“And so it begins.”
These were the only words President Donald Trump shared on the evening when Zohran Mamdani made history as New York’s inaugural Democratic Socialist mayor.
Trump’s succinct statement on his social media platform, Truth Social, clearly indicated the onset of a political standoff.
Zohran Mamdani, a 34-year-old Democrat originally from Uganda, responded during his victory speech with his own pointed remark, knowing the stakes of this election.
“Turn up the volume,” Mamdani asserted, aware that Trump, whose business ventures have significantly altered New York’s landscape, would be tuning in.
According to insiders from the West Wing, as reported by the Daily Mail, Trump will be closely monitoring Mamdani’s actions as he leads the nation’s largest city, fearing what he describes as a “communist agenda.”
The response from Pennsylvania Avenue could be severe, and Trump’s inner circle is already looking at ways to bring Mamdani back down to earth.
‘The president will be watching to see if Mamdani keeps up the tough-guy act by poking the bear,’ one White House adviser told the Daily Mail. ‘That’s a surefire way to trigger Trump’s anger and face some heavy consequences.’
‘And so it begins.’ Those were the only four words uttered by President Donald Trump on the night Zohran Mamdani was crowned New York’s first Democratic Socialist mayor
It was the opening salvo in a political duel between two sharply opposing figures now defining the future of their parties.
Trump had already warned he would punish New York City if voters installed a ‘communist’ in City Hall.
With Mamdani’s win on Tuesday, the president and his aides in Washington are weighing how to confront the self-proclaimed socialist now preparing to take charge of America’s greatest city.
Washington insiders were stunned by how personal and aggressive Mamdani’s rhetoric was toward Trump on election night.
One Republican strategist told the Daily Mail it might be wiser for the president to wait for Mamdani’s socialist policies to collapse under their own weight, then point to the self-inflicted pain he brought on New Yorkers.
Others in Trump’s orbit want him to go on the attack, even considering a lawsuit to challenge Mamdani’s citizenship for ‘fraud’.
Mamdani was born in Uganda in 1991 and became a naturalized US citizen in 2018.
His wife of less than a year, glamorous artist Rama Duwaji, will become the city’s first Gen Z First Lady.
Over two million people turned out to vote, the highest number, says the New York Board of Elections, since 1969.
Republican members of Congress, including Randy Fine of Florida and Andy Ogles of Tennessee, have urged the Department of Justice to open denaturalization proceedings, arguing that Mamdani concealed his past association with ‘communist or totalitarian organizations’.
‘Going after his citizenship would be the ultimate blow against his upstart push for socialism,’ said one strategist.
But others fear such a move could backfire. ‘Attack him personally and you risk turning him into a martyr,’ warned another.
Threatening to cut funding for New York City could also hurt Republicans running in key House races in 2026.
‘You don’t necessarily want to make it about funding and end up hurting Republican candidates right before the election,’ one insider said, pointing to Rep Elise Stefanik’s campaign for New York governor announced on Friday.
Donald Trump speaks on his phone on Marine One at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on his way to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida
Since the election, Trump has avoided naming Mamdani directly, referring to him only as ‘the communist in New York City’ or ‘my little communist’.
Before polling day, he told supporters it would be ‘hard’ to keep sending federal 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’.
The president insists the results of Mamdani’s socialist experiment will soon speak for themselves.
‘If he is a communist, there’s not going to be a lot of activity,’ Trump told the Daily Mail in the Oval Office on Thursday.
‘So you wouldn’t need the bridges and tunnels and all the different things that are being planned for New York.’
He also confirmed that ICE raids would continue, despite the left-wing backlash that propelled Mamdani’s rise.
‘If they are criminals, we want to get them out,’ he said.
‘Ideally we wouldn’t have to do it because he would send the criminals out himself, but that seems to be unlikely.’
For now, Trump appears content to smear the entire Democratic Party with what he calls the ‘stink of socialism’.
The day after the election he told supporters in Florida that Democrats had ‘installed a COMMUNIST as the mayor’, warning the Hispanic business community that New York was adopting the same failed policies as ‘communist Cuba or socialist Venezuela’.
Mamdani’s election, he said, would drive New Yorkers to flee to Florida to escape his ‘communist regime’.
‘We lost a little bit of sovereignty last night in New York,’ Trump added, ‘but we’ll take care of it – don’t worry about it.’
