The newly elected mayor of New York City, self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani, sidestepped a question about the political future of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer after his big win Tuesday — a telling moment that shows exactly who’s calling the shots in today’s Democrat Party.
Speaking to Politico, the self-described “socialist” — let’s be honest, that’s just a polite way of saying communist — weighed in on a range of issues. One of the big questions he faced was how he plans to govern a city where nearly half the voters wanted absolutely nothing to do with him.
‘We completely changed the electorate of this city’ https://t.co/StP2HJ53L1
— POLITICO (@politico) November 6, 2025
The mayor-elect gave the kind of canned, feel-good answer you’d expect from any career politician — pledging to “lead for all New Yorkers,” including those who didn’t vote for him or didn’t bother showing up at all. Translation: empty words designed to sound unifying while meaning absolutely nothing.
When asked how soon he expects real change to happen in the city, Mamdani’s response was even worse — a masterclass in vagueness. Lots of buzzwords, no substance:
I am going to work towards delivering those results from the very first day in my administration. There will be different timelines for different issues, but all of them are ones that we have to deliver throughout the time that I am the mayor of the city.
Governor Hochul has said, for example, that child care is the issue of 2026, and I know that the rent guidelines board makes the determination on the increase or lack thereof on rents on an annual basis. These are examples of places where we will start in spelling out a timeline to actually deliver on the needs of working class New Yorkers.
What in the world does “spelling out a timeline to actually deliver on the needs of working-class New Yorkers” even mean? Sounds like “we’ll get around to their needs eventually…sometime in the future…we’ll let you know when.”
But the most revealing moment of the interview came during the lightning round, when the reporter asked him point-blank: “Should Chuck Schumer face a challenge in 2028?”
Mamdani didn’t respond, however, as a spokesperson essentially said the mayor-elect was out of time. But that said, the reporter fired off one more question that Mamdani did answer:
“One lightning round!”
“I’m focused on this transition, my brother, but thank you.”
I guess he did have more time to talk after all — despite what his spokesperson tried to claim.
Here’s the kicker — and the irony couldn’t be thicker. The same guy who spent months preaching about making the rich “pay their fair share” and promising free everything under the sun is now begging his so-called “working people” supporters to chip in cash for his transition team, as my colleague Frank Bruno noted:
Well, that didn’t take long. One of the biggest reasons Zohran Mamdani pulled off his win is because he peddled a fantasy — the classic socialist sales pitch of “free buses and frozen rents.” He convinced struggling New Yorkers that he could magically fix the city’s affordability crisis by bleeding the rich and redistributing the spoils.
Now, let’s be real — Mamdani isn’t going to deliver even half of what he promised. If he somehow manages to make buses “free,” they’ll quickly turn into rolling homeless shelters that no sane person would want to ride. And that whole “rent freeze” idea? It’s economic suicide.
But setting aside the fact that Mamdani’s promises are pure economic fiction, the irony of what happened next is almost too rich. This guy sold voters on a utopian future where “the rich” would foot the bill for everything — free housing, free transit, free whatever — and then, literally the day after his win, he turned around and started begging the working people for money.
NOW — Zohran Mamdani asks “working people who have been left behind” to donate money to his transition team pic.twitter.com/cYmySSx6zr
— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) November 5, 2025
Yay, socialism!
