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US President Donald Trump said he would be hesitant to send federal funds to his hometown of New York City if the leading leftist candidate, Zohran Mamdani, is elected mayor of America's largest city this week.
"It's going to be hard for me as president to give a lot of money to New York, because if you have a communist running New York, they're going to waste the money that we're sending there," Trump said in a television interview.
The Trump administration has repeatedly tried to cut federal grants and funding for projects, mainly in Democratic-led areas.
Polls show Mamdani ahead of his main rival, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, heading into Tuesday's vote. Trump did not elaborate on his comments about funding if Mamdani wins. New York City received $7.4 billion in federal funding this fiscal year.
In a lengthy interview with the CBS program "60 Minutes" on Sunday, Trump said a mayor like Mamdani would make leftist former Mayor Bill de Blasio look "very good."
"I saw de Blasio, how bad he was as mayor, and this man will do a worse job than de Blasio, on many things," the president said of Mamdani.
Trump, who grew up in the New York borough of Queens, also virtually endorsed Cuomo, a Democrat, in the interview.
"I'm not a fan of Cuomo by any means, but if I have to choose between a bad Democrat and a communist, I'll always choose the bad Democrat, to be honest with you," the Republican president said.
Mamdani, who will run a global financial center, is a democratic socialist, although he has denied accusations that he is a communist, joking in a television interview that he is "a bit like a Scandinavian politician."
Mamdani won the Democratic primary, while Cuomo was second. The 34-year-old has called the former New York governor a Trump puppet and parrot.
Trump has deployed National Guard troops to Democratic-led cities as part of an anti-crime operation, while trying to remove funding from jurisdictions that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
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