Zohran Mamdani Told Trump to "Turn the Volume Up" During HIs Victory Speech

Nov. 4, 2025, brought elections all over the country. Among the most-watched elections of the year, though, was the New York City mayoral race, where Zohran Mamdani held off a third-party challenge from Andrew Cuomo to become the youngest mayor in the city in a century.

During his victory speech, Mamdani discussed both Cuomo and Donald Trump, who has threatened New York in a variety of ways in the run-up to the election. Among the things he said during his speech, some were confused by a section where he told Trump to "turn the volume up." Here's what we know about what he meant.

Although Mamdani's speech was broadly about his vision for the city he calls home, in one section, he called out the president specifically.

"This is not only how we stop Trump, it’s how we stop the next one. So, Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching: I have four words for you: Turn the volume up," he said in the speech, suggesting that the president should turn the volume up on his TV.

While some people were confused about what he meant by this, it seems like Mamdani was just suggesting that Trump should pay particularly close attention to the lines that followed in his speech. "Turn the volume up" was just a way of signaling that what he was about to say was both important and a specific response to Trump's view of both New York City and the country more generally.

"New York will remain a city of immigrants, a city built by immigrants, powered by immigrants, and as of tonight, led by an immigrant. So hear me, President Trump, when I say this: To get to any of us, you will have to get through all of us," Mamdani continued.

Basically, Mamdani just wanted to make sure that Trump heard this rebuke to Trump's view of the world, which is that immigrants are the reason for many of the problems we face in America.

Although the president has threatened the city that was once his home, Mamdani's election suggests that at majority of New Yorkers wanted a different kind of future for their city. Andrew Cuomo, Mamdani's chief rival, was endorsed by Trump, and while he was also ostensibly a Democrat, he would have led the city in a manner that was likely to be much more cooperative with the current administration.

As Mamdani's victory speech indicated, he's more than ready for a fight with Donald Trump, and seems to understand that he has the power and mandate to push back. While most major cities across the country have resisted Trump's deployment of ICE and the National Guard, Mamdani's victory means that New York could become a focal point of those efforts in the months and years ahead.