Zohran Mamdani, a leading progressive candidate for NYC mayor, ripped conservative City Councilwoman Vickie Paladino on Tuesday for suggesting he should be deported from the U.S. for his political views, calling her comment “a reflection” of how President Trump has emboldened “extremists.”
Paladino, one of the Council’s most right-leaning members, lobbed the attack late Monday, claiming on X it’s “insane” that Mamdani was elected to the state Assembly in 2020 even though he had been a U.S. citizen for less than a decade and is “a radical leftist who actually hates everything about the country.”
“Deport,” Paladino concluded the post, which included photos of Mamdani, who was born in Uganda and became a U.S. citizen in 2018.
In a statement on Tuesday, Mamdani, who is Muslim, said he has since launching his mayoral campaign in October been “targeted with death threats, Islamophobic attacks against me and my family, and now, a sitting New York City Councilmember is calling for my deportation.”
“This isn’t just hateful rhetoric — it’s a reflection of what happens when Donald Trump’s authoritarian administration is allowed to shove New Yorkers into unmarked vehicles, tear our communities apart and spit in the face of the Constitution,” Mamdani said, a reference to the Trump administration’s recent deportation raids at courthouses in the city.
“But let me be clear: New York belongs to all of us. The MAGA extremists may try to divide us, but the movement we’ve built is proof of the enduring promise of this city. And we’re not going anywhere.”
Mamdani, a socialist running on a platform that includes a promise to freeze rent for stabilized tenants, has consistently been polling as the runner-up candidate in the June 24 Democratic mayoral primary. Some recent polls suggest front-runner Andrew Cuomo’s lead over Mamdani is narrowing as the primary looms just weeks away.
Mayor Adams — who dropped out of the Democratic primary after the Trump administration secured a controversial dismissal of his corruption indictment in April — declined to comment on Paladino’s post during his weekly press conference Tuesday.
“I am not going to point out one specific comment, when I said over and over again: We all need to tone down our rhetoric,” he said, before turning to reporters in the room: “I think many of you should have toned down some of the stuff you wrote about me over these last few years, I condemn a lot of stuff that you guys have said about me.”
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