Former CNN host Chris Cuomo slammed the Democratic Party after “open socialist” Zohran Mamdani defeated his brother, former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary on Tuesday.
Cuomo told viewers on his NewsNation program Wednesday night, “Thank you very much for all the kind words about my brother. I didn’t cover the mayoral election or even comment on it here at NewsNation for obvious reasons, and my feelings about my brother and what he should do now, those are personal, not professional. So, suffice it to say, I love and support my brother, and I’m not worried about him.”
Cuomo revealed that he was not stunned by the outcome.
“It was a low turnout race that people did not think could go the way it did. The enthusiasm and turnout energy were overweighted for the more extreme candidates, as is often the case, and that’s one of the problems with our binary system and with our closed primaries,” Cuomo said. “Not to mention, and contrary to what was sold by his opponents, Andrew’s no establishment guy and the party was not loving that he ran, but that’s his case to make, okay?”
Gov. Cuomo, 67, who has been elected to that role three times, resigned in disgrace in 2021 following multiple allegations of sexual harassment by female employees, making him a pariah in the eyes of many primary voters and the Democratic establishment.
Throughout his campaign, Mamdani, 33, a state assemblyman, advocated for defunding the police, rent control expansion, government-sponsored grocery stores, higher taxes, and $65 million in taxpayer-funded “gender-affirming” trans procedures for adults and children.
Chris Cuomo blasted the Democratic Party for its “extremism,” declaring the party all but “dead” in his eyes.
“The Democratic Party is now officially in MAGA mode. We are now, on both sides, in a period of extremism,” Cuomo said. “The same way MAGA played with the prejudices of white nationalism, you’re seeing an identical dynamic on the Left with prejudices like tacitly supporting extreme Islamism or targeting Jews.”
“For the Right, it’s migrants. For the Left, it’s Jews. It’s fundamentalist Christians dominating the Right. It’s fundamentalist Islamists making headway on the Left. I know that doesn’t sound like Democrats, but that party is dead. What it will be reborn as, we’ll see,” Cuomo added.
Mamdani has stated that he doesn’t believe Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state, refused to condemn calls to “globalize the intifada,” and recorded a rap song expressing “love” to convicted Hamas financiers. His October 7 statement notably focused on “ending the occupation” without mentioning Hamas’s massacre of Israeli civilians.
“What we’re seeing now is that there are many in America who are adopting and adapting to fundamentalism. The outcome in this election wasn’t about affordability or about real change. The winner is an open socialist, and the Democratic Party is now just that: socialistic. But be clear, this is a fictional fix for very real frustrations,” Cuomo concluded.
There is no more Democratic party. There is no Republican party. Here is the truth: pic.twitter.com/7b8nTV5Hhp
— Christopher C. Cuomo (@ChrisCuomo) June 26, 2025
Andrew Cuomo declined to say if he would run in the November general election as an independent for the Fight and Deliver Party, which he formed for this race.
Should the ex-governor enter the race as an independent, that would make the race a five-person contest between Cuomo, Mamdani, incumbent Democrat Mayor Eric Adams (running as an independent this cycle), Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa, a talk show host, and independent Jim Walden, a former Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.