President Donald Trump suggested Thursday night that Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani could win the New York City mayor’s race if the field of candidates isn’t narrowed.
“I don’t think you can win unless you have one on one, because somehow he’s gotten a little bit of a lead,” Trump told reporters before a White House dinner with top tech executives.
“I would like to see two people drop out and have it be one on one,” Trump added. “I think that’s a race that could be won.”
Trump did not specify which candidates he would like to see exit the race. Mamdani is competing against Mayor Eric Adams, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa.
Asked whether he’d encouraged any of the candidates to drop out, Trump said, “No,” before adding, “I don’t like to see a communist become mayor, I will tell you that.”
President Donald Trump during a dinner in the State Dinning Room of the White House, in Washington, on Sept. 4, 2025.Alex Brandon / AP
Trump has repeatedly derided Mamdani, 33, as a communist, arguing that he isn’t fit to lead the country’s largest city. Mamdani identifies as a democratic socialist.
The New York Times reported Wednesday that his top advisers sought to entice Adams and Sliwa to drop out of the race by offering them roles in the administration. The aim is to boost former Cuomo’s chances of defeating Mamdani after he suffered a bruising loss in the Democratic primary in July.
Cuomo is running as a third-party candidate in the general election. Adams is running as an independent.
A spokesperson for Adams said he hasn’t had any discussions with Trump about the race and denied that he’d been offered a job at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, as some outlets reported. However, the spokesperson didn’t explicitly deny the central angle of the Times’ reporting, which was that intermediaries for Trump met with Adams to discuss a potential administration role.
Sliwa also denied having any discussions and said he’s “not interested in a job with the White House.”
Mamdani called the alleged intervention by Trump’s allies “outrageous” in an interview Thursday on MSNBC, though he said he is “just as confident of beating Andrew Cuomo today as I was yesterday.”
“This is an affront to our city’s democracy. This is an affront to the values that make so many of us proud to be Americans; that we could choose our own leaders, not that our leaders pick themselves or their friends,” Mamdani said.