Trump cracks jokes with Mamdani in cordial Oval Office meeting: 'I've been called much worse'



President Donald Trump and New York City's Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani cracked jokes during a surprisingly cordial meeting in the Oval Office on Friday.

Mamdani arrived at the White House Friday afternoon for his highly anticipated meeting with Trump, leaving many to speculate if their interactions would be friendly or fiery. After the meeting, both politicians maintained that the meeting went well with a common focus on affordability, with Trump even slipping in a few jokes to lighten the mood.

'I met with a man who's a very rational person.'

Mamdani was confronted by a reporter about his previous characterizations of Trump as a "despot."

"I've been called much worse than a despot," Trump quipped. "So it's not that insulting. I think he'll change his mind after we get to working together."

RELATED: Trump warns Mamdani ahead of high-stakes Oval Office meeting: 'He has to be careful'

Photo by Jim WATSON / AFP via Getty Images

Trump also interrupted Mamdani with a lighthearted comment on another occasion when Mamdani was pressed about calling the president a "fascist."

"That's OK, you can just say yes," Trump said, patting Mamdani on the shoulder. "That's easier than explaining. I don't mind."

Mamdani promptly agreed with Trump and refrained from elaborating on his past comments.

RELATED: Zohran Mamdani becomes first openly socialist mayor of New York City

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Alongside the many moments where the two joked about contentious remarks they've made about each other, both Trump and Mamdani agreed on key issues like affordability and cost of living. Trump acknowledged that their solutions to these issues would likely be different, but he cordially praised Mamdani as a "rational person" who sincerely wants New York City to succeed.

"I met with a man who's a very rational person," Trump said. "I met with a man who really wants to see New York be great again."

"I'll be cheering for him."

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Socialism 'will f**k you': Bill Maher warns Democrats the radical left is leading party to ruin



Bill Maher criticized those behind the Democratic Socialist movement, stating that the Democratic Party must move to the center if it wants to win elections.

During a Friday episode of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” Maher described how Democrats have become divided, with some pushing socialist ideals and others advocating for a more centrist position. He compared the comments of New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, a self-described Democratic Socialist, to those of Virginia Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger (D), who stated that the party should never “use the words ‘socialist’ or ‘socialism’ ever again.”

'Because socialism, to put it simply, just doesn’t work and has never worked.'

Spanberger also previously stated that if the party does not shift toward the center, “We will get f**king torn apart.”

“So how do we decide who’s right?” Maher asked. “Well, it turns out we don’t really have to flip a coin; we have the evidence. In 2024, 13 Democrats won in districts Trump also won.”

Maher noted that all of those Democrats were “moderates.”

“All the left-leaning think tanks have done autopsies on 2024, and they all came up with the same message: Move to the center,” he said.

RELATED: Bill Maher destroys the left on the trans issue: ‘You can’t just say s**t’

Zohran Mamdani. Photo by Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images

Maher stated that Generation Z has warmed to socialism because they attribute current affordability challenges to capitalism.

“No one wants to be approaching middle age and still writing their name on food before they put it in the fridge. So they’re quitting, quiet quitting, capitalism and texting socialism that they’re down to f**k,” Maher continued. “The thing is, socialism will f**k you. Because socialism, to put it simply, just doesn’t work and has never worked.”

“If you think New York can somehow reinvent this wheel, you’re in for a rude a-woke-ning,” Maher said.

He contended that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), and Mamdani are “not Democrats.”

“They’ll be the first to tell you that. They’re Democratic Socialists, and that’s a very different thing, and I don’t think people know that yet,” he added.

RELATED: Mamdani sells socialism — and Republicans peddle the Temu version

Bernie Sanders. Photo by Joe Maher/Getty Images For Fane

Maher explained that the U.S. already has “a lot of socialism,” citing Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, food stamps, veteran benefits, Pell grants, COVID-era payments, farm subsidies, disability payments, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, corporate bailouts, and the military-industrial complex.

He slammed the Democratic Socialists of America as “radicals” who want “completely open borders.” He also accused the group of “p***y politics,” stating that they required convention attendees in 2025 to submit a negative COVID test. Maher criticized the DSA's request for attendees not to clap but to use “jazz hands” instead, as well as the stipulation against wearing “aggressive scents” during the conference to accommodate those sensitive to sensory overload.

