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Steve Bannon warns Mamdani victory better be a ‘wake up call’

November 6, 2025 | | Print Article

Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon sees Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral victory in New York City as a “wake-up call” for Republicans.

While some in the GOP may be relishing Mamdani’s win as an incoming disaster for the Democratic Party, Bannon warned that the national Republican Party and the populist movement under President Donald Trump need to pay attention.

“First off, all those people that said he wasn’t going to win the primary and he was great to run against, I think, have been proven wrong. This is not a debating society,” Bannon told Politico Magazine in an interview following Tuesday’s elections, referring to Mamdani as “an angry guy.”

“People better understand they have a fight on their hands. This guy is a serious guy. I’ve said this from the beginning — I said early in the primary,” he said of the 34-year-old member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

“Modern politics now is about engaging low-propensity voters, and they clearly turned them out tonight, and this is kind of the Trump model. This is very serious,” Bannon added, emphasizing that Mamdani is “a Marxist, a neo-Marxist.”

He contended that the mayoral race and outcome should set off alarm bells for the GOP.

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“There should be even more than alarm bells. There should be flashing red lights all over,” he told Politico. “You’re going to see a whole new group of Mamdanis in these major urban cities because they’re just flooded with immigrants, right? That’s where his vote came from, principally, and the progressive left; these kids have come up through the public school system. This is the flower of what the progressive left has delivered over the last 40 or 50 years. You saw it tonight, and people, we’re going to have a fight on our hands.”

“What this kid got was 5,000 people canvassing in Brooklyn by going door-to-door, the Working Families Party, and the DSA. People should understand they’re the rising power organizationally,” he added of Mamdani, a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in Uganda and moved to the U.S. as a child.

“Tonight should be a wake-up call to the populist nationalist movement under President Trump, that these are very serious people, and they need to be addressed seriously, not dismissed, like so many of the pundits have done,” Bannon warned.

Bannon argued that Trump should refocus attention on domestic issues and “combat” the Democratic narrative that their wins are a reflection of dissatisfaction with the president.

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” You’ve got to go back on that and show that nobody can do it better than President Trump, and I think it’s time now to get on with it,” he said.

“In addition, I think he ought to sit there and listen to Mamdani’s speech again, particularly the part where he challenged President Trump when he said, ‘Turn the volume up,'” Bannon added. “President Trump’s got a great saying: ‘No games.’ And so if this guy wants to take on President Trump, so be it.”

Frieda Powers
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