New York’s mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani used his election-night stage to confront President Donald Trump directly, telling him to “turn the volume up” after a campaign punctuated by the president’s attacks and warnings about the nation’s largest city under a democratic socialist administration. In a combative address delivered at the Brooklyn Paramount, the 34-year-old state assemblyman framed his victory as both a local mandate and a national statement, arguing that New York’s response to Trumpism should be to dismantle the conditions that allowed it to take root. “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, adding, “And if there is any way to defeat a despot, it is by dismantling the very conditions that allowed him to accumulate power.” He closed the passage with a four-word challenge to the president: “Turn the volume up.”
Mamdani’s remarks came after his decisive win in the New York City mayoral race, an election he cast as a “mandate for change” following months in which Trump derided him as a “communist” and a “nut job” and suggested federal funds could be withheld from the city during his tenure. The president appeared to be tracking the event in real time. “…AND SO IT BEGINS!” he wrote on his Truth Social account as the speech unfolded. The exchange capped a campaign that made national headlines not only for its ideological contrast with the White House but also for its generational overtones, with Mamdani claiming victory over former governor Andrew Cuomo, the scion of a storied New York political family. From the stage, Mamdani portrayed the result as the toppling of a “political dynasty,” telling supporters they had delivered a mandate for “a new kind of politics.”
The mayor-elect said his administration, due to begin on 1 January, would centre tenants’ rights, labour protections and an expansive vision of immigrant life in the city. “We will hold landlords accountable because the Donald Trumps in our city have grown far too comfortable taking advantage of our tenants,” he said. “We will stand alongside unions and expand labour protections because we know – just as Donald Trump does – that when working people have ironclad rights, the bosses who seek to extort them become very small indeed.” He drew perhaps the loudest response of the night with a declaration that “New York will remain a city of immigrants, a city built by immigrants, powered by immigrants, and as of tonight, led by an immigrant,” before warning the president: “To get to any of us, you will have to get through all of us.”
The speech, which opened with a nod to the early-20th-century socialist leader Eugene Debs, set out the themes Mamdani is likely to press as he transitions into office. The references were deliberate: Debs is an icon for left-wing organisers who emphasise solidarity across class lines, and Mamdani used the quotation to link his incoming administration to a broader movement for economic and social reform. By placing Trump at the centre of his remarks, he signalled that his mayoralty will not shy away from national argument even as it confronts the city’s immediate concerns over housing costs, wages, public services and safety. The rhetoric also suggested that Mamdani sees his own election as a proof-point for the viability of democratic socialist policies in executive leadership, rather than only in legislative roles.