Trump Threatens New York After Kathy Hochul Endorses Zohran Mamdani

The president is threatening to withhold federal funding from a U.S. city unless its local election goes his way.

Donald Trump warned Monday that he would stop “sending good money” to New York City if it chose Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani as its next mayor—hours after the 33-year-old politico earned Governor Kathy Hochul’s critical endorsement.

“Governor Kathy Hochul of New York has Endorsed the ‘Liddle’ Communist,’ Zohran Mamdani, running for Mayor of New York,” Trump posted to Truth Social. “This is a rather shocking development, and a very bad one for New York City. How can such a thing happen?”

“Washington will be watching this situation very closely. No reason to be sending good money after bad!” he noted.

Hochul—a bonafide centrist—spelled out her support for the Democratic Socialist in a sprawling New York Times op-ed Sunday, detailing their mutual policy goals of lowering the cost of living, instating strong leadership atop the New York City Police Department, and vehemently opposing Trump’s “abhorrent and destructive policies.”

“Since taking office in January, Mr. Trump has killed jobs and dragged down our economy with tariff tax hikes that make life more expensive for working families. He’s gutted Medicaid and food assistance, slashed federal funding New York City relies on and threatened a federal takeover of New York—all while trying to put his thumb on the scale of our local elections,” Hochul wrote.

“We must never allow Mr. Trump to control our city like the king he wants to be,” the governor noted. “Anyone who accepts his tainted influence or benefits from it is compromised from the start.”

It’s not the first time that Trump has overtly threatened Mamdani. The president accused the Ugandan-born New Yorker of being in the country “illegally,” and in July said he would arrest Mamdani if the mayoral hopeful followed through on defying ICE.

Mamdani has been repeatedly accused by conservatives of being a communist, a badge that he has roundly rejected. Politifact, an independent fact-checking organization, said that the Queens lawmaker’s platform for free buses, subsidized daycare, protected rent control, and city-owned grocery stores was not akin to communism, a system in which the government seizes and retains complete and total control over private property and industry. Instead, Politifact decried the cheap smear as a “red scare tactic that has existed in U.S. politics for decades.”

But the name-calling and federal intrusions have not swayed New York voters away from the race favorite: Mamdani clinched New York City’s Democratic primary with 56 percent of the vote in June. He eclipsed former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo by double digits, beating out the establishment Democrat by 12 points.

New York City’s election day is Tuesday, November 4, though early voting begins October 25.

FBI Director Kash Patel on Monday denied any wrongdoing in his clumsy handling of the investigation into last week’s fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Meanwhile, Fox News reports that his position in the Trump administration could be in jeopardy.

Kash is facing fire mainly for his premature social media post the day of the shooting, declaring that “the subject for the horrific shooting” was in custody—a claim almost immediately contradicted by local officials. Patel later backtracked, and the manhunt ensued for another 27-plus hours before the suspect, Tyler Robinson, was turned in by a family member.

On Fox and Friends Monday, Patel said he was simply “being transparent with working with the public on our findings as I had them.”

“The job of the FBI is not just to manhunt the actual suspect who did the killing, or suspects, but it’s also to eliminate targets, and eliminate subjects who are not involved in the process, and that’s what we were doing,” Patel said. “Could I have worded it a little better in the heat of the moment? Sure. But do I regret putting it out? Absolutely not.”

Patel’s comments come as Trump administration insiders say his ouster could be in the works. Fox reported Sunday that “Patel’s purported off-ramp, which the White House denies, would not involve his firing but a reassignment to another administration role, according to multiple people who described it.”

One source told Fox that Patel will “get Billy Long-ed,” referring to the IRS commissioner whom Trump recently removed and then nominated as U.S. ambassador to Iceland.

The White House, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and Deputy A.G. Todd Blanche “have no confidence in Kash,” a source knowledgeable of personnel talks told Fox, adding that Bondi and Blanche in particular “can’t stand” him. Both officials denied the characterization to Fox, and White House officials also denied that there are plans to replace Patel.

Trump allies and Patel critics reportedly believe that the FBI’s freshly sworn in co-deputy director, Andrew Bailey, could be his planned replacement—which Bailey denies, telling Fox he was not “brought in to replace anyone in leadership at the FBI.”

The day after Patel’s premature post about a shooting “subject,” the FBI director kept silent at a press conference with Utah Governor Spencer Cox and other officials. Citing multiple sources, Fox reports that this was because he was “forcefully instructed” not to chime in.

Similarly, Cox took the lead in the press conference on Friday announcing that the suspect was in custody—though the FBI director did speak, including telling the deceased Kirk, “I’ll see you in Valhalla.” A source told Fox that there had been a concern that “letting Kash talk much could f*ck up the prosecution.”

Patel is set to testify before the Senate and House Judiciary committees this week.

Arizona Republican Kari Lake is warning parents not to send their children to college because they could turn out like Charlie Kirk’s alleged shooter—who didn’t actually attend university for more than one semester. 

Speaking at a vigil for the right-wing activist at the Kennedy Center Sunday, Lake, a Trump acolyte serving as a senior adviser to the U.S. Agency for Global Media, claimed that alleged gunman Tyler Robinson had been “brainwashed” into committing political violence. 

