Category: Zohran Mamdani
Mamdani sells socialism — and Republicans peddle the Temu version
New York City has elected a self-professed socialist as mayor. Critics worry about Zohran Mamdani’s inexperience, his approach to law and order, and his views on Israel and Islamic radicalism. But the most urgent issue inside the walls of City Hall is his economic agenda.
Mamdani promises “free” bus transit, a freeze on rent increases, a $30 minimum wage, government-run grocery stores, free child care, and higher taxes in a city already crushed by some of the nation’s highest tax burdens. His brand of socialism isn’t subtle. It’s explicit — and guaranteed to fail.
A movement confident in free enterprise can beat socialism — first in the arena of ideas, then at the ballot box. But only if we choose clarity over imitation.
Many on the right treat Mamdani’s victory as cosmic justice for a deep-blue city that keeps moving left. Others welcome his rise, convinced that showcasing a hard-left mayor will repel voters nationwide. That might be true. It might also be fantasy.
New Yorkers didn’t elect Mamdani so conservatives could score a talking point. His win advances ideas — and conservatives must decide whether they still believe ours are better.
When the right copies the left
Mocking government-run grocery stores is easy. Yet national Republicans just embraced government ownership in Intel — a massive corporation that dwarfs any Manhattan supermarket. Some even support a federal sovereign wealth fund to buy equity across private industry, handing Washington the power to pick winners.
Mamdani demonizes Wall Street and high earners who keep the city solvent. Republicans respond by demonizing “big pharma” and pushing policies that treat major U.S. innovators as villains.
Mamdani wants to redistribute income with New York’s already-extreme tax code. Some on the right now call for $2,000 government checks to lower-income households — financed with borrowed money and paid back by business owners already hit with $350 billion in new tariff taxes this year.
Mamdani would freeze rents because, in his telling, landlords “make a killing.” His economics ignore taxes, insurance, utilities, and maintenance costs that devour margins across New York’s rental market. Yet GOP proposals on health care routinely blame insurers for “making a killing while the little guy suffers.” The overlap with left-wing rhetoric isn’t coincidence. It’s drift.
High grocery prices fuel Mamdani’s push for government-run grocery stores. He blames “capitalistic greed.” Republicans answered high beef prices by accusing meat companies of “price fixing.” Again, the same logic — just delivered with a different logo.
Resurrecting failed policies
Mamdani’s worldview mirrors the same interventionist thinking that powered the Affordable Care Act. Subsidies, mandates, and price controls promised relief. They delivered higher premiums, higher costs, and lower-quality care.
Conservatives should highlight that failure. Instead, too many mimic the left’s solutions — regulation dressed up as populism, government expansion sold as “tough on corporations,” and class warfare renamed as “standing up for workers.”
If Mamdani’s win teaches anything, it’s that conservatives must draw a bright line: free enterprise or the road to socialism. Blurring that line weakens the argument and cedes the moral ground socialism feeds on.
RELATED: Mao tried this first — New Yorkers will not like the ending
Bettmann/Getty Images
The real fight
The conservative movement faces serious internal debates — debates worth having. But Mamdani’s election exposes one fight we cannot dodge: the fight for limited government and competitive markets.
We cannot counter socialism with lighter versions of the same policies. We cannot attack Mamdani’s economic program while pushing our own price controls, government takeovers, and redistribution schemes. A movement that refuses to defend free enterprise won’t defeat socialism. It won’t even understand the threat.
Mamdani comes into office with plenty of flaws. New Yorkers will feel the consequences soon enough. But conservatives face a choice: defend our own principles or mimic the left and call it “the new right.”
A movement confident in free enterprise can beat socialism — first in the arena of ideas, then at the ballot box. But only if we choose clarity over imitation.
