The real reason Donald Trump is afraid of Zohran Mamdani

He's threatened by Mamdani's authentic populism, engaged in distractions and ridiculous lies. And some in the lazy corporate media parrot him. Democrats will suffer if they fall into the trap.

Last week, The New York Times published a story about New York’s mayoral race that not so surprisingly buried the lede. The piece, as usual for the Times, also attributed superpowers to Donald Trump.

According to the Times headline and framing—“Trump Weighs Getting Involved in New York City Mayor’s Race"—Trump is thinking about trying to influence the race by backing a candidate who can beat Zohran Mamdani, who electrified Democrats across the city when he won the primary by double digits in June, trouncing Andrew Cuomo. The former governor is now running as an independent, as is the corrupt, embattled New York Mayor Eric Adams (who chose not to run as a Democrat), hoping to be re-elected.

The Times embarrassingly treated the idea that Trump, who is radioactive in New York City — despite having won over some Democratic voters in 2024, most of whom have now soured on him in polls—could actually help beat an opponent of the Democratic candidate in a largely Democratic city.

Sure, Trump’s intentions and actions are a story, but one that should be treated—and framed—much more skeptically. Instead, the Times gives us this suspenseful, melodramatic subhead: “The possibility that the president will seek to intercede could inject an element of unpredictability into an already fractious contest.”

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Buried in the piece is the bigger news that should have led and framed the piece: Trump and Cuomo—who have been fierce combatants, with the Trump DOJ now investigating Cuomo—actually spoke recently. As Mamdani pointed out, this shows a “coordination” between Trump and Cuomo, who is backed by billionaires, including those close to Trump, who are trying to defeat Mamdani by using “democratic socialism” as a boogeyman. (Cuomo denied speaking with Trump about the race.)

Even if the Times didn’t want to go as far as “coordination” or “conspiring,” the phone call showed Trump wasn’t “weighing” getting involved; he was already wading into the race, which is the news.

According to the Times, Trump’s interest in getting involved is because “he is concerned” about the city, which, according to one ally quoted, he “loves.” The Times attributes Trump’s concerns to his baseless claims and demagoguery, such as his calling Mamdani a “communist lunatic.”

But as we all know, Trump doesn’t have “concern” for any person, place or thing except himself.

What Trump is actually afraid of is something Mamdani has made clear in interviews since his primary win, and which political observers have also underscored: Mamdani actually won over many of the Democratic voters in New York who’d taken a chance on Trump and his economic promises in 2024, and who have since realized they were duped. (This was, of course, a small percent of voters, but in a city of eight million it’s enough for political analysts to make an assessment about).

Mamdani’s intense focus on affordability—the cost of housing, groceries, transportation and other everyday items and activities — connected with people all across the city, just as Trump’s tariff policy is causing massive uncertainty and bolstering inflation.

One of Mamdani’s first viral videos of his campaign was, in fact, a series of interviews with people in Queens who voted for Trump. He asked them why they backed Trump, and then championed their concerns about the economy, with the video showing him ultimately getting the backing of some of them for his mayoral run.

Trump is melting down over jobs numbers and other indicators that show the country possibly heading toward a recession. His intense focus on Mamdani, trying every way to make him into a monster, not only betrays his fears that the economy could be a disaster for Republicans in the mid-terms; he’s worried that Democrats would, if smart, emulate Mamdani’s authentic populism.

In one of his first major interviews after winning the primary, Mamdani noted, as The Guardian put it, that his “leftwing populist victory can be replicated across US.” On “Meet the Press,” Mamdani responded to Trump’s attacks by saying Trump, “ultimately is trying to distract from what I’m fighting for—and I’m fighting for the very working people that he ran a campaign to empower that he has since then betrayed.”

Trump saw all of this and surely was unnerved, inspiring his attacks. Some political observers did focus on how, though the issues in New York differ from a lot of the rest of the country, and though the city is a large, liberal place, Mamdani offered a basic blueprint for Democrats with regard to his focus and passion. What’s disappointing is that many Democratic leaders haven’t gotten the message.

Some Democratic leaders in New York—like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries—still haven’t endorsed Mamdani. More concerning, however, is that many Democratic politicians think the future is about going in the opposite direction. Too much of the media continually pushes the “Dems in disarray” narrative even as Democrats have won or over-performed in every special election this year, running on progressive ideas and against Trump.

The Washington Post over the weekend resurrected Bill Clinton’s so-called “Sister Souljah” moment in a piece about Democrats running for the presidency in 2028, pining for Democrats to slap down the left, which includes the party’s diverse base of minorities. The piece showcased 2028 Democratic hopefuls doing so:

As prominent Democrats begin testing the waters for potential 2028 presidential runs, some have been explicitly rejecting tenets of liberal orthodoxy in high-profile ways, often in venues that might attract independent or pro-Trump listeners.

It presented a round-up that included everyone from Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts focusing on trans athletes and Arizona’s Senator Ruben Gallego co-sponsoring the odious Laken Riley Act, to California Gov. Gavin Newsom joining yet another far-right extremists’ podcast and Pete Buttigieg saying Democrats were too quick to defend the Department of Education.

"It is wrong to burn down the Department of Education, but I actually think it's also wrong to suppose that the Department of Education was just right in 2024," Buttigieg told NPR. Like Newsom and Moulton, Buttigieg also stated that female trans athletes in women’s and girls’ sports “raise serious fairness” issues, ceding to the right-wing MAGA claim when there have been studies debunking this—and we’re talking about an issue that affects a tiny percentage of people.

All of this is not only caving to the MAGA right’s discriminatory framing on a variety of issues; it’s wrong-headed, counter-productive politics. Mamdani ran on supporting trans rights—including pledging $30 million in gender-affirming care—and defended the rights of LGBTQ people, immigrants, and many others, much of which I discussed with him when he appeared on my SiriusXM program in the spring.

Sure, it’s New York. But there’s still a diversity of opinions on these and other issues. Mamdani greatly emphasized his core issue of affordability. No matter what people thought of his positions on many other issues, they voted for Mamdani on the issue they cared most about, and for which he offered a lot of details and showed great passion.

And that is what Trump and the GOP are most worried about—to where Trump is obsessed with demonizing Mamdani—particularly since some voters who backed Trump realized they made a mistake. Democrats are falling into a trap if they follow the GOP framing rather than replicating what Mamdani has done.