Trump Tries, Fails to Attack Zohran Mamdani

Trump has fired off his first two social media posts about Zohran Mamdani, the newly elected Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City. Until Wednesday afternoon, the president had been mum on Mamdani, who won the Democratic primary handily Tuesday evening against front-runner and former Mayor Andrew Cuomo.

On the campaign trail, the 33-year-old progressive proudly styled himself as “Donald Trump’s worst nightmare, as a progressive, Muslim immigrant who actually fights for the things that I believe in.” During his victory speech, Mamdani vowed, if elected, to use his power to “reject Donald Trump’s fascism, to stop ICE agents from deporting our neighbors, and to govern our city as a model for the Democratic Party.”

Though the president has in the past been known to concoct catchy epithets and lines of attack against his opponents, Trump’s reaction to Mamdani fell flat—amounting to stale red-baiting and an absurd attempt to argue that Mamdani is not the sharp, telegenic candidate that even many of his ideological foes have recognized him to be.

“It’s finally happened,” Trump posted on Truth Social Wednesday afternoon, “the Democrats have crossed the line.”

Calling the democratic socialist candidate “a 100% Communist Lunatic,” Trump wrote, “We’ve had Radical Lefties before, but this is getting a little ridiculous,” before fixating on Mamdani’s style, writing, quite unconvincingly, “He looks TERRIBLE, his voice is grating, he’s not very smart.” (One odd part about this line of attack is that Mamdani, like Trump, is rarely pictured not wearing a suit.)

Trump also tried to lump Mamdani in with some of MAGA’s bêtes noires—noting that he is endorsed by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other progressive lawmakers. Trump added that Senator Chuck Schumer is “groveling over him.” (On Wednesday, Schumer congratulated but stopped short of officially endorsing Mamdani.)

Moments later, Trump shared a follow-up post, in which he daydreamed about a future Democratic presidential ticket headed by progressive Representatives Jasmine Crockett and Ocasio-Cortez. And Mamdani was there too—“Added together with our future Communist Mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, and our Country is really SCREWED!” Trump wrote.

Prior to Trump’s social media posts, the most notable reaction to Mamdani’s victory from the White House had been that of Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who accounted for Mamdami’s victory and vast popularity by invoking the white nationalist “great replacement theory.”

If you don’t support MAGA “values,” you might not be allowed to stay in this country.

The official social media account for the office of Citizenship and Immigration Services threatened visa and green card holders Wednesday, declaring that permanent residence in the U.S. is a “privilege” dependent on an applicant’s alignment with Trumpian politics.

“Coming to America and receiving a visa or green card is a privilege. Our laws and values must be respected,” the agency wrote. “If you advocate for violence, endorse or support terrorist activity, or encourage others to do so, you are no longer eligible to stay in the U.S.”

It was not clear from the statement if that meant every possible legal infraction—from parking tickets to loitering or seatbelt violations—could lead to deportation. Further still, it was even less clear what “values” the agency was referring to, or how an immigrant might be able to work within those in order to stay in the country.

Politico’s senior legal affairs reporter Josh Gerstein noted that the administration’s new, principle-based directive is not required by law.

“For one thing, we’d have to define them, which I don’t think we’ve done,” Gerstein wrote on X. “Australia does require it and they’ve laid them out.”

But the Trump administration has so far attempted to boot noncitizens out of the country for unconstitutional reasons, likening their First Amendment–protected political dissent rights to a vague national security risk, or forcing out tattooed immigrants without due process under the Alien Enemies Act by claiming that they were gang members.

In April, a U.S. circuit judge stated that the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to force immigrants out of the country had treated asylum-seekers worse than prior presidents treated actual German Nazis during World War II.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams experienced some awkward technical difficulties on Wednesday while phoning in to NewsMax from his car to offer criticism of Democratic Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. 

“Yes, can you hear me now? Hello? I can hear you fine, can you hear me?” Adams said, in response to a question from the anchor about how “terrifying” Mamdani is. 

After almost 30 seconds he figured it out. 

“And you’re correct, when you think about [Mamdani’s] comments about our law enforcement officers who … they put their lives on the line all the time, and every day. His comments toward them were extremely offensive.” 

This was the second stop of Adams’s anti-Mamdani fearmongering campaign. The embattled mayor also made a chummy appearance on Fox & Friends that morning. 

“He’s a snake oil salesman. He will say and do anything to get elected,” said Adams. “Think about this one moment. He wants to raise tax on the 1 percent of New Yorkers, higher-income earners. As the mayor, you don’t have the authority to do that. You know who has the authority to do that? An assemblyman, which he is. He wants to do free buses, he could’ve done it at assemblyman. He doesn’t understand the power of government and how you must make sure you improve your economy, raise the standard of living, and this is what we’ve done in the city.… I’m never going to quit for the city that I love.”  

