President Donald Trump took reporters' questions while visiting what's been dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz," the 5,000-bed migrant detention center of tents and FEMA trucks recently cobbled together near the Florida Everglades.
One reporter asked Trump what he thought about news that 33-year-old naturalized citizen Zohran Mamdani had won the Democratic nomination in the New York City mayor's race.
"Your beloved New York City may well be led by a communist, soon — Zohran Mamdami — who, in his nomination speech, said he will defy ICE and will not let criminal aliens arrested in New York City," the reporter began before asking for "your message to communist Zohran Mamdami."
"Well, then, we'll have to arrest him," Trump snapped. "Look, we don't need a communist in this country, but if we have one, I'm going to be watching over him very carefully on behalf of the nation."
Trump claimed, "We send him money, we send him all the things that he needs to run a government," even though Mamdani hasn't yet won the full election.
Trump repeated, "We're going to be watching that very carefully, and a lot of people saying he's here illegally, but we're going to look at everything. But, and ideally, he's going to turn out to be much less than a communist. But right now, he's a communist. That's not a socialist."
Mamdani identifies as a democratic socialist, which, according to The Washington Post, "combines a 'commitment to democracy' with a 'skepticism about the compatibility of capitalism and democracy.'"
Robert Lieberman, a professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University, told the Post, "The approach to addressing that incompatibility 'is where it gets complicated because the skepticism comes in a lot of different flavors.'”
At Monday's White House press briefing, Fox News's Peter Doocy asked about possible denaturalization proceedings since Mamdani "could have misrepresented or concealed material support for terrorism based on rap lyrics he wrote in 2017."
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt said she would look into it, adding, "Surely if they are true, it's something that should be investigated."
Watch the clip below via Fox News.