President Donald Trump criticized New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s fiery election-night remarks, calling his acceptance speech “very angry” and warning that the socialist ideas Mamdani espouses “have never worked anywhere.”
Appearing on Special Report with Bret Baier, Trump weighed in on the results of the off-year elections that saw Republicans fall short in several key races.
Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, a member of the New York State Assembly, was elected mayor of New York City after defeating former governor Andrew Cuomo and Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa.
Trump said he was not surprised by the outcome of the mayoral race but took issue with Mamdani’s tone and ideology.
“I thought it was a very angry speech,” Trump said. “Certainly angry toward me, and I think he should be very nice to me. You know, I’m the one that sort of has to approve a lot of things coming to him, so he’s off to a bad start.”
The president said he would like to see Mamdani succeed for the sake of New York but warned that his political philosophy was fundamentally flawed.
“Look, for a thousand years, communism has not worked,” Trump said. “It’s just communism, or the concept of communism, has not worked. I tend to doubt it’s going to work this time. It’s literally never worked.”