President Donald Trump criticized New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s “very angry” victory speech, warning that communism “has never worked.”
Trump commented on the November off-year election outcomes Wednesday on “Special Report with Bret Baier.” Republicans Jack Ciattarelli and Winsome Earle-Sears were defeated in closely-watched gubernatorial contests by Democrats Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger in New Jersey and Virginia respectively. In New York City, “Democratic socialist” Zohran Mamdani was chosen as mayor.
The president shared that he expected New Jersey would fare better, but was not surprised by the outcomes of the Virginia and New York races.
“I thought New Jersey would perform a bit better than that,” he said. “The Cuomo situation, he simply had too many things working against him; there were many challenges for them. Curtis Sliwa put in a strong effort, but he has experience. Consequently, Mamdani had a relatively clear path.”
Trump stated that he would like Mamdani to “succeed” because of his affection for New York, but advised the incoming mayor to be “respectful” of Washington, criticizing his supposed support for communism.
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“Look, for millennia, communism has been unsuccessful,” Trump said. “It’s simply that communism, or the idea of communism, has failed. I doubt it will be successful this time. It has quite literally never been effective.”
The commander-in-chief, who informed reporters that pollsters considered the shutdown a “significant factor” in the results, denounced “radicalized” Democrats for causing a situation that has “never occurred before” during the United States’ longest-ever government shutdown.
“They [Democrats] invariably extend the deadline in past shutdowns,” he told anchor Bret Baier. “You know, an extension is very simple. It’s always done. You extend, sometimes four or five times. I mean, they simply… become radical, truly radicalized lunatics. They should extend automatically, and we will reach an agreement as soon as they do. Once they do, we’ll make a deal.”
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Trump mentioned he’d “love” collaborating with Democrats to improve healthcare and conveyed a hope to “move forward.”
“We should collaborate on health care because Obamacare has been a failure. There will be a substantial increase, but Obamacare is not quality health care, and it’s very expensive. I am eager to work with them to resolve it.”
Trump also posited that eliminating the filibuster could benefit Congress.
“I believe that if we eliminated the filibuster, we would approve numerous positive, sensible, excellent measures that would make us difficult to defeat,” he said.
Fox News’ Stephen Sorace helped with this article.
