NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
New York City Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani traveled uptown to the Bronx on Thursday for the fourth day of his “Five Boroughs Against Trump” tour, arguing that President Donald Trump’s administration is hurting small businesses.
“We are here today on the fourth stop of our five borough tour, to speak about how Bronx sites can not afford the city that they call home, Mamdani said. “That is a struggle that many residents of the Bronx feel individually. It’s also a struggle that I know our small businesses are feeling at this moment. From 2020 to 2022, the population of the Bronx dropped by 6.3%. That’s more than any other borough in New York City. People are leaving this further, leaving this city because it’s too expensive. We are the most expensive city in the United States of America.”
Throughout the week, Mamdani has connected Trump to his leading competitor in the race, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who lost the Democratic primary to Mamdani in June and is now running as an independent candidate.
The theme continued on Thursday as the Mamdani campaign visited Nohble, a small business in the Bronx, where he argued that both Trump and Cuomo have handed “tax breaks to billionaires and megacorporations” throughout their political careers. Meanwhile, Mamdani has made affordability the central message of his campaign.
Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” which narrowly passed Congress last month, has been widely celebrated by Republicans for extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and adding deductions on tipped wages and overtime, while reducing spending on Medicaid and clean energy and strengthening border security.
MAMDANI TAKES AIM AT TRUMP’S IMMIGRATION POLICIES IN FIERY STATEN ISLAND SPEECH: ‘WE ARE FIGHTING TO KEEP NYC A SANCTUARY CITY’
But Democrats have been quick to claim that Trump’s megabill handed tax breaks to the wealthy while cutting benefits to the most vulnerable – a key Democratic message ahead of competitive midterm elections expected in 2026.
MAMDANI ZINGS CUOMO IN RENT-STABILIZED HOUSING SPAT DURING ANTI-TRUMP TOUR STOP
While Republicans argue the bill only cuts waste, fraud and abuse in Medicaid, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), about 10 million more people will be uninsured by 2034 due to Trump’s mega-bill.
As national Democrats slam Trump’s tax breaks, Mamdani has criticized Cuomo’s own record as governor, which includes offering $3 billion in tax breaks for the failed Amazon HQ2 deal in Queens, expanding $420 million-a-year film industry credits and launching “Tax-Free NY” zones to give businesses 10 years without state taxes.
Throughout the week, Mamdani has criticized Cuomo following The New York Times report that Trump spoke on the phone with Cuomo about how to defeat Mamdani in November. Meanwhile, Mamdani has described how his administration would be Trump’s “worst nightmare.”
“As we see Donald Trump and Andrew Cuomo trip over themselves to reward those who already have a fortune, we will stand up and fight for those that have been forgotten,” Mamdani said on Staten Island on Wednesday at an anti-Trump event focused on immigration.
Trump made waves on the 2024 presidential campaign trail when he held a rally in the Bronx and then visited a local barber shop in the borough.
The focus on deep blue New York City was seen as politically unusual for a Republican candidate, but Trump spent weeks in New York City for his criminal trial and often used the Big Apple as his own personal campaign trail.
During the rally, Trump vowed to “turn New York City around,” promising to make the city “bigger, better and greater than ever before.”
The Republican candidate also spoke with voters at Knockout Barbershop in the Bronx, taking questions from locals grappling with economic hardship.
“We see far too many parallels between Donald Trump and Andrew Cuomo, far too many stories that make clear that both administrations have been characterized by corruption, by a sense of impunity, by an inability of an executive to understand that no means no, a prioritization of the interests of billionaires over working people, and an agenda that is driven by little else beyond the retention and accumulation of power,” Mamdani said on Monday in Manhattan.
The White House did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s comment request, but said on Monday, ahead of Mamdani’s first anti-Trump event, “The American people have repeatedly rejected this Communist agenda and the more Mamdani shares his radical policies, the more the American people will recoil.”
Read the full article here
