Newsmax continued its Trump Regime Media routine bashing New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani with a July 2 column by Michael Reagan, who began by mocking the “Democratic base” as welfare-addicted poor people:
New York City shoppers may get the “opportunity” to sample genuine Soviet-style, government–run grocery stores much sooner than they expected.
Zohran Mamdani, the “democratic socialist” candidate for mayor in New York City, just won the Democratic primary. He did so mostly on a promise to give free stuff to low information voters and economic illiterates.
One of his promises involved reducing grocery store prices.
How grocery store prices affect the Democratic base of welfare recipients who have taxpayers footing the bill for their groceries is unknown at this time, but the promise struck a chord with some voters.
Possibly the bitter wine women — another important segment of the Democratic base — unhappy about the price of arugula.
Reagan fully lashed out at Mamdani’s plan for city-operated grocery stores:
What he doesn’t say is that shoppers would also get to enjoy the famous customer service and attention to detail made famous by the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV).
John Catsimatidis, the CEO of grocery chain Gristedes, is angry enough regarding the proposal to help Mamdani by potentially opening up some prime real estate.
Catsimatidis told Fox News, “If the city of New York is going socialist, I will definitely close, or sell, or move or franchise the Gristedes locations.” Fox also said Catsimatidis will contemplate moving his corporate offices to New Jersey.”
As the USSR’s government-owned grocery stores proved, this new — for New York — model will remove a lot of the decision-making overhead afflicting some shoppers.
They won’t have to worry about 40 different varieties of condiments anymore.
In the Soviet Union shoppers could choose from one.
If it was in stock.
And will city owned grocery stores even care about shoplifting?
Or will that be part of an impromptu Mamdani Bone-in Ribeye reparations program?
But as Wonkette points out, New Yorkers shop at Catsimatidis’ grocery stores because they have no better option:
The stores are known for being grimy, having ridiculous prices even by Manhattan standards, and a tendency to have a single register open at one time, operated by a surly, elderly woman who’s worked there for 20 years and hates everybody’s face.
[…]Click reviews of any of Gristedes or D’Agostino’s three-something-starred locations on Google Maps and you’ll be treated to a bounty of tales of rotten meat and vegetables, $9 boxes of Fruity Pebbles, and other disappointments. “Sometimes life gives you lemons and sometimes life gives you 5 dollar black beans and no lemons.”
Two weeks ago Catsimatidis threatened to close up his stores and move to Florida if Mamdani wins, and nary a tear was shed.
Grocery collapse is what’s been happening already, that’s the whole problem! Grocery redlining has left entire ZIP codes in New York without stable access to food, and more than 100 full-service grocery stores in New York City have closed in the past five years, mostly in lower-income neighborhoods. Lack of investment in areas considered a “demographic risk” are why there are food deserts in the city in the first place.
Reagan said nothing about that, of course.
Betsy McCaughey used her July 3 column to raise the ol’ right-wing specter of election-rigging in Mamdani’s win:
New Yorkers are under the false impression that the taxpayer-funded New York City Campaign Finance Board is leveling the playing field to make voting for Gotham’s next mayor and other elected officials fair.
Just the opposite is true. The CFB is doling out obscene amounts of our money to tilt the scales in favor of left-wing candidates.
The political consultants, pollsters and campaign industry raked in gobs of cash during the recent primary, while the city was pushed to the extreme left, nominating radical antisemite and communist Zohran Mamdani to be the Democratic candidate for mayor.
[…]Mamdani’s also backed by a far-flung network of leftist nonprofits that receive taxpayer funding courtesy of Democratic lawmakers — then provide the expertise, manpower andconnections to win political races. They’re outstripping the unions in impact and influence.
And worse, gaming the campaign finance system and corrupting its original purpose.
[…]Mamdani frequently boasts about the grassroots volunteer movement powering his campaign. But what happened last Tuesday was not an organic rising up of everyday New Yorkers.
In a city and state dominated by the Left, lawmakers are using taxpayer money to boost the nonprofit radical advocacy industrial complex, which then orchestrates their reelection.
The CFB doles out more taxpayer money, pretending the process is fair.
Time to eliminate the CFB, let taxpayers off the hook, and devise another method to make elections fair.
McCaughey offered no evidence that anything illegal happened.
Micah Halpern ranted in his July 7 column:
It’s so easy to hate Jews nowadays, you don’t even need an excuse for expressing your vitriol.
The ascension of Zohran Mamdani, his guaranteed position on the ballot for New York City mayor, does not, contrary to common belief, represent a surge in the popularity of hating Jews. What it does, rather, is concretize what New York Jews, specifically and American Jewry, more generally, already felt in their bones, in their “kishkes” as my “Bubee,” would say.
Mamdani’s success in the NYC Democratic primary illustrates that Jew hatred is now an established reality. Present-day Jew hatred is not a spike on the status quo — it is the status quo.
Understanding this distinction is crucial. Within the United States, there now exists a significant portion of the population that feels comfortable in their hatred of Jews. This is a fact that was inconceivable even a decade ago.
And Zohran Mamdani is the poster child of this movement.
[…]Jew hatred must not be normalized. The non-Jewish world must, unlike Mamdani, condemn this hatred as all hatreds. As for the NYC mayoral election, even those who conspire with the now most famous Jew hater of our day should pay attention to his other policies.
Mamdani’s views and his politics are not just bad for Jews; they are bad for New Yorkers and bad for all Americans.
Julio Rivera served up his own rant in his column the same day:
They did it. They actually did it.
In New York City, Democrats just nominated Zohran Mamdani — a self-described socialist — for mayor, running on a platform best summed up as “Amnesty, Anarchy, and Absurdity.”
In a stunning upset, the 33-year-old Queens legislator defeated former N.Y. Gov. Andrew Cuomo by championing a radical leftist agenda that would make Bernie Sanders blush.
[…]What Mamdani proposes for New York — a permanent rent freeze, city-owned grocery stores, a $30 minimum wage, and open hostility to police and federal immigration enforcement — is becoming the default agenda of America’s urban left.
Mamdani has referred to capitalism as “theft” and ICE as “fascist.”
This isn’t a serious governing vision. It’s ideological cosplay at best — and economic ruin at worst. Unfortunately, too many cities are letting these ideas become law.
Rivera took his own shot at Mamdani’s grocery proposal:
Government-run grocery stores may seem helpful — until shelves go bare like we’ve seen in practically every socialist experiment in this hemisphere.
When government decides what you can charge, what you can pay, and where you can invest, you no longer have a free society. You have a command economy.
We’ve seen this playbook before.
It fails every time.
But that hasn’t stopped progressive politicians from turning America’s great cities into testing grounds for failed ideologies.
The real threat is not one candidate in New York, but an entire movement trying to turn socialism from a slogan into a system — one ordinance, one rent cap, one spending bill at a time.
It’s time for a course correction.
Rivera closed by huffing: “Mamdani’s rise should be a wake-up call. The path to prosperity isn’t paved with slogans. It’s built on supply, opportunity, and liberty.”