MAGA Won. It Gave Us Zohran Mamdani.

Nikos Mohammadi

August 7, 2025

In the 1980s, the Republican Party gave us the tough-on-Communism, union-busting, free-market-crusading Ronald Reagan. Last July, that same party provided a venue for Sean O’Brien, who became the first Teamsters president to ever speak at their national convention. 

As it happens, a majority of rank-and-file Teamsters would go on to support Donald Trump in the election. Bernie bros like Joe Rogan, now pejoratively called “manosphere” personalities, also endorsed Trump. So did anti-war pacifists, Catholic postliberals, libertarians, and countless other unlikely bedfellows who seemingly had nothing in common but their conviction in forging a new political order (what this new order would look like was an open question). Thus, belief in so-called “conservative principles” was no longer the only litmus test for being Republican, but further, the degree to which one was “redpilled” to the social, political, and economic reality in America. 

This “redpilling” might have worked against the Democratic Party and its then-dominant, pro-corporate woke ideology. But it also undermined the GOP’s own establishment, which had started wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, presided over a Neoliberal economic order that had decimated the American working and middle class, and pushed policy that disproportionately favored the wealthy. Meanwhile, the Right’s opposition to Big Government started evolving into skepticism of Big Business. As a result, “redpilled” individuals dissatisfied with the continuation of the status quo looked to Trump not only as someone who would defeat Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, but who would radically alter the course of his own party. 

 The Complications of Realignment

After Trump’s win in the election, it might have been possible to cast aside his more traditionally Republican governing decisions for a general conviction in realignment—the idea that, mostly relating to foreign policy and economics, Republicans were increasingly going left, and Democrats going right. It’s hard to say when the realignment idea really started, perhaps on the campaign trail in 2016 (which Glenn Greenwald observed was a truly “socialist” version of Trump) or sometime during the Biden years. Despite its loosely-defined emergence, realignment explains how in the past year, neoconservative writer and one-time chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, Bill Kristol, praised the mention of the late President Reagan at the Democratic National Convention, while Batya Ungar-Sargon called herself on the pages of the Free Press, with apparently little contradiction in her mind, a “MAGA Lefty.”

Realignment is real in that the base and punditry of the Republican Party today is considerably different, that is, more anti-elite, anti-woke, and nationalistic than ten years ago. Certain influential voices, like Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson, have gone even further, taking an explicitly pro-worker, protectionist, and isolationist stance. For all of the President’s smears against “radical Marxists,” at the height of his 2016 campaign, Bannon, then Trump’s top strategist, told a reporter that he was a Leninist. Carlson is, in more ways than one, a socialist. Theirs is a leftism articulated in right-wing jargon, and with conservative social characteristics. 

Then, will the leftist ideals of Bannon, Carlson, and others ever materialize in the Republican Party? Time will tell. Maybe through a President JD Vance. For now, realignment’s practical flaw is that it assumes that there is any ideology, aside from a conviction in tariffs as the best trade policy to vindicate the failures of Neoliberalism, to be realigned through Trump. 

On the very first page of his Art of the Deal, Trump actually lays out his only “ideology” quite clearly: “I do it to do it. Deals are my art form.” Tariffs are the ultimate deal because they allow the U.S. to wage its negotiating power as the still, if faltering, global cultural, economic, and geopolitical behemoth. By abandoning its status as the free market nation par excellence, the U.S. could potentially alienate some allies, but also resurrect its domestic industry and revitalize its heartland. So goes the reasoning. 

Tariffs as the sole true exception, Trump appears to be no serious agent for realignment in other spheres, at least given the vibes at this particular moment. Lately, he praises the Republicans with old ideas supporting the projection of American muscularity, like Fox News’ Mark Levin, yet calls the ones with a more pacifist vision, like Carlson, “kooky.” 