“I’m not going to say our side is perfect, but damn it, this is coming from the other side,” Lake claimed. “How does a 22-year-old become so filled with hate? Five years earlier, I was told, he was a Trump supporter. And we sent our kids off to college, and they brainwashed ’em.

“I am making a plea to mothers: Do not send your children into these indoctrination camps,” Lake continued. “Don’t do it, do not do it!” 

But Robinson only attended Utah State University for one semester before taking a leave of absence, according to CNN. He never went back. 

In fact, Robinson was a third-year student in the electrical apprenticeship program at Dixie Technical College—exactly the kind of trade school that Republicans are hoping more young Americans will attend.

Either Lake didn’t know that, or she didn’t care. “At one point, that 22-year-old was a baby in his mother’s arms,” she went on. “And by all accounts, they did a good job raising him until he was sent off to be brainwashed.”

Lake is among several other MAGA pundits who have blamed Kirk’s death on higher education, as a means of placing responsibility on the left.  

But if Robinson’s alleged bullet-casing manifestos are anything to go on, his radicalization had much more to do with memes from distant corners of the internet and video games than a university he didn’t attend for more than a couple of months.

Lake is just one of many Republicans using Kirk’s death to boost their own political agendas. She has been targeting education for years. During her failed gubernatorial campaign in 2022, she described schools as “factories to churn out deliberately mis-educated progressive activists.” Speaking at Kirk’s vigil, she lamented that Americans were “living through the most horrific brainwashing campaign in the history of mankind.” 

President Donald Trump won’t say whether he’s planning military action in Venezuela.

While speaking to reporters Sunday, Trump was asked whether he had plans to strike mainland Venezuela, amid ratcheting tensions with the South American nation.

“Well, we’ll see what happens,” Trump replied. “Look, Venezuela is sending us their gang members, their drug dealers, and drugs. That’s not acceptable.”

Earlier this month, the United States launched a deadly extrajudicial strike on a vessel the government claimed was smuggling drugs. Trump claimed that the strike was an act of “self defense,” although the boat had reportedly turned around by the time it was fired upon.

The Trump administration further attempted to justify sidestepping laws about executing suspected drug smugglers, recast as so-called “narco terrorists,” by claiming it was part of a broader campaign targeting cartels in Venezuela, raising concerns that further military action was imminent.

Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Yván Gil said Saturday that military personnel from a U.S. Navy destroyer boarded a fishing boat in Venezuelan waters for eight hours on Friday, in a “direct provocation” against the South American country.

In a rare interview with CNN, Gil said that Venezuela was not looking for a fight with the United States. “We are not betting on conflict, nor do we want conflict,” he said.

The National Guard’s time in Washington is nearly up—but the president doesn’t seem willing to let them go.

In a lengthy post on Truth Social late Sunday night, Donald Trump claimed that he was willing to call a national emergency to keep some 800 National Guard members in the nation’s capital. He blamed the potential overreach on an imagined variant of the city’s crime rate that he claimed could explode if federal immigration agents are not given free rein.

“The Federal Government, under my auspices as President of the United States of America, has stepped into the complete criminal mess that was Washington, D.C., our Nation’s Capital,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Because of this, D.C. has gone from one of the most dangerous and murder ridden cities in the U.S.A., and even around the World, to one of the safest—In just a few weeks.”

Trump used made-up crime stats to usher the National Guard into the city last month. In reality, violent crime has been on the decline in Washington since 2023, funneling into a nationwide crime drop the following year that saw homicide rates plummet across the country, according to data from The Washington Post. In 2024, crime in the capital was down 35 percent—a figure from the Metropolitan Police Department that was hailed by FBI Director Kash Patel during one of Trump’s press conferences.

But the documented downward trend was not good fodder for Trump’s D.C. takeover. Late last month, the Justice Department announced a criminal investigation into the Washington police department to determine whether the law enforcement bureau had manipulated data to make crime in the city seem lower than officers have claimed.

Whether the troops have actually made the city better is unclear. Crime is down, homeless encampments have been cleared, and hundreds of people accused of being in the country illegally have been detained by ICE, reported CNN. But tourism is also way down, restaurants are suffering, residents have sparked protests raging against the military occupation, and National Guard members have picked up hundreds of bags of trash—apparenly due to a lack of relevant work. But that version of Washington has seemingly not been witnessed by the big man in the White House.

“The ‘place’ is absolutely booming, with restaurants, stores, and businesses packed and, for the first time in decades, virtually NO CRIME,” Trump insisted. “It has been a beautiful thing to watch but, now, under pressure from the Radical Left Democrats, Mayor Muriel Bowser, who has presided over this violent criminal takeover of our Capital for years, has informed the Federal Government that the Metropolitan Police Department will no longer cooperate with ICE in removing and relocating dangerous illegal aliens.

“If I allowed this to happen, CRIME would come roaring back,” Trump emphasized. “To the people and businesses of Washington, D.C., DON’T WORRY, I AM WITH YOU, AND WON’T ALLOW THIS TO HAPPEN.

“I’ll call a National Emergency, and Federalize, if necessary!!!” he added.

Keeping the National Guard in Washington is not free—the crime crackdown is costing the country at least $1 million per day, according to early estimates.