New York City’s socialist Democratic mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani should express more “gratitude” for America instead of just harping on the country’s problems, Vice President JD Vance charged Thursday.
Vance, 41, took a swipe at the New York assemblyman in an interview with Fox News host Will Cain, after explaining that his beloved, late grandmother, “Mamaw,” was a lifelong Democrat “who loved this country and felt gratitude for this country” — which he said doesn’t appear to be the case with Mamdani.
“Does Mamdani, when you hear him speak — is this a man who feels gratitude for the United States of America? Is this a man who feels grateful for all of the opportunities, the incredible bounty of this country?” the vice president said on “The Will Cain Show.”
“I don’t know the guy, but my sense is he’s had a very good life in this country. It would be nice for him to occasionally show a sense of gratitude, instead of just attacking the United States for all of its problems,” Vance added.
Mamdani, 33, was born in Uganda to Indian parents who brought him to the Big Apple when he was 7 years old.
He graduated from Columbia University in 2014, after identifying himself as Asian and African American on his application to the Ivy League School, and only spent three years in the workforce before being elected to the New York State Assembly in 2020.
Mamdani is a staunch critic of capitalism, and five years before his meteoric rise, he argued that Communist godfather Karl Marx’s “end goal” of “seizing the means of production” should be championed by aspiring Democratic Socialist politicians.
“Mamaw would say this is crazy,” Vance said of what his grandmother, Bonnie Blanton Vance, would think of Mamdani’s rise.
“I think that she would say the modern Democratic Party doesn’t represent her at all,” the vice president added.