“This is who the Democrats are thinking of following? You know, Chuck Schumer ain’t perfect, but at least he doesn’t crumble into a heap when confronted with Chanel No. 5,” Maher stated.

“You may not clap in the traditional way,” he told his audience.

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Glenn Beck warns: Government reliance is a 'poisoned promise'



The government shutdown may be ending, but it revealed something very important about Americans as a whole — too many rely on the government to survive.

And that is a very dangerous situation to be in.

“Whenever a society gets into this situation, history will show us a poisoned promise begins,” Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck explains.

“The socialists always arrive making all kinds of poison promises,” he says. “And there is a pattern, and it is so ancient it could be scripture. ... Every socialist experiment starts with the same smooth-tongue promise: ‘We are going to make life fair.’”


“Unfortunately for socialists, you know, history keeps impeccable books. The receipts are really, really damning. Fortunately for socialists, nobody ever reads history,” he continues.

These receipts that Glenn pulls out are in the form of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Fidel Castro in Cuba, and Adolf Hitler in Germany.

“This story of socialism is written in blood in ledger books all over the world,” Glenn says. “And it always starts with the promise of equity or equality. And it always leads to the rise of an elite who decides what equality means. And every time it fails, they say, ‘Well, that was just put in the hands of the wrong people.’”

“No, the key word here is not ‘wrong,’ it’s ‘people.’ People. The workers never get the factories. The peasants never receive the land. The poor never get any of the wealth. And it's this story over and over and over again,” he continues.

“Socialism begins with a promise but always ends with a ruling class armed with absolute power,” he says, adding, “Only the names change.”

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'Furry' Democrat running for Congress celebrated Kirk assassination, wants to put MAGA voters in 'hard labor camps'



Graham Platner, the oyster farmer running for the U.S. Senate in Maine, was exposed last month for making a number of damning comments on social media — including posts where he apparently identified as a communist, branded rural white Americans as racists, suggested that service members worried about being raped should buy "Kevlar underwear," and smeared all police officers as "bastards."

Although he has since covered it up, Platner was also outed for having a tattoo of a skull image similar to that popularized by Adolf Hitler's SS elite Nazi guard.

It appears that Platner, who enjoys the continued support from lawmakers including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), is far from the most radical candidate seeking election as a Democrat in 2026.

The homosexual socialist running as a Democrat to represent Michigan's 7th district in Congress has engaged in bloodthirsty and inflammatory rhetoric that makes Platner's remarks seem tame by comparison.

'Radical far-left lunatics like Samuel Smeltzer expose the liberal brain rot that is now the current state of the Democrat Party.'

Samuel Smeltzer, a 36-year-old IT contractor who calls himself Elyon Badger and dresses up in an anthropomorphic "furry" costume, has not only stated that "America deserved 9/11," called Jesus "a communist," recommended killing billionaires, labeled Israel as "an enemy of the United States," advocated the imprisonment of all U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, and repeatedly celebrated Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk's assassination, calling him a "massive loser."

Within an hour of Kirk's passing, Smeltzer wrote on the liberal X knockoff Bluesky, "Good things can happen." Days later, he shared an image of the murdered father of two with the caption, "How can we defeat evil, if evil is mourned when it's defeated?"

RELATED: The left isn’t collapsing — it’s consolidating power

Photo by Trent Nelson/The Salt Lake Tribune/Getty Images

To ensure there was no mistaking his antipathy for the murder victim, the Democratic candidate smeared Kirk as a "white supremacist who preached stochastic terrorism" in an official campaign statement, blaming the shooting on "gun loving Conservative Christians."

The National Republican Congressional Committee called Smeltzer's remarks about Kirk both "dangerous and disgusting" but noted they were unsurprising when only 38% of Democrats think it's always unacceptable to feel joy about the death of a public figure they oppose.

Despite his website promising "compassionate leadership for a just future," Smeltzer vowed in a recent post to "round up EVER [sic] SINGLE red hat wearing MAGA and put them in hard labor camps for the rest of their lives."

