On Tuesday morning, a reporter asked Donald Trump for his reaction to Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary. “I think I’m gonna have a lot of fun watching him, because he has to come right to this building to get his money,” the president replied, pointing at the White House. The Republican added that people shouldn’t “worry,” because he’d help thwart Mamdani’s agenda.

Roughly 24 hours later, Trump returned to the subject, publishing an item to his social media platform that read in part, “As President of the United States, I’m not going to let this Communist Lunatic destroy New York. Rest assured, I hold all the levers, and have all the cards.”

But as it turns out, Trump isn’t just focused on standing in the way of Mamdani’s platform. The New York Times reported:

President Trump on Tuesday floated an outlandish claim that Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic candidate for New York mayor, was an illegal immigrant and threatened to arrest him if he blocked immigration arrests in New York City.

At an event in Florida, the president, in reference to the mayoral hopeful, said, “A lot of people are saying he’s here illegally. We’re going to look at everything.”

Trump didn’t identify any of these “people,” or explain why these bizarre claims are worthy of federal scrutiny. But to the extent that reality has any bearing on the conversation, the Times’ report added, “Mr. Mamdani was born in Uganda and has lived in New York City since 1998, when he was 7 years old. He was naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 2018. If elected, Mr. Mamdani would also be the first Muslim to become mayor of New York City. There is no credible evidence to suggest Mr. Mamdani is not, or shouldn’t be, a U.S. citizen.”

But just as notably, when someone at the Florida event raised the prospect of Mamdani interfering with ICE raids, the president also said, “Well then we’ll have to arrest him.”

I’m trying to imagine the reaction if a Democratic president, reflecting on a Republican candidate in a red city and a red state, effectively said, “Don’t worry, I’ll use federal power to make sure he can’t govern.”

And then, as part of this same hypothetical, I’m also trying to imagine what would happen if this same Democratic president baselessly speculated that the GOP might be in the United States illegally — before publicly musing about possibly arresting the Republican candidate.

It seems easy to believe such rhetoric would generate a significant controversy.

As for Mamdani, the New Yorker said in a statement, “The President of the United States just threatened to have me arrested, stripped of my citizenship, put in a detention camp and deported. Not because I have broken any law but because I will refuse to let ICE terrorize our city.”

Mamdani added, “His statements don’t just represent an attack on our democracy but an attempt to send a message to every New Yorker who refuses to hide in the shadows: if you speak up, they will come for you. We will not accept this intimidation.”