Trump did not elaborate on his remark about funding should Mamdani win. New York City received $7.4bn (£5.7bn) in federal funding this fiscal year.
In a wide-ranging interview with CBS programme 60 Minutes on Sunday, Trump said that a Mayor Mamdani would make left-wing former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio “look great”.
“I got to see de Blasio, how bad a mayor he was, and this man will do a worse job than de Blasio by far,” the president said of Mamdani.
Trump, who grew up in the New York borough of Queens, also effectively endorsed Cuomo, a Democrat, in the interview.
“I’m not a fan of Cuomo one way or the other, but if it’s gonna be between a bad Democrat and a Communist, I’m gonna pick the bad Democrat all the time, to be honest with you,” the Republican president said.
Mamdani, who would run a world financial hub, is a self-described democratic socialist, though he has rejected accusations he is a communist, joking in one television interview that he was “kind of like a Scandinavian politician”, only browner.