While locking up those with whom he disagrees appears to be one of his key objectives, Smeltzer told the Washington Free Beacon that he is running a "health care and tax-the-rich campaign" and would use a role in Congress to advocate for his fellow "furry" fetishists.

"The furry community is the ultimate form of freedom in America, and that's why conservatives hate it and the queer community so much," he told the Beacon.

Smeltzer recently told the LGBT magazine Between the Lines, "The reason I'm leaning into the furry side of things is the Heritage Foundation has targeted the furry community."

"They're going after the queer spaces and organizations where we are allowed to express creative freedom," the self-identified Democratic socialist added.

Smeltzer claimed that other candidates in the Democratic primary like former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink "can only trudge along and drag this broken cart through the mud; they can't fix it."

Brink reportedly did not respond to the Beacon's request for comment.

NRCC spokesman Zach Bannon noted earlier this year, "Radical far-left lunatics like Samuel Smeltzer expose the liberal brain rot that is now the current state of the Democrat Party."

Blaze News has reached out to the Michigan Democratic Party as well as Rep. Tom Barrett, the Republican who presently represents Michigan's 7th congressional district and is running for a second term, for comment.

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Zohran Mamdani’s war on Trump will bankrupt NYC before liberals wake up



Zohran Mamdani has just taken his place as the mayor of the “most powerful city in the world,” but BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales warns it won’t remain that way for long — especially after his victory speech.

“After victory was declared for him, he was very quick to just declare war with President Trump,” Gonzales says, playing a clip of Mamdani yelling, “So, Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching, I have four words for you: Turn the volume up.”

“To get to any of us, you will have to get through all of us,” he yelled.

“You haven’t actually said anything. ... You’re stringing a bunch of words together, and you think that they sound nice and they sound insightful,” Gonzales scoffs.


“But with this in particular, it’s very cute that this man who is now going to be in charge of New York City wants to wage this war against President Trump when in actuality, you’re going to run out of money, Zohran. You’re going to run out of money,” she continues.

“You can’t pay for these policies that you’ve just promised New Yorkers. And if you think for one second President Trump is going to bail you out with federal funding, you are sorely mistaken,” she adds.

In his speech, Mamdani also went after capitalism, claiming that he plans to tear down the system that allowed President Trump to initially be a thriving businessman in New York City — which is capitalism.

“President Trump has already been very clear that he is not going to give federal tax dollars to bail out these cities, these states that are just doing communism. That’s not going to happen. So, you’re going to find out real quick who is going to win that battle,” Gonzales says.

Gonzales predicts Mamdani’s reign will be much like Joe Biden’s, in that his voters won’t realize, or admit, how awful a job he’s done until much too late.

“We will tell them for years, ‘Guys, this is happening. Guys, this is happening.’ And they will call you crazy. ... They’ll tell you you’re a right-wing nutjob. And then, all of a sudden, when it’s too late, they’re like, ‘God, you know what? It turns out this thing that you guys said was happening the whole time that we denied, it turns out you may be right,” she says.

Even CNN host Van Jones reflected on Mamdani’s crazed speech as a bit of “a character switch,” which Gonzales points to as the first of many liberals who will slowly realize the man they voted for doesn’t exist.

“Uh oh, the peaceful Muslim isn’t so peaceful anymore,” Gonzales mocks.

“Have you been paying attention at all? Because there are videos that have existed, that have been posted all over social media, that have shown this guy, again, code-switching, changing his accents depending on who he’s with, which is, we know, what Democrats do all the time,” she continues.

“Van Jones is apparently just catching wind that this guy may not be exactly who he portrayed himself to be, even though videos like this already existed,” she adds.

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Zohran Mamdani becomes first openly socialist mayor of New York City



Democrat candidate Zohran Mamdani became the first openly socialist candidate to sweep the New York City mayoral race Tuesday night.

Mamdani secured 50% of the vote, while independent candidate and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo won 41.4%,according to the Associated Press. Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa, who was widely regarded as a spoiler candidate for Cuomo, won just 7.7% of the vote.

His brazen embrace of socialism raised eyebrows across the political spectrum.

