The house in question is New York. And Trump supports Cuomo: “I’d rather see a Democrat with a history of success win than an inexperienced Communist with a history of total and utter failure”
President Donald Trump issued a warning to voters on the eve of the New York mayoral election: “If the communist candidate wins the New York City mayoral election, it is highly unlikely that I will contribute federal funds, beyond the required minimum, to my beloved first home,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. “I don’t want to send, as president, good money after bad.”
Although the president does not have direct power over the amount a city receives from the federal government, as responsibility constitutionally rests with Congress, control over how these funds are used or withheld (in confiscation actions, prohibited by federal law) has become a topic of increasing legal dispute.
Trump’s statements repeat what he had said on the CBS program “60 Minutes” the previous Sunday: “It will be difficult for me, as president, to give a lot of money to New York, because if we have a communist running the city, all we will be doing is wasting the money we send there.”
Zohran Mamdani has already reacted: “This funding is not a gift from Donald Trump to the city of New York. It is something that, in fact, is owed to us.”
Zohran Mamdani
The Trump administration appears to already be acting on this threat, even before the midterm election votes are counted. The White House began discussions about New York’s plan to implement car congestion charges at the beginning of the year – a topic that Trump returned to in a new publication on Truth Social, on Monday night.
During the government shutdown, the White House withheld 15.67 billion euros earmarked for a project to build a tunnel under the Hudson River and expand the subway. A federal judge ended up ordering the government to reverse the decision to cancel around 29.6 million euros in anti-terrorism funds allocated to the city, considering the measure “arbitrary, capricious and a flagrant violation of the law”.
Trump characterized his vote for Republican Curtis Sliwa, also a candidate for president of the House, as “a vote for Mamdani”, and showed a preference for independent candidate Andrew Cuomo, former governor of New York. “I would rather see a Democrat with a track record of success win than a communist with no experience and a record of complete and utter failure,” Trump wrote in Truth Social.
Andrew Cuomo, a longtime Democrat running as an independent, repeated Donald Trump’s words moments later, in an interview with 77WABC radio: “Now it will be up to the Republicans and I hope they listen to the president.”
Later, in an interview with Fox News, Cuomo added: “We need a speaker of the House who will stand up to Donald Trump.” And he also reinforced the president’s threat to cut funding to the city and send the National Guard: “Trump will go through Mamdani like a hot knife through butter,” said Cuomo.
Mamdani responded publicly to Trump’s statements – he did so during a campaign event in Queens, saying that he already expected the president’s support for Cuomo: “We’ve known for months that Trump would support Cuomo,” he said, quoted by the New York Times.
“The MAGA movement’s embrace of Andrew Cuomo shows that Donald Trump understands that Cuomo would be the best mayor for Trump himself – not the best for New York, not for New Yorkers, but the best for Donald Trump and his administration.” Mamdani further added that he would face the threat “for what it is: a threat, not a law”.
“Too often we treat everything Donald Trump says as if it had the force of law just because he said it,” he criticized.
According to the most recent polls, Mamdani is leading the race. An Atlas Intel survey, completed on October 30, shows Mamdani with 41% of voting intentions, followed by Cuomo (34%) and Sliwa (24%), according to .
