Mamdani Quotes Tupac Shakur To Justify Socialism And Cut Defense Spending

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist darling, trotted out the old Tupac line that he’d obviously rehearsed dozens of times: 

I wish the words of Tupac from the 90’s weren’t still prescient, but they continue to be true for too many which is that we always have money for war and not to feed the poor.

He’s pointing at the war in Iran, claiming the federal government has blown “upwards of 28 billion dollars killing thousands of people” while American families scrape by. It’s a tidy little sermon. It’s also a complete lie. Never mind that this same crowd spent the Biden years printing money and throwing it around like confetti, igniting the inflation that actually hammered grocery bills and gas prices.

Mamdani’s claim isn’t just wrong, it’s a deliberate con designed to make you feel guilty for wanting a strong country.

According to the latest breakdowns of total U.S. government spending (federal plus state and local, roughly $11 trillion for FY 2025), we are not a nation that “always has money for war.” National defense clocks in at a measly eight percent. Meanwhile, social welfare programs and education gobble up a combined 66 percent when you include veterans’ benefits. Two-thirds of the entire pie goes to the very “feed the poor bucket” that the left pretends is starved.

Yet here we are, being told by the most useless political class on the planet that the military is eating the budget alive. It isn’t. Actually, we’d be far better off prioritizing national defense over the welfare apparatus that has spent trillions since LBJ’s Great Society, which somehow managed to entrench dependence rather than eradicating poverty.

Decades of data show us that massive spending correlates with higher single motherhood, lower workforce participation among the able-bodied poor, and generational traps. Material hardship has eased thanks to the checks themselves, but the behavioral poverty — the broken families, the work disincentives, the “welfare cliffs” where earning a few extra bucks costs you benefits — has proven stubbornly immune to spending. Trillions of dollars later, and the Left’s solution is always more. Shocking.

This isn’t an argument against helping people in genuine need. It’s an argument against pretending we haven’t been trying, and it’s absolutely an argument for why national defense cannot be the scapegoat.

Funding the military isn’t just defensible, it’s non-negotiable. National Defense exists to keep the lights on, the borders secure, and the homeland from turning into a playground for our enemies. A strong military is not optional in a world full of revisionist powers like China, Russia, and Iran. It deters wars, not just fights them.

On Israel specifically, the one Mamdani loves to demagogue, U.S. aid is no blank check to “kill thousands.” It’s a strategic bargain. Annual baseline support runs about $3.8 billion, almost all of it spent on American-made weapons that flow back into U.S. factories and jobs. That’s roughly .34% of America’s total defense and intelligence budget. Israel spends around 6% of its own GDP fighting our shared enemies, extending American reach without us stationing endless troops there. That’s not charity. That’s leverage through intelligence sharing, missile defense technology, and a stable democratic outpost in a hellscape region. The alternative is ceding the Middle East to the mullahs and their proxies while we pretend isolationism works. It doesn’t.

If we’re going to talk about who actually mishandles money like a drunk sailor on shore leave, that’s the Democrats. The Joe Biden years proved it in living color. Cumulative inflation hit 21.5% from 2021 to 2025. Groceries and gas skyrocketed — gasoline alone up 31% — while real inflation-adjusted weekly earnings for private sector workers fell about 4%. Median household income, after inflation, barely budged or dipped in key areas. The “vibecession” wasn’t a vibe. It was working families watching their paychecks evaporate while the administration bragged about “record job creation” that included millions of people simply re-entering the workforce after COVID lockdowns they prolonged.

Yet Democrats keep floating a utopian wishlist like it’s free: paid family leave, free community college, universal healthcare. They sound like middle schoolers running for class president — and frankly, there isn’t much difference. They lecture Republicans about fiscal responsibility while their own policies ballooned the debt, fueled inflation, and left more Americans financially strained than at any point in recent memory.

The hypocrisy is Olympic-level. They want America naked and vulnerable so the scavengers — China, Iran, cartels, Leftists — can feast. Weakness is the point. A strong military requires priorities, and our military deserves the best because they are the best. However, the left’s vision requires an endless spigot of other people’s money and a populace too distracted by bread and circuses to notice the empire of debt rising around them.

No one is saying we should cut every social program tomorrow or ignore the genuinely needy. But pretending the military is the budget villain while two-thirds of spending flows into programs that have failed to break the cycle of poverty is gaslighting on an industrial scale.

The left doesn’t want to feed the poor. They want to buy votes and erode self-reliance. They don’t want a robust defense. They want a paper tiger that easily folds to third-worldism.

If this country takes its governing cues from a failed rapper turned big-city mayor whose deepest policy insight comes from a 1990s rap lyric, we’re going to need that military a lot sooner than we think.