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The leftist establishment spends so much time hating and trying to destroy Donald Trump that it’s easy to overlook the fact that leftist top dogs wish they had a Trump of their own. They may never admit it, but leftist would be overjoyed to find a candidate like Trump, someone who could relate to people honestly, communicate their message effectively, and above all, move people to vote for him. Now, some leftists think they’ve found their man: New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani.

In many ways, of course, Mamdani is the opposite of Trump, and he is proud of that fact. During the first New York City Democratic mayoral candidates’ debate on June 4, 2025, Zohran Mamdani proclaimed: “I am Donald Trump’s worst nightmare, as a progressive Muslim immigrant who actually fights for the things that I believe in. And the difference between myself and Andrew Cuomo is that my campaign is not funded by the very billionaires who put Donald Trump in D.C. I don’t have to pick up the phone from Bill Ackman or Ken Langone,” two Trump-supporting billionaires who donated to the Cuomo campaign.

Yet for all his hatred and contempt for the president, Mamdani emerged during that debate as the left’s answer to Trump. Cuomo responded to Mamdani’s class warfare rhetoric in the first debate by skewering Mamdani’s inexperience: “You know, Mr. Mandami [sic] is very good on Twitter and with videos, but he actually produces nothing… Donald Trump would go through Mr. Mandami [sic] like a hot knife through butter. He’s been in government 27 minutes, he passed three bills, that’s all he’s done, he has no experience with Washington, no experience with New York City, he would be Trump’s delight.”

Cuomo brought up Mamdani’s inexperience again in the June 12 debate, saying: “I think inexperience is dangerous. In this case. Mr. Mamdani had a staff of five people, you’re now going to run a staff of 300,000 employees. He’s never dealt with the City Council. He’s never dealt with the Congress. He’s never dealt with the State Legislature. He’s never negotiated with a union. He’s never built anything. He’s never dealt with a natural emergency. He’s never dealt with a hurricane, with a flood, etc. He’s never done any of the essentials. And now you have Donald Trump on top of all of that.”

Mamdani was ready for Cuomo’s attack and shot back with a blistering and clearly prepared response, referring to the scandals that led to Cuomo resigning as governor of New York: “To Mr. Cuomo, I have never had to resign in disgrace. I have never cut Medicaid. I have never stolen hundreds of millions of dollars from the M.T.A. I have never hounded the 13 women who credibly accused me of sexual harassment. I have never sued for their gynecological records, and I have never done those things because I am not you, Mr. Cuomo.”

Then, as his supporters in the crowd howled with delight, Mamdani corrected Cuomo’s pronunciation of his name: “And furthermore, the name is Mamdani. M-A-M-D-A-M-I. You should learn how to say it, because we gotta get it right.”

This made for terrific theater, and it showed Zohran Mamdani at his best: glib, articulate, fast-talking, self-righteous, and eager to assume the role of the courageous defender of the little guy against the profit-seeking capitalists who would be happy to exploit ordinary folk in any way they could. The cheers from the crowd as Mamdani eviscerated Cuomo with the former governor’s own sorry record illustrated how popular this approach was with Mamdani’s supporters.

The optics couldn’t possibly have been worse for Cuomo. Not only was he a Democratic machine politician, but he looked the part in every detail. No one would have mistaken him as any younger than his 67 years, and with his craggy, lined face, he looked as if he had been sent over from central casting to play the part of a corrupt political insider. And in contrast to Mamdani, Cuomo looked pale, and worse than that: he looked white, the original sin of the left.

Mamdani, on the other hand, looked young, handsome, brown (which to leftists meant he was free from the taint of whiteness, and could be trusted), and determined. As he destroyed Cuomo with Cuomo’s own record, Mamdani looked every bit like the political outsider who was coming in to clean up the mess that Cuomo and his corrupt cronies had made, whether they liked it or not.

The exchange between Cuomo and Mamdani was reminiscent of a debate nine years before, when another political outsider skewered a member of the political establishment and embarrassed him before the world. On February 13, 2016 in Greenville, South Carolina, Donald Trump harshly criticized Jeb Bush, during a debate between candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, and left no doubt about the fact that he was not the candidate of the entrenched Republican establishment.

Jeb Bush had promised to pursue policies that were in line with the weak establishment Republican policies of his brother’s administration, and Trump attacked that approach head-on. Trump directly contradicted establishment Republican orthodoxy when he said: “Obviously the war in Iraq was a big fat mistake, all right? George Bush made a mistake, we can make mistakes. But that one was a beauty.”

Trump then blasted Bush for equivocating on the Iraq war: “It took Jeb Bush — if you remember at the beginning of his announcement when he announced for president, it took him five days — ‘It was a mistake, it wasn’t a mistake,’ — it took him five days before his people told him what to say…. We should have never been in Iraq, we have destabilized the Middle East. They lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction — there were none. And they knew there were none.”

Bush’s reply was a textbook example of wounded impotence: “I’m sick and tired of Barack Obama blaming my brother for all of the problems that he’s had. I could care less about the insults that Donald Trump gives to me. It’s blood sport for him…but I am sick and tired of him going after my family. My dad is the greatest man alive in my mind. While Donald Trump was building a reality TV show my brother was building a security apparatus to keep us safe and I’m proud of what he did.”

Trump interrupted to remind Bush that “the World Trade Center came down during your brother’s reign.” Thoroughly outgunned, Bush began rambling about the virtues of his family, complaining that Trump had even attacked his mother: “He’s had the gall to go after my mother. My mom is the strongest woman I know.”

Trump shot back, “She should be running,” the audience guffawed, and that was effectively the end of Jeb Bush’s political ambitions. Mamdani’s destruction of Cuomo was not as total as was Trump’s of Jeb Bush, but his summary of Cuomo’s misdeeds was quite enough to cement the ex-governor’s image as just another corrupt pol from the same old political machine, with Mamdani in the role of the plucky outsider who was fighting for the people. Like Trump, Mamdani’s appeal was in large part due to his being clearly not part of the political establishment.

Yet for all of his posing as an outsider and his castigation of Cuomo for supposedly being in the pocket of billionaires, Zohran Mamdani was not as much of an outsider as he claimed to be. In fact, he had his own billionaire backer, George Soros, who was doing all he could to ensure that he would win. And Mamdani believed in a system that, for all its pretensions about caring for working people, actually concentrates all power and wealth in the hands of the government. Mamdani, although he poses as an outsider, is, from the standpoint of protecting and expanding big government and increasing the benefits that the political elites enjoy, an insider’s insider.

So Mamdani’s political resemblance to Trump as the outsider coming to reform a corrupt system is a lie. As is everything that comes from the left.