Though portrayed, particularly by London media, as a bold confrontation of President Trump’s immigration policies, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s Independence Day speech, delivered July 3 from George Washington’s desk now at City Hall, was in fact moderate, and coherent with that of Pope Leo XIV in Philadelphia the same day.
What evidently sounded interesting to the British ear, as a “challenge” to the President, was Mamdani’s detailed description of the contributions to America of wave after wave of immigrants from various nations. But in fact, that emphasis, without a detailed listing of this sort, was also present in the Pope’s speech accepting the National Constitution Center’s Medal of Freedom. The London Guardian, for example, played up the fact that Trump was to speak hours later at Mt. Rushmore. That London newspaper led off with Mamdani’s “ideological counterpoint to a US semiquincentennial address that was expected later in the day from Donald Trump—who has sought to deport immigrants en masse throughout his second presidency.”
