Zohran Mamdani blasted former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo for being President Donald Trump’s alleged “puppet” as the two sparred over their ability to stand up to the White House at a New York City Mayoral debate on Thursday.
Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for New York City mayor, stressed that Cuomo didn’t call out Trump by name when he responded to the Justice Department’s decision to pursue an indictment of New York Attorney General Letitia James.
That move, he argued, spoke to Cuomo’s reluctance to confront the president, along with past media reports that suggested a cozier relationship between the two.
“You’ll issue a statement that doesn’t even name the president. And no matter what you think about Donald Trump, you know that not even being able to name him is an act of cowardice,” Mamdani said. “That is what we would see from Donald Trump’s puppet.”
Cuomo countered that he’d condemned political weaponization of the justice system, and said that he’d pushed back on Trump over pandemic policies when he was governor.
