Zoran Mamdani dared President Trump to go on the offensive in a combative election night speech after being elected New York’s next mayor.
Zoran Mamdani’s New York Major Race
Mamdani, 34, will be New York City’s first Muslim and South Asian mayor.
NEW YORK – Zoran Mamdani dared President Donald Trump to go after him with a bellicose speech following his victory in the Nov. 4 New York mayoral election.
Mr. Mamdani, who has been the target of attacks from the president for months, criticized Mr. Trump by name as the democratic socialists shouted a “mission for change” in their victory.
“If anyone can teach the people betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it’s the city that produced him,” Mamdani, 34, said. “And if there is a way to bring down a tyrant, it is by dismantling the very conditions that have allowed him to accumulate power.”
He added, “This isn’t just how to stop Trump, this is how to stop the next Trump. So, Donald Trump, I know you’re watching, so I have four words for you: Turn up the volume.”
In the evening, the crowd at the Brooklyn Paramount, where Mamdani’s supporters had gathered, erupted in applause.
As Mamdani expected, Trump seemed to be watching closely. “…So it begins!” Trump wrote of “Social Truth” during his speech.
President Trump has labeled Mamdani a “communist” and a “shit job” and has repeatedly warned that he could withhold federal funding from New York City under his tenure as mayor.
Those threats didn’t stop Mamdani, a state lawmaker, from targeting the president in his first speech as mayor-elect.
“The Donald Trump family in our city has become so comfortable taking advantage of tenants,” Mamdani said, vowing that his administration starting January 1 will hold landlords accountable.
“We stand side by side with unions and expand worker protections because, like President Donald Trump, we know that when workers have iron rights, the bosses who try to take them away are actually much smaller,” he said.
Then, drawing perhaps the loudest cry of anger, Mamdani said: “New York will continue to be a city of immigrants, built by immigrants, run by immigrants, and starting tonight, it will continue to be a city of immigrants.
“So, President Trump, hear me out: To get to any of us, you have to get through all of us.”
Mamdani began his victory speech by quoting Eugene Debs, the founder of the Socialist Party a century ago. He then touted the defeat of former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the son of former Gov. Mario Cuomo, who came in second after Mandani, as the overthrow of a “political dynasty.”
“You have given us a mandate for a new kind of politics, a mandate for cities that we can afford, and a mandate for a government that will do just that,” Mamdani said.
X Contact Joey Garrison at @joeygarrison.
