Trump bashes Mamdani after Democrats sweep key elections

President Donald Trump on Wednesday attacked New York City Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani in a boastful speech doubling down on his policy agenda after Democrats won a slew of key elections across the country.

"If you want to see what congressional Democrats wish to do to America, just look at the result of yesterday's election in New York, where their party installed a communist as the mayor of the largest city in the nation," Trump said during the speech in Miami.

Mamdani is a self-described democratic socialist who has rejected frequent accusations from Trump and other Republicans that he is a communist.

The Democratic nominee on Tuesday night trounced his main opponent, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who had been endorsed by Trump.

Trump told the Miami crowd on Wednesday afternoon, "We lost a little bit of sovereignty last night in New York, but we'll take care of it. Don't worry about it."

Near the end of the speech, Trump said he may try to work with Mamdani, though he has previously threatened to cut funding to New York City if its voters elected the Democrat.

"Now let's see how a communist does in New York. We're going to see how that works out. We'll help him. We want New York to be successful. We'll help him a little bit, maybe," Trump said in Miami.

Hours earlier, Trump conceded that the Democrats' electoral sweep up and down the ballot on Tuesday night spelled bad news for his Republican Party.

"Last night, it was, you know, not expected to be a victory, it was very Democrat areas, but I don't think it was good for Republicans," Trump said during a breakfast meeting with GOP senators at the White House on Wednesday morning.

"I'm not sure it was good for anybody," Trump said. "But we had an interesting evening, and we learned a lot, and we're going to talk about that."

Trump added: "If you read the pollsters, the shutdown was a big factor, negative for the Republicans, and that was a big factor."

"And they say that I wasn't on the ballot, was the, the biggest factor," he said.

Trump's reference to the government shutdown, which is now the longest in U.S. history, suggests he believes that the stalemate in the Senate is a political liability for the GOP.

Recent polls show more Americans blame Trump and Republicans for the shutdown, which has caused mass furloughs of government workers and threatened the funding for a slew of federal services.

Trump stressed at the breakfast meeting, "We must get the government back open soon, and really immediately."

He went on to urge Republicans to terminate the Senate filibuster in order to end the shutdown and force through his policy agenda.

Mamdani's victory was one of many Democratic electoral wins in the first off-year election cycle since Trump began his second term as president.

Democratic candidates Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill delivered resounding wins in their respective gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, with both projected to notch double-digit margins of victory.

Jay Jones, the Democrat running for Virginia attorney general, defeated his incumbent rival, overcoming a major scandal involving texts he sent in 2022 musing about violence against a Republican political foe.

After reporters and news cameras were ushered out of the breakfast Wednesday morning, Trump said that the electoral drubbing showed Republicans are "getting killed" and that the shutdown has been "worse for us than for them," Punchbowl News reported.

In his Miami speech hours later, Trump slammed the "reckless Democrat shutdown."

Publicly, some Republican leaders have brushed off the election results.

"What happened last night was blue states and blue cities voted blue. We all saw that coming," House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said Wednesday morning. "And no one should read too much into last night's election results. Off-year elections are not indicative of what's to come."

Vice President JD Vance in an X post said he believes "it's idiotic to overreact to a couple of elections in blue states."

But Republicans "have to do better at turning out voters," Vance wrote. And they must "focus on the home front," he added, emphasizing the issue of affordability, a key refrain for Mamdani and other Democratic candidates.

Trump's initial reaction to the electoral results, which came as the votes were still trickling in Tuesday night, was to claim that his party underperformed because he wasn't on the ballot, and because of the shutdown.

"'TRUMP WASN'T ON THE BALLOT, AND SHUTDOWN, WERE THE TWO REASONS THAT REPUBLICANS LOST ELECTIONS TONIGHT,' according to Pollsters," Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. He did not provide a link to those polls.

Trump, in follow-up posts, reiterated his recent demand that top Republicans move to eliminate the Senate filibuster, which requires 60 votes to pass most legislation, rather than a simple majority.

"REPUBLICANS, TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER! GET BACK TO PASSING LEGISLATION AND VOTER REFORM!" he wrote.

Republican leaders have long opposed taking that step, known as the "nuclear option," for fear that a future Democratic congressional majority would wield that power aggressively.

But Trump wants them to nuke the filibuster in order to quickly reopen the government and enact more of his policy agenda, including passing sweeping changes to federal voting laws.

He emphasized that view at the breakfast Wednesday morning.

"If you don't terminate the filibuster, you'll be in bad shape. We won't pass any legislation," he said.