Mamdani can’t claim affordability while elevating Lina Khan, says former RNC chair

FIRST ON FOX: Four-term Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel is calling out Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani for hypocritically running a campaign to make New York City more affordable, arguing that his selection of a former Biden administration official, Lina Khan, as a senior advisor will serve to undermine that.

McDaniel, chosen last week to lead the Competitiveness Coalition, a right-wing nonprofit focused on promoting free market principles, wrote a letter to Mamdani in one of her first major national initiatives since leaving the RNC. McDaniel called on the mayor-elect to fire Khan, the former chairman of President Joe Biden’s Federal Trade Commission (FTC), whom Mamdani named co-chair of his transition team.

McDaniel said that if New York’s mayor-elect truly wants to be true to his word about cutting costs for New Yorkers, he can’t have someone like Khan in his administration who “is not only a flashback to the dreaded Biden era that 77 million Americans rejected by re-electing President Trump” but also has a history of “policy prescriptions.” [that] I have failed before and I will do it again.”

ECONOMIC ADVISOR MAMDANI IS A REPARATIONS ACTIVIST WHO DECLARES THE “DEVALUATION OF BLACK LIVES” INKED IN THE AMERICAN SYSTEM

Zohran Mamdani’s transition co-chair Lina Khan speaks at a press conference Wednesday afternoon in Queens. (Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images)

“He says one thing and does another by making her co-chair of his transition team,” McDaniel told Fox News Digital. “Lina Khan, to us, represents the embodiment of inflation in this country and bidenomics. I think she is the best example of someone who raised prices across this country by fighting against entrepreneurship, innovation, big business and capitalism.”

During Khan’s tenure as Biden’s FTC chair, she gained a reputation as a staunch campaigner against big business. McDaniel’s letter said “early reports” from the New York business community indicated they were ready for a “repetition” of the playbook Khan presented to the FTC under Biden.

One example cited in the letter was Khan’s alleged opposition to a proposed merger between Amazon and Massachusetts-based iRobot, maker of the popular self-cleaning vacuum cleaner called Roomba. According to McDaniel’s letter, Khan’s opposition contributed to the company’s subsequent bankruptcy and led to the loss of 350 iRobot employees amid a 31% reduction in the company’s workforce. McDaniel also said in his letter that Khan sent taxpayer resources to foreign regulators in Europe “in their quest to apply more red tape” to American companies operating in the European Union.

MAIN TRANSITION LEADER MAMDANI WAS HEARTLY INFLUENCED BY THE SOROS NETWORK DURING BIDEN’S ADMINISTRATION

“Later during his tenure, reports even surfaced that Khan was communicating with Temu, a Chinese company linked to the Chinese Communist Party, for the purpose of gathering damaging information about American retailers,” McDaniel wrote to Mamdani. “Surely we can agree that handicapping American innovators to the benefit of their CCP-linked rivals harms our geopolitical standing.”

Mamdani’s nomination of Khan serves to illustrate that the mayor-elect doesn’t care about inflation or “what Bidenomics has done to the people of New York and across the country,” McDaniel added in an interview with Fox News Digital, noting that over-regulation by Mamdani is a real concern for her.

Businesses will flee New York for places with higher tax rates and less regulation, allowing them to grow, do better and prosper, McDaniel said.

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“When you look at what Mamdani proposed, these things that sound good but won’t be good in practice – rent control, government-run grocery stores, free bus transportation, increasing the corporate tax rate… it sounds good, but it’s not sustainable and it means businesses will say, ‘Guess where I’m not going to do business?’ grow up,” McDaniel said.

“This is why socialism is sometimes confusing, especially to young voters,” the former RNC chairman added. “All this means inefficient and burdened government that will cost taxpayers more money and cost you more and leave fewer jobs in the long run.”

Fox News Digital reached out to Khan and Mamdani’s staff for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication.