Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich pressed Americans to back Republicans on Sunday, warning socialists have seized the Democratic Party and holding up Zohran Mamdani as the cautionary example.

The ex-governor delivered the message on the “Cats Roundtable” radio program with host John Catsimatidis on 770 WABC while promoting his new book. Blagojevich, once a Democrat who later called himself a “Trump-O-Crat,” told listeners the party he used to lead no longer exists in recognizable form.

He framed the choice in plain terms for the midterms. Stay home, he said, and the country gets more of the same leftward push. Show up for Republicans, and voters protect the country from people he said would wreck it.

The New York Post reported the former governor’s remarks as he mixed book promotion with a direct political appeal and a long-running grievance against Barack Obama.

Blagojevich says the old Democratic Party is gone

Blagojevich did not hedge. He told the radio audience the institution he once belonged to has been taken over.

Blagojevich said:

“It’s not the Democratic Party anymore.”

He added:

“It’s a socialist party,”

Then he went further, tying the claim to concrete stakes and naming New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani as the type of figure he fears will spread.

Blagojevich said:

“The Democratic Party has been hijacked by socialists and communists who hate America. If you want Mamdamis all across America, then stay home and allow the Democrats to win the midterm elections,”

He closed the pitch with a call to action:

“But if you want to make our country great again, and protect it from people who would destroy our country, then get out there and vote” for Republicans.

That warning lands amid wider signs that radicals now drive the Democratic Party and leave traditional voters looking for an exit.

Catsimatidis used the appearance to float a political comeback of his own, suggesting Blagojevich run for mayor of Chicago. The former governor stayed focused on the national choice he wanted listeners to make.

Obama gets the blame for the prison years

Blagojevich’s book is titled “Framed, F****ed, and Freed: A Governor’s Odyssey.” On air he spent real time revisiting the corruption case that sent him away and the role he assigns to Barack Obama.

After the 2008 presidential election, Obama vacated his Illinois Senate seat. Blagojevich was later convicted in connection with the effort to fill that seat and received a 14-year prison sentence for political corruption. President Trump commuted the sentence in 2020.

FBI wiretaps captured Blagojevich discussing the appointment at the time. One recording caught him saying he had “this thing, and it’s [expletive] golden,” and that he was “not giving [the appointment to the Senate seat] up for [expletive] nothing.”

On Sunday he insisted the entire episode traced back to an approach from Obama’s side. Blagojevich said none of it would have happened if Obama “didn’t send someone to meet [me] to make a political deal, which was criminalized in my case.” He repeated that the deal “wasn’t a crime.”

He also said Obama should have defended the rule of law and the Constitution. Instead, Blagojevich claimed, Obama protected himself.

Blagojevich said:

“He made a very cynical, political deal to protect himself. He spent eight years in the White House. I spent eight years in the big house. I laugh about it now, but you’d have to say... that Obama had a better eight years than me.”

In 2008 Obama publicly stated, “I have not discussed the Senate seat with the governor at any time.” Blagojevich still places Obama on the “socialist side” of today’s Democratic Party.

Party strain is not limited to old scores. Recent turmoil includes a Montana Democratic chair who resigned and backed an independent rather than the party’s own Senate nominee.

Trump earns the credit in Blagojevich’s telling

Where Obama draws fire, Trump draws praise. Blagojevich said his book is far more complimentary toward the president. He pointed to working-class measures such as tax cuts on tips and overtime as reasons he considers Trump better for ordinary Americans.

The 2020 commutation ended the 14-year sentence and returned Blagojevich to public life. He now uses that platform to tell voters the Democratic brand he once carried has been replaced by something hostile to the country.

Similar fractures keep surfacing. One recent example is the moment Fetterman eased off Hasan Piker criticism as the Democratic rift deepened, underscoring how hard it has become for the party to police its left flank.

Blagojevich’s radio appearance mixed personal score-settling with a simple electoral instruction: treat the midterms as a firewall against the Mamdani model going national.

Local party machinery is feeling the same pressure. In New York, the Brooklyn Democratic chair exited after years of party turmoil as progressive strength grew inside the organization.

Even the search for a 2028 standard-bearer shows the drift. Some Democrats have begun to eye Ocasio-Cortez while the party hunts for direction after successive losses, a debate that only reinforces Blagojevich’s core claim about who now sets the tone.

Voters who still want secure borders, working-class growth, and constitutional order now hear a former Democratic governor say the clearest path runs through the Republican column.