The Sunday before the New York City mayoral race, President Donald Trump told New Yorkers he might withhold federal funding if Zohran Mamdani won.
“It’s gonna be hard for me as the president to give a lot of money to New York, because if you have a Communist running New York, all you’re doing is wasting the money you’re sending there,” Trump told CBS’s 60 Minutes. Mamdani responded to Trump’s threat of extortion—vote for my preferred candidate or else—by pointing out that said federal funding was not Trump’s to give. “This funding is not something that Donald Trump is giving us here in New York City,” Mamdani said. “This is something that we are, in fact, owed in New York.”
It was not the first time Trump treated federal funds as his personal property that he could use to extort political opponents or reward political allies. Trump has approved disaster aid for red states and denied it to blue states. In the midst of the government-shutdown fight with Democrats, he is refusing to disburse rainy-day funds for food stamps, saying (falsely) that the lapse will hurt “largely Demo
Continue Reading on The Atlantic
This preview shows approximately 15% of the article. Read the full story on the publisher's website to support quality journalism.