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Dems win key messaging battles against Trump
Dems across the ideological spectrum are taking him on and emerging stronger.
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Last week, Democrats achieved two impressive, consequential, and very different messaging victories over President Donald Trump.
In the first, New York City’s Muslim mayor-elect, Zohran Mamdani, managed to get Trump to mostly endorse his vision of the city. In the second, a group of congressional Democrats with past service in national security pushed Trump to throw a tantrum so severe and damaging that even his White House confusingly disavowed it.
The approaches, and Trump’s reaction to them, were very different. But in both cases, Democrats took the initiative and then were focused and uncompromising. They also both demonstrate that standing up to Trump works a lot better than bending the knee.
Mamdani charms Trump without compromising his values
Mamdani has been a target of hyperbolic smears and hatred — especially from Republicans, but in some cases even from Democrats.
Sen. Ted Cruz, in a paroxysm of Islamophobia, called Mamdani “an actual Communist Jihadist.” Trump himself attacked Mamdani, sneering that “if you have a communist running New York, all you’re doing is wasting the money you’re sending there.” (Mamdani is not a communist, for pity’s sake.)
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Perhaps in part because of Trump’s threats to withhold federal funds, Mamdani asked for a personal meeting to talk to the president “about what it means to actually stand up for New Yorkers, and the way in which New Yorkers are struggling to afford this city.” Trump, for his part, called Mamdani a communist again and nicknamed him “Kwame” because he’s a bigot and bully. Fox News even billed the meeting as a “Showdown with Socialism.”
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Mamdani did as promised by focusing on affordability in his remarks to the press with Trump after their meeting. He pointed out that there’s a cost of living crisis in the city, that one in four New Yorkers live in poverty, and said he came back again and again with Trump to “what it could look like to lift those New Yorkers out of struggle, and start to deliver them a city that they could live in.” For Mamdani, that means policies such as rent control, free city buses, free childcare for low income families, and other initiatives that look a lot like socialism.
So Mamdani did his part to initiate Fox’s showdown. But Trump, to the surprise of most commenters, did not. Rather than criticize a redistribution agenda — as have conservative outlets like City Journal and National Review — Trump expressed enthusiasm for Mamdani’s efforts.
“I think he is going to surprise some conservative people, actually,” Trump said.
