President Donald Trump warned Zohran Mamdani or whoever ultimately wins the next election for mayor of New York City will “have to behave” or face a “very tough” financial response from the federal government.
Trump made the comment during a “Sunday Morning Futures” interview after anchor Maria Bartiromo asked who is “poised to support” in the election.
“Well, I don’t want to say that because I have a lot of people, a lot of friends, and I have everybody, so I don’t want to get into that,” Trump said. “I can tell you this, whoever’s mayor of New York is going to have to behave themselves or the federal government is coming down very tough on them financially.”
Watch Part 4 of @MariaBartiromo‘s interview with @POTUS discussing the NYC Mayor race, the Supreme Court rulings, and the future of the Trump agenda pic.twitter.com/7W5krRTiBj
— SundayMorningFutures (@SundayFutures) June 29, 2025
Moments earlier, Trump took a direct swipe at Mamdani, the socialist candidate who emerged victorious in the Democratic Party’s primary for New York City mayor after former Governor Andrew Cuomo conceded the contest last week.
“He’s a communist, I think it’s very bad for New York. I don’t know that he’s going to get in, it’s inconceivable that he is,” Trump said. “But he’s a communist, and he’s pure communist. I think he admits it. But I can’t imagine it, but let’s say this, if he does get in I’m going to be president and he is going to have to do the right thing, or they’re not getting any money.”
Trump added, “He’s got to do the right thing. It’s shocking that I would have assumed that. … I used to say we will never have a socialist in this country. No, but we’ll have a communist. I mean, he’s a communist, he gonna be mayor of New York. So I was very surprised when I said, I never heard of him, I don’t know who he is.”
He also said Mamdani is a “radical left lunatic” and Bartiromo said the socialist has vowed not to cooperate with ICE and pledging to have Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would be arrested if he visits New York City.
Mamdani pushed back on the “communist” label that Trump has given him during an interview on NBC’s “Meet The Press” on Sunday.
“No, I am not. And I have already had to start to get used to the fact that the president will talk about how I look, how I sound, where I’m from, who I am, ultimately because he wants to distract from what I’m fighting for. And I’m fighting for the very working people that he ran a campaign to empower, that he has since then betrayed,” Mamdani said.