Current New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) did attempt to run for re-election, but eventually dropped his bid in September.

RELATED: Is Trump meddling with Mamdani's candidacy?

Photo by Hiroko Masuike-Pool/Getty Images

Mamdani consistently campaigned on progressive policies, offering a socialist antidote to New Yorkers who struggled with affordability. Some of these policies include rent freezes, free buses, city-run grocery stores, and free child care.

Although this clearly appealed to residents of America's most expensive city, his brazen embrace of socialism raised eyebrows across the political spectrum. Despite living in Brooklyn, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D) declined to say whether he voted for the Democrat candidate.

Zohran's candidacy created a unique alliance between President Donald Trump and Cuomo. Leading up to the election, Trump urged New Yorkers to vote for Cuomo instead of Mamdani or even Sliwa, the Republican candidate.

RELATED: Zohran Mamdani’s Soviet dream for New York City

Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

"I would much rather see a Democrat, who has had a Record of Success, WIN, than a Communist with no experience and a Record of COMPLETE AND TOTAL FAILURE," Trump said in a Truth Social post Tuesday. "He was nothing as an Assemblyman, ranked at the bottom of the class and, as Mayor of potentially, again, the Greatest City in the World, HE HAS NO CHANCE to bring it back to its former Glory!"

"We must also remember this — A vote for Curtis Sliwa (who looks much better without the beret!) is a vote for Mamdani," Trump added. "Whether you personally like Andrew Cuomo or not, you really have no choice. You must vote for him, and hope he does a fantastic job. He is capable of it, Mamdani is not!"

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A Mamdani win could spark largest mass exodus in US history



With socialist candidate Zohran Mamdani poised to become New York City’s next mayor, BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales is sounding the alarm on what she says could be a “major catastrophe.”

“As well as the polls can tell, he is about to win as mayor in New York City. And, you know, you might think, like, ‘Well, let’s just let him run this New York City, this leftist s**thole, into the ground. Just let him do that. You get what you vote for, that’s fine,’” Gonzales says on “Sara Gonzales Unfiltered.”

“Well, the problem is that his policies could bankrupt the city, which we’ve already talked about, and he could have just another mass exodus from New York, which would really spell trouble for the state,” she continues.

And a mass exodus could definitely be in the cards if he wins, as indicated by a new Daily Mail poll that asked New Yorkers if they plan to stay or leave if Mamdani gets elected.


Nine percent of those who answered the poll said that they would “definitely leave.”

“You’re like, ‘Oh, it’s only 9% — 59% said they would stay; 25% said they would consider leaving. Only 9% said that they would definitely leave.’ But 9% of New Yorkers is 765,000 people. I mean, that would be one of the biggest mass exoduses in American history,” Gonzales says.

“Now, then you take into consideration that 25% who are considering leaving. If they left, that’s 2.12 million people leaving New York City. Now, you’re talking about an economic collapse for the city, just because Zohran Mamdani wins,” she continues.

But it gets worse, because it’s not going to be the poor that are leaving.

“His plan to tax the rich is behind this. The top 1% of earners in New York pay around half the city’s income taxes. So, who is going to pay for all of this s**t if all of the top earners are leaving?” Gonzales asks.

“We already saw this play out in places [like] California. When you rely on the top 1% of earners and the top 1% of earners actually have a whole lot of income, disposable income, to just move — if you elect a radical Muslim communist, they’re just going to do that. And then you won’t be able to tax them,” she continues.

“So, how is he going to pay for all of this free s**t — the government-run grocery stores, the free buses? I’ll use air quotes because we all know none of this is actually free. Then all the other city services are going to start circling the drain. You’re going to have fewer funds for police, for fire, for transit,” she says.

“Then comes real estate issues. You’ll have a rise in vacancies. The property values, in turn, are going to plunge. The lenders are going to get hit. More rich people are going to snap up properties across the country, which is going to cause real estate to rise everywhere else,” she adds.

And all of this will lead to “New York City becoming unrecognizable as the global powerhouse that it once was.”

“We’re talking about a major catastrophe here,” she adds.

