There was a single interruption at New York Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani’s campaign event with Sen. Bernie Sanders in Brooklyn on Saturday.
Just as the progressive heavyweights prepared to begin the latest event on Sanders’ national “Fighting Oligarchy” tour, an older man wearing a shirt bearing the Cuban flag heckled the mayoral candidate.
“You are a communist,” the protester yelled. “This is not Cuba, you fool!”
The message from the protester, who was promptly removed from the event, echoed rhetoric amplified in recent weeks by President Donald Trump, who has inserted himself as a major player in the high-stakes mayoral race.
Noting the success of Mamdani’s campaign, Trump has already framed him as a Democratic foil, teasing high-profile clashes with the 33-year-old progressive should he be elected.
“We’ll get used to a communist,” Trump said at an Oval Office event on Friday. “He’s going to have to go through the White House and get approvals for everything, and we’re going to make sure that New York is not hurt.”
One day after that remark, Mamdani issued a response that could apply equally to both his heckler and Trump.
“You know that something has changed when it’s not enough to call us democratic socialists anymore,” Mamdani said at Saturday’s event. “He knows what we know, which is that the fight for each and every person to live a dignified life is a fight that is very popular across this country.”
The interaction was one of several moments at the Brooklyn campaign event that demonstrated how Mamdani will confront Trump, in addition to his mayoral rivals, in his bid to lead the nation’s largest city. He condemned both Trump’s policies as well as the president’s growing influence in the race, likening him to hedge fund manager Bill Ackman and DoorDash — both of which donated to a super PAC supporting former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the mayoral race.
“This is a city where we will choose our own mayor,” Mamdani told his audience. “It’s not going to be Donald Trump, it’s not going to be Bill Ackman. It’s not going to be Door Dash. We will choose our mayor.”
The New York Times reported this week that allies of Trump had sought to deepen their influence in the race by urging two of Mamdani’s competitors, Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa and incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, to leave the race in a bid to boost Cuomo’s campaign.
“I would say that Cuomo might have a chance of winning if it was a one-on-one. If it’s not one-on-one, it’s going to be a hard race,” Trump said Friday.
Sanders took aim at Trump’s involvement in the election, questioning what he and other Mamdani foes “are afraid of.”
“You’ve got people like Bill Ackman and others saying openly, front page to the newspapers, we will spend as much as it takes to defeat this guy. You have the president of the United States working to make it harder for him to get elected. So what are these people, these oligarchs, afraid of?” Sanders said.
“What a radical idea to say that we should stabilize rents so the working-class people can live in this city,” he added.
Asked about Trump’s threats to deploy federal law enforcement and National Guard troops to Democratic cities, including New York, Mamdani said “it is wrong to accept any part” of the administration’s “deportation agenda” and criticized Adams for not doing more to aid residents targeted by immigration authorities.
“It is wrong,” Mamdani said. “It should be opposed, and we should understand that the greatest responsibility is with this administration here seeking to tear families apart across this country.”
Another attendee asked Mamdani how he would protect the city from a potential National Guard deployment, pointing to troop deployments to Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. Mamdani said the city must “prepare for the inevitability of that deployment.”
“We cannot try and convince ourselves that because something is illegal Donald Trump will not do it. We have to be prepared, and we have to be clear-eyed, and we have to understand that we’ll take every single tool at our disposal,” he said.
Mamdani joined Sanders at his 35th “Fighting Oligarchy” tour event, which has also seen the 83-year-old senator rally Democrats alongside Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and has reached over 300,000 people, according to Sanders.
Both Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez endorsed Mamdani ahead of his June Democratic primary victory over Cuomo. At the event, Sanders chided top New York Democrats for not doing the same.
“I find it hard to understand how the major Democratic leaders in New York state are not supporting the Democratic candidate,” he said, referring to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
“One might think that if a candidate starting at 2% in the polls gets 50,000 volunteers, creates enormous excitement, gets young people involved in the political process, gets nontraditional voters to vote, Democratic leaders would be jumping up and down,” Sanders added.
