President Donald Trump compared the rise of socialism to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Trump was asked about the possible rise of more socialist candidates after three candidates New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani endorsed last week won their Democratic primary elections.
“It’s a big threat to our nation, actually, because it’s not socialism, it’s really communism,” Trump told reporters on Monday at the White House. “They use the word ‘Social Democrat’ because it sounds so nice, but it’s really communism you’re talking about. I think it’s the biggest threat to our nation there is, maybe since our founding. That includes World War I, World War II, September 11. It includes the Pearl Harbor attack.”
Trump reiterated how the rise of socialists, including Melat Kiros, who is running in Tuesday’s Democratic primary in Colorado’s 1st Congressional District, is “basically introducing communism into the United States of America.”
“There’s never been anything so dangerous,” he said.
Trump has escalated his attacks on socialists after three Mamdani-backed candidates, Claire Valdez, Brad Lander, and Darializa Avila Chevalier, won their primaries last week. Valdez prevailed over Rep. Nydia Velazquez’s (D-NY) preferred successor, while Reps. Dan Goldman (D-NY) and Adriano Espaillat (D-NY) were successfully primaried from their left.
“These are not social democrats, these are hardcore, godless communists,” the president said last week during the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s 2026 policy conference. “This is the most serious threat to our country since its existence, in my opinion, 250 years ago. This is a major threat to our country.”
TRUMP SAYS COMMUNISM IS THE BIGGEST THREAT FACING AMERICA ON EVE OF 250TH BIRTHDAY
Trump also twice connected communism to cancer, predicting “everybody will continue leaving New York and as this spreads throughout the country.”
“Very much like an uncontrollable form of cancer,” he said. “The country itself will be taken down. It will be Third World, strictly Third World, and it’s happened many times before to very big and very powerful countries. But it’s not going to happen to the United States of America because communism really is the past and freedom is the future. That’s what we all want.”