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Mamdani Delivers a Direct Message to Trump During Contentious Fox News Interview
"I will not be a mayor, like Mayor Adams, who will call you to figure out how to stay out of jail," Mamdani said.
Oct 15, 2025
Democratic New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani on Wednesday went on Fox News on Wednesday to deliver a direct message to President Donald Trump.
During an appearance on "The Story With Martha MacCallum," Mamdani looked directly into the camera and addressed Trump on the off chance he was watching the show.
"I will not be a mayor, like Mayor Adams, who will call you to figure out how to stay out of jail," he said, just weeks after Mayor Eric Adams ended his reelection campaign. "I won't be a disgraced governor, like Andrew Cuomo, who will call you to ask how to win this election. I can do those things on my own."
Mamdani then listed issues that he would happy to speak with the Republican president about in future conversations.
"I will, however, be a mayor who's ready to speak at any time to lower the cost of living," he said. "That's the way that I will lead the city and the partnership I want to build not only with Washington, DC, but anyone across this country. I think it's important because too often the focus on the needs of working-class Americans are put to the side as we talk more and more about the very kinds of corrupt politicians, like Andrew Cuomo, that delivered us into this kind of crisis."
Mamdani: Trump might be watching right now. I want to speak directly to the president. I will not be a mayor like Mayor Adams who will call you to figure out how to stay out of jail or be a disgrace governor like Andrew Cuomo who will call you to ask how to win this election. I… pic.twitter.com/cPaaaTC8XD
— Acyn (@Acyn) October 15, 2025
Elsewhere in the interview, Mamdani directly addressed Cuomo, who is running as an independent and is his top rival in the New York City mayoral election.
"Andrew: You had your chance to lead this state," he said. "You took that time to sell out working-class New Yorkers to your billionaire donors. And instead of actually meeting the needs of people who couldn't afford to live in this city, you gave $959 million in tax breaks to Elon Musk."
Mamdani: "Andrew Cuomo is gonna say a lot of things tomorrow night on the debate stage. And frankly, I wish it was more like Nascar so New Yorkers could see the billionaires that were sponsoring him right on his suit jacket. He watches Fox News as well. So I'll just speak to him… pic.twitter.com/8T3k14lbeW
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 15, 2025
Mamdani is scheduled to square off against Cuomo and Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa on Thursday night in the penultimate debate ahead of next month's election. Early voting begins October 25.
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Dementia President: Could It Be That Trump Has Truly Lost His Mind?
Given his behavior, it could very well be that the President of the United States is going nuts.
Sep 29, 2025
Over the weekend, on his Truth Social, Trump shared a video purporting to be a segment on Fox News — it wasn’t — in which an AI-generated, deepfaked version of himself sat in the White House and promised that “every American will soon receive their own MedBed card” that will grant them access to new “MedBed hospitals.”
What?
Believers in the “MedBed” conspiracy theory think certain hospital beds are loaded with futuristic technology that can reverse any disease, regenerate limbs, and de-age people. No one has an actual photo of these beds because they don’t exist.
Trump also posted (again, without any basis in fact) that the FBI “secretly placed … 274 FBI Agents into the Crowd just prior to, and during” the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, during which they were “probably acting as Agitators and Insurrectionists.”
Trump added that this “is different from what Director Christopher Wray stated, over and over again!” and went on: “Christopher Wray, the then Director of the FBI, has some major explaining to do. That’s two in a row, Comey and Wray, who got caught LYING.”
In fact, the Department of Justice’s inspector general reported that there were no undercover FBI agents at the January 6 riots. (FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed that the few FBI agents present on January 6 were there on “a crowd control mission after the riot was declared.”)
Trump also announced Saturday that he intends to send the U.S. military to Portland, Oregon, authorizing “Full Force, if necessary” to “protect War ravaged Portland, and any of our ICE Facilities under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists.”
Hello? Although protesters have been camping on the sidewalks outside the ICE office for months, the demonstration has dwindled to almost nothing. Of the 29 related arrests, 22 happened on or before July 4, when the protests were at their peak.
What’s been the media’s response to Trump’s bonkers postings and announcements this weekend? Nada. The media either ignored them, mentioned them as part of Trump’s “strategy,” or assumed Trump was just being Trump.
But there’s another explanation.
