Charlie Kirk warns ‘Mamdani effect’ metastasizing in the Democratic Party with ‘grievance-based politics’

Turning Point USA Founder Charlie Kirk sounded the alarm on Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani’s run for New York City mayor Friday and why young people need to choose optimism over “grievance-based politics.” 

Kirk joined “FOX & Friends” where he was asked about Abdul El-Sayed, a Democratic senate candidate in Michigan who has been tying himself to Mamdani, and what a socialist mayor in New York City would mean for the Democratic Party. 

“The Mamdani effect is going to metastasize in the Democrat Party. Now, how successful it will be in a general election, I don’t know, I still have my skepticism. But the Mamdani effect is grievance-based politics, playing into people’s bitterness, and also playing into the economic disorder that Biden left us,” Kirk said. 

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“President Trump is going to fix this, and he is aiming to fix this,” Kirk continued. “But understand, for the younger voters that I represent and the younger voters that delivered the White House for President Trump, they can’t afford homes, they’re increasingly renting, they’re not getting married, they’re not having children, so there are two ways this can go.”

Kirk said young people can either take an “optimistic, patriotic vision like President Trump is offering,” or a “very dark and sinister vision – one that is anti-Western, anti-American, anti-civilization.” He believes far-left Democrats like Mamdani have embraced the latter. 

“I believe this effect will only continue in the Democrat Party for years to come,” Kirk said. 

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“Fox & Friends” aired footage of Democratic National Committee chair Ken Martin downplaying concerns from Jewish colleagues about Mamdani, who has drawn criticism for not condemning calls to “globalize the intifada” in earlier interviews. The term is widely seen as a call for violence against Jews and Israelis, while Mamdani has said he’s not out to police speech.

“You might think the Democrats are going to moderate, you might think that I went on Gavin Newsom’s show, and he’s going to move to the middle. No, no, no, the rise of Mamdani and that ridiculous statement from Ken Martins shows the canary in the coal mine is the Democrats are going to double and triple down on an anti-civilizational agenda,” Kirk said.

“They are going to go more in the encampment direction that we saw at Columbia University and Harvard University, which should be for everybody in the audience, a chilling alternative if we do not maintain Republican majorities,” he continued. “The Democrats are going to offer stuff that we have not seen in this country ever.”