Zohran Mamdani Wants to Debate Donald Trump

Democratic New York City mayoral nominee and front-runner Zohran Mamdani is tired of going back and forth with Andrew Cuomo, when he could just debate the man he views as pulling Cuomo’s strings: President Donald Trump.

As the New York City mayoral race heats up, Trump is reportedly working behind the scenes to keep Mamdani from winning, saying Thursday, “I don’t like to see a communist become mayor, I will tell you that.” (Mamdani is a Democratic Socialist.)

Trump has said he believes the race—which currently has four candidates; Mamdani is in the lead—should be one-on-one, and has reportedly been trying to use potential White House jobs to entice current Mayor Eric Adams and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa to drop out.

So when Cuomo challenged Mamdani to five debates, one in each borough, Mamdani fired back—not at Cuomo but at his perceived benefactor.

“Let’s cut out the middleman,” Mamdani told CBS. “Why should I debate Donald Trump’s puppet when I could debate Donald Trump himself?”

Mamdani continued, saying, “If Donald Trump is serious about this, he should come to New York City; we can have as many debates as he wants about why he’s cutting SNAP benefits for hungry New Yorkers just to fund tax cuts for his billionaire donors.”

Mamdani rocketed to national prominence when he won the June Democratic Primary on a grassroots campaign of affordability. This time last year, the race had been preemptively called for Cuomo before the former governor had even declared his candidacy—but Mamdani’s canvassing efforts, social media mastery, and resonant goals of free buses, city-funded grocery stores, and a rent freeze for rent-stabilized apartments won the day.

So it’s no surprise that he’d take issue with how Trump’s budget bill impacts New Yorkers, 300,000 of whom could lose food stamp benefits after the cuts.

Meanwhile, Cuomo has said that he doesn’t want Trump “involved in anything to do with [his] race,” though the two “Queens boys” have known each other for decades.

President Trump went on a Friday morning Truth Social rant about Jeffrey Epstein, as he clearly attempts to change the narrative as bipartisan calls to release the Epstein files grow louder.

In a post that parroted some of his favorite talking points, Trump wrote:

The confused and badly failing Democrat Party did nothing about Jeffrey Epstein while he was alive except befriend him, socialize with him, travel to his Island, and take his money! They knew everything there was to know about Epstein, but now, years after his death, they, out of nowhere, are seeming to show such love and heartfelt concern for his victims. Does anybody really believe that? Where were they during his very public trials, and for all of those years before his death? The answer is, “nowhere to be found.” The now dying (after the DOJ gave thousands of pages of documents in full compliance with a very comprehensive and exacting Subpoena from Congress!) Epstein case was only brought back to life by the Radical Left Democrats because they are doing so poorly, with the lowest poll numbers in the history of the Party (16%), while the Republicans are doing so well, among the highest approval numbers the Party has ever had!

There’s a lot going on here. For one, Trump knows as well as anyone what it’s like to “befriend,” and “socialize” with Epstein, as their countless letters and interactions are well documented. To accuse Democrats of doing that—especially when Epstein’s sweetheart plea deal in 2008 was delivered by a Republican who later joined Trump’s administration—is a massive projection.

Trump is conveniently forgetting that his administration got us to this point. He’s ignoring the fact that his Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Directors Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, Vice President JD Vance, and his own son Donald Jr. have all advocated for the release of the Epstein “list” or “files,” completely independent of the Democratic Party. Trump is also ignoring the fact that he was president for nearly three years before Epstein killed himself, ample time for him to pursue this case. He was nowhere to be found then, either.

“The Dems don’t care about the victims, as proven by the fact that they never did before,” Trump continued in his Friday morning post. “This is merely another Democrat HOAX, just like Russia, Russia, Russia, and all of the others, in order to deflect and distract from the great success of a Republican President, and the record setting failure of the previous Administration, and the Democrat Party. The Department of Justice has done its job, they have given everything requested of them. It’s time to end the Democrat Epstein Hoax, and give the Republicans credit for the great, even legendary, job that they are doing. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”

Multiple victims, some of whom even voted for Trump, have made it extremely clear that this is not a Democrat-versus-Republican thing, and it is certainly not a hoax.

“Mr. President Donald J. Trump, I am a registered Republican, not that that matters because this is not political. However, I cordially invite you to the Capitol to meet me in person so you can understand this is not a hoax,” Epstein survivor Haley Robson said on Wednesday. “We are real human beings. This is real trauma.… We’re here in person. To say that it’s a hoax is just not … please humanize us. I would like Donald J. Trump and every person in America and around the world to humanize us, and to hear us for what we have to say.”

“I’m a Republican. I voted for him. I voted for Trump,” Jena-Lisa Jones, who was abused by Epstein in 2003 when she was just 14 years old, also said on Wednesday evening. “For him to say what he’s saying is beyond me. Because I put my hope in him, and he’s supposed to protect us. And for him to say that this is a joke, and that it’s sides? This is not sides. We will say it time and time again: None of us are up there accusing him of anything. There is no one that is accusing him of any wrongdoing, so for the fact that he is saying those things and saying it’s a hoax, who are you hiding for then? Because if it’s not you, then who is it?”

Additionally, Trump’s verbose post came after perhaps his worst jobs report numbers to date, as the economy added a mere 22,000 jobs in August where 75,000 were expected. This is a hit dog hollering.

“Trump with a final knife in the back for conspiracy theorists who believed he would reveal the truth about Epstein and bring down the international pedo elite rings,” journalist Mike Rothschild wrote on X. “He got your votes, now he’s done with you.”

President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics had a since-deleted social media account where he made lewd comments about Kamala Harris, bashed women and gay people, and spread far-right conspiracy theories. Gee, no wonder the president picked him!

