By: Fern Sidman – Jewish Voice News

In a stunning and politically seismic declaration on the eve of the New York City mayoral election, President Trump urged New Yorkers to unite behind Andrew Cuomo, the scandal-scarred former governor, to prevent what he described as the city’s descent into “economic and social ruin” under Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani.

Trump’s pronouncement — posted to his Truth Social account late Monday night — marked his most forceful endorsement yet of Cuomo’s mayoral bid, representing a remarkable alignment between two of New York’s most polarizing figures. As The New York Post reported on Monday evening, the president’s statement framed the race as an existential referendum on the city’s future, casting Mamdani as a “Communist” whose leadership would bring about the “collapse of the greatest city in the world.”

“If Communist Candidate Zohran Mamdani wins the Election for Mayor of New York City,” Trump wrote, “it is highly unlikely that I will be contributing Federal Funds, other than the very minimum as required, to my beloved first home, because of the fact that, as a Communist, this once great City has ZERO chance of success, or even survival!”

Trump’s emphatic message gave voice to his conviction that New York — his birthplace and lifelong emblem of ambition — is now “on the brink of collapse” under far-left influence. According to The New York Post report, Trump’s endorsement amounted to a last-ditch intervention in a race that polls suggest Mamdani is favored to win.

“It can only get worse with a Communist at the helm,” Trump warned. “And I don’t want to send, as President, good money after bad. It is my obligation to run the Nation, and it is my strong conviction that New York City will be a Complete and Total Economic and Social Disaster should Mamdani win.”

While Trump’s relationship with Cuomo has historically been strained — marked by public clashes during the COVID-19 pandemic and years of mutual recrimination — the president made clear that his animus toward Mamdani transcends partisan lines. “I would much rather see a Democrat, who has had a Record of Success, WIN, than a Communist with no experience and a Record of COMPLETE AND TOTAL FAILURE,” he declared.

As The New York Post report noted, Trump’s endorsement of Cuomo has been building for weeks. But his latest message carried the unmistakable urgency of a final warning — a plea for pragmatism over purity in a political climate increasingly shaped by ideological extremism.

Trump’s statement also delivered a stinging rebuke to Curtis Sliwa, the Republican nominee and longtime Guardian Angels founder, whose populist campaign has failed to gain traction beyond the city’s conservative enclaves. “We must also remember this,” Trump wrote pointedly. “A vote for Curtis Sliwa (who looks much better without the beret!) is a vote for Mamdani.”

That quip, equal parts mockery and strategic admonition, reflects Trump’s calculation that Sliwa’s candidacy serves only to divide the anti-Mamdani electorate. As The New York Post report observed, Trump’s camp has been privately urging Republican voters for weeks to coalesce around Cuomo as the only viable candidate capable of blocking the Democratic socialist’s path to City Hall.

“Whether you personally like Andrew Cuomo or not,” Trump added, “you really have no choice. You must vote for him, and hope he does a fantastic job. He is capable of it, Mamdani is not!”

In political terms, Trump’s statement was extraordinary — a sitting Republican president openly calling on his party’s voters to support a Democrat, even one tainted by scandal, in order to thwart a socialist insurgent. Yet in Trump’s telling, this was not about party allegiance but about survival: “I don’t want to send good money after bad,” he wrote, vowing to withhold most federal funding from New York should Mamdani win.

Cuomo, ever cautious in managing political optics, sought to distance himself from the endorsement — or what he carefully reframed as an anti-Mamdani declaration. Speaking to reporters Monday night, the former governor struck a pragmatic tone.

“President Trump doesn’t support me. He opposes Mamdani, right?” Cuomo said, as quoted by The New York Post. “He believes that Mamdani is an existential threat to New York City. He believes he’s a communist. He believes he’ll bankrupt New York.”

Pressed further on whether he welcomed Trump’s intervention, Cuomo deflected: “He’s not endorsing me, he’s opposing Mamdani.”

Still, Cuomo’s campaign insiders acknowledged privately that Trump’s statement could reshape the race’s final hours — potentially swaying disillusioned moderates, business leaders, and even segments of the city’s Orthodox Jewish community, who view Mamdani’s anti-Israel rhetoric and support for boycotts as deeply troubling.

As The New York Post highlighted in its election coverage, Cuomo’s path to victory hinges on a fragile coalition of centrist Democrats, independents, and business-minded voters alarmed by the Democratic Party’s lurch to the left. Trump’s intervention, while controversial, could consolidate that bloc at a critical moment.

The “Communist” epithet Trump deployed against Mamdani was no spontaneous flourish. It was a deliberate revival of Cold War rhetoric — the kind that resonates powerfully with working-class and immigrant New Yorkers wary of radical economic experiments.

Mamdani, a state assemblyman from Queens and a self-identified democratic socialist, has called for sweeping rent freezes, wealth taxes, and cuts to police funding — policies that Trump and others have warned would cripple the city’s economic engine. As The New York Post reported, business groups fear that a Mamdani administration could trigger a mass exodus of high-income earners and accelerate corporate flight to lower-tax states such as Florida and Texas.

In Trump’s words, “This once great City has ZERO chance of success, or even survival” under Mamdani’s leadership.

The rhetoric struck a familiar chord with older New Yorkers, many of whom recall the city’s near-bankruptcy in the 1970s. As one longtime Manhattan businessman told The New York Post, “People laughed when Trump said he’d withhold federal funds, but if Mamdani wins, he might not have to. The private sector will do it for him — by leaving.”

For Cuomo, Trump’s dramatic endorsement — however uninvited — may represent an ironic lifeline in his quest for political redemption. Once considered the most powerful Democrat in New York, Cuomo’s fall from grace following sexual harassment allegations and pandemic-era controversies seemed irreversible.

But as The New York Post observed in recent weeks, Cuomo has carefully repositioned himself as a centrist alternative to the city’s ideological extremes, courting law-and-order Democrats, union leaders, and disaffected moderates tired of what he calls “Twitter politics.”

“Cuomo has found himself the unlikely vessel for New York’s silent middle,” The Post wrote in an editorial last week. “The same voters who punished him three years ago now see him as the only one standing between the city and chaos.”

Trump’s remarks, paradoxically, amplify that narrative. By painting Cuomo as a pragmatic bulwark against socialist excess, the president may have inadvertently legitimized his former rival’s comeback bid.

With just hours before polls open, New York City finds itself in a rare political moment — one in which old party loyalties have been upended by ideology. Trump’s call for Democrats and Republicans alike to “vote Cuomo” signals a recognition that, at least in this election, the battle lines are not partisan but philosophical: between capitalism and collectivism, pragmatism and extremism, governance and grievance.

As The New York Post succinctly framed it, “New York’s mayoral race has become a national proxy war for the soul of the American city.”

Whether Trump’s appeal sways enough voters remains to be seen. But his message — that a Mamdani victory would herald “a Complete and Total Economic and Social Disaster” — has electrified the final hours of an already turbulent campaign.

In closing his Truth Social post, Trump invoked nostalgia for the city that made his name — and lamented what he sees as its potential demise. “New York was once the envy of the world,” he wrote. “Under Mamdani, it will become its cautionary tale.”

The line, quoted prominently by The New York Post, captures both Trump’s enduring emotional connection to New York and his disdain for its political decay. For a president whose populist instincts remain intact, the message was as much about national symbolism as municipal politics: a warning that the fate of New York mirrors the direction of America itself.

For now, one thing is certain — Trump’s endorsement has transformed an already volatile mayoral contest into a defining moment of ideological clarity. In the words of The New York Post, “New Yorkers woke up to a political earthquake — one that could determine not only the city’s future, but the country’s as well.”