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Radicals decry demise of Teen Vogue — the propaganda rag that pushed anal sex and Marx on minors



Teen Vogue was originally launched in 2003 as a teenage girl-targeting print counterpart to publisher Condé Nast's fashion magazine Vogue. Since its quarterly print run was brought to an end in 2017, the leftist propaganda mill continued independently online — until now.

Radicals are clutching pearls as it is clear that the publication will survive in name but not in spirit.

'19 Best Anal Lubes for Slick and Pain-Free Insertion.'

Teen Vogue's leftist editor in chief Versha Sharma is leaving the company, and Teen Vogue is being absorbed into Vogue.com.

According to Vogue, "the title will remain a distinct editorial property, with its own identity and mission"; however, it will now "focus its content on career development, cultural leadership, and other issues that matter most to young people."

The union representing the propagandists at Teen Vogue condemned the decision to park the blog under the broader Vogue.com umbrella, complaining that the shake-up was "disproportionately impacting marginalized employees," as the majority of those now allegedly facing termination are "BIPOC women or trans."

Lex McMenamin, the plural-pronoun-providing radical who served as the blog's news and politics editor since 2021, confirmed that she was laid off along with multiple other staffers on Monday, noting, "To my knowledge, after today, there will be no politics staffers at Teen Vogue."

Condé United, the union representing writers at the blog, suggested that the move was "clearly designed to blunt the award-winning magazine's insightful journalism at a time when it is needed the most."

Some of the usual suspects have echoed this suggestion that the content published on the blog under Sharma's leadership was of journalistic value.

Alejandra Caraballo, a transvestite activist and Harvard Law School clinical instructor, for instance, wrote, "They just gutted Teen Vogue which had top notch political journalism. The media is continuing to purge any sort of political dissent to Trump and the oligarchs."

Caraballo added, "It's resegregation in real time."

Cross-dressing Montana state Rep. Zooey Zephyr (D) stated, "The loss of the politics staff at Teen Vogue is an absolute travesty. In a media marketplace that has been decimated by billionaires, tepid takes, and AI slop, Teen Vogue often stood out as a bastion of principled, purposeful journalism."

Here are a few examples of the supposed "principled, purposeful journalism" Teen Vogue has been churning out in recent years:

  • "How to Finger Someone (Including Yourself), According to Sexperts" — Oct. 31, 2025;
  • "Anal Sex: Safety, How tos, Tips, and More" — Nov. 12, 2019;
  • "The Polyamory Workbook: How I Discovered Nonmonogamy" — Nov. 15, 2022;
  • "6 Intersex People on Why Gender-Affirming Care Bans Are Bad for Everyone" — June 13, 2025; and
  • "19 Best Anal Lubes for Slick and Pain-Free Insertion" — June 3, 2023.

The publication has, in fairness, not limited itself to giving minors advice on sodomy and the latest in sex-toy technology.

It has also often promoted gender ideology and abortion — see the Jan. 23, 2025, piece titled "The Sex Lives of College Girls Needs an Abortion Storyline" — and pushed a significant amount of leftist agitprop.

RELATED: Assata Shakur and 6 more: A rogues' gallery of leftist America's heroes

Photo by Phillip Faraone/Getty Images

For instance, in a piece published last month titled "Trump and Republicans Want to 'Un-Cancel' Columbus Day, Erasing Indigenous Peoples Day," the blog suggested that Christopher Columbus was little more than an Italian "who brought disease, colonization, and enslavement" to the Americas.

Amid the deadly Black Lives Matter riots in 2020, Teen Vogue published a list of bail funds to which readers could contribute in order to spring rioters from jail.

In a politics article explaining how teens can "learn the legacy of Marx's ideas and how they're relevant to the current political climate," the author emphasized to teens that they should think like pinkos even if they aren't card-carrying communists: "While you may not necessarily identify as a Marxist, socialist, or communist, you can still use Karl Marx’s ideas to use history and class struggles to better understand how the current sociopolitical climate in America came to be."

Teen Vogue made clear that thinking like Marx was acceptable but that conservative thought and lifestyles were beyond the pale.

A December Teen Vogue op-ed warned about the threat posed to America's "progressive new future" by those young women who would dare embrace traditional gender roles and stay home to tend children.

