Right-wing media figures responded to New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani's victory on Tuesday night by blaming “mass immigration.” This reaction comes amid a concerted effort among MAGA personalities to delegitimize the citizenship of not just Mamdani but of other Americans as well.
Molly Butler / Media Matters
Research/Study
Right-wing media blame Mamdani’s NYC mayoral win on immigrants amid MAGA push to delegitimize certain Americans
Newsmax’s Rob Schmitt: “We have flooded this country with diversity, and that diversity delivered us Zohran”
Written by Jack Winstanley & Alyssa Tirrell
Research contributions from Pete Tsipis, Isabella Sherk & Torri Lonergan
Published
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Zohran Mamdani was elected amid right-wing media efforts to redefine who can be an American
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- Several Democratic candidates, including Mamdani, saw electoral successes during the first election of Trump's second term. According to NBC News, Mamdani and other Democrats who won elections across the country on Tuesday were rewarded “for making affordability and economic issues the center of the campaigns.” [NBC News, 11/5/25]
- Following his November 4 victory, Mamdani stated that “New York will remain a city of immigrants, a city built by immigrants, powered by immigrants and as of tonight, led by an immigrant,” and said that he looks forward “to being the mayor for every person that calls this city home.” Mamdani also thanked “Yemeni bodega owners and Mexican abuelas. Senegalese taxi drivers and Uzbek nurses. Trinidadian line cooks and Ethiopian aunties. Yes, aunties. To every New Yorker in Kensington and Midwood and Hunts Point, know this: This city is your city, and this democracy is yours too.” [NBC News, 11/5/25; CNN, 11/6/25; The New York Times, 11/5/25]
- In the lead-up to the November 4 elections, right-wing media figures targeted Mamdani with anti-Muslim rhetoric and some even called for him to be denaturalized and deported. Right-wing media figures have called Mamdani “anti-American," a “jihadist,” and “pro-terror.” [Media Matters, 10/23/25, 11/3/25, 11/5/25]
- Right-wing media figures have spent much of the current Trump administration attempting to redefine who is an American. Media Matters reported that “The notion of certain Americans being less 'American' has escalated in right-wing media in recent months,” alongside efforts by the Trump administration to increase deportations. [Media Matters, 8/27/25, 8/25/25]
- Right-wing media figures have previously used electoral outcomes to demonize noncitizens and immigrants. Many of the claims promoted by right-wing media figures have echoed the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which alleges in part that Democrats are working to replace white Americans with nonwhite immigrants in order to secure electoral victories. [Media Matters, 10/3/24, 9/23/24, 9/18/24, 9/16/24, 9/11/24]
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Right-wing media blamed an “immigrant invasion” and “mass immigration” for Mamdani’s win
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- Right-wing radio host Jesse Kelly: “Young women collaborate with foreigners to elect communists and burn your country to ash.” He continued, “We can deal with the former over time. The latter can simply be deported. And denied entry. Mass deportation saves the country.” [Twitter/X, 11/5/25]
- On Real America's Voice, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon blamed “visa scams” and “illegal alien invaders” for Mamdani's win. Bannon said, “You have 40 or 50 years of visa scams, you have illegal immigrants coming in – illegal alien invaders coming in, 10 or 15 million, this is what you’re going to end up with. So, folks, if you don’t think that’s a reality check, you’re not paying attention.” [Twitter/X, 11/5/25]
- Sean Davis, founder of The Federalist, wrote that Mamdani's win was evidence of how “mass immigration is destroying this country.” Davis wrote, “Professional Republicans will bemoan Mamdani winning the mayor’s race in New York City, and some may even note he won on the strength of support from voters not born in America, and at no point will any of them make the obvious connection that mass immigration is destroying this country.” [Twitter/X, 11/4/25]
- The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles complained that Mamdani “is an immigrant and he is speaking to immigrants,” differentiating between “transplants from within the United States and especially from outside the United States” and people of Italian, Irish, English, and Jewish descent who have “been in New York for a long time.” Knowles continued, “On the racial front, forget about white people. We’ll talk about every other group of people other than white people. … There’s an old New York, we don’t care about that. We care about Uzbeki taxi drivers, and Mexican abuelas, and everyone other than New Yorkers.’” [The Daily Wire, The Michael Knowles Show, 11/5/25]
- Megyn Kelly claimed that Mamdani won because of an “immigrant invasion.” Kelly blamed “an immigrant invasion that has now given us a radical Muslim running the greatest city in the world into the ground.” Discussing Mamdani’s background on Election Day, Kelly said “I'm sorry, but they should not be ascending to our mayors and our governors and so on because Islam is not consistent with the premises of the West, the basic premises that led to the Bill of Rights here in America.” Kelly also claimed that “immigrants like my grandfather from Italy, and then my grandfather on the other side from Ireland, … desperately wanted to assimilate,” adding, “It's a very different story when you're talking about immigrants from Uganda who are Muslim at a minimum and potentially radicalized Muslims.” [SiriusXM, The Megyn Kelly Show, 11/5/25, 11/4/25]
- Following Mamdani’s win, The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh stated that the impacts of “demographic transformation” in New York City “have not been positive.” Walsh admitted that “New York has always had a significant immigrant population … but not all immigration is the same” because “these immigrants are now coming from very different parts of the world compared to where they were coming from a hundred years ago.” [The Daily Wire, The Matt Walsh Show, 11/5/25]
- Glenn Beck, founder of TheBlaze, said that Mamdani was attempting to “jam a wedge between natural born Americans and immigrant Americans.” Beck wrote on Twitter, “Mamdani was right when he said New York City was built by immigrants. But those immigrants were PROUD to become Americans. They weren’t angry socialists trying to dismantle capitalism and jam a wedge between natural born Americans and immigrant Americans.” [Twitter/X, 11/5/25]
- TheBlaze’s Logan Hall wrote of Mamdani's win, “It’s not a ‘socialism’ problem. It’s an immigration problem!” In the attached video from his appearance on Tim Pool’s podcast, Hall stated that Mamdani’s win “is a cautionary tale about letting these people into your country with no vetting, no assimilation, no discrimination at all against — it doesn’t matter where you come from. If you’re from Uganda, you’re going to assimilate as well as like a farmer from South Africa — no, that’s not the case. We need to seriously address Muslim immigration in this country.” [Twitter/X, 11/5/25]
- On Newsmax, host Rob Schmitt stated that “Mamdani is a mayor for the foreign born” and decried: “We have flooded this country with diversity, and that diversity delivered us Zohran.” Schmitt claimed that Mamdani’s supporters were “the most gullible of all of us,” including “fresh-off-the-boat immigrants who have managed to create a coalition large enough to get control of the most important city in the world.” [Newsmax, Rob Schmitt Tonight, 11/5/25]
- Fox host Laura Ingraham stated that Mamdani appeals to “voters who are either not born here or who were taught to resent American history and our way of life.” She added, “Disaffected minorities and the proletariat will finally get their due.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 11/5/25]