Trump Says It Looks Like Mamdani Is ‘Going to Win’

After weeks of discussions among his advisers, allies and donors about how he could intervene in the race for New York City mayor, President Trump appears increasingly resigned to a potential victory by Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee.

In an appearance on “Fox and Friends” in New York on Friday morning, the president said that former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo could still have a path to defeat Mr. Mamdani if two other candidates dropped out, but he bemoaned the quality of Mr. Mamdani’s opponents.‌

“I’m not looking at the polls too carefully, but it would look like he’s going to win,” Mr. Trump, a Republican, said of Mr. Mamdani. “And that’s a rebellion. It’s also a rebellion against bad candidates.”

The president called Mr. Mamdani, a 33-year-old democratic socialist, “my little communist,” and suggested he was already thinking about the leverage he could exert over him as mayor.

“He has to come to Washington for money,” Mr. Trump said.

He also took swipes at Mr. Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa, the Republican nominee. He said Mr. Sliwa, who is known for rescuing cats, was “not exactly prime time” and would try to fill Gracie Mansion with “thousands of cats.”

He accused Mr. Cuomo of bungling the covid response in state nursing homes during the pandemic, joining those who have said the former governor’s policies cost lives. Mr. Cuomo has strongly rejected that assertion, and insists he was following federal guidance.

“What he did with the nursing homes, it was so horrible,” Mr. Trump said.

The president’s pessimistic tone came only a week or so after close associates of Mr. Trump were still discussing the possibility of an exit for at least one of the candidates, Mayor Eric Adams, by offering him a job. The main option discussed was an ambassadorship to Saudi Arabia, The New York Times reported.

Mr. Trump said publicly at the time that he would like to see a one-on-one race between Mr. Mamdani and Mr. Cuomo, a more moderate Democrat he has known for decades. Even so, people in Mr. Trump’s orbit have not been impressed by Mr. Cuomo’s campaign this year.

But as the private discussions became publicly known, the possibility of moving forward with a job for the mayor — who, like Mr. Cuomo, is running on a third-party line — has grown dimmer, people familiar with the matter said.

While they cautioned that the president could yet change course, the same people said that the president did not currently see a realistic scenario where the field would be cleared. Mr. Sliwa, who was third with 15 percent in a recent New York Times/Siena poll, has been particularly adamant about staying in the race.

The poll was one of a string of surveys released this week that showed Mr. Mamdani with a commanding lead in a four-way race, though they did suggest the contest could tighten if Mr. Adams and Mr. Sliwa dropped out.

“I think he’s resigned to the fact that Mamdani is going to win,” said Sid Rosenberg, a conservative talk radio personality who hosted Mr. Trump on his show earlier this week. “He’s not a stupid guy, Trump.”

Mr. Rosenberg said the president still held out “some hope” that Mr. Cuomo might be able to rise in the polls, but said “he has given up on Eric Adams.”

The mayor’s courtship of the president earlier this year prompted the Justice Department to abandon the corruption charges against him. The move ensured Mr. Adams’s liberty, even as it tarnished his political prospects in his hometown, where Democrats outnumber Republicans by six to one and Mr. Trump remains unpopular.

For a time, it seemed as though Mr. Trump, who built his name and business in New York City, had enough political muscle and personal desire to influence the race.

The president was always wedged between competing camps of advisers and allies.

Among those opposing Mr. Trump’s intervention were national Republicans who believed Mr. Mamdani’s leftist politics were a gift for their bid to win the midterm elections next year. They were joined by local party leaders in New York who strongly dislike Mr. Cuomo and have deep loyalty to Mr. Sliwa.

“Trump should just stay out of it,” said Tony Nunziato, the Republican Party chairman in Queens, where Mr. Trump grew up. “Trump didn’t win and they don’t care for him, so he will put a curse on whoever he’s backing basically.”

On the other side were some of the president’s oldest friends in New York, who reacted to Mr. Mamdani’s triumph over Mr. Cuomo in the June Democratic primary with a level of fear, if not panic, and Mr. Trump’s personal desires for a time aligned more with those friends than his political allies.

Many in the business and real estate community have been alarmed by Mr. Mamdani’s explicitly leftist platform, including raising taxes on the rich; a history of sharply criticizing the police; and long-standing criticism of Israel.

Some have promised to plow millions into super PACs to defeat him.

“If we fail to mobilize, the financial capital of the world risks being handed over to a socialist this November,” wrote several wealthy businesspeople, including Jeff Blau, the Related Companies chief executive, in an email this week. “We cannot — and will not — let that happen.”

The talks to try to craft a Trump administration job for Mr. Adams were notably led by Steve Witkoff, a close adviser to Mr. Trump who is also a billionaire real estate investor in New York.

Though that plan appears to have fallen by the wayside, Mr. Trump had seemed open to the idea.

“I would like to see two people drop out and have it be one-on-one,” Mr. Trump said last week when asked by a reporter whether he wants Mr. Adams to suspend his re-election bid. “And I think that’s a race.”

The president has an affinity for Mr. Cuomo, born of their shared Queens background and overlapping family stories. But they also battled during Mr. Cuomo’s days in the Clinton administration and during the Covid pandemic, when Mr. Cuomo was governor and Mr. Trump was president.

Their relationship was further complicated in the spring, when Mr. Trump’s Justice Department opened an investigation into Mr. Cuomo after Republicans accused him of lying to Congress about his decisions as governor during the coronavirus pandemic. (Mr. Cuomo has denied wrongdoing.)

There has been ample discussion about the race between Cuomo and Trump allies.

This summer, the president was briefed on polling by Andrew Stein, a former City Council president and longtime friend, and Mark Penn, a pollster whose firm worked for Mr. Cuomo’s super PAC. Their message: Mr. Cuomo could win a two-way race. The Times also reported that Mr. Trump spoke with Mr. Cuomo directly about the race, though both men later disputed the account.

Mr. Cuomo has also openly pushed for the other candidates to drop out and tried to portray the contest as a head-to-head between him and Mr. Mamdani.

But his opponents have not complied.

Mr. Sliwa has little allegiance to Mr. Trump and said he would only leave the race if someone shot him.

Mr. Adams has shown more willingness to accommodate the president than Mr. Sliwa.

In a comment his campaign issued last week, after The Times and other outlets reported on the Saudi Arabia idea, Mr. Adams said, “while I will always listen if called to serve our country, no formal offers have been made.”

During a meeting with business leaders on Wednesday, he suggested he was still willing to consider leaving the race under the right circumstances and would commission his own poll to determine his chances.