"With clearly defined gender roles and responsibilities, trad wife and traditional masculine content in the manopshere works to convince a new generation of would-be population breeders and workers to embrace fundamentalist values," said the piece. "This is not a new trend but an old belief system with worn methods that perform until people who know better, choose better.'

While happy to characterize conservatives as extremists, Teen Vogue routinely painted leftist radicals and thugs as saints, printing, for instance, a hagiography for convicted cop-killer and Marxist fugitive Assata Shakur.

Shakur was a member of a terrorist militant group, the Black Liberation Army. She was convicted in 1977 of the first-degree murder of New Jersey Trooper Werner Foerster. Although she was supposed to spend her life in prison, she escaped in 1979 to communist Cuba.

Teen Vogue's obituary for the cop-killer, titled "Assata Shakur Was a Black Revolutionary Who Fought for Freedom Even in Exile," cast doubt on her guilt and concluded, "To many, including those posting in honor of her after her death, Shakur will be remembered as a revolutionary who fought for her freedom and won."

Chloe Malle, Vogue's head of editorial content, said in a statement, "I remember when Teen Vogue launched. I read every page on the bus home from cross-country practice. I loved it then, and I love and respect it now and am committed to continuing and supporting its point of view and sensibility."

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Zohran Mamdani’s Soviet dream for New York City



At a packed rally in Queens on Sunday, New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani reinforced his far-left vision for remaking America’s largest city.

Among his proposals: government-run grocery stores, free public transportation, 200,000 government-built apartments, universal childcare, and a rent freeze for the city’s one million rent-stabilized apartments.

Only a socialist could argue that taking away people’s property rights and centralizing power enhances individual freedom.

The price tag for Mamdani’s most ambitious ideas comes to nearly $7 billion a year — more than the city’s entire police budget.

Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist, shared the stage with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), two of the country’s best-known socialist stars. Both praised Mamdani as the future of progressive politics.

Like Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, Mamdani claims he can fund his agenda by taxing the rich and targeting corporations. He wants to raise the top corporate tax rate from 7.25% to 11.5% and increase the city’s income tax by two percentage points for anyone earning $1 million or more.

Those ideas have energized his base and helped him surge in the polls. Yet his lead is not secure. Critics from both parties warn that Mamdani’s high-tax, high-spending platform would drive wealthy residents and businesses out of New York, worsening the city’s economic and fiscal problems.

But Mamdani’s biggest obstacle isn’t fiscal — it’s philosophical.

Even in deep-blue New York, voters hesitate to hand power to a democratic socialist. Socialism’s record is clear: It limits freedom, crushes economies, and breeds instability.

To ease those fears, Mamdani’s campaign has begun to reframe socialism as a path to freedom rather than its enemy. At his rally over the weekend, he told the crowd: “No New Yorker should ever be priced out of anything they need to survive. ... It is government’s job to deliver that dignity.” Then he added, “Dignity, my friends, is another way of saying freedom.”

In Mamdani’s view, freedom comes from the state guaranteeing life’s essentials — food, housing, transportation, childcare. To provide those things, government must seize and redistribute private wealth. Mamdani calls this process “delivering dignity,” which he equates with liberty itself.

That logic turns freedom on its head. Only a socialist could argue that taking away people’s property rights and centralizing power enhances individual freedom.

This rhetorical sleight of hand is not new. It’s straight from the socialist and communist propaganda of the 20th century.

Article 39 of the 1936 Soviet Constitution claimed that socialism “ensures enlargement of the rights and freedoms of citizens.” Fidel Castro’s 1976 Cuban Constitution promised “the freedom and full dignity of man” through a state guarantee of social services.

Even Joseph Stalin cloaked authoritarianism in the language of freedom. In a 1936 interview, he insisted that socialism was built “for the sake of real personal liberty,” arguing that “real liberty can exist only where there is no unemployment and poverty.”

Intentionally or not, Mamdani’s speeches echo those same lines. And he’s far from the first democratic socialist to do so. Julius Nyerere in Tanzania, Olof Palme in Sweden, and Aneurin Bevan in Britain all used similar arguments to justify state expansion in the name of “freedom.”

