Oscar winner Jon Voight is once again throwing himself into the center of America’s culture wars, this time by begging President Donald Trump to overturn New York City’s historic mayoral election.
In a two minute video posted to social media, the 86 year old actor, seated in front of a large American flag, implored Trump to intervene after democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor, defeating former governor Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa in a three way race that reshaped New York politics.
Voight, who built his reputation on acclaimed performances in films such as Midnight Cowboy, Coming Home and Deliverance, has in recent years reinvented himself as one of Trump’s most loyal celebrity surrogates. He now holds an official title in Trump’s orbit, serving as a “Special Ambassador” to Hollywood alongside Mel Gibson and Sylvester Stallone in the former president’s second term, a role created to help revive domestic film production.
In his new video, Voight paints Mamdani as an existential threat to the city he has called home for decades. “This mayor will destroy this city,” he declares at one point, warning his followers that New York is poised to slide into left wing chaos under a 35 year old democratic socialist who ran on rent freezes, free buses and higher taxes on the wealthy.
New York City pic.twitter.com/0QyTOyZJdd
— Jon Voight (@jonvoight) November 14, 2025
Voight repeatedly tells viewers that the only person who can stop Mamdani from taking office is Trump himself. “He, and only he, can stop this horror,” Voight says, urging the former president’s supporters to demand that Mamdani’s victory be overturned and calling the mayor elect a “communist fool” who will turn New York into a “socialist crap city.”
The actor’s rhetoric quickly veers into explicitly religious and anti Muslim themes. Voight claims that the city’s “blood, sweat and tears” are about to be sacrificed to what he calls “radical Muslim ideology,” language that echoes the Islamophobic attacks Mamdani faced throughout the campaign as the first Muslim and first Indian Ugandan to win the mayoralty.
Mamdani, a self described democratic socialist who previously served in the New York State Assembly, won the November 4 election with just over half the vote, riding a wave of working class frustration over housing costs, transit fares and child care. He has promised free city buses, universal public child care and hundreds of thousands of new affordable housing units, while backing police reform and a higher minimum wage.
Trump had already made Mamdani a national target before Election Day, threatening to limit federal funding if New York voters backed the left wing challenger and casting him as a symbol of what he calls extremist urban politics. Voight’s latest broadside effectively amplifies that line of attack, turning a municipal race into another front in Trump world’s ongoing war against progressive cities.
Civil rights groups and progressive commentators have condemned the video as dangerous, warning that framing a Muslim mayor as an invading ideological force risks stoking harassment and violence. Those critics note that Mamdani’s campaign was already the target of racist and Islamophobic smears, and argue that an Oscar winning actor and official Trump emissary telling millions of followers that New York is in mortal danger only raises the temperature further.
For now, there is no legal mechanism for Trump to “terminate” the result of a local election, and city officials are moving ahead with Mamdani’s transition to power on January 1, 2026. But Voight’s flag framed plea is a reminder that in Trump era politics, even a mayoral race can become a proxy battle over immigration, religion and the future of American democracy.
