WASHINGTON: From the MAGA perspective, millionaires are fleeing Manhattan, cops are quitting NYPD en masse, and the Big Apple is rotting faster than strawberries on a summer day because New York City has fallen…to Communists, Islamists and immigrants. Memes show the Statue of Liberty under a burka or niqab, hammer and sickle projected on the Empire State Building, and public transport overcrowded with immigrants in native grab among other bleak outcomes of Zohran Mamdani victory in the mayoral election. “Imagine North Korea… with a dash of Sharia,” goes one rightwing parody of Frank Sinatra’s song New York, New York. Liberals and progressives meanwhile are cockahoop with delight at the resurgence of the left, reflected in a raft of jokes, some of them self-deprecating, on late-night shows. “Today Democrats are walking around with a spring in their step like a divorced mom in her 40s whose new haircut just got her carded at two different bars,” riffed Seth Meyers, whose late-night gig on NBC beams from the Rockefeller Center in NYC. Trump’s bete-nore Jimmy Kimmel, whose late-night show on ABC broadcasts from across the country in Hollywood, Los Angeles, joked that President’s social media post after the rout (“…AND SO IT BEGINS!) “was either a response to Mamdani winning the mayoral race, or he just sat down on the toilet.”Toilet humor aside, the more serious commentariat agreed on one thing: Mamdani’s rise from an obscure local legislator who polled less than 1 percent when he began his campaign to a monumental victory with over 50 percent vote has electrified American politics. Although he is not eligible to run for the White House (he is not born in the U.S., a Constitutional requirement to run for President), many are already seeing him, or at least his policy prescriptions, as a challenge, and perhaps even an opportunity, for MAGA supreme Donald Trump to define him in fearful terms. “His smile is disarming, but his ideas are armed to the teeth,” the Wall Street Journal said of Mamdani’s policies, suggesting that his victory could inspire more leftist candidates to challenge moderate Democrats, allowing President Trump to drive home his message of radical left lunatics taking over America. Trump himself is said to have acknowledged that Mamdani is a “talented politician” and “slick talker,” according to one report. So despite railing against the “communist lunatic,” Trump is now showing signs of learning something from the electoral setback. Pilloried for his tone-deaf bragging about his new White House ballroom and his hosting a Gatsby-themed party at his Mar-o-Lago estate at a time of government shutdown, the President briefly embraced the term “affordability” – which Mamdani flogged during his campaign – while discussing a deal to reduce the price of certain drugs like anti-obesity medications at a White House event on Thursday. Taunted from the left that “Affordability is Trump’s word of the week,” the President shrank from the word later, saying “I don’t want to hear about affordability” and insisting that inflation is under control and prices are coming down under him. “My cost are lower than the Democrats on everything, especially oil and gas! So the Democrats “affordability” issue is DEAD! STOP LYING!!!” he posted on Truth Social. But even hard-core MAGA lawmakers previously seen as rabid race-baiters are starting to put affordability issues ahead of immigrant demonisation that has been their go-to issue. “Grocery prices remain high. Energy prices are high. My electricity bills are higher…So, affordability is a problem,” Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has sounded increasingly critical of Trump, in recent weeks, said in a TV interview on Thursday, adding that she is worried about her children’s generation because “they’re having a very hard time.” Even millionaires and billionaires, said to be decamping NYC in the face of the “socialist surge” seemed to acknowledge Mamdani has raised important issues. “Congrats on the win. Now you have a big responsibility. If I can help NYC, just let me know what I can do,” Bill Ackman, billionaire hedge fund manager and NewYorker who contributed $ 1 million to Mamdani’s opponent Andrew Cuomo, posted soon after Mamdani’s win.
