The following is a lightly edited transcript of the July 3 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

This week, President Donald Trump has spent a lot of time issuing angry threats against Zohran Mamdani, who recently pulled off a shocking underdog victory in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary. Trump has been attacking Mamdani as a “Communist” and questioning his U.S. citizenship, which hints at a coming effort to try to strip that citizenship from him. What really caught our eye, though, is Mamdani’s response to Trump. It was very sharply worded and quickly laid out the real stakes of this battle. This is something we think Democrats can learn from because it’s becoming clear that Trump’s threats to denaturalize political opponents may be on the way to becoming a real thing. So can Trump denaturalize Mamdani and other political opponents? What would that look like? And what should liberals and Democrats be preparing for right now? Today we’re trying to figure all this out with one of our favorite immigration analysts, David Bier of the Cato Institute. Good to finally have you on, David.

David Bier: Thanks for having me on. It’s great to finally make it here.

Sargent: So let’s start with Trump’s deranged threats. This week Trump was asked about Mamdani’s claims that he will resist ICE arrests in New York City. Trump responded by saying, Well, we’re going to have to arrest him. Listen to this.

Donald Trump (audio voiceover): Well then we’ll have to arrest him. Look, we don’t need a communist in this country, but if we have one, I’m going to be watching over him very carefully on behalf of the nation. A lot of people saying he’s here illegally. We’re going to look at everything.

Sargent: So there’s that. And then Trump also tweeted this, “I’m not going to let this Communist Lunatic destroy New York.... I hold all the levers.” David, if you take this along with Trump’s suggestion that Mamdani is here illegally, you have to take seriously the possibility that Trump may move to denationalize Mamdani. Your thoughts on this?

Bier: The reason why the president is so anti-immigrant, anti-legal immigration [is] because he sees them as a threat to his power. He sees them as political opponents, as future members of the Democratic Party. And so when he looks at them, he thinks, Threat, and I’m going to crack down. I’m going to find a way to get them out of this country. And it doesn’t matter if they’ve committed any crimes, if they’ve done anything in violation of the law, he’s still going to target them. And that’s what we’ve already seen with respect to his agenda with legal immigrants in the United States who are here as noncitizens. Now he’s just expanding those assaults to people who are citizens, who have naturalized. And if you look at what he’s done with legal immigrants already, he’s arresting people who are here legally for their speech and their advocacy, including someone who wrote an op-ed in a student newspaper. So this is what he sees as his power, and he’s willing to use it even against U.S. citizens who express dissent and oppose his agenda.

Sargent: So Mamdani responded to all this with a terrific statement. I want to read part of it. Here goes, “The President of the United States just threatened to have me arrested, stripped of my citizenship, put in a detention camp and deported. Not because I have broken any law but because I will refuse to let........

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