Mamdani Rips $1.8B Trump ‘Slush Fund’: ‘Could Make Every Bus Free — Twice!’

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) ripped President Donald Trump’s $1.776 billion “slush fund,” pointing out it could “make every bus” in New York “free — twice!”

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told Fox News this week that “we’re currently drawing up plans to say, listen, in these sanctuary cities where the local, radical left Democrats aren’t allowing us to do our job and enforce federal laws, then we shouldn’t be processing international flights into their cities either because they don’t want us to enforce immigration.”

Mamdani was a guest on Thursday’s edition of MS NOW’s The Briefing with Jen Psaki, during which he told host Jen Psaki that “We will not be threatened” over immigration:

PSAKI: You’ve clearly been focused on cutting waste and going through the budget, I assume, dollar by dollar, a little more than that.

(LAUGHTER)

MAMDANI: Yes.

PSAKI: To find savings so that you can do the things you want to do. Having just gone through all that, I just have to ask you about some of the spending we’ve been seeing out of Washington. I mean, in particular, Trump’s decision to use $1.8 billion of taxpayer money as a slush fund for his aggrieved supporters. I mean, that’s a lot of money. The people it’s going to is its own separate, outrageous problem. And the same people who are defending this fund are the ones who spent months claiming you were going to bankrupt New York with your policies. I — I know, because we’ve talked a number of times, you never stop smiling through all this, but that has to make you furious, right?

MAMDANI: I — I think it just shows that it’s never been about the amount of money. It’s about what it’s being spent on. And there is a politics across this country that is completely at peace with the idea of spending billions of dollars to enrich those who already have more money than they know what to do with. And what they are offended by is the idea of spending that money to help those who have been left behind by our politics.

The idea that we have money in Washington for these kinds of initiatives, when here in New York City, we are looking to protect our New Yorkers from cuts happening the same city of Washington, D.C., to the tune of similar amounts of money, it just shows that it’s all a question of priorities. It’s not a question of what’s possible.

PSAKI: There’s a lot that could be done with $1.8 billion. I’m sure you could plan some things in New York City. We — we’ve seen several proposals, some at the federal level and state level, to tax the money from Trump’s slush fund at 100 percent. I mean, there was one from the governor of California. There’s also a bill in the New York State Assembly to do that right now. Anyone who’s watched you closely know you’ve — you’re not afraid to tax someone who you think deserves to be taxed.

(LAUGHTER)

PSAKI: Do you support those kind of proposals?

MAMDANI: I think that’s the kind of imagination we need to see, whether it’s here in New York City or across the country. Because what we found time and again is it feels like the Republican Party has a monopoly on imagination, whereas Democrats are constructing an ever-lowering ceiling of what’s possible. And it’s time for us to actually show that we are willing to fight for the people who are being left behind by these kinds of policies. And as you said, $1.8 billion could make every bus free, twice. That’s the kind of money that we’re talking about when it comes to New York City. And yet that’s the money that they’re willing to spend on what are clearly just partisan political priorities.

Watch above via MS NOW’s The Briefing with Jen Psaki.

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