Mamdani win creates sticky situation for… JD Vance?

Well, this is awkward. It turns out that in the wake of this month’s election, “Khanservative” JD Vance’s favorite lib is now advising New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani on antitrust policy. The Washington Examiner reports:

Lina Khan, the Biden-era Federal Trade Commission chairwoman who questioned mergers and championed antitrust enforcement, has returned to the spotlight as part of New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s transition team. Khan said she wanted to “set a new model for Democratic governance” by helping Mamdani put together his administration.

Mamdani is a self-described socialist, though President Donald Trump has called him a communist.

The wrinkle for Vance? Well, not only is his pet lib now advising a possible “communist.”

That “communist” also happens to be someone that his boss, Donald Trump, hates with a passion only rivaled by that he holds for people like James Comey or Liz Cheney.

Everyone noticed that Trump endorsed Cuomo ahead of the election this month. But what they might not have noticed is why:

For Trump, it wasn’t just politics. It was also about the fact that he still owns a ton of real estate in New York City– and its value might be about to fall off a cliff.

An extra wrinkle?

Vance’s team was reportedly gunning for a Mamdani win, because that will better position Vance to run for President and win in 2028. (Side note: A source with connections to Vance confirmed the existence of this “Mamdani strategy,” or perhaps more a “put $100 on a favorably-rigged game of bingo” strategy, to us).

So there’s a big split in the administration over Mamdani– who now has brought in Khan.

And even another wrinkle?

As you might expect, it’s the Vance side of the administration that has been pressing for a continuation of Khan’s approach at FTC and DOJ (DOJ is headed by Vance’s former antitrust adviser, who incidentally keeps getting busted for leaking to the much-hated media).

And, as is usually the case on antitrust, the whole situation also pits Vance (and Khan and Mamdani) not just against Trump, but also against very-powerful House Judiciary Committee Chairman, Ohio’s very own Jim Jordan.

Good Lord, Republican coalitions sure are complicated these days.

The Washington Examiner dishes a lot of the nasty details– and it turns out there’s yet another Trump business dealing here that means a rift with Vance over tech/antitrust policy:

[S]ome populist Republicans continue to go down Khan’s extreme left-wing path, despite significant opposition to that approach from MAGA base favorites such as Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), who battled with Khan on a near-daily basis for years as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), who has long championed a return to the consumer welfare standard approach to antitrust.

That approach, favored by Lee and most conservatives, focuses on moving against monopolists or oligopolists where their market dominance adversely affects consumers in terms of actual pricing of goods and services.

…

In many respects, Trump himself has lined up with the tech side of the argument as opposed to Khan-friendly voices. This may stand to reason — Trump is something of a tech innovator in his own right with Truth Social and TrumpCoin. He won massive backing from Silicon Valley leaders during his 2024 reelection campaign and the transition ahead of his second inauguration.

The other side, more associated with fringe players such as antitrust hawk Assistant Attorney General Gail Slater, who has fallen out with key Trump administration players over alleged self-serving press leaks, unfortunately remains focused on using a blunt antitrust hammer on Big Tech. Slater, who, like Khan, is an immigrant to the U.S. from Europe and seems to take a more European than traditional American approach to antitrust, is one of the names generally mentioned as aligning with Khan in contrast to the GOP writ large.