While ringing the bell to open the New York Stock Exchange and launch the IPO of his latest business venture, "GrabAGun," Donald Trump Jr. said he thinks there would be an exodus out of New York City if Zohran Mamdani is elected mayor later this year.
Mamdani has said he would raise taxes on the rich and has espoused ideas like defunding police and living in communes rather than owning property.
"If what possibly could happen in November happens, I mean, it's scary and, you know, perhaps that's what New York needs," Trump Jr. told Fox News Digital on Wednesday.
"Maybe it has to fail to be able to come back, to be able to, you know, put the nail in the coffin of these ideas that have failed so many times around the world."
Trump Jr. predicted that more people would move from New York to Florida, continuing an exodus that has been going on since the pandemic in 2020.
"In New York, I think the stat I remembered, it was from like 10 years ago, but it was something like 18,000 people pay 80% of New York City’s city tax," Trump Jr. said. "Well, those people are all very mobile. They can go wherever they want. This new mayor could possibly be the greatest marketing campaign for Florida ever to exist."
Most Republicans and many Democrats are alarmed at the possibility of Mamdani being mayor, but it seems almost like Trump Jr. is wishing for it.
He seems to think that New York needs to fall in order to be rebuilt and to swing back pendulum-like to more conservative policies that actually work.
Trump continued, "But what happens to New York then? And as a lifelong New Yorker, as someone who grew up here, someone who changed the skyline here with my father for many years before he got into politics, that's a scary notion, but perhaps it's exactly what America needs. Sometimes you have to hit rock bottom, and I think if this communist mayor gets elected, rock bottom is what New York's going to see."
Trump Jr.'s partner in GrabAGun, Omeed Malik, compared Mamdani to progressive former Mayor Bill de Blasio, who was generally regarded as a failure.
"If you didn't see it on the writing on the wall with de Blasio I don't know what to tell you," Malik said. "I definitely don't want those people in Florida because if you haven't already moved out of here you've got the wrong politics."
President Donald Trump said earlier this month that if Mamdani gets elected, New York will "never be the same."
Current Mayor Eric Adams and former Mayor Andrew Cuomo are both running as independents, but they will likely split the vote if they both stay in the race and give the edge to Mamdani.
If all of Mamdani's detractors unite around one candidate, however, he will be easily defeated.