The “peace candidate” in fact seems to be presiding over a new cold war. For the first time since 2008, the U.S. is moving nuclear weapons to the U.K., presumably to counter Russia. He bombed Iran over highly questionable intel, which could have well led to devastating, far-ranging consequences, and still could. The Heritage Foundation, essentially the institutional powerhouse of the conservative movement, now believes that the U.S. is in a cold war with China, and Trump’s actions and rhetoric toward the People’s Republic certainly do make it feel that way (with a few notable exceptions). 

For Trump, the end will remain to be deals. The President can sometimes be a hawk, whereas other times, he can be a genuine America First restrainist. To some degree, he could also be borrowing from the old Bolshevik playbook, “twisting the wire” and forging the way for a new political order to replace our current one. But that is just speculation. 

Irrespective of how much Trump wants to deal and how much he wants to eventually tear the whole system down and forge something new, this is the reality: the conservative movement has evolved from the Tea Party, and the Reagan Revolution before that, to be more ideologically diverse and at times verge on lefty, even socialist. Still, the evidence shows that Trump is in many cases, to borrow Jude Russo’s clever moniker, just a “Boring Republican.” A new Republican politics may eventually come around, but if so, the revolution is taking longer than many (including myself) initially expected. 

Mamdani’s “America First” Calculation

Again, realignment is real, even if, in practice, it is not always being actively driven by Trump and current GOP leadership. It is the nature of politics for someone to use that discourse and ideological shift for their own benefit, to which we must look to none other than the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani. 

In the last primary debate, when the candidates were asked which foreign country they would first visit as Mayor, everyone responded “Israel” (Adrienne Adams instead referred to it as the “Holy Land”); Mamdani, however, stated, “I would stay in New York City. My plans are to address New Yorkers across the five boroughs and focus on that.” When pressed, he said that he would be able to meet Jewish New Yorkers in their homes and synagogues, and that he need not travel to Israel to combat anti-Semitism. 

Mamdani articulated, to call it what it is, America First, in stark contrast to his chief rival Andrew Cuomo’s staunch pro-Israel rhetoric. In his episode with Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, Carlson did not hold back on criticizing Mamdani, calling him a “foreign-born midwit.” But he also said, “That guy was the only person in the New York City mayor’s debate to say he wanted to focus on New York City… He said I wouldn’t go anywhere, I’d stay in New York.” Both Carlson and Greene believed that “he gave the right answer.” 

A few weeks later, at the TPUSA Student Action Summit for young right-wingers, Carlson took a shot at conservative’s fear of Mamdani, calling out “certain cable channels,” by which he almost certainly meant his former employer Fox News, “who are spending all this time talking about, ‘oh, they’re about the elect a socialist in New York City.’” He then ridiculed Mamdani as “not even a real socialist” but instead “a tranny-vax rich kid liberal guy”. 

Comedian and podcaster Andrew Schulz, another “manosphere” type like Rogan who is not necessarily conservative but supported Trump in the previous election and has since grown somewhat disenchanted with the President, opined, “The only party right now that to me seems America First is the Democrat Socialist Party… Mamdani, and all of his ideas that he will not be able to execute, and I frankly think many of them are not good ideas, but he is no doubt New York first.” 

The working class tends to vote in its own economic self-interest, and will see no inherent contradiction in having supported Trump last November, and Mamdani today. Ethnic and religious minorities might place a greater emphasis on geopolitical conflicts they see as impacting their fellow “brothers” and “sisters.” Mamdani was clever enough to realize this, after the President’s win last November, quickly taking to the streets of Queens and The Bronx to ask working-class individuals why specifically they voted for Trump. Almost everyone answered either “economics” or “Palestine.”

Country club Republicans, it is worth mentioning, will certainly not bring themselves to support Mamdani. His entire platform goes against their WASP avarice and suburban ethos. Hardcore Zionists too will have an issue supporting a candidate who says he would arrest Netanyahu if he ever sets foot in New York, which Mamdani justifies because of the prime minister’s accused crimes under international law (it’s wholly unclear what would happen if the NYPD did that; these are untested waters). Thus, it should come as no surprise that Olivia Reingold’s beat at the pro-Israel, right-of-center Free Press has, since April, been almost exclusively devoted to trashing Mamdani. 

