By:  Justin Winograd

In a move that both amused and unsettled New York’s Republican establishment, President Donald Trump on Sunday once again ridiculed GOP mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa, refusing to endorse him and joking that the longtime Guardian Angels founder might turn Gracie Mansion into a “cat sanctuary.” The remarks, reported on Sunday evening at VIN News, underscore Trump’s growing frustration with what he sees as weak Republican leadership in New York City — and his refusal to back a candidate he believes lacks the toughness to take on the city’s hard-left politics.

According to the information provided in the VIN News report, the president’s comments came during a Sunday morning interview with Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo, who asked whether he would consider endorsing Sliwa ahead of the high-stakes November election. Trump, however, made it clear that he remains unimpressed.

“Is he really a Republican? Am I a big fan?” Trump asked rhetorically. “This isn’t exactly ideal — where he wants to make Gracie Mansion a home for the cats.”

It was the second time in as many weeks that Trump publicly mocked Sliwa’s well-documented fondness for felines. The veteran crime-fighter and radio host famously shares his Upper West Side apartment with more than a dozen rescue cats and has leaned into his animal welfare persona on the campaign trail. But as the VIN News report noted, Trump’s mockery struck a more serious chord this time, signaling that the president sees Sliwa as unserious at a moment when the Republican brand in New York needs to project strength.

Trump, whose endorsements have defined Republican primaries across the nation, has wielded his political influence sparingly in New York City — a city that once crowned him its most famous builder and later became the crucible of his political identity. Yet, as VIN News reported, he has so far refrained from endorsing any of the three major mayoral contenders: Sliwa, former Governor Andrew Cuomo, and Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani.

“Gracie Mansion is a magnificent home,” Trump told Bartiromo. “You had great mayors there — Fiorello La Guardia, Rudy Giuliani. Rudy was the greatest mayor in the history of New York. You need someone like that again.”

His invocation of Giuliani — his longtime ally and personal attorney — served as both a compliment to the city’s storied past and a veiled jab at its present field of candidates. As the VIN News report observed, Trump’s wistfulness for Giuliani’s era calls attention to his view that modern New York politics, even within the GOP, lacks the law-and-order vigor that once defined its leadership.

For Sliwa, the rebuke could not have come at a worse time. The latest VIN News-cited polls show him trailing far behind Democratic frontrunner Zohran Mamdani, the 34-year-old Queens Assemblyman whose far-left platform has captured the city’s progressive imagination. Sliwa remains stuck in third place behind both Mamdani and Cuomo, with double-digit gaps separating him from the top two contenders.

The self-styled street crusader has long defined himself as a populist outsider — a crime-fighting vigilante who built his public identity patrolling New York’s subways in his signature red beret. But as the VIN News report pointed out, Sliwa’s quirky personal life, particularly his devotion to his cats, has often overshadowed his message on crime and city governance.

To his supporters, those cats are a symbol of his compassion and authenticity. To his detractors — including Trump — they’ve become an easy punchline.

“Curtis loves his cats, and that’s fine,” one Republican operative told VIN News on background. “But the city’s falling apart — crime, homelessness, economic collapse — and we’re talking about cats? That’s not the conversation Trump or New York Republicans want to be having right now.”

Trump’s remarks also reflect a broader theme in this election cycle: the president’s continued ability to define the terms of Republican politics, even in a deep-blue city where his name remains polarizing.

According to the information contained in the VIN News report, Trump has been closely monitoring the race, privately expressing concern that New York — his symbolic hometown — could fall even further under the influence of left-wing ideology if Mamdani wins.

“Mamdani is a communist — he really is,” Trump said bluntly during the interview, repeating a label he has used multiple times in recent weeks. “He’s pretty slick, but the city will be in big trouble under him.”

As VIN News reported, several GOP lawmakers have echoed Trump’s warnings, with some even suggesting that Mamdani’s radical positions — including his past support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel and his calls to slash NYPD funding — make him “unfit to hold public office.”

Trump’s blunt rhetoric, though characteristic, resonates with many conservatives who view the New York City race as a referendum on the city’s identity: a battle between the pragmatic centrism of its past and the ideological experimentation of its present.

Trump’s comments also took a swipe at Andrew Cuomo, the former three-term Democratic governor and now independent mayoral hopeful, who resigned in 2021 amid sexual misconduct allegations.

“I’m not going to endorse a Democrat — that’s not my thing,” Trump said, dismissing Cuomo outright. But his tone toward the disgraced former governor was almost wistful compared to his sharp criticisms of Mamdani. As the report at VIN News noted, Trump seemed to suggest that even Cuomo’s old-school machine politics would be preferable to the socialist experiment Mamdani represents.

“Cuomo’s corrupt, but at least he’s not a communist,” one Trump ally told VIN News. “That’s about as much of a compliment as you’ll get from Trump.”

The fracture within New York’s Republican ranks is now plain to see. Trump’s refusal to endorse Sliwa — and his mockery of the candidate — effectively leaves the GOP without a unifying figure in a race already dominated by Democratic energy.

According to the VIN News report, Republican strategists fear that Trump’s remarks could depress turnout among the party’s limited voter base, especially in outer-borough neighborhoods where Sliwa had hoped to rally support around crime, cost of living, and quality-of-life issues.

“This isn’t helpful,” said one senior GOP consultant quoted in the VIN News report. “Curtis needed Trump’s blessing to energize conservative voters, and now Trump’s basically laughing him off as a cat lover. That’s devastating optics.”

Trump’s fascination with New York politics is as personal as it is political. Though he decamped to Florida years ago, he continues to see New York as both his proving ground and his unfinished business — a city that turned its back on him but one he still claims to love.

In that sense, as the VIN News report observed, Trump’s remarks were not just about Sliwa, but about what he believes New York has become: ungovernable, unrecognizable, and unmoored from the values that once made it thrive.

“New York used to be strong,” Trump said during the interview. “Now it’s run by people who hate the police, who hate success, who want to destroy everything good about the city. It’s very sad.”

That sentiment — equal parts nostalgia and lament — speaks to the cultural backdrop of the mayoral race, where even Republicans find themselves fighting over what it means to be a New Yorker.

With just weeks to go before Election Day, VIN News reported that the tone of the campaign has grown increasingly bitter. Mamdani’s supporters have dismissed Trump’s attacks as irrelevant, while Cuomo’s team has attempted to court moderate voters disillusioned by both extremes.

Meanwhile, Sliwa continues to campaign on public safety, animal welfare, and grassroots reform — but without Trump’s endorsement, his chances appear slimmer than ever.

As one Manhattan voter told VIN News, “It’s New York — people can forgive almost anything except being a joke. And right now, Trump just turned Curtis into one.”

Whether Trump’s feline jabs prove fatal to Sliwa’s campaign remains to be seen. But one thing is certain: in a city defined by larger-than-life personalities, the president has once again managed to make himself the loudest voice in the room — even from 1,000 miles away.