New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani wasted no time confronting President Donald Trump, responding to the president’s threats to defund and deport him with a fiery message during his Brooklyn victory speech: “Turn the volume up.”
"Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching, I have four words for you: Turn the volume up,” Mamdani, a Democrat, told the Republican president from the stage of his Brooklyn victory party.
He issued a direct challenge to the president. "If anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it is the city that gave rise to him," he said.
The proclamation was an illustration of how both men have seized on one another as politically advantageous foils as Mamdani has risen from obscure state lawmaker to national Democratic star and as Trump has cast today's Democratic Party as radical and out of touch with everyday voters.
Mamdani, who was born in Uganda and became a naturalized American citizen after graduating from college, went on to cast himself as the embodiment of the resistance against the president, who has pursued an aggressive, anti-immigrant agenda during his second term.
"New York will remain a city of immigrants, a city built by immigrants, powered by immigrants and, as of tonight, led by an immigrant," he said. "So hear me, President Trump, when I say this: To get to any of us, you will have to get through all of us."
Trump, who has spent months insulting Mamdani and warning that the city would be ruined if he won, seemed to be watching.
"...AND SO IT BEGINS!" he posted on social media as Mamdani spoke.
Mamdani, a democratic socialist who campaigned on a slate of far-left progressive policies and a cheery optimism that stands in stark contrast to Trump's darker and more hardline tactics, is expected to continue to face the president's persistent political bashing - along with a federal government that may try to thwart his agenda. It remains unclear however, exactly how Trump plans to respond and if the courts will stop him.
New York has remained relatively unscathed by Trump's administration, as he has targeted cities including Los Angeles and Washington, dispatching the National Guard. The current mayor, Eric Adams, enjoyed an unusual alliance with the Republican president, whose administration dropped a federal corruption case against the mayor so he could better assist with the president’s immigration agenda.
But Trump for months has threatened to slash federal funding to the city and mount an outright takeover if Mamdani won - threats that became a cornerstone of Mamdani's rivals' campaigns against him.
"It will be Mayor Trump” if Mamdani wins, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo said during their last debate, warning that Mamdani was too inexperienced and too much of a target to effectively negotiate with the president.
Meanwhile, Trump and others in his party gleefully seized on Mamdani's most controversial policy proposals and past statements, including those criticizing the city's police department, trying to cast Mamdani as dangerous - and representative of the Democratic Party at large.
"The Democrat Party has surrendered to radical socialist Zohran Mamdani and the far-left mob who are now running the show," said National Republican Congressional Committee spokesperson Mike Marinella in a statement Tuesday night. "They’ve proudly embraced defunding the police, abolishing ICE, taxing hard-working Americans to death, and replacing common sense with chaos. Every House Democrat is foolishly complicit in their party’s collapse, and voters will make them pay in 2026.”
Nearly a decade ago, Trump was the bold yet untested candidate who notched a remarkable political victory of his own after building a populist coalition, harnessing social media, commanding the media spotlight and promising a wave of change.
Those same qualities that propelled the Republican into the White House in 2016 have helped Mamdani rise to become the soon-to-be mayor of Trump’s hometown and the biggest city in the nation.
But rather than see Mamdani as a Democratic analogue for his own path to power, Trump has cast him as a prime foil and a reason he may seek to punish or overpower the city.
Both of them seem ready for it.
Though most presidents don't devote time to tangling with local elected officials, Trump is not most presidents, and New York City holds special significance for him.
The Queens-born former reality star made his fame in Manhattan, where he became a TV star from his gilded penthouse and later launched his improbable presidential campaign after descending his golden escalator.
Trump has kept a particular focus on the city, trying to block its congestion pricing program, cancel construction on new tunnels under the Hudson River and insisting during his comeback presidential campaign last year on holding a mega-rally at Madison Square Garden despite his unpopularity in the city.
As the city prepared to pick its next mayor, Trump got unusually involved. He attacked him on social media, falsely labeling Mamdani a communist and eventually endorsing Cuomo.
And in the fall, intermediaries for the Trump administration approached Adams to try to persuade him to abandon his reelection campaign in an attempt to block Mamdani's path to victory.
On the eve of the election, Trump said he would likely cut federal city funding if Mamdani won, writing on social media that "it is highly unlikely that I will be contributing Federal Funds, other than the very minimum as required.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Tuesday declined to clarify what funds Trump may seek to withhold.
But he had already sought to punish the city this year as part of a broader pattern of asserting power against Democratic elected officials who've criticized him, including suspending funding for some infrastructure projects during the government shutdown and trying to slash grants aimed at addressing the costs of migrants.
The threats also resonated with some voters.
Amy Snyder, an art adviser who voted for Cuomo, said she feared Mamdani "would not be able to stand up to Trump."
Ariel Kohane, a registered Republican who voted for Cuomo but has voted for Trump multiple times, said he expected the president would do everything in his power to prevent Mamdani from accomplishing his agenda - and hoped it would work.
"Trump will probably have to send in the National Guard and ICE agents, too,” Kohane said.
Wacef Chowdhury, a volunteer for the Mamdani campaign, said he fully anticipated Trump would attempt to punish the city in retaliation for the democratic socialist’s victory.
"We know he’s going to try, but we’re ready,” said Chowdhury, who works in finance. "We fought back the establishment, and we're going to do the same to the president.”
