New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani appeared on MSNBC Friday, where he was asked how he would respond to the Department of Justice’s dubious persecution of New York Attorney General Letitia James.
“Donald Trump ran on three promises. He ran on the punishment of his political enemies, he ran on easing the cost of living crisis, and he ran on engaging in a program of mass deportation,” he said. “It's that second promise of the cost of living crisis that brought so many to his campaign, and yet he's unable and unwilling to deliver on that because he's beholden to the very billionaires that are profiting off of that crisis. So what he's doing is focusing entirely on this agenda of punishment and cruelty.”
Mamdani also took aim at disgraced former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who is running for mayor as an independent.
“The other candidate that is running for mayor is Andrew Cuomo. He released a statement yesterday speaking about this indictment of Attorney General James. He couldn't even name her. He couldn't even name Donald Trump. And he couldn't do those things because he knows that his narrow path to City Hall is paved by the very billionaires who put Donald Trump back in the White House,” he said.
Mamdani’s strategy of speaking directly to the interests of working class voters places him alongside other leaders unafraid to challenge Trump's attacks in cities like Chicago and Portland. And it’s helped inure him from the predictable, ahistorical accusations that advocating for housing and food makes one a “communist.”
The irony in all of this, as Mamdani notes, is that what made Trump politically viable—his populist appeal—is now his greatest liability.
