After months of declining to weigh in, President Donald Trump has revealed his preferred candidate in the New York City mayoral race.
“If it’s going to be between a bad Democrat and a communist,” Trump told CBS’ Norah O’Donnell, “I’m gonna pick the bad Democrat all the time, to be honest with you.”
New Yorkers will make that choice between socialist Zohran Mamdani and Democrat Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday. Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa also remains in the race. Mamdani currently holds at 13.7 point lead over Cuomo, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average.
Trump said he will withhold funding from New York if Mamdani becomes mayor.
“It’s going to be hard for me as the president to give a lot of money to New York. Because if you have a communist running New York, all you’re doing is wasting the money you’re sending there,” Trump said.
Last month, Trump told The Daily Signal that Cuomo has a chance of defeating Mamdani if Sliwa dropped out. But the president maintained that he was not ready to get involved.
“If he dropped out, maybe Cuomo would have a little bit of a chance, but not much, because it looks like, it’s not a great lead, but it’s big enough that [Mamdani] should be able to win,” Trump said in response to a question from The Daily Signal. “So, I don’t know that I want to get involved. It’s really a question of would I rather have a Democrat or a communist, and I would rather have a Democrat than a communist.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., endorsed the state assemblyman and the rest of the Democrat ticket for the Nov. 4 city elections—a decision he had held off making for months. Speaker Mike Johnson said Mamdani has taken over the Democratic Party.
“Mamdani is a big issue here in the halls of Congress. Why? Because the second-highest ranked Democrat in the country, leader Jeffries, endorsed him,” Johnson said. “They’re making Mamdani a mainstream Democrat now. This party has left the people.”
