Former New York governor Andrew Cuomo sat down with The View this week and delivered a blunt warning: a Zohran Mamdani mayoralty, he said, would be a “gift” to President Trump and a national cudgel for branding Democrats as radical. Cuomo told the hosts that Trump would parade a Mamdani victory around the country to argue Democrats have become communists who hate the police and would legalize crime and permissiveness.
Cuomo didn’t just flail with rhetoric — he tried to explain why ordinary New Yorkers were drawn to Mamdani’s slogans, arguing many voters didn’t actually understand what his policies would mean in practice. He pointed out that promises like “freeze the rent” sound great on a billboard but are limited in scope, applying mainly to a subset of rent-stabilized units, and that the Democratic Socialists’ platform includes proposals that would hollow out public safety budgets.
That warning matters because Mamdani is not a fringe chatterbox anymore; he became the Democratic nominee after a stunning primary victory earlier this year and now looms large in the general election. New Yorkers must reckon with the reality that the party’s left flank has moved from gadfly status into real power, and that shift will have consequences for budgets, policing, and day-to-day life in the city.
If you look at Mamdani’s agenda, the promises are big and the math is shaky: free buses, municipally run grocery stores, expanded social programs and sweeping tax changes to pay for it all. Even some outlets sympathetic to progressive aims have noted the funding questions, and Mamdani himself has reportedly admitted contingency plans might be needed if tax hikes on the wealthy don’t produce the billions he projects. That kind of wish-list governance is not fiscal responsibility; it’s politics by fantasy.
The clip circulating on conservative feeds — shared by Dave Rubin and other outlets — highlights how broadcast media treated Cuomo’s arguments with a mix of shock and condescension, as if raising plain concerns about experiments in socialism is somehow uncivil. Conservatives should be glad these conversations are getting airtime, because the heart of the matter is simple: voters deserve plain language about tradeoffs, not sloganeering and moral preening from coastal elites and cable-panel cheerleaders.
Now is the time for patriotic, working Americans to wake up and demand competence. New York can’t be run on slogans or on the promise that someone else will find a magical pot of money; it needs leaders who prioritize safety, fiscal sanity, and opportunity for families and small businesses. If conservatives want to save the city and the country from an experiment with far-left governance, we must make our case loudly, clearly, and at the ballot box.
