New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani wasted no time confronting President Donald Trump, responding to the president’s threats to defund and deport him with a fiery message during his Brooklyn victory speech: “Turn the volume up.”
"Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching, I have four words for you: Turn the volume up,” Mamdani, a Democrat, told the Republican president from the stage of his Brooklyn victory party.
He issued a direct challenge to the president. "If anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it is the city that gave rise to him," he said.
The proclamation was an illustration of how both men have seized on one another as politically advantageous foils as Mamdani has risen from obscure state lawmaker to national Democratic star and as Trump has cast today's Democratic Party as radical and out of touch with everyday voters.
Mamdani, who was born in Uganda and became a naturalized American citizen after graduating from college, went on to cast himself as the embodiment of the resistance against the president, who has pursued an aggressive, anti-immigrant agenda during his second term.
