“The fact that he’s so aggressively focused on affordability issues in New York City…is smart,” Vice President J.D. Vance said of New York City Mayor-elect Zoran Mamdani.
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Vice President J.D. Vance refused to put any light on President Donald Trump in a new interview with NBC News, saying incoming New York City Mayor Zoran Mamdani is “at least listening to people” on affordability and musing about leading politicians.
Mamdani, a democratic socialist, emerged as a prominent new politician during a campaign focused on the cost of living issue, drawing the ire of President Trump before the two held an intimate meeting at the official residence after the election.
“Obviously, I’m not a communist, and I think he’s a communist,” Vance told NBC News. “But the fact that he’s so aggressively focused on affordability issues in New York City, a city with one of the worst affordability crises anywhere in the world, at least he’s listening to people.”
Vance also said he is “fascinated” by Sen. Bernie Sanders, and called him “interesting” “sometimes” by California Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna.
“That’s a very low bar for most politicians, but they don’t even want to listen to what people have to say,” Vance said. “I would put Mamdani, Bernie and Ro Khanna in the category of people who do that at least sometimes.”
The vice president, a front-runner for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination, insisted he is focused on his current job rather than his political future as the party heads into the 2026 midterm elections.
“I try not to wake up and think, ‘What does this mean for my future?'” I always try to think, ‘How can I do a better job now?’ ” Vance told NBC. “That’s one of the reasons I tried to stay away from the 2028 discussion…I never want to focus on the future at the expense of this job.”
Vance’s political future is closely tied to President Trump’s declining approval ratings. When running for president in 2024, former Vice President Kamala Harris was asked on “The View” if she “would have done anything differently” during her four years in office with former President Joe Biden. She said she couldn’t think of anything, and Vance scoffed at that answer.
When NBC asked Vance the same question, he said, “The president really needs a vice president who is loyal to him and who is not going to plot or use the media to set himself up for 2028.”
“So what you’ll never hear me do in this job is attack the president of the United States,” Vance added. “Of course, if I were to run for another office in the future, people would ask me, ‘Would you have done this? Would you have done that?’ And when the time comes, let’s have that conversation. But I would never attack the president of the United States.”
