MAGA is in full-blown meltdown mode over Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral victory in New York City, with one former official even comparing the young Muslim Democrat to one of history’s most reviled white supremacists.
“Hitler was good at voter turnout too,” Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union during the first Trump administration, raged Tuesday night on MSNBC after anchor Ari Melber praised the mayor-elect’s outreach skills.
“This is wrong on so many levels for both parties,” Sondland, who was previously accused of helping finesse President Donald Trump’s alleged attempts to bribe Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for kompromat on Hunter Biden, went on. “For Jews in New York to support Mamdani, who is an antisemite—how do I know he’s an antisemite? Because he says he’s an antisemite. It’s very simple.”
Mamdani has not described himself as an antisemite, and Sondland’s claim prompted Melber to label the former diplomat’s characterization of the newly elected Democrat as an “extreme overstatement.”
Mamdani’s seismic victory Tuesday, beating former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo by almost nine points, sent shockwaves throughout MAGAland.
House Speaker Mike Johnson is warning “Democrats in New York City have chosen a true extremist and a Marxist, and the consequences will be felt across our entire nation,” while National Republican Congressional Committee spokesperson Mike Marinella said the city has “surrendered to radical socialist Zohran Mamdani and the far-left mob who are now running the show.”
Trump, for his part, has suggested Mamdani only secured victory because U.S. law unfortunately prohibits sitting presidents from also holding mayoral positions at the same time.
There’s cause for alarm among GOP ranks. Tuesday’s slate of gubernatorial, legislative and local races in the U.S. represented the Trump administration’s first major electoral test since last year’s presidential election.
Alongside Mamdani’s victory, New Jersey and Virginia elected Democratic governors. Every time Democrats have won each of those races over almost the past century, they’ve gone on to win the U.S. House the following year.
New York, New Jersey, and Virginia are states where Trump’s net approval rating was at -11, -14 and -15, respectively. The latest polls show that more broadly, his nationwide disapproval ratings are at the highest they’ve ever been—exactly one point higher even than in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
Other surveys suggest more than half of Americans blame Republicans for the ongoing federal shutdown, while Democrats currently hold an eight-point lead in voter intent ahead of next year’s midterms.
After almost a year of uncertainty among Trump’s opponents over how to recover and recoup following their bitter defeat last November, the president’s Truth Social response to Mamdani’s victory would now appear to prove prescient: “... AND SO IT BEGINS!”