The current mayor has absolutely no ground to stand on here. He became embroiled in scandal after he was federally indicted on charges of bribery, wire fraud, and soliciting political donations from a number of foreign nationals connected to the Turkish government. The only reason he isn’t still being investigated, on trial, or even in prison is because he bent over backward to make himself useful to President Trump and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

Adams is running a campaign that no one in New York City wants. All he can do is talk about how scary Mamdani is because his own platform is devoid of legitimacy. 

Adams and Mamdami, among others, will face off in the general election on November 4. 

Donald Trump is now targeting journalists by name as he spirals about the leaked Pentagon report undermining his claims about the U.S. military strikes in Iran.

Trump called out CNN’s national security correspondent Natasha Bertrand in a post on Truth Social Wednesday, after she reported on an “early assessment” that found that the American military strike on three Iranian nuclear facilities had only set the country’s capabilities back by months—not years.

“Natasha Bertrand should be FIRED from CNN! I watched her for three days doing Fake News. She should be IMMEDIATELY reprimanded, and then thrown out ‘like a dog,’” Trump railed.

In his post, the president claimed Bertrand had “lied” in her reporting about Iran because she had also lied in her reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop.

In 2020, Bertrand had reported on a letter signed by more than 50 former senior intelligence officials who said that the allegedly leaked emails from Biden’s computer had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

Since it was first reported on, the laptop has proved to be authentic, but many of Republicans’ allegations that it tied the Bidens to corrupt foreign business dealings have not been proven. But Bertrand wasn’t lying. She accurately and dispassionately reported on an official document—it just happened to say something with which Trump disagreed.

Now Trump claimed that Betrand was “attempting to destroy our Patriot Pilots by making them look bad when, in fact, they did a GREAT job and hit ‘pay dirt’—TOTAL OBLITERATION!

“She should not be allowed to work at Fake News CNN. It’s people like her who destroyed the reputation of a once great Network. Her slant was so obviously negative, besides, she doesn’t have what it takes to be an on camera correspondent, not even close. FIRE NATASHA!” Trump wrote.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also took a swipe at Bertrand in a post on X. “This CNN story was written by the same ‘reporter’ who wrote the very first FAKE NEWS story claiming the Hunter Biden laptop was disinformation,” wrote the preternaturally antagonistic Leavitt.

CNN released a statement Wednesday defending Bertrand and her reporting. “We stand 100% behind Natasha Bertrand’s journalism and specifically her and her colleagues’ reporting of the early intelligence assessment of the U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities,” the statement said. “CNN’s reporting made clear that this was an initial finding that could change with additional intelligence. We have extensively covered President Trump’s own deep skepticism about it.”

The president, who was quick to claim that the mission was a complete success, had been fuming about the report all day at a NATO summit, claiming that the intelligence had been “very inconclusive.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth dismissed the report as “low assessment,” meaning there was low confidence in the data. Hegseth, who oversaw the agency where the leak originated, was also quick to blame the media who reported on it.

The White House is planning on getting less transparent under Donald Trump’s watch.

The Trump administration is planning to limit the amount of classified information it shares with Congress, four sources told Axios Wednesday. That will involve posting less on CAPNET, a system used to share information between the White House and Congress, as part of a “war on leakers,” one senior White House official told the publication.

The decision follows an intelligence leak Tuesday that revealed the U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities was less successful than the president had advertised.

The attack, conducted Saturday without the express approval of Congress, damaged facilities in Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan. A battle damage assessment by the Pentagon’s intelligence arm determined that the missile barrage only set Iran’s nuclear program back by a few months, rather than the “years” that Trump had advertised, CNN reported. The report was put on CAPNET late Monday, and by Tuesday afternoon, several outlets had already written about the back-channel evaluation.

“Go figure: Almost as soon as we put the information on CAPNET, it leaks,” an administration source told Axios. “There’s no reason to do this again.”

The White House immediately rejected the report Tuesday, rebuffing the whistleblower as a “low-level loser,” though it still acknowledged that the report had been classified as “top secret.” On Wednesday, the administration had apparently thrown the U.S. intelligence out the window altogether, siding instead with a narrative pushed by the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission that the attacks had “rendered the enrichment facility inoperable.”

“The FBI is investigating the leak,” one source told Axios. “The intelligence community is figuring out how to tighten up their processes so we don’t have ‘Deep State’ actors leaking parts of intel analysis that have ‘low confidence’ to the media.”

But the decision isn’t likely to sit well with public representatives, who were already frustrated and upset by the president’s decision to keep them in the dark ahead of conducting airstrikes on Iran: Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez traded barbs with Trump after she wrote online that the unauthorized attack is grounds for impeachment, while Republican Representative Thomas Massie argued that war with Iran was not constitutional, chastising House Republican leadership for failing to call lawmakers back to Congress at such a critical time.