Others in the educated middle class, by contrast, are amenable to jumping ship. More still did not vote for Trump but weren’t terribly disappointed when they woke up on the morning of November 6th to see him poised to return to office. And many committed leftists neither like Trump personally nor his actual policies, but can appreciate some of the realignment ideas within the MAGA movement. Even if, like Schulz, these groups explicitly disagree with some of Mamdani’s agenda, they are all potential Zohran bros (and gals). 

How Mamdani Understands The Culture 

In an environment where MAGA has won the culture war, it is highly relevant that Mamdani’s movement has not been “woke” per se but largely centered on class and affordability, and to some (perhaps inevitable) degree, Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza. 

Republicans are generally more supportive of Israel than Democrats, but MAGA is becoming disheartened over the onslaught in Gaza, as are Independents. The “manosphere” of Rogan, Schulz, Theo Von, and others even more so. Cuomo, meanwhile, has called himself a “Shabbos goy” because of how much he supports Israel, is on Netanyahu’s legal defense team against his International Criminal Court warrant, and heads Never Again, NOW!, an organization which aims to combat “antisemitism on US college campuses” and expose “the truth about antizionist rhetoric.” 

Mamdani’s slogans, on the other hand, are “Freeze the Rent” and “Free Buses,” and the mayoral contender has never once mentioned, like most Democrats in his position might, that he would become the first Muslim or Indian or African-born mayor of New York. 

In fact, it might be more prudent to classify Mamdani’s movement not as inherently opposed to MAGA, but as having taken some of the MAGA movement’s ideological commitments to isolationism and workerism for the political Left. He has inspired New Yorkers to come together as one big community, to solve their own issues irrespective of who is in power in Washington or Albany; to ensure that the working class has a fair shot at achieving the American Dream. If it were not for Kamala Harris’s loss in November 2024, the Democratic Party establishment’s apparent shift to the center to appeal to more voters, and the cultural triumph of the New Right, it is likely that Zohran Mamdani would not have been able to defeat the Cuomo political dynasty in the Democratic primary.

When I attended Mamdani’s first rally in Brooklyn in May, I saw a politics of anger toward the existing political order like Trump’s. One that sought to break from the failures of the past and seek something new that worked for all New Yorkers. Any attacks toward Trump were toward Trump and his administration specifically, not mistakenly placing the blame on Trump voters (unlike SNL, across the East River). 

Mamdani’s final remarks from the stage were that “darkness is all around us” and that we are “in a night that will not end,” but that “it is at night that we dream best.” That’s merely Trumpist rhetoric, in opposition to not only the Democratic establishment but Trump himself. Just as how in 2015 and 2016, Trump rallied not only against the Democrats but against the failures of the G.O.P. and their leadership. 

By applying MAGA’s anti-establishment politics and rhetoric to progressivism and American democratic socialism, Mamdani has exposed the very contradictions inside the GOP’s big tent and in Trump’s more “Boring Republican” governing decisions. 

The Right’s Red (And Green) Scare

The loudest voices on the Right, as it happens, are unable to hold their contempt for Mamdani to themselves, and I’m not talking about Carlson’s cheeky insults. Mamdani articulates the failures of the Right in power, who were relegated to total cultural and political outsiders for the past four years, and must now actually govern. This makes him a legitimate threat to an order built off realignment but which, in these past six months, has not been able to fully deliver on that mandate. 

On June 24, 2025, the day Mamdani won the primary, Charlie Kirk went on an unhinged race hate rant on X about how “24 years ago a group of Muslims killed 2,753 people on 9/11. Now a Muslim Socialist is on pace to run New York City.” He also tweeted, “London. Calgary. Rotterdam. And soon…New York City. The power centers of the west will soon have Muslim mayors. You become what you import.” Never mind that Calgary’s mayor is actually Sikh, and that Calgary is probably not a “power center” of the West. 

Congressman Brandon Gill retweeted a video of Mamdani eating with his hands, remarking that “Civilized people in America don’t eat like this. If you refuse to adopt Western customs, go back to the Third World.” The responses to his tweet are quite amusing: many users pointed out that his wife, Danielle D’Souza Gill, who is of Indian heritage, grew up “eating that way” or “eats that way.”

Congresswoman Greene, though she was able to commend Mamdani for his insistence on staying in New York, nonetheless posted an AI-generated image of the Statue of Liberty covered in a burka following his primary win. Trump later suggested deporting Mamdani, who he claimed might be here illegally. 

The irony of these insults is that Mamdani is more or less an assimilated American, though Trump’s own comments should (as always) be taken less literally than what is usual for a politician. Mamdani is a former rapper who used to live on the Upper West Side and matriculated from Bowdoin College. He is the son of two intellectuals who have made their careers in the West; his father is a Columbia professor, and his mother is a filmmaker. That is about as characteristic of the American Dream of integration and prosperity as it gets. 

Mamdani’s ethnic plays, like wearing a traditional Indian garment and aligning himself with Desi communities in the city, appear simply an attempt to win — for better or for worse — at the very American game of ethnic politics. 

Of course, MAGA itself and the Zohran bros have many deep disagreements. Yet, broadly speaking, both the MAGA and Mamdani movements respond to similar concerns and embody a similar exigency. They’re both derided by liberals as “postliberal,” by others as against our shared American values (whatever that even means), and thus not worthy of true consideration. So, can we be surprised that both Trump and Mamdani won in many of the same districts? 

The MAGA Legacy

The culture now favors the bros, the anti-woke, the MAGA-esque. That necessitates a sort of MAGA Leftism that works within the rhetoric and narrative of this cultural shift, and to appear genuine, to be articulated by an anti-Trumper progressive like Mamdani. 

Another New Yorker is poised to shock the nation, attempt to alter the course of his party, and rally against the mores of the elite. His name won’t be on buildings on 5^th Avenue, but it will be in the hearts of so many New Yorkers disillusioned not only with the old-time Democrats, but also with what to many has been a disappointing New Right whose “realignment” does not necessarily translate into substantive policy. 

And like Trump, Mamdani makes a lot of promises he might not be able to keep. Like free buses, which as an MTA service, would fall under the discretion of the governor, not the mayor. Or take tax increases to fund his ambitious projects like free childcare, which must also come out of Albany and not City Hall, and Governor Kathy Hochul has explicitly said that she would not raise taxes. “King” Trump, who takes a particular interest in the affairs of his hometown, could also withhold funding from the city and use the opportunity to showcase his power to the rest of the country. Perhaps Mamdani to some, like Trump to others, is best understood as a “redpilled” protest vote? 

It could be that the chief victory of MAGA won’t be in the actions of the Trump administration itself or even a future Vance administration (itself not a certainty), but in the similar anti-establishment movements it inspires, on the Left and the Right. These different movements won’t be tied by the same goals or specific ideology — and their prominent figures may be actively opposed to each other, as we have seen countless right-wingers attack Mamdani — but by a basic understanding that our current political system has failed the majority, and that a radically different political order that articulates new ideas is attainable.

Of course, there is still some time until the general election, an election that has almost achieved the importance of a presidential race for the American media. Mamdani could well lose in a four-way contest against independents Cuomo, Adams, and GOP nominee Curtis Sliwa. The frontrunner’s cringey tweets in 2020, rhetoric we can unfortunately blame many progressives of, do him no favors. 

Therefore, a new political order beyond Trump’s MAGA proper is not certain. Nor is it certain that it will work. 

The biggest question remains whether this new politics will respond more directly to people’s concerns and truly challenge a failing status quo. 

The ball is in your court, Mr. Mamdani.