"Got To Do Right Thing": Donald Trump's Big Warning To Zohran Mamdani

US President Donald Trump has threatened to cut federal funding for New York City if favoured mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani--a democratic socialist-- "doesn't behave himself", should he win the November 4 elections. The Republican leader, however, argued that Mamdani's victory was "inconceivable" because he is a "pure communist" candidate. 

"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, but they're not getting any money. He's got to do 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's gonna be mayor of New York," Trump said during an interview with Fox News.

Trump, who grew up in New York and built his sprawling real estate business there, said Mamdani's victory is "very bad" for the city.

"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," he added.

New York gets over $100 billion from the federal government through different entities and programs, according to the city's comptroller data. 

Mamdani Replies

Thirty-three-year-old Mamdani also took to the talk shows on Sunday, asserting he would "absolutely" maintain New York's status as a sanctuary city so that "New Yorkers can get out of the shadows and into the full life of the city that they belong to."

The Indian origin leader, meanwhile, denied he was a communist, as labelled by Trump. Asked directly on NBC's "Meet the Press" whether he is a communist, he said, "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," Mamdani said.

"I'm fighting for the very working people that he ran a campaign to empower, that he has since then betrayed."

The Ugandan-born state assemblyman had trailed former governor Andrew Cuomo in polls but surged on a message of lower rents, free daycare and buses, and other populist ideas in the notoriously expensive metropolis. His shock win last week resonated as a thunderclap within the Democratic party and drew the ire of Trump and his collaborators, who accused Mamdani of being a radical extremist.

Current Mayor Eric Adams is a Democrat but is campaigning for re-election as an independent, while Cuomo may also run unaffiliated.