Mayor Zohran Mamdani commented on the Iran War and criticism of his socialist policy proposals for New York City during an interview this week with NPR: <\/p>\n
NPR INTERVIEWER: When you were campaigning, President Trump did have names for you. He called you a “communist lunatic,” and you had names for him-you called him a “fascist.” Now that you’ve met with him, that you’ve spoken with him multiple times, do you still think he’s a fascist? NEW YORK CITY MAYOR ZOHRAN MAMDANI: Yes. NPR INTERVIEWER: And do you tell him that? ZOHRAN MAMDANI: Yes. … Look at the war in Iran today. We’re talking about a federal administration that has spent close to $ 30 billion killing thousands of people at a time when working-class people across this country cannot afford the bare minimum. … NPR INTERVIEWER: So, do you feel an added sense of pressure nationally because of the face you’ve become of the Democratic Party, and specifically the progressive part of this party? ZOHRAN MAMDANI: I’ll be honest with you-I don’t let myself think too much about what Republicans seek to portray me as. I think about the fact that the power of an ideology is judged in the worth of its delivery. And delivery, at the end of the day, is every single thing that we want to do. It’s why I spoke on Sunday about ‘pothole politics’ as a way we describe the work that we do, because for a long time Republicans have sought to describe themselves as being driven by the needs of working people, when in reality we’ve seen a chasm in what they’ve actually delivered for those people. I mean, look at the war in Iran today. We’re talking about a federal administration that has spent close to $ 30 billion killing thousands of people at a time when working-class people across this country cannot afford the bare minimum. And to be told that a city-run grocery store is implausible, but spending more than $ 500 million a day to kill people in Iran and Lebanon is not only plausible but necessary-it speaks to a broken kind of politics. And what we’re showing is that we can put forward not just our principles, but also the practical impacts of this work. We can deliver universal child care and change 6,700 catch basins. We can take on bad landlords across the city and start to repave more than a thousand miles of roadway. We can do all of these things where we’ve been told in the past you can only do one. NPR INTERVIEWER: Has the war in Iran had an outsized impact specifically on the economy of this city? ZOHRAN MAMDANI: Yes. The war in Iran has had an impact on the economy of this country. And even more than the economy, it’s had an impact on the people of this city and across this country. At the core of any war is a dehumanization that takes place. And that dehumanization is not limited to any battlefield-it extends into the lives of people across this country. And you know, I spoke to a young Muslim woman who I had called after seeing the news that she had been thrown to the ground at a subway stop. She told me that the first thing her attacker said to her before he attacked her was, ‘I wonder how many Iranians we killed today.’ That is what we are allowing to take hold in our politics. And it is critically important for all of us to speak up-not just from a position of politics, but frankly even just from a position of morals. NPR INTERVIEWER: Have you shared-I know you’ve spoken publicly about your concerns about this war-but have you shared those directly with President Trump? ZOHRAN MAMDANI: I’ll keep the nature of the conversations with the president between the two of us. What I will tell you is that it is no secret-not my concerns. I would describe it more as a deep opposition to this war-a deep opposition that comes out of a concern for what our politics are incentivizing in this moment: the killing of civilians as opposed to the uplifting of working-class people across this country. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n