MAGA Comes Down With a Case of Mamdani Derangement Syndrome

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When a 34-year-old Democratic Socialist Muslim got elected as New York City’s mayor, conservatives lost their minds and predicted that the Big Apple would fall apart. Now, six months into Zohran Mamdani’s term, there certainly is a lot of doom and gloom in America’s greatest city… not in its five boroughs but rather in the Fox News studios in midtown Manhattan. 

And the talking heads of the right-wing propaganda network aren’t alone in experiencing Mamdani Derangement Syndrome (MDS). It is an affliction that has spread through the entire MAGAverse. And with good reason.

When he took office, we wrote that the young mayor would be the most important Democrat in the country.

That’s because, ahead of this fall’s crucial midterm election and with control of Congress at stake, Republicans desperately need Mamdani to fail. They have spent all year trying to make him out like a boogeyman who wants to turn the United States into a Marxist hellscape. 

They try to equate democratic socialism with the kind of failed socialism of the Soviet Union and not with the social democracies of Europe. 

Or with communism, because that sounds even scarier. 

Donald Trump did just that on Friday night.  

“A generation after we fought and won the Cold War against the menace of communism, there is now a resurgence of the communist menace in our land, including from newcomers to our country who embrace ideas totally opposed to our way of life and our great success,” the president said during a speech on the eve of America’s 250th birthday.

“You know who those people are,” Trump added later in his remarks, and he might as well have name-checked Mamdani. 

The problem for the GOP is that New York hasn’t fallen apart. 

Instead, it has embraced its young mayor, who enjoys a 58 percent favorable rating in the city with only 26 percent holding an unfavorable opinion of him.

It’s easy to see why. 

Mamdani is a rare political talent and an outstanding communicator, whether he appears with little children and “repeals bedtime” so they can watch the Knicks win the NBA championship (which has undoubtedly increased the positive vibes in the Big Apple), shares real-life accomplishments that actually improve the lives of New Yorkers, announces the lowest murder rate in the city’s history, or delivers speeches to the American people.

There is just a real sense of joy and optimism about him that has been so sorely missing in politics dominated by the sneering Trump and doddering Democrats.

He even managed to charm the president.

All of this has given him a lot of political clout, which he used to help unseat a couple of incumbents in New York and replace them with more progressive Democrats. 

Of course, it would be a different story if you polled Mamdani’s popularity at Fox News. 

This week in particular, the entire network was in full MDS mode. 

First, the mayor had the audacity to give New Yorkers some tips on how they could overcome a record heat wave together. 

New York: it's hot out there, and the power grid is working overtime to keep us cool.

Set your AC to 78 degrees, turn off lights/electronics you're not using, and unplug what you can.

Our City is doing its part too: maintaining the 78 degrees rule in our buildings,…

— Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@NYCMayor) July 1, 2026

Fox News used the chyron “Commie Mamdani” to inform its audiences of the energy-saving advice, and various pro-MAGA accounts made it sound as though the mayor single-handedly built the city’s electric grid. 

“Welcome to socialism, where the government demands you turn your house into a sauna because they can’t plan for the super unpredictable fact that it tends to get hot in the summer,” said Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX). 

What he and others conveniently forgot to mention is that this recommendation is standard for heat waves. 

The power grid operator in Gill’s own state, for example, asked Texans to also turn their thermostats to 78 degrees.

We would link to their actual statement, but that has mysteriously disappeared from the web over the past couple of days… just like federal Department of Energy recommendations that say the same thing. Hopefully, this example of MDS doesn’t get people killed by depriving them of advice on how to deal with the heat wave or risking a statewide power outage by convincing them that setting their air conditioners to 78 degrees makes them Marxists. 

And if providing New Yorkers with useful information on how to beat the heat was not bad enough, the mayor then had the audacity to weigh in on the country’s 250th birthday.

In a speech worth watching, Mamdani highlighted not only America’s accomplishments and potential, but also some of its past and present challenges (we aren’t entirely objective here because our own take also points out that the US is a nation of contradictions).

To those with MDS, one part in particular stood out: 

We see the wealthiest country in the history of the world — one where children go to sleep hungry while the world’s first trillionaire hungers for more. We see monopolies that dominate every industry and oligarchs who buy elections. We see masked agents terrorizing our streets, eating food cooked by our undocumented neighbors before spiriting them away in unmarked vans. We see a nation whose immense wealth has been built by those with calloused, dirt-streaked hands — those who toil on factory floors and chisel into stone — and we see a nation that has allowed so much of that wealth to be held instead in the soft hands of a precious few.

That’s eloquently expressed — and tough to argue with. 

After all, that first trillionaire owns more stocks himself than the entire bottom half of Americans combined. 

But it rankled the right-wing mouthpieces of Fox News and the rest of MAGAverse that an immigrant dares to point this out. 

Laura Ingraham, one of the network’s stars, called his delivery “angry” (which makes us wonder which clip she watched) and the speech a “misstep.” Jesse Watters, another one of Fox’s top guns, felt that Mamdani “bombed” and was “boring.” 

But it wasn’t just news personalities. 

“It doesn’t get much more disgraceful than this,” said Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN). “[Mamdani] uses America’s 250th anniversary to bash our country and discredit the American dream.”

Here is the mayor “bashing” America: 

Those ideals upon which our nation was built — they are strong enough to endure any authoritarian regime, but only if we reach for them. Ours is a nation working each day towards the perfection in which it was conceived. A nation striving each day to better itself. Therein lies the work of America — the striving, the bettering, the reaching towards perfection.  

What a privilege each of us has, to live in a nation that every one of its inhabitants can shape. What a responsibility each of us possesses, to prove ourselves worthy of all those who came before. What power each of us holds, to bring America ever-closer to the greatness so many have seen when they looked upon these shores — the greatness that, for 250 years, has been America.

That doesn’t exactly reflect the “negativity” that former Trump aide Kellyanne Conway identified in the speech. Then again, she has always been one for “alternative facts.”

There is one major voice in the MAGA movement who is not suffering from MDS: political operative Steve Bannon. 

“Mamdani just gave you a lesson in rhetoric,” he said on his podcast.

“This is quite serious,” Bannon added. “If you dismiss this guy, if you dismiss the people around him, and dismiss the money … backing him, you are missing something that’s more powerful than Obama.”

He should know. The former White House strategist is an expert in (right-wing) populism.

“What you just heard is very appealing,” said Bannon, who played Mamdani’s entire speech on his show. “What he does is play on the symbols of America and say, ‘Hey, we are actually more American. We represent the true America.’”

Of course, what Bannon doesn’t say is that the reason this is appealing to Americans is that Trump’s policies have failed them and instead driven up prices — and Mamdani isn’t the one, as far as we know, who enriched himself to the tune of more than $2 billion last year.

While neither the president nor the mayor is on the ballot in the fall, their personalities, successes, and failures will play a major role in how their parties will fare. 

Mamdani is aware of this and is not afraid to embrace that responsibility. 

When he was asked on Sunday’s This Week about how Republicans were trying to make him the poster child for the Democratic Party, he laconically replied, “Let them,” before pointing to his record. 

“We’ve delivered free childcare for two-year-olds for the first time in New York City history. We’ve delivered tens of millions of dollars back to tenants who were taken advantage of by bad landlords,” Mamdani said. “We’ve delivered 165,000 potholes being paved. And we’ve done all of these things while also delivering the lowest recorded crime in our city’s history. That’s what it looks like to have Democratic socialism.” 

And New Yorkers are buying into it… just not the people at Fox News.