NEW YORK: US President Donald Trump has warned on the eve of Tuesday's election that if Zohair Mamdani, the toxically divisive Democratic Party candidate, becomes the city's mayor, he will cut funds to it.
Mamdani, a radical member of the Democratic Socialists, is running on the Democratic Party ticket, having won the party nomination in June, defeating former Governor Andrew Cuomo and sitting Mayor Eric Adams.
"If Communist Candidate Zohran Mamdani wins the Election for Mayor of New York City, it is highly unlikely that I will be contributing Federal Funds, other than the very minimum as required, to my beloved first home", Trump wrote Monday on Truth Social.
This is because with a "Communist" as mayor, "this once great City has ZERO chance of success, or even survival! It can only get worse with a Communist at the helm, and I don't want to send, as President, good money after bad", he said.
Crossing party lines as a realist, Trump endorsed Cuomo, a Democrat who is running as an independent, rather than the Republican Party's candidate Curtis Sliwa, the controversial founder of a vigilante group to patrol the city's transit system.
A vote for Sliwa, Trump wrote, "is a vote for Mamdani".
"Whether you personally like Andrew Cuomo or not, you really have no choice. You must vote for him, and hope he does a fantastic job. He is capable of it, Mamdani is not", he added. Mamdani bristled at being called a "communist" during the campaign, and his supporters and media sympathisers vehemently deny it, but he has advocated a distinctly communist line and strategy.
In an interaction with his group, the Democratic Socialists of America, he said, "Our end goal, seizing the means of production".
That - government take-over of industries and businesses - is a cornerstone of communism, and a classic Marxian strategy is to publicly play it down while running for elections, hoping to ultimately capture national power.
"His principles have been tested for over a thousand years, and never once have they been successful", Trump said of Mamdani's ideology. (IANS)
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