TRUMP TO MEET WITH MAMDANI: ‘We’ll Work Something Out … We Want to See Everything Work Out Well For New York’ [WATCH]
![TRUMP TO MEET WITH MAMDANI: ‘We’ll Work Something Out … We Want to See Everything Work Out Well For New York’ [WATCH]](https://hannity.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Trump-Mamdani-300x195.png "Trump Mamdani")
President Donald Trump told reporters over the weekend that New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has reached out for a White House meeting.
Actor Jon Voight calls on Trump to ‘terminate’ election of Mamdani in NYC
Academy Award-winning actor Jon Voight released a video calling on the president to take action to prevent the newly elected socialist mayor from imposing his destructive policies on New York City.
Zohran Mamdani surprised many by winning the Democratic nomination in the mayoral primary election and then went on to easily win the office in November. The socialist Democrat garnered 50.4% of the vote over runner-up Andrew Cuomo, who got support from 41.6%.
‘The blood, sweat, and tears that the city of New York was built on will turn into a virtual refugee shelter for the radical Muslim ideology. This is now the most dangerous time for our citizens of New York.’
Critics are warning that Mamdani’s extremist socialist policies will worsen the plight of NYC residents, but Voight says the threat is so severe that President Donald Trump should address it.
“The mayor that has taken over New York City is a Muslim who is going to take down the ‘city that never sleeps,'” he began on the video posted to social media.
“The city of life’s dreams, this city that our ancestors brought forth in prosperity and greatness and liberty. This city will turn into a forbidden place of darkness, the blood, sweat, and tears that the city of New York was built on will turn into a virtual refugee shelter for the radical Muslim ideology. This is now the most dangerous time for our citizens of New York,” he added.
Voight went on to say that the mayor has no right to dictate socialist rules for the city that would take away citizens’ rights.
“This must be stopped, and his mayoralty should be terminated immediately,” he continued.
“You, the people of the greatest city, New York, are in danger of losing your city to this communist fool. We, the people, must stand for the greatest nation’s purpose — the honor of our flag, the red, white, and blue — and for which it stands, one nation under God, with liberty and justice for all,” Voight added.
He then pleaded with the president to take action.
“We the people have put our trust in the president of the United States, Donald J. Trump. He, and only he, can stop this horror as this mayor, Mamdani, will try to destroy New York’s wealth and turn it into a socialist crap city.”
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“Let this be a warning to the people — and may God bless,” Voight concluded.
The 86-year-old has been a passionate Trump supporter, and in 2019, the president awarded him the National Medal of Arts.
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Glenn Beck warns of 3 potential economic outcomes that could drastically change America’s future
Is economic doom on America’s horizon?
“The end of the year economic data is beginning to come out and to say that it’s not the best might be an understatement,” says Glenn Beck. “There’s some warning signs for 2026 and beyond.”
In this riveting episode of “Glenn TV,” Glenn outlines three potential economic futures for 2026.
Outcome #1: A K-shaped economy
A K-shaped economy, Glenn explains, happens when “the rich get richer,” while the middle and lower classes suffer. “They lose jobs; they’re priced out of basic goods and services; and in the case of young people now just hitting the workforce, they fail to achieve the American dream and own any kind of property,” he explains.
What happens next is people, especially youth, begin to see things like socialism and even communism as salvation. This just played out in New York City with the election of Muslim Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani as mayor.
Once the American people at large start seeing centralized power as the answer to all our problems, “The American experiment goes away,” warns Glenn.
Outcome #2: Outcome #1 on steroids
The second possibility, says Glenn, is everything in outcome number one plus a long chain of economic disasters: unemployment skyrockets thanks to artificial intelligence; then the Fed goes on an interest-cutting spree; this leads to bailout programs and money printing; inflation soars; and finally, the U.S. dollar dies.
Outcome #3: Weather the storm, thrive in the revolution
A third potential outcome, says Glenn, is that “what we’re seeing right now [with the economy] is just temporary pain.” It’s plausible that every economic slump is something “the Trump administration has been preparing for.”
“I just got off the phone with the president yesterday, and we spoke about this,” says Glenn.
