Is Donald Trump afraid of Zohran Mamdani?

This week we’re chatting with two journalists who have followed Mamdani’s campaigns since 2020: Ted Hamm, whose new book Run Zohran Run! looks inside Zohran Mamdani’s sensational campaign to become New York City’s first Democratic Socialist mayor, and Liza Featherstone, a journalist at Jacobin who focuses on student and labor activism.

We hear their takes on why Trump and the establishment are getting nervous about the rise of Mamdani, and why this could harvest success in November’s election, but also danger and threats from both Democrats and Republicans for the young mayor candidate.

Here is an excerpt of their take. Subscribe to hear Ted and Liza’s full analysis of the NYC mayor race and its national implications:

I'm pretty optimistic that a lot of the attacks on Zoran and the failure of the Democratic leadership to stand up for him and get behind him, even though he is overwhelmingly the Democratic nominee, in many ways actually help him. Just because I think that people are mad.

And the crazy attacks by the Trump administration on Zoran worry me a lot because they could just arrest him and send him to El Salvador.

And so I'm honestly more concerned about that in some ways than the election. Because I think their threats to deport him are so outrageous. The things they say about him are so appallingly racist. This is New York City! I think people are really offended by all of that. But great instincts of a body or a population can exist, they just have to be organized into being.

This great consensus behind Zoran has been organized into being, and I think it's going to be really hard for them to stop it.

Subscribe to hear the full interview where Liza and Ted discuss whether Cuomo even wants to be NYC Mayor, proof of how the NY Post manufactures outrage against Zohran, and if a Mayor Mamdani could have any real success making New York affordable with government-run grocery stores and rent freezes.

Plus, catch this week’s Thursday Throwdown: Aaron Maté & Katie Halper Demand Meeting with “Fraudfather” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt

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The Anti-Defamation League (Apartheid Defense League*)’s CEO Jonathan Greenblatt embarked on a frantic smear tour across corporate media this week in a desperate effort to break public support for NYC Mayor candidate Zohran Mamdani. What was allegedly an attempt to sound like a worried protection of Jews instead came off like the threats of a mob boss.

Mamdani “doesn’t get to pick and choose which Jewish people he talks to,” the Fraudfather said. “He needs to come to us.”

To which we at Useful Idiots respond, Jonathan Greenblatt, you don’t get to pick and choose which Jewish people you talk to. We have two right here that disagree with the antisemitic notion that Israel has a biblical right to occupy, murder, and starve Palestinian children.

You need to come to us.

We hereby demand a meeting with ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt. Come to Useful Idiots.

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And speaking of the ridiculous, genocidal claims of Zionists, we watch a British journalist respond to the fact that “the IDF are sniping children in the head. IDF soldiers were ordered to shoot at Gazans who were waiting for food,” with the mindless talking point: “But how can we not support our allies??”

And one more, just for madness sake: Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) claims that Iran was “days away” from a nuclear bomb before the US attack. When asked whose assessment this was, he responds: “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

Subscribe to watch full episode, which also has some One Big Beautiful Bill nonsense for good measure. Thanks for supporting independent media, watch the whole Throwdown here:

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The situation and discourse over the escalating US-Israel-Iran conflict are changing fast with civilian strikes, ceasefire talks, sneak attacks, and coverups. Narges Bajoghli, Associate Professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, helps us parse through the propaganda.

Useful Idiots: The big debate right now in Washington is the Trump administration claiming, ‘Yeah, we basically obliterated Iran's nuclear program.’ And the media saying, ‘No, you didn't.’ And that's the debate, not whether the U.S. had the right to do that, or whether it was right for Trump to pretend to engage in diplomacy just to help Israel kill a bunch of people in Iran, including many civilians. As you're watching all this unfold in Washington, what is your sense of what is missing from the public discussion?

Narges Bajoghli: First of all, this was an unprovoked war that Israel launched inside of Iran. And as much as the framing around it by mainstream media was that Israel was just targeting military infrastructure, military officials, and nuclear facilities, from day one they were targeting civilian infrastructure. Lots of civilians ended up losing their lives in this twelve day war that we had. So the erasure of that and the focus on the civilian infrastructure in Israel, that is important to pay attention to.

The other is that we still talk about nuclear energy as if nuclear energy can only be used to create a bomb. Not only did the IAEA and all US intel agencies say that they had no evidence that Iran was going for a bomb. But what we were not discussing is that nuclear energy is actually used for medical research, it's used for cancer research, it's used for electricity, it's civilian infrastructure. And so targeting civilian infrastructure in this way actually violates international law.

Useful Idiots: There's a lot of talk right now about a ceasefire. Is there a ceasefire?

Narges Bajoghli: So far, there's a ceasefire in the sense that both sides have ceased firing at one another. Trump’s base turned against him so publicly, so loudly that he could not risk starting another war or else he would have to risk losing his base. So it seems like he's put some pressure on the Israelis as well. But Israel is not known for abiding by and honoring ceasefires. I think to date with the ceasefire in Lebanon, it's already violated it over a thousand times. So I know that there's a lot of trepidation about how long this will actually hold. But for the moment, this is where we are.

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Subscribe to hear the full interview with Narges Bajoghli on the impact of US sanctions on working people in Iran, whether sanctions should be considered a war crime, what we can predict about Iran by analyzing the regime change operation in Syria, and a weird CNN propaganda video fear-mongering about Iranian sleeper cells in the US.

Plus, catch this week’s Thursday Throwdown: Trump Thinks He’s Hotter Than Zohran Mamdani

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