E.J. Antoni, the MAGA rioter Trump tapped to replace Erika McEntarfer, ran an X account under different usernames and display names to air his right-wing grievances, CNN’s KFile reported Friday.

When the account was first created in 2015, the username was simply his full name: “ErwinJohnAntoni.” He later changed his display name to “Dr. Erwin J. Antoni III” around the time he received his Ph.D., in 2020.

After that, the user frequently identified himself as an economist, and other accounts also identified him as one too. The account posted the specific phrase “You called down the thunder, now reap the whirlwind” 20 times, which also appeared on Antoni’s professional account “RealEJAntoni.” The account had previously been linked to Antoni by Wired.

Using the account, Antoni reportedly published a number of gross attacks against female politicians and political figures. While the posts are grotesque, they generally aligned with positions the president has expressed.

In October 2018, Antoni referred to Christine Blasey Ford, who’d accused Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault, as “Miss Piggy,” just one day after Trump mocked her testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Antoni posted at least five times suggesting that former presidential candidate Kamala Harris had used sexual favors to advance her career. “You can’t run a race on your knees,” he wrote in December 2019, responding to a picture of a Harris campaign poster that had been defaced. Trump later shared similar comments about Harris during the 2024 presidential race.

Antoni accused former President Joe Biden, former FBI Director James Comey, and economist Paul Krugman of being pedophiles. He also took aim at members of the Squad, a group of female Democratic lawmakers, whom Trump has also repeatedly criticized, but the president’s barbs have tended to lean more racist than sexist.

Sexism was a common theme for Antoni, who wrote and shared a number of posts explaining just how much he hates women. “Feminism is that belief by which women are liberated from false slavery to men in order to become true slaves to corporations,” he wrote in February 2020. He’s dabbled in gay bashing, writing in March 2020, “There is only one sexual orientation—everything else is a disorientation,” and he wrote several posts targeting CNN anchor Anderson Cooper and former CNN anchor Don Lemon.

Wired previously reported that Antoni’s account had published far-right positions, like conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, Covid-19, and Jeffrey Epstein. KFile reported that he also shared conspiracy theories about the 2016 presidential election, criticized abortion, and engaged with QAnon and far-right accounts.

According to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Palestinians seeking international justice for Israeli human rights abuses mustn’t go unpunished. The State Department on Thursday announced sanctions on three top Palestinian rights groups that asked the International Criminal Court to investigate Israel for war crimes, including genocide.

Al Haq, the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights—which all document human rights abuses in occupied Palestine—drew America’s ire for having “directly engaged” in ICC efforts “to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute Israeli nationals, without Israel’s consent.”

In November 2023, the three groups called the tribunal’s attention to various Israeli abuses in Gaza, including strikes on its civilian areas, forced displacement of its population, the use of toxic gas, and the denial of necessities like food and water.

“These actions amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide and incitement to genocide,” the groups wrote in a press release at the time. They encouraged the issuance of arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu and then Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

A year later, the ICC issued warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant for “the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.” (The ICC also issued an arrest warrant for a former Hamas commander.)

On Friday, the three groups issued a joint statement condemning the U.S. sanctions.

“Threatened by the impact and role of our advocacy, legal research, and documentation in exposing Israel’s ongoing international crimes, the United States has resorted to punishing individuals and organisations seeking to uphold the legal system upon which the international community was founded,” the statement says. “The implications go beyond Palestine: by protecting Israel from accountability, they are dismantling the international legal order and undermining the possibility of justice for victims of grave crimes anywhere.”

The Trump administration in February imposed sanctions on the International Criminal Court, and last month slapped ICC officials with sanctions, giving the same rationale then as this week.

Fox News is struggling to find a spin as President Trump’s economy continues to perform worse than expected. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the United States added only 22,000 jobs this month—a massive decrease from the previous month’s numbers—and unemployment has risen, both warning signs for a rough economy ahead.

“Twenty-two thousand jobs added in the month of August, that was much less than the expectation of 75,000, guys; the July number was revised, I will get to the revisions in a moment,” said Fox Business’s Lauren Simonetti on Friday morning. “Unemployment rate coming in as expected, 4.3 percent.… Again, 22,000 jobs added in August.… For June and July together, combined 21,000 jobs lower than previously reported.”

That 22,000 number isn’t just “weaker than expected,” it’s awful—and it once again raises fears of that awful word Trump keeps avoiding: recession. Economists had forecast 75,000 jobs would be added this month.

The coping continued on Fox.

“But again, that 22,000 number, Charles, it’s a weaker than expected number, and these revisions are pretty brutal,” Fox Business host Cheryl Casone said.

“Yeah, extraordinarily,” host Charles Payne replied. “I’ve mentioned health care, 31,000—the 12-month average is 42,000. That had been obviously a massive driver, and we know the demographic situation there. Just a little disappointed in manufacturing, was hoping to maybe see something there.”

Casone then asked guest and “motivational leader” Joanie Bily to share her thoughts on the labor force participation rate, which is at 62.3 percent.

“We’re not seeing much movement in that number, which is disappointing. And surprising, to be honest with you, Cheryl.… We’ve lost jobs again in the professional business service sector, we’ve lost jobs in this report in the temporary help sector, which is not a good sign, so there’s a lot of concern even though the private payroll number is 38,000, that is still a pretty weak number.”

Maybe Trump slashing the health care system and kneecapping the economy with a trade war was the problem all along, and not the BLS commissioner he fired for being too “woke” after last month’s terrible jobs report. What will Fox News say when we’re actually in the recession?

“Weak job growth. Rising unemployment. Soaring costs,” Colorado Representative Jason Crow wrote. “Donald Trump’s ‘Golden Age’ is screwing working people.”