Trump’s response? “I got it.”
“He knows we’re on the brink of major societal change … but a new economic global system is now being built by him, and all of the levers are being pulled to ensure we remain resilient for the change that is coming,” says Glenn.
Change, whether we like it or not, is inevitable, he assures. “We’re at the threshold of another industrial revolution,” where development will be so rapid, it will eclipse the achievements of all human history combined.
“How we navigate this new world depends on the moves that we’re making right now,” he says.
To hear Glenn’s full in-depth breakdown, watch the episode above.
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Mao tried this first — New Yorkers will not like the ending
More than 50 years ago, I witnessed firsthand how Mao Zedong’s socialist experiment dismantled market competition, suppressed innovation, and plunged China into economic ruin. As a survivor of that experiment, I watched in horror last week as Zohran Mamdani won over 50% of the vote in New York City, promising a socialist illusion of city-owned grocery stores, free public transit, universal rent control, and a defunded police department.
Such proposals might sound compassionate, but they threaten to repeat the class warfare and state control that devastated China from the 1950s to the late 1970s, only this time they are taking place in the financial capital of the world.
The unpleasant truth is that America may have won the Cold War, but we are losing the ideological war at home.
Consider Mamdani’s push for “good cause eviction” laws and expanded rent control. He claims these measures protect tenants from exploitation, but they discourage property ownership and investment — just as Mao’s housing policies did.
In communist China, the state assigned apartments to urban families, but most people lived in poverty. My family of five was crammed into a 200-square-foot unit with no running water or a toilet. Today, rent control has already reduced housing supply by 20% in parts of New York City, driving up costs for everyone else. What Mamdani offers isn’t progress — it’s stagnation disguised as equity.
Mamdani’s support for “Medicare for All” and fare-free buses also ignores fiscal realities. Mao’s “barefoot doctors” promised class equity but delivered substandard care, contributing to millions of preventable deaths. America’s health care system leads the world in breakthroughs because of merit-driven research and competition, not government mandates. Meanwhile, New York City’s transit authority estimates free transit would cost taxpayers $1 billion annually without improving service. When socialism promises “free” services, it often delivers shortages, rationing, and inefficiency.
The proposal for city-owned grocery stores is another red flag. Under Mao, government-run stores led to chronic food shortages. Rice, cooking oil, and meat were rationed. Each urban citizen received only two pounds of meat per month. Even with ration coupons, I had to wake at 3 or 4 a.m. and wait in line for hours to buy a few ounces. Mamdani’s plan threatening private grocery competition risks repeating this nightmare.
Then there’s his support for defunding the police and replacing them with vague “community safety” alternatives. In 2020, he co-sponsored bills to slash NYPD funding by $1 billion, claiming it would combat systemic racism. This mirrors Mao’s Red Guards, who dismantled law enforcement and replaced it with ideological enforcers — leading to chaos, violence, and mass suffering.
Since 2020, crime in New York has risen by 15%, according to NYPD data. Weakening law enforcement doesn’t protect vulnerable communities — it leaves them exposed. As a father of a New Yorker, Mamdani’s reckless approach to policing is not just a political concern; it’s a personal one.
Mamdani also seeks to eliminate gifted and talented programs in public schools, calling them “inequitable.” But these programs offer high-achieving students — often from diverse backgrounds — a path to excellence.
RELATED: The right needs bigger ideas than tax cuts
Photo by Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images
During the Cultural Revolution, China crushed its intellectual class and smothered innovation. New York is making a similar mistake. Gifted programs lifted math proficiency by 25%, according to a 2022 Department of Education report, yet Mamdani wants them eliminated in the name of “equity.” As an Asian-American parent who raised a child in STEM, I’ve seen how excellence takes root: You cultivate talent; you don’t level it.
Mamdani’s agenda mirrors the same destructive ideology I fled from. Socialism thrives on utopian promises pitched to voters who have never lived through the consequences. I have. And I recognize the warning signs.
