New York City‘s socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani could hardly find anything nice to say about the nation’s 250th anniversary during his speech Friday, and rather focused on accusing wealthy elites, immigration authorities, and political leaders of betraying the country’s founding.
Seated behind a desk once used by President George Washington, Mamdani delivered the nearly 15-minute address from City Hall’s Governor’s Room while flanked by 10 recently naturalized U.S. citizens. Mamdani, who immigrated from Uganda as a child and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2018, sat in the middle of the group as City Hall sought to contrast itself from President Donald Trump’s planned Independence Day address from Mount Rushmore later on Friday.
Throughout the speech, the socialist mayor argued that the United States has been defined by generations of immigrants and other groups overcoming oppression while casting today’s political and economic leaders as forces working against that legacy.
“There is a term so often used to describe our nation and those who have shaped it: American exceptionalism,” Mamdani said. “American exceptionalism, the conventional wisdom tells us, makes our freedom a little more free, is how we dug the Erie Canal and irrigated the West, is why children in faraway lands grow up dreaming of one day moving here, and yet the irony is that the story of America has so often been written by those who were told by others with power and influence and wealth, that they were anything but exceptional. For generation after generation, we have been told that when the world has sent its people to our shores, it has not sent its best. It sent Puritans and Sikhs and Quakers and Muslims and Jewish people who were banished for praying the wrong way, worshiping the wrong gods, angering the wrong people, it sent peasants and serfs from slums and shtetls who were treated as less because they hardly owned clothes, let alone land. It sent immigrants from whom power was something someone else had.”
“We are told that America is exceptional because we are richer, stronger, more powerful than everyone else,” the mayor said. “The truth, my friends, is that America is exceptional, because here nothing is fixed into place.”
Mamdani sought to paint a picture of division in the country as a tool of the rich and powerful.
“At every moment in our past, those who led through exclusion and isolation have tried to win power and enrich themselves by turning us against one another. Division is the oldest trick in politics, and the cheapest.”
Mamdani also accused Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents of “terrorizing our streets” by arresting illegal immigrants, criticized “oligarchs who buy elections,” attacked corporate landlords and health insurance companies, and denounced what he called a nation that spends tax dollars on “bombs and bailouts.”
The remarks, which also paid homage to New York’s place in history as a haven for immigrants, amounted to a progressive counterweight to Trump’s expected America 250 speech at Mount Rushmore, where the president is expected to celebrate the nation’s founding and achievements.
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The address also came as Mamdani has faced criticism over his handling of New York City’s recent heat wave. Earlier this week, the mayor urged U.S. residents to conserve electricity by setting thermostats to 78 degrees, while the New York Post reported that temperatures inside City Hall ranged from 54 to 63 degrees.
Mamdani concluded by urging citizens to continue what he described as the unfinished work of fulfilling the Declaration of Independence before wishing New Yorkers and the rest of the nation a “happy Fourth of July.”