RELATED:Why Zohran Mamdani will be ‘one of the most catastrophic mayors ever’

Photo by Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images via Getty Images

That’s no coincidence. Mamdani is a student of socialist history, and his rhetoric mirrors the Marxist premise that true liberty requires the abolition of private property. In his 1844 essay “Private Property and Communism,” Karl Marx wrote, “The abolition of private property is therefore the complete emancipation of all human senses and qualities.”

Every socialist movement since has repeated that creed, always promising “real freedom” while consolidating control over wealth, work, and speech.

History shows what those promises yield: less freedom, not more. The more government collectivizes decision-making, the less room individuals have to think, speak, or prosper.

New York City has enormous problems, but reviving the century’s old, failed ideas of socialism won’t solve them. If anything, they’ll accelerate decline.

The city’s revival depends on the principles that built it into a global capital in the first place — limited government, free markets, low taxes, and the liberty to rise through one’s own effort.

If Mamdani truly wants to bring dignity and freedom to New Yorkers, he should reject the hollow slogans of socialism and embrace the real promise of liberty that made America — and New York — great.

SHOCK POLL: Republican leads NY Governor Hochul one year before the election



New York City voters may be on a different page than the rest of the state.

Despite Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani maintaining a significant advantage in the polls ahead of the NYC mayoral election, one Republican is looking to flip the state red next year.

For example, 60% of registered voters in New York ... either strongly support or somewhat support returning to the pre-2019 bail laws.

RealClearPolitics has Mamdani boasting a 15-point lead average across the last six polls in October. With around 46 points, Mamdani's lead has only widened since July.

In new numbers from the Manhattan Institute, the Democratic socialist and alleged communist maintains that lead over former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a former Democrat now representing the Fight and Deliver Party.

Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa is third, 24 points behind Mamdani and nine points behind Cuomo.

At the same time, however, pollsters asked respondents how they would vote if the 2026 N.Y. gubernatorial election were held today.

Shockingly, Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik (N.Y.) held a slim margin over Democrat Governor Kathy Hochul. Stefanik's lead was just one point, 43% to 42%, while "someone else" had 9% support, and "not sure" was at 7%.

RELATED: LGBTQ champion Zohran Mamdani faces backlash over photo with 'anti-homosexuality' Ugandan lawmaker

Photo by Andres Kudacki/Getty Images

Stefanik's team responded to the news:

"In a heavily Democrat-leaning state, an independent poll that is heavily weighted toward registered Democrat voters shows Republican Elise Stefanik leading Democrat Governor Kathy Hochul in a head-to-head matchup," Stefanik's spokesperson Bernadette Breslin said in a press release.

Breslin said it was the first time in decades that any Republican candidate for governor of New York has polled ahead of a Democrat incumbent.

The remarks continued, "In a decision that she will come to regret, Kathy Hochul lives up to her title as the worst governor in America when she chose to bend the knee and put New Yorkers LAST by desperately endorsing the defund the police, tax-hiking, raging anti-Semite socialist Zohran Mamdani who will destroy New York."

Though rumors have swirled for months that Stefanik intends to run for governor, she has not formally announced her candidacy. Reports indicate that she will announce sometime after the November 4 election.

RELATED: Cuomo narrows gap in new poll

Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images

While Mamdani maintains a strong lead in the city, some of his progressive policy positions range from somewhat unpopular to widely unpopular in updated polling.

For example, 60% of registered voters in New York, including 49% of Democrats, either strongly support or somewhat support returning to the pre-2019 bail laws. This pertains to allowing individuals to be "released until trial rather than being held."

Mamdani has said he wants to reduce the jail population, specifically at Rikers Island.

One of Mamdani's biggest promises, free bus services, saw 58% of New York City respondents oppose the idea. This figure included 48% of Democrats. Meanwhile, 42% of Democrats agreed with the idea that eliminating fares would make public transit more affordable and efficient for working New Yorkers while reducing conflicts between riders and operators.

Other topics — like New York's gifted and talented programs, corporate taxation, and fare evasion — were covered in polling conducted with 600 likely voters in the NYC mayoral election and 300 registered voters across New York state between October 22 and 26. The poll was weighted to reflect the electorate.

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