Yet according to CNN exit polls, 70% of voters ages 18-44 supported Mamdani, compared to just 40% of older voters. Even more alarming: 57% of New Yorkers with college degrees voted for him, versus only 42% without. This reflects the growing influence of pro-socialist indoctrination in American universities.
The unpleasant truth is that America may have won the Cold War, but we are losing the ideological war at home. To prevent a socialist takeover, we must fight back by reforming higher education and teaching our children the truth about socialism in K-12 classrooms.
POST OP-ED: Zohran Mamdani is Reviving the Worst of the de Blasio Years
By The New York Post Editorial Board Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s latest rumored hire may fit his vision of a dream team, but for the rest of New York, it promises to be a recurring nightmare.
COPS OUT, COMRADES IN! DSA Ally to Run Point on NYC’s $1.1B ‘Community Safety’ Scheme
Incoming New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has tapped the chief architect of his most controversial idea — a plan to replace cops with social workers — to help run his new administration.
The scariest thing about Zohran Mamdani isn’t his socialism
Last Tuesday, Zohran Mamdani — a Muslim Democrat socialist — won the New York City mayoral election in a landslide victory over disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Like all socialists, he seduced the city’s financially crushed population, which is nearly everyone in tax-choked NYC, with a mountain of “free” promises: free buses, free childcare, rent freezes, and city-run grocery stores.
Of course, anyone with half a brain knows socialism bleeds cities dry every time. It’s death by a thousand tax hikes, crime waves, and empty storefronts.
The fiscal meltdown has dominated headlines since Mamdani’s win — but is economic suicide really the Big Apple’s most pressing threat?
Lomez, in the debut episode of BlazeTV’s “Rufo and Lomez,” says no. It’s what the radical symbolizes that should really scare us.
While Lomez “[doesn’t] like him at all,” he doesn’t think Mamdani’s economic reform or his other progressive policies will be as revolutionary as people are saying.
“If I’m looking for the sort of policy daylight between what he might do in New York City versus [former mayor] de Blasio, I think it’s pretty thin,” he says.
“Do I think Zohran Mamdani is going to impose a kind of communist authoritarianism on New York City? No, I don’t. I think things will just kind of get incrementally worse in ways that aren’t good,” he predicts.
The “key thing” that makes Mamdani scary, he says, is what the radical symbolizes.
“Mamdani represents above all else a kind of post-Americanness, a post-white Americanness in particular. I think that’s really important,” he says.
Lomez points to a clip of Mamdani’s victory speech on election night as evidence of this. In this segment that’s gone viral, he repeatedly thanked not Americans but immigrants for powering his campaign.
“Thank you to those so often forgotten by the politics of our city, who made this movement their own. I speak of Yemeni bodega owners and Mexican abuelas! Senegalese taxi drivers and Uzbek nurses! Trinidadian line cooks and Ethiopian aunties!” he boomed from the podium.
“He’s praising the Mexican abuelas and the Senegalese Door Dash drivers … not Mexican-American, not Senegalese-American, just those things without the hyphen at all,” says Lomez, reminding listeners that “Zohran Mamdani made explicitly anti-white statements during his campaign,” like pitching taxes for white people specifically.
“I think that kind of normalization, which is something we’ve seen from the Democratic Party sort of escalating over the last decade, is the most important part of this, and it’s the thing that gives me the most concern.”
To hear more, watch the full episode above.
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Explaining Mamdani’s appeal to the young, with polling
It’s a sad week for the de facto capital of the world, New York City. The epicenter of American finance, media, and dynamism now enters a self-imposed trajectory of decline.
But those of us on the populist right should not merely shake our heads and bemoan the extremism of Zohran Mamdani, frightening though it is. Instead, we must understand his appeal, so that we might effectively counter his un-American ideas and continue to build on our 2024 triumph by earning further big gains nationally among young voters.
We have much to learn from Mamdani, even though he is a dangerous Marxist. Establishment Republicans have no effective answer to this kind of populism.
Polling shows the pathway to that success.
First, the great news. Young voters have swung massively to the right over the last three presidential election cycles. President Trump won young men in 2024, and overall, voters 35 and under shifted materially from a +37% preference for the Democrats in 2016 to only a +13% preference in 2024, cutting the young adult margin by two-thirds in just over eight years. It represents a massive macro shift.
In addition, a new national poll of 2,100 voters ages 18-25 shows a substantial rejection of Democrats’ radicalism on key social issues, especially transgenderism and free speech. Simultaneously, young voters express extreme frustration with the current economy, creating a clear opening that Mamdani drove a campaign truck right through.
So, backed by data, here are the three lanes of success that Mamdani exploited.
‘Affordability’ is key
Even though all of his Marxist answers are wrong and immoral, Zohran is laser-focused on the issue that matters most to voters, especially younger ones. Most young citizens have not benefited from the massive run-up in asset prices in recent years. Without substantial holdings of equities or real estate, they struggle to afford the staples of life amid sky-high costs. Even worse, the job market got substantially tougher for young adults, adding even more angst.
These voters correctly blamed the Democrats for the pain of Bidenomics, but that anger has now shifted over to Republicans, fair or not.
Right now, per TIPP Insights polling, only 24% of young adults rate Trump’s performance on the economy as “good” or “excellent,” while 54% rate it as “poor” or “unacceptable.” On inflation, using letter grades, only 6% of young independents give the president an A, while 44% deliver an F.
Mamdani smartly dove into this issue. All his proposed solutions will only make inflation worse, of course, from “free” public transit to lavish benefits for illegal aliens. But regardless, he fixated on what matters to voters, especially young ones.
Media skills
After watching Mamdani throughout the campaign, it’s clear he hates the founding principles and history of the United States. He exemplifies how America’s immigration system — even its lawful pathways — too often imports people who reject the nation’s heritage rather than embrace it.
That said, as a media professional, I can only respect his acumen in front of the cameras.
In this new digital age, which President Trump helped create, successful politicians must be able to perform effectively. Mamdani exudes charisma and likeability. His youth and enthusiasm captivated voters, especially those in the streaming/TikTok spaces.
Media savvy combined with lots of ludicrous promises of freebies is a pretty powerful approach in this populist age. Young people are especially receptive to the heavy use of new/alternative media. TIPP Insights shows that only 31% of independent young adults have positive sentiment for legacy media, and only 34% of young women.
Focus on home
Perhaps the most compelling moment of the campaign for Mamdani was during the July debate, when all candidates were asked where their first foreign visit would be as mayor of New York. All of them said Israel, with Ukraine thrown in as well. But Mamdani gave a truly “New York First” answer instead, one that might well have been uttered by a MAGA partisan. He said, “I would stay in New York City.”
That answer clearly appeals to young voters, who are decidedly non-interventionist abroad. For example, a whopping 69% of young men think we “intervene too much in foreign conflicts.” Only 26% of young adults think the United States should remain involved in Ukraine if Putin and Zelenskyy cannot reach a settlement soon.
RELATED: The kids aren’t all right — they’re being seduced by socialism
Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
That non-interventionism seeps over into a very negative view of Israel among young voters. Survey results found that only 25% of them have a positive view of Israel, versus 52% negative. Among young independents, only 18% have a positive view of Israel.
Therefore, Mamdani probably did not generate the blowback he deserved for extremist postures, such as embracing a pro-terror jihadi who was implicated, but unindicted, in the 1993 World Trade Center bombings.
We have much to learn from Mamdani, even though he is a dangerous Marxist. Establishment Republicans have no effective answer to this kind of populism, because their default is always “cut taxes for the wealthy and go to war.”
The MAGA movement has a very different vision — one that can appeal to reasonable young people in increasing numbers — to continue this patriotic, populist surge for decades to come.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.