Trump is showing growing signs of dementia. He’s increasingly unhinged. He’s 79 years old with a family history of dementia. He could well be going nuts.
You might think this would be covered in the news, but he isn’t facing anything like the scrutiny for dementia that Joe Biden did.
Perhaps the most telling evidence of Trump’s growing dementia is his paranoid thirst for revenge, on which he is centering much of his presidency.
The paranoia was becoming evident in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election. On November 11, 2023, he pledged to a crowd of supporters in Claremont, New Hampshire, that:
“We will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections and will do anything possible — they’ll do anything, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America and to destroy the American dream.”
Most media commentators chalked this up to overheated campaign rhetoric.
But since occupying the Oval Office, Trump has demanded that his attorney general target political opponents, urged the head of his FCC to threaten a major network for allowing a late-night comedian to say things Trump disliked, suggested that the government revoke TV licenses of network broadcasters that allow criticism of him, and pulled government security clearances from former officials whom he deems his enemies.
Less than two weeks ago, he demanded that the Justice Department prosecute a handful of named political opponents “now!” — including James Comey, whom Trump fired from his post in 2017 after Comey oversaw the FBI’s investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election; Letitia James, the attorney general of New York, who indicted Trump; and Adam Schiff, U.S. senator from California, who played an active role in the House hearings on January 6, 2021.
On September 19, Erik Siebert, the acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia (initially selected for the position by Trump) resigned after Trump told reporters “I want him out.” Siebert had concerns about the strength of the evidence against both Comey and James.
The following day, Trump posted a message to his attorney general, Pam Bondi. “Pam,” it began, “Nothing is being done. What about Comey, Adam “Shifty” Schiff, Leticia??? They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done.’”
He said he was promoting Lindsey Halligan, one of his former personal attorneys, to take Siebert’s place, and fumed: “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”
On September 22, three days after Halligan assumed office, she secured a simple, two-count indictment against Comey for allegedly lying to Congress and for allegedly obstructing justice.
“JUSTICE IN AMERICA! One of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to is James Comey,” Trump exalted on social media following the indictment. “He has been so bad for our Country, for so long, and is now at the beginning of being held responsible for his crimes against our Nation.”
The Comey indictment was a blip in the weekly news cycle. The media appeared to shrug: Yes, of course Trump is vindictive, so what else is new?
But wait. Are his acts those of a sane person? Or of an aging paranoid megalomaniac?
Even if it’s unclear to which category Trump belongs, shouldn’t this question be central to the coverage of his presidency? At the very least, shouldn’t the media be actively investigating?
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Stop Red-Baiting Zohran Mamdani on Housing
Does Zohran Mamdani represent the second coming of Stalin for New York City? All the red-baiting attacks on him cannot detract from the sensibleness of his call for social housing.
Sep 24, 2025
Since democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani won New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary in late June, Fox News has predictably sounded the alarm with heavy doses of red-baiting. For example, politics reporter Alec Schemnel reported on the network’s digital news site in early July the discovery of evidence that claims of Mamdani being a communist “may not be as unfounded as Mamdani claims.” Schemmel wrote that Mamdani was “garnering backlash for previous comments he has made espousing language steeped in radical socialist and communist ideology.”
Schemmel related to readers his titillating discoveries about Mamdani’s communist beliefs: a 2021 video of Mamdani calling for leftists to be uncompromising in pursuit of “seizing the means of production;” a 2020 social media post where Mamdani called for seizing private luxury housing as residences for the homeless during the Covid-19 pandemic; a 2021 speech before The Gravel Institute where Mamdani called for luxury housing to be converted into “communal style living.”
It is on the subject of housing policy where Schemmel concentrated nearly all his effort to prove Mamdani’s commitment to “radical socialist and communist ideology.” He summarized Mamdani’s housing policy as an effort to move “toward the full de-commodification of housing,” a future where housing access is not conditioned by ability to pay but where the government guarantees “high quality housing to all as a human right.”
Mamdani made the above quotations in his capacity as a private left-wing activist; Schemmel was relatively reticent in relating the actual housing policy proposals Mamdani has advanced in his quest to become New York City’s chief executive. Schemmel’s reticence to inform his readers about those proposals is understandable because doing so would complicate his efforts to portray Mamdani as the second coming of Stalin.
