Thune had suggested they would reprise the no-formal-ruling strategy they'd used earlier in the process of passing the megabill. 'As we did on the budget resolution, we believe the law is clear that the budget committee chairman can determine the baseline we use,' Thune told reporters. Graham on Sunday embraced the CBO ruling showing the deficit savings — and his own authority to make the accounting change: 'I've decided to use current policy when it comes to cutting taxes,' he said. 'If you use current policy, they never expire.' The baseline change is crucial for Senate Republicans because under the budget blueprint they adopted earlier this year, the Finance Committee provisions in the bill can only increase the deficit by a maximum of $1.5 trillion. The bill now under consideration wouldn't comply under the old accounting method. Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden , the top Finance Democrat, called it 'budget math as fake as Donald Trump's tan,' and said the GOP amounted to a 'nuclear' choice that would weaken the chamber's 60-vote filibuster. 'We're now operating in a world where the filibuster applies to Democrats but not to Republicans, and that's simply unsustainable given the triage that'll be required whenever the Trump era finally ends,' he said.
San Francisco Chronicle
35 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
‘Big Ugly Bill': California's top officials excoriate Trump's big bill while it is debated in Senate
California's top Democrats condemned President Donald Trump's signature domestic policy package Sunday, as the U.S. Senate continued to debate its version of Trump's 'big, beautiful bill.' The legislation is a vast array of tax breaks and spending cuts, plus additional money for national defense and deportations, that Republicans say are crucial to keeping the country running. Democrats, however, have said it will destroy state budgets and lives, particularly among the most vulnerable who rely on government-funded programs. 'Millions will lose health care. Hundreds of thousands of jobs will be lost. Electricity costs will skyrocket. Needy families will lose access to food,' Gov. Gavin Newsom posted on the social media platform X on Sunday. 'The GOP's budget bill does all that so @realDonaldTrump can give hundreds of billions in tax breaks to his rich friends.' 'Late last night, Senate Republicans voted to advance Trump's Big Ugly Bill that strips health care from nearly a million people MORE than the version passed by the House,' California Sen. Alex Padilla also posted to X on Sunday. 'All to give tax breaks to big corporations and billionaires.' As of Sunday night, Senators were still debating the measure, which Trump had wanted to sign by July 4. The bill must still win final House approval, as well. The Associated Press reported Sunday that a new analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that the Senate bill would increase the deficit by nearly $3.3 trillion from 2025 to 2034, which is nearly $1 trillion more than the House-passed bill. The office also concluded that nearly 12 million Americans would lose their health insurance by 2034 if the bill becomes law. The legislation would make permanent many of the tax breaks from Trump's first term that were set to expire by year's end, while adding new breaks, leading to a total of $4 trillion in tax cuts. The Senate package would also roll back billions in green energy tax credits and impose roughly $1.2 trillion in cuts, mostly to Medicaid and food assistance, while committing $350 billion to national security, part of which would pay for Trump's mass deportation agenda, according to the Associated Press. California Democrats have warned that the cuts, particularly to Medicaid, would decimate federal spending by imposing more checks on enrollees and providers, establishing work requirements and reducing funding to states that provide insurance to undocumented immigrants. To compensate, state lawmakers have said that states will need to raise taxes and shift funds from other programs. More than a quarter of Californians are on the state's Medicaid program, including 41% of all children, 49% of adults with disabilities and 41% of people living in nursing homes. Throughout the weekend, California representatives turned to X to weigh in. On Sunday, California Sen. Adam Schiff said that Trump's 'Big Ugly Bill' would strip health insurance away from millions of people while driving up energy costs. 'The longer this bill exposed to the sunlight,' U.S. Rep. Lateefah Simon, D-Oakland, wrote on Saturday. 'The more people will be able to see what this Republican disaster really is: an unforgivable betrayal of American values and governance that will cause significant, tangible harm to millions of people nationwide for years to come AND disproportionately impact communities of color, the disability community, and seniors.' 'GOP Senators whose states will be screwed by Trump's budget bill are now cutting side deals, eg, exempt Alaska from SNAP work requirements & give $ to rural hospitals,' State Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, also wrote. 'All in service of kicking tens of millions off health care & food assistance to fund tax cuts for rich people.'
