President Donald Trump said Tuesday independent New York mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo has a chance of winning against socialist Zohran Mamdani if the Republican candidate, Curtis Sliwa, drops out.
“If he dropped out, maybe Cuomo would have a little bit of a chance, but not much, because it looks like, it’s not a great lead, but it’s big enough that [Mamdani] should be able to win,” Trump said in response to a question from The Daily Signal. “So, I don’t know that I want to get involved. It’s really a question of would I rather have a Democrat or a communist, and I would rather have a Democrat than a communist.”
A new report by Gotham Polling and New York AARP found that 44.6% of New Yorkers would vote for Mamdani if Sliwa dropped out, in contrast to 40.7% saying they’d back Cuomo. Thar puts Cuomo within a margin of error of four points.
But Sliwa has rejected calls from members of his own party to step aside.
“So, let’s be very clear: I am not dropping out, under no circumstances,” Sliwa said Tuesday. “I’ve already been offered money to drop out. I said no.”
Based on the polls, Trump said, it “looks like we’re going to have a communist as the mayor of New York.”
“It’ll be very interesting,” he said. “But here’s the good news. He’s got to go through the White House. Everything goes through the White House, at least this White House, it does, and we’ll have to see what happens.”
Trump said he has always loved New York and “can’t believe” the city might have a communist mayor.
“I left New York, and we had a Mayor [Bill] de Blasio, who was a disaster, but when I left, it was sort of before he could really take hold,” Trump said. “And boy, New York was a hot city, and now it’s sad to see what’s happening, frankly, and with the communists in charge. Look, you just go back 1,000 years. I mean, it’s been done many times, 1,000 years. It’s never worked once.”