There is a very high risk that if Mamdani wins the mayorship, not only will Trump’s thugs try to sabotage his program but business leaders and rich investors will engage in capital flight, withdrawing their money from the city, destroying its credit rating and tax base.
For example, nowhere in his housing policy platform has Mamdani, contrary to Schemmel’s implication, called for “the full de-commodification of housing.” He has called for increased government spending on existing public housing stock, affordable housing, and social housing (a form of public housing) to exist alongside the private housing market. He has called for these policies because rents have skyrocketed in NYC—the Wall Street Journal reported in June that the average monthly rent for a 2 bedroom apartment in the city was $5,280.
Schemmel noted that Mamdani has stated his personal inspiration in the possibilities for social housing—and has specifically cited the model of government-backed social housing in Vienna, Austria as a proper example for a similar program in New York City. The Vienna social housing model has clearly been a success in providing safe, affordable housing with modern amenities for a significant portion of Vienna’s non-wealthy population. Schemmel seemed to subtly admit the success of the Vienna model for he did not try to argue that it had been unsuccessful. Instead, he only briefly referenced it, quoting Mamdani as having “conceded” that residents of such housing in Vienna “still pay part of their earnings in rent to cover operational costs and a sizable chunk of the [Vienna] population lives in private housing.”
In reality, nowhere has Mamdani or his co-thinkers denied that renters in Vienna’s social housing still pay a portion of their income in rent for that housing—or denied that such housing exists alongside a substantial private housing market. The point is that the rent for social housing is significantly lower than in Vienna’s private housing market and provides a significant percentage of the city’s working- and middle-class residents access to high quality housing.
Nearly half of Vienna’s housing is social housing: Half of that total is directly operated by the city government and the rest run by government regulated limited profit corporations. The successful social housing program is perhaps part of the reason why Vienna was named the world’s most livable city for the third consecutive year in 2024 by The Economist. The housing is often constructed in ways allowing residents easy walking access for such amenities as food, healthcare, and education. According to Vienna’s mayor, this massively government-subsidized housing program exists alongside a dynamic capitalist economy: Vienna, with its services and manufacturing industries, represents 25% of Austria’s overall Gross Domestic Product.
For another successful example of social housing—one that has provided affordable and safe housing to a modest but tangible number of working- and middle-class people—one does not have to go outside the United States. Alec Schemmel—like perhaps most Americans and even many New Yorkers—is probably not aware that New York State already has a successful social housing program, created—when American anti-communism was at its highest crest—by the Mitchell-Lama Act of the New York State legislature in 1955. The Mitchell-Lama Act is one of the main subjects of a book—Homes for Living: The Fight for Social Housing and a New American Commons—published earlier this year by Jonathan Tarleton, an urban planner and designer in addition to being a writer.
Tarleton notes how Mitchell-Lama, in the decades after its passage, “funded the construction of 140,000 apartments across 270 developments in New York City (and more across the state). Roughly half of those homes in the city take the form of what’s known as a limited equity co-op.” Limited equity co-ops under Mitchell-Lama receive substantial governmental subsidies. After buying a “share” in a co-op apartment, residents pay a monthly fee that covers the building’s mortgage, maintenance fees, and other costs, paying a monthly rate that is substantially below the average apartment rents in NYC.
Mamdani’s Prospects
There is a very high risk that if Mamdani wins the mayorship, not only will Trump’s thugs try to sabotage his program but business leaders and rich investors will engage in capital flight, withdrawing their money from the city, destroying its credit rating and tax base. This would severely limit Mamdani’s ability to fund his proposed welfare state expansion with regard to housing, transportation, government-run grocery stores, and other areas. New York’s business-friendly Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul is also legally empowered to veto Mamdani’s fiscal proposals. She has publicly endorsed Mamdani for mayor but likely had major reservations in doing so as she has previously vigorously denounced Mamdani’s proposals for tax increases and government borrowing.
There is immense pressure on Mamdani to heavily dilute his program. Social movements rooted in ordinary people will have to keep up constant pressure on him to keep his campaign promises.
Correction: A previous version of this article referred to Jonathan Tarleton as the editor of the radical left NYC newspaper The Indypendent. He is not, and the article has been edited to reflect this.
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