President Donald Trump and his fascist Republican allies have escalated their racist, Islamophobic and anti-socialist attacks on Zohran Mamdani, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and the winner of this week’s Democratic primary for mayor of New York City.
Speaking from the White House on Friday, Trump denounced Mamdani as “this communist from New York.” Trump added, “That’s a terrible thing for our country, by the way. He’s a communist! We are going to go to a communistic city. That’s so bad for New York, but the rest of the country is revolting against it.”
Far from “revolting against it,” the 432,305 first-choice votes cast for Mamdani in Tuesday’s election is the largest raw turnout for a self-identified democratic socialist in New York City history. It is also the highest vote total for any Democratic candidate in a mayoral primary since the 1973 runoff, when Abraham Beame received over 547,000 votes.
Mamdani is neither a communist, Marxist, nor revolutionary socialist. But the ruling class is terrified that even his mild criticisms of capitalism—and his open identification as a “democratic socialist”—received overwhelming support in Tuesday’s primary, held in the heart of global finance capital: New York City, home to Wall Street.
The Republican attacks on Mamdani come in the immediate aftermath of the targeted assassination of Minnesota Democratic State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, as well as the near-fatal shooting of State Senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette. The assailant, Vance Luther Boelter, was a far-right Christian fanatic and ardent Trump supporter who had compiled a kill list of Democratic lawmakers.
The New York Police Department has confirmed it is investigating violent threats made against Mamdani earlier this month. On June 19, the NYPD stated it was responding to multiple bomb threats, including voicemails left at Mamdani’s district office.
In the voicemails, a caller referred to Mamdani as a “terrorist” and declared that he was “not welcome in New York or America.” Although Mamdani does not own a vehicle, the man warned that he should be careful when he starts his car.
Republican officials used podcast interviews and social media posts Friday to escalate their racist attacks on Mamdani and to renew threats to deport him for his political beliefs. Appearing on the far-right program The Benny Show, top Trump co-conspirator in the January 6 coup and former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani endorsed calls to investigate and arrest the DSA member.
The fascist Giuliani fretted that Mamdani “wants us to be a communist government.”
“The things that he says,” Giuliani added, “there should almost be a movement to put him in jail for the things that he says.”
Later in the interview, host Benny Johnson—who frequently postures as a defender of free speech—asked Giuliani, “Should a communist be allowed to run for office? They are not allowed to be naturalized citizens, Mr. Mayor.”
Giuliani replied, “I think you can make the argument that, no they shouldn’t because they want to annihilate the government, and we should not be induced to vote for our annihilation. But I don’t think it would pass the current Supreme Court definition of free speech.” (emphasis added)
In response, Johnson ranted about “communist infiltration” and accused Mamdani of “playing footsie with Hamas.” He continued, “He, himself is a Muslim, and I think there is a lot of people in New York saying, you know, what the hell is happening to my city?”
The segment was a vile mix of red-baiting, Islamophobia and incitement. Johnson’s comments reflect the central thrust of the Republican campaign: to portray a democratically elected self-identified socialist and Muslim candidate as a foreign invader and terrorist sympathizer, as part of an overall criminalization of opposition to the policies of the financial oligarchy.
Asked by Johnson to comment on Nashville Republican Rep. Andy Ogles’s effort to denaturalize and deport Mamdani, Giuliani replied:
I think that is very responsible request and something the government should do given the nature of the things that he says. I don’t know that we can come to the conclusion and convict him of it, but he raises a real legitimate concern that he is not a loyal American....
And there is certainly enough, that he has done and said that would justify an FBI investigation that he is a traitor.
Giuliani added: “We have about...three to six million bad actors in this country, many of which are terrorists.”
Appearing on the same program after Giuliani, Tennessee Rep. Andy Ogles reiterated his call—first made the previous day—for the Department of Justice to investigate “nutjob” Mamdani with the aim of denaturalizing and deporting him.
Ogles noted that Mamdani became a US citizen in 2018, and argued that his political affiliation alone could be grounds for retroactive disqualification:
So at the same time he’s filling out these forms to become a citizen he’s joining a communist group here in the United States, and so if we can go back and fill in the dots of when he was joining that group versus when he filled out that paperwork it may very well disqualify him from being a citizen of United States of America.
By “communist” group, Ogles is referring to the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)—a faction of the Democratic Party, one of the oldest and most entrenched capitalist parties in the world.
Ogles said the investigation into Mamdani would serve as a “template” to “go after other radicals who come to this country, become a citizen and quite frankly, they are a sleeper to undermine our government.”
In other words, Republicans are openly advocating the use of denaturalization as a political weapon—not just against Mamdani, but against any immigrant or “home grown” who opposes the capitalist system.
In an extended interview with Benny Johnson on Wednesday, fascist Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville agreed that Mamdani’s election was proof that the so-called “Great Replacement” was already underway. The “Great Replacement Theory” is a neo-Nazi conspiracy that claims Democrats and Jewish elites are deliberately importing non-white people to “replace” the white population in the United States.
“Well that’s the easiest place to do it, Benny, in the big cities where they have all these government handouts. Where they can hang out on the streets, steal whatever they want to steal—Chicago, Detroit they are all next. It will happen in the big cities, it will sweep across the country, and then they will start trying to go into the medium-sized cities, but we can’t wait until that point.
“We have got to call it out, let it be known what it is. President Trump, I promise you will fight back against it, thank God he is in office.”
Tuberville also revealed coordination with former acting ICE director Tom Homan, stating he had spoken “several times with Tom Homan, who is basically running the inner-city ICE program.”
“If we get a mayor like this” Tuberville said, referring to Mamdani, “that’s when you can stop the federal funding. You can, President Trump can do anything he wants when it comes to federal. Again, these uh, inner-city rats they live off the federal government, and that’s one reason we are $37 trillion in debt.”
Mixing genocidal and racist language with a call to unleash the federal immigration Gestapo against entire cities, Tuberville concluded: “And it’s time we find these rats and we send them back home.”