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President Donald Trump warned that New York won’t ever be the same if New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is elected.
Mamdani is a Ugandan-born Muslim who won the Democratic Party’s primary for New York City mayor in June and identifies as a Democratic socialist.
But Trump said that New Yorkers should not cast their ballot for the New York State assemblyman from Queens, who he described as “a man who’s not very capable in my opinion, other than he’s got a good line of bulls–-.”
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“No. 1, you have a communist running, and you shouldn’t vote for him,” Trump said during a Cabinet meeting Tuesday. “He’s a disaster. He’s leading. He’s got the Democrat nomination because that shows you where the Democrats have gone.”
“I’m not getting involved, but I can tell you this: I used to say we will not ever be a socialist country. Right. Well, I’ll say it again. We’re not going to have — if a communist gets elected to run New York, it can never be the same.”
Mamdani did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
Trump previously has blasted Mamdani, and threatened to arrest him if he refused to comply with federal immigration officials. Trump’s remarks came after Mamdani said in June that he would halt “masked” U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials from “deporting our neighbors.”
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“Well, then we’ll have to arrest him,” Trump told reporters at the White House July 1. “Look, we don’t need a communist in this country, but if we have one, I’m going to be watching over them very carefully on behalf of the nation. We send him money. We send him all the things that he needs to run a government.”
In response, Mamdani issued a statement claiming that Trump’s comments amounted to an assault on democracy.
“The President of the United States just threatened to have me arrested, stripped of my citizenship, put in a detention camp and deported,” Mamdani said. “Not because I have broken any law but because I will refuse to let ICE terrorize our city.”
“His statements don’t just represent an attack on our democracy but an attempt to send a message to every New Yorker who refuses to hide in the shadows: if you speak up, they will come for you,” Mamdani said.
Trump has also slammed Mamdani after the 33-year-old refused to condemn the term “globalize the intifada.”
‘GLOBALIZE THE INTIFADA’ PHRASE STIRS TENSIONS ON NYC CAMPAIGN TRAIL AS MIDDLE EAST CONFLICT RAGES
“Frankly, I’ve heard he’s a total nut job,” Trump told reporters July 1. “I think the people in New York are crazy because they go this route. I think they’re crazy. We will have a communist in the for the first time, really a pure, true communist. He wants to operate the grocery stores. The department stores. What about the people that are there? I think it’s crazy.”
Mamdani said in a June interview with NBC News he didn’t want to condemn the term “globalize the intifada,” a phrase used to back Palestinian resistance against Israel, because he didn’t want to “police language.”
Mamdami has received criticism from Democrats for refusing to come out with a stance on the phrase, including from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York. Jeffries told ABC News Sunday in June that the term was not “acceptable phrasing.”
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