It took Donald Trump only a few days to seize on Zohran Mamdani’s refusal to walk back his campaign promise to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — for whom the International Criminal Court has issued a warrant — if he were to appear in the city.

“Benjamin Netanyahu will not be arrested in any way, shape, or form under any circumstances while he is in the United States of America,” Trump wrote Monday on the social network Truth Social.

The president’s response raised the prospect of a clash between the federal government and the city he once called home.

But the real significance of the move runs much deeper, CNN writes.

It is a classic example of Trump’s habit of latching onto a news hook or a specific individual to inflame a much broader political scandal. He was not merely defending his ally Netanyahu (and perhaps cultivating in a leader with whom he has recently had strained relations a renewed sense of obligation). Trump was also laying the groundwork for his new midterm-election narrative: that the Democratic Party has become too extreme.

At the same time, both Trump and Mamdani may have an interest in a conflict over Netanyahu — a dispute with far deeper domestic consequences than foreign-policy disagreements over the deaths of civilians during Israel’s offensive in Gaza.

So it is not all that important whether Mamdani could actually arrest Netanyahu. (That is an ambiguous question, since the United States has not ratified the Rome Statute, which obliges member states to arrest individuals subject to an ICC warrant. Moreover, Washington has long allowed even leaders of hostile countries — from Iran to Cuba — to visit New York to attend the U.N. General Assembly.)

Instead, this is one of those cases where the process of the fight matters more than victory in it.

It is also a sign of how American politics is moving away from its historic and near-universal support for Israel, and a moment that illustrates the broader evolution of the Democratic Party itself.

How Democrats’ view of Israel has changed

Mamdani belongs to a new generation of Democrats who have embraced harsh anti-Israel rhetoric that thrills the party’s left wing. His refusal to abandon his campaign promise to arrest Netanyahu shows that Mamdani is safeguarding the political capital he won during the campaign — something critically important to carrying out his progressive agenda as he transitions from insurgent outsider to governing official.

Mamdani’s views on Israel have become a matter of conviction for many progressive and young Democrats, who are convinced that Netanyahu committed genocide against tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians. The Israeli prime minister “belongs in The Hague. He is a war criminal charged by the International Criminal Court,” Mamdani said in the same New York Times podcast in which he mentioned consulting his legal advisers about Netanyahu — a view that he said “many share.”

Both the Biden and Trump administrations have argued that Israel’s actions do not amount to genocide.

However, some key Democrats are shaping an anti-Israel argument that goes beyond Gaza and touches on a central issue in the upcoming midterm elections — the affordability of life for the middle class. “I want my tax dollars spent here in Michigan, on schools in Michigan, on healthcare in Michigan, on investment in Michigan, not sent overseas to kill Palestinians because of genocide and apartheid,” Abdul El-Sayed, a Democratic Senate candidate from Michigan, told CNN on July 2.

An all-out feud over Netanyahu would mark a new turn in relations between Trump and Mamdani. During an Oval Office meeting last year, a sort of “bromance” seemed to emerge between them. “I get along with him very well. We’ve had good meetings, good conversations, and he is who he is,” Trump said in January.

Despite being completely different in age, ideology, and temperament, Trump and Mamdani share key traits. Both seek to please their bases through populist politics and possess highly developed political communication skills.

It benefits Mamdani to enter into a confrontation with Trump, because it underscores his clout as a national figure. The president, meanwhile, is always looking for a convenient target.

Trump’s jabs at Mamdani over Netanyahu appeared fairly restrained by the standards of his Truth Social posts overall. Yet they open the possibility that New York’s role as the flagship of the Democratic Party’s anti-Israel shift could soon become a White House argument that the entire party has become too radical for most Americans.

Ahead of the midterm elections, Mamdani could become, for Trump, the embodiment of the Democratic Party as a whole.

Trump has done this before. He portrayed New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, also a democratic socialist, as the face of the entire party. And he called Vermont independent senator Bernie Sanders, a former Democratic presidential candidate, “crazy.”

Democrats have a substantial chance against the president’s party in the November elections, as polling shows that the country has lost faith in his handling of the economy and sees unfulfilled promises on lowering prices.

But if Trump succeeds in provoking ideological or cultural clashes, he may be able to stop Democrats from winning over more conservative white working-class voters who were part of his 2024 coalition.

Democrats are already moving toward a serious split over Israel, as more moderate members of the party warn that some of the anti-Netanyahu rhetoric borders on antisemitism. Trump is even hoping to attract some Jewish voters who have traditionally voted Democratic.

For now, the most obvious divide over the war in Gaza is within the Democratic Party itself. And Trump has every reason to use a figure like Mamdani to deepen that rift.