Zohran Mamdani Pressed Whether Democratic Socialist Policies Like Abolishing Prisons Will Work in Nationally 

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) was pressed on whether Democratic Socialist policies like abolishing prisons, abolishing ICE, and opening the borders are positions that would work for the Democratic Party nationally — or if they only appeal to hard-left voters in New York City.

Mamdani was asked about it by ABC’s Jonathan Karl on This Week on Sunday. Karl wanted to know if Mamdani believed the socialist polices that several candidates he backed last week would work for Democrats outside the Big Apple.

“There’s been a lot of attention on one of the candidates you supported, one who knocked off an incumbent Democrat, is Darializa Avila Chevalier,” Karl said. “She said some very controversial things, including calling for the abolition of prisons, couldn’t say whether or not somebody who had committed murder should be in prison. Called for open borders. Against all deportations, including those of violent criminals.”

He then asked, “Are those positions that the Democratic Party could win on nationally?”

Mamdani answered:

I think what the Democratic Party can win on nationally is a focus on working people, and I think that what I saw from Darializa when I would walk the streets of her district was a focus on what she describes as the politics of life. She would talk about how we have to invest in babies, not bombs.

She’s now going to represent what is one of the poorest districts in the United States of America. And what people in that district are exhausted by is a politics that has justified the spending of tens of billions of dollars in killing civilians overseas, while working people are struggling just to do the basics.

Karl seemed a bit confused by that answer.

“But how does that — how does abolishing prisons or having open borders fit into that?” he said. “I mean, do you see how… those are ideas that a lot of your Democrats that are warning about what happened here say are toxic, most of America won’t go along with. They are bad ideas. They are dangerous ideas.”

Mamdani said Chevalier’s race was all about the “struggle that working people are facing.”

“And I think that we can have disagreements on policy positions,” he continued. “What we have to agree on is what are we fighting for, and who are we fighting for? She showed that in her race, and I think that many people will come to appreciate that in her leadership to come.”

“So we can disagree on something as basic as whether or not there should be prisons?”

Mamdani answered by saying there are still prisons in New York and that safety is “not something that’s up for debate” in his town.

The interview comes a few days after several socialist candidates backed by Mamdani won their Democratic primaries.

Two of the candidates — Chevalier and Claire Valdez (D) — are card-carrying DSA members, just like the mayor. The third candidate is Brad Lander (D), a former member of the DSA who left the organization after its response to the October 7 Hamas terror attack in Israel.

Still, he earned Mamdani’s support by running more critically of Israel than did incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY). Lander has claimed American support for Israel made the USA “complicit in genocide.” 

Beyond their shared socialist beliefs, the three candidates also agree with Mamdani that ICE needs to be abolished.

The socialist wave was celebrated by Mamdani on Tuesday night, but a number of establishment Democrats were unsettled by it. One centrist House Democrat told Axios that 2027 would be a “headache” for the party with them around, while another House Dem reacted to the sweep by saying, “Holy sh*t.”

And James Carville urged Congressional Dems to shun any socialists who enter Congress.

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump sardonically congratulated Mamdani on getting “3 solid Communists” elected.